Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education


Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education

Contact: Alison Lehner-Quam , Director, Resources and Technology Development Lincoln Center Institute 70 Lincoln Center Plaza New York, NY 10023 Phone: 212-875-5566		Fax: 212-875-5539 Email: alquam@lincolncenter.org Web Address: Visit web site
Approach: Imaginative learning through aesthetic education: for teachers, teacher educators, teaching artists, with multiple partnerships. Partners: Partnerships and alliances with Teacher Education higher education institutions, K-12 schools in New York City, New Jersey, Westchester and Long Island, within a 30-mile radius of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Lincoln Center Institute National Educator Workshop host sites. Lincoln Center Institute Consultancy sites. Description: For over 30 years, New York City’s Lincoln Center has worked at the crossroads of arts and education. Annually, the Lincoln Center Institute (LCI) reaches over 5,000 teachers and 300,000 students nationwide. Work in partnership with pre-K through grade 12 educators and teacher education programs. Lincoln Center Institute fosters the cultivation of imagination through aesthetic education practice that includes art-making explorations, inquiry, and the use of multimedia contextual resources. Structures: Approach: Reflecting educational philosopher-in-residence Maxine Greene’s teachings, LCI has developed an approach to teaching and learning now subscribed to across the country. At the beginning of multi-level professional development offerings for educators are intensive interactions with works of art – selected from the vast collection offered by LCI and its partner museums – guided by teaching artists. Educators choose works relevant to their classroom’s curriculum, and teaching artists (TA’s) and educators brainstorm ways to explore the artwork, developing a framing question called the “line of inquiry” (LOI). Before – and often after – experiencing the artwork, TA’s facilitate educators in related hands-on art making. This investigation flows between doing and examining, using a variety of learning modalities. The inquiry seeks to establish a deeper observation and analysis of the artwork, both as a group and individually. Multiple perspectives are embraced, even as the group develops a common vocabulary and understanding, and repeated encounters with the work of art allow for refinement. Connections to the classroom may lead to new questions to pursue in this cycle of asking, looking, and learning. LCI believes that this approach to fostering imaginative learning can be applied across the curriculum. Offerings: Lincoln Center Institute offers summer, fall, and winter sessions. For the teacher new to LCI, the Introductory Level Workshop introduces LCI’s approaches and the concepts over an intensive workshop, followed by school year professional development. Experienced educators choose from a variety of advanced workshops focused specifically on a work of art or imaginative learning topics. LCI National Educator Workshops also offer introductory and advanced levels to educators from across the nation and around the world who are interested in the Institute's approach to arts and education. Formal Large Scale Sites: LCI's work in teacher education creates a community among LCI and higher education programs that teach student, novice, and experienced educators. LCI currently partners with eight universities. Focus Schools: Since 1994, a laboratory learning community of schools have committed to examining LCI principals in practice, and assist with the continued development of the approach. Ten New York City public schools currently participate, with each school developing written commitment and focus statements. Program involvement includes: Study, Investigation, Exploration Concept and Staff Development Continued Professional Development and Work with Students Embedding and Deepening the Practice Focus school components include a whole school approach, teacher participation in a range of professional development workshops, development of a resource center at each school, family workshops, and a research partnership with LCI exploring: How understanding artworks can develop over time. Connections between aesthetic education and other curricular areas. How work with imaginative learning in studiying works of art can affect the whole school curriculum. In these intensive models, participants work in seminars and workshops both at their home educational site and in cultural venues, and LCI seeks to build interaction among the collaborators. (Lincoln Center Institute) Other Resources and Services include: Partnership schools: Within a 30-mile driving radius, LCI works with school-based teams of educators who attend an intensive week-long introductory seminar. Work with teaching artists and works of art follow in classroom sessions as well as performance venues and museums over the year. Subsequent professional development opportunities offer advanced workshops for educators to pursue specific educational topics related to LCI curriculum and pedagogy. National Educator Community: To serve educators out of driving distance – whether a few miles away or in another country – LCI offers professional development opportunities. Lincoln Center Institute National Educator Workshops are led by Institute-trained staff and teaching artists active in their disciplines. They strive to offer high-quality, hands-on instruction that includes, as part of the Institute’s rigorous approach, art-making related to performances from LCI annual repertory, as well as explorations of the subject through discussion and research of context. Each workshop features a balance between philosophy and practice, activity and reflection, and personal and group inquiries. Workshop leaders are specially trained by Lincoln Center Institute in the methodology and philosophy of aesthetic education for imaginative learning. In addition, LCI offers learning opportunities as part of National Principals Leadership Institute. Particularly geared towards school leaders and teams. Online Courses: As of Fall 2008, Lincoln Center Institute also offers online courses. Designed to recreate the in-class Institute experience, the courses guide participants toward a skill level where they can design a classroom program themselves, fully based on the LCI model. The initial set of four courses is built around a work of art that uses cutting-edge technology and embodies properties of dance and visual arts. Titled Ghostcatching, the work represents movement in the virtual world by choreographer/dancer Bill T. Jones and was designed digitally by Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar. Hecksher Foundation Resource Center: In-person and online loaning library of arts and education resources, particularly supports participants in collaborative professional development programs and the Lincoln Center repertory (Lincoln Center Institute) (Lincoln Center Institute) (Holzer and Noppe-Brandon). Lincoln Center Institute Consultancies LCI consultancies are customized to the needs of each organization that wishes to acquaint itself with LCI's teaching and learning strategies. It is a full immersion in the LCI aesthetic education experience and is offered in the following models: a one-day introductory session in aesthetic education principles and practice, a week-long workshop intensive, a month-long workshop series, and a year-long sequence of professional development workshops. LCI consultants conduct workshops for teachers, model LCI's practice in classrooms with students, coach teachers in aesthetic education practice, and advise the participating organization on establishing aesthetic education programs. The Consultancy experience is designed to strenghen the participants' confidence in their ability to sharpen the students' learning and critical-thinking skills, and to guide them from inspiration to creative action. History: Launched in 1975 as an integral part of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center Institute grew out of a yearlong study funded by the Carnegie Corporation. The study, written by founder Mark Schubart and published in 1972 as The Hunting of the Squiggle, surveyed existing programming at cultural organizations around the country and discovered that most failed to reach all but a very small percentage of the student population. To work with schools more effectively, there would need to be a much broader educational focus that went well beyond traditional arts appreciation while welcoming genuine collaboration with classroom teachers. As reported on the front page of the New York Times, the study called for an entirely new approach: one that engaged children and provided them with hands-on opportunities to explore and understand the arts. In response to this challenge, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc. established a separate board of trustees for the Institute and enlisted former U.S. Commissioner of Education Francis Keppel as its first Chairman; Mark Schubart former Dean of The Juilliard School, was chosen as the Institute's founding Director. Under their leadership, the Institute developed a strong philosophical approach to arts in education that was grounded in the progressive tradition of such renowned educators as John Dewey and Maxine Greene. Thirty years later, the Institute has expanded globally and become a strong presence in the arts and education initiatives of numerous institutions both in and outside the United States. It serves thousands of educators, and, since its inception, its educational approach has reached 20 million students throughout the world. The Lincoln Center Institute National and International Educator Workshops, a series of foundational workshops in professional development, are now hosted by partnering organizations across the nation and abroad. As part of its expansion, the Institute offers consultancies to institutions interested in its aesthetic education approach and is designing online courses accessible through the web. It plans to add a children’s book series to its scholarly texts, thus bringing its approach to the arts into homes as well as schools. (Lincoln Center Institute) Resources: LCI focus schools share costs with the Institute on a 50%-50% basis. This includes direct costs for TAs, planning time, performance and museum visits. Schools pay half through school and district budgets, grants, and fundraising, and LCI supports half direct, plus indirect administration and services, including professional development offerings for teachers and TAs, and resource materials(Lincoln Center Institute). For services like the National Educator Community and the Lincoln Center Institute National Educator Workshop, a five-day workshop costs the participant $525, and a single workshop days for advanced workshops cost $105/day. Both require a $25 registration fee. Findings : From Teacher Education Partners: St. John’s University finds the professional development for its teacher educators has increased value of arts education on its campus (Ross). Required arts education courses have returned, and faculty participate in LCI collaboration voluntarily and are energized. Arts are more credible. Education students get the chance to experience the arts, some for the first time. At the same time, the arts have been infused into the teaching of general education. This has been done through planning and mirrors the developmental differences between elementary and secondary education. The collaboration encourages more project-based learning in the developing lesson plans of educators. Also of note, the dean took on responsibility for helping teacher education faculty incorporate and integrate this arts-based professional development into their teaching of teachers . Queens College, Department of Elementary and Early Education formed a learning community around integration of aesthetic education into teacher education that is developing initiation rituals for new faculty (Johnson and Lew). Undergraduates all have an aesthetic education component in initial courses, and later during student teaching, and graduate students experience aesthetic education during the Accelerated Certification Program and can elect relevant courses for master’s degrees. From the Hunter College Department of Curriculum and Teaching: Teachers from this LCI collaboration reflect on how faculty and graduate students grow and develop their capacity for inquiry through an encounter of a traditional Indian dance (Brainin and Saarikangas). Students' final reflective essays indicate the collaboration offered enjoyable, transformative experience in helping them overcome anxieties. It also provided opportunities for English language learners through the transcendence of kinesthetic learning across language. Ultimately, the program aided the development of a belief in the arts as a way to enrich all learning and offered insights into the power of nonverbal expression in teaching. LCI is undertaking a 5-year research formative and summative study supported by the Ford Foundation, in 8 pre-K through grade 12 New York City schools, culminating in an experimental design study. Lessons Learned: Regarding large-scale cultural institution - higher education collaboration: Recognize each brings a different institutional culture (Holzer and Noppe-Brandon). Tenure, publication, analysis, and aggressive debate come with higher education. Conversely, cultural institutions rarely publish and may value imagination, intuition, and emotion. Teaching artists may bring baggage about the educational system, having learned in alternate pathways. Complex partnerships will bring up unanswered questions. Create regular forums and structures for the diverse parties to move closer to finding answers. Lincoln Center Institute offers symposia for the various teacher educators to meet, share campus programs, and perspectives. A faculty Research Advisory Group can help campuses collaborate on aesthetic education research (Holzer and Noppe-Brandon). Each site develops personalization of collaboration. At Hunter College, a core-committee of committed faculty and LCI personnel meet bi-monthly to plan the collaboration, resolve issues, and induct new members by showcasing student work (Eldridge). Mirror K-12 learning communities. In-service and pre-service educators, teacher educators with Queens College’s Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education started an aesthetic education faculty seminar. In response to the inquiry-based arts professional development, they grappled with integrating its lessons at a time of change in teacher education policy and influx of new faculty members. The LCI- Teacher Education Collaborative applies the concept “community in the making” (Holzer, postscript, 2005). Language matters. To optimize the partnership, develop a common language about the arts and education. Language battles, about terms such as “arts education”, “arts-in-education”, or “aesthetic education”, within the arts and education communities only serve to confuse the public and slow progress (Ross) (Holzer and Noppe-Brandon). Challenges: One challenge facing the LCI- higher education learning communities is how to make up for lost time. There is a gap between the hopes for arts and aesthetic education and the preparation of the current generation of teachers, who had very little of either in their educations (Michelli). Another challenge encountered is integrating new group members as new faculty join the learning community can be difficult (Johnson and Lew). Reflections on Bank Street College of Education – LCI Partnership: Advisor and instructor Roberta Altman of Bank Street College points out that it is important to find ways to make aesthetic education more explicit, and that students’ interests and knowledge should be taken into account when shaping choices of works and themes (Altman). It is important to observe K-12 students learning, and to make explicit connections to how to assess student learning in this context. The debate regarding how the LCI approach can adapt to serve students of various learning styles, backgrounds, particularly in a high stakes testing environment continues. Teacher educator Sue Ruskin-Mayher reminds us that novice educators struggle with how to teach first, what to teach later. Therefore, she recommends LCI work to explicitly scaffold the learning opportunity, so that novice educators find relevance in the work and can move beyond the particular work of art to what’s important about it, given the variety of cultural backgrounds and school situations in which they will or do teach (Ruskin-Mayher) (Louis, 2005). References: Altman, Roberta. "The Arts, Aesthetic Education, and Teacher Preparation: A Partnership Developing Multiple Connections for Learning." Community in the Making: Lincoln Center Institute, the Arts, and Teacher Education. chapter. editors Madeleine Fuchs Holzer and Scott Noppe-Brandon. NY: Teachers College Press, 2005. 89-101. Brainin, Sena, and Salla Saarikangas. "Bharata Natyam As a Metaphor for the Concept of "With-It-Ness": Teaching Pedagogic Craft Through Story and Dance." Community in the Making: Lincoln Center Institute, the Arts, and Teacher Education. chapter. editors Madeleine Fuchs Holzer and Scott Noppe- Brandon. NY: Teachers College Press, 2005. 114-21. Eldridge, Deborah. "Strengths and Dormant Opportunities in the Teacher Education Collaborative From the Perspective of Professional Development." Community in the Making: Lincoln Center Institute, the Arts, and Teacher Education. chapter. editors Madeleine Fuchs Holzer and Scott Noppe-Brandon. NY: Teachers College Press, 2005. 68-73. Holzer, Madeleine Fuchs, and Scott Noppe-Brandon. Community in the Making: Lincoln Center Institute, the Arts, and Teacher Education. NY: Teachers College Press, 2005. Johnson, Helen L., and Jamie Lew. "Learning to Talk: Reflections on the First-Year Faculty Seminar." Community in the Making: Lincoln Center Institute, the Arts, and Teacher Education. chapter. editors Madeleine Fuchs Holzer and Scott Noppe-Brandon. NY: Teachers College Press, 2005. 77-86. Lincoln Center Institute. Educational Partnerships. 2003. Web Page. URL: http://www.lcinstitute.org. 7 June 2006. Lincoln Center Institute. Focus Schools Collaborative: Frequently Asked Questions. 2003. Web Page. URL: http://www.lcinstitute.org/ep_focus_faq.asp. 7 June 2006. Lincoln Center Institute. History of the Institute. 2003. Web Page. URL: http://www.lcinstitute.org/aboutlci_history.asp. 7 June 2006. Lincoln Center Institute. Professional Development. 2003. Web Page. URL: http://www.lcinstitute.org/ep_prodev.asp. 7 June 2006. Michelli, Nicholas M. "Collaboration for Imagination: The City University of New York and Lincoln Center Institute." Community in the Making: Lincoln Center Institute, the Arts, and Teacher Education. chapter. editors Madeleine Fuchs Holzer and Scott Noppe-Brandon. NY: Teachers College Press, 2005. 12-19. Ross, Jerrold. "The Promise of Lincoln Center Institute From the Perspective of a New York City Dean." Community in the Making: Lincoln Center Institute, the Arts, and Teacher Education . chapter. editors Madeleine Fuchs Holzer and Scott Noppe-Brandon. NY: Teachers College Press, 2005. 22-31. Ruskin-Mayher, Sue. ""What Are We S'Posed to Do, Teach Opera?": Aesthetic Education Meets Teacher Education at Bank Street College." Community in the Making: Lincoln Center Institute, the Arts, and Teacher Education. chapter. editors Madeleine Fuchs Holzer and Scott Noppe-Brandon. NY: Teachers College Press, 2005. 133-43.

Target Population:
Arts Administrators

Arts Specialists

Classroom Teachers

Education Administrators

Other Population

Parents

Professional Developers

Students

Teachers

Teaching Artists

Arts Discipline:
Dance

Interdisciplinary arts and other subjects

Music

Other Discipline

Theatre/Drama

Visual Arts

Education Thread:
Leadership

Partnership