Fine Arts ​& Disadvantaged Learners 

 

Creating Success 
Education excludes. In every classroom there are learners 
who are left out or who are left behind because they are 
unprepared, unrecognized, devalued or who are simply 
not expected to learn what other students are required to 
know. These students don’t demand less of us as teachers 
because they are of different ethnicities, come from lower 
social or economic status, are learning disabled or 
physically impaired, speak other languages, or are at risk 
of violence or homelessness. They demand more. 

 
  

Julianna Rees* Teaching for Equity EDUC 5010 *December 4, 2017 

And yet studies continue to show these students fail to 

thrive in our schools. They may be itinerant and difficult to 
track; they may have high absenteeism; they may need 
more resources, trail behind their peers, or otherwise 
present challenges to the system that seem intractable. 
But they are still our responsibility to educate. 

Since the obvious solutions have not been effective in 

reversing falling test scores for disadvantaged students – 
remedial math and reading classes, detention, suspension 
and worse - educators and researchers have turned to 
more creative possibilities to solve the problem. 
At its very core, arts education is everything we strive to 
incorporate in our classrooms: it is student-centered, 
project-based, UBD, diverse, inclusive, exploratory and 
open-ended. In every art, students are invited to develop a 
question, explore a theme, and pursue a topic that 
interests, excites or inspires them. Student engagement is 
built into the subject matter. 

 
However, these benefits are not enough to lift struggling, 
underserved and at-risk learners to achieve to their 
potential. The real benefit of arts education to these 
learners is in o
​ ther subjects​. The arts support learning 
across the curriculum. They are a crossroads for all the 
academic skills:  

● Research 
● Developing a thesis 
● Implementing a hypothesis 
● Revising and editing 
● Publishing or sharing = exhibition or performance 

Because the arts are  This creates confidence as 

project-based, they are a  students reflect on their 
laboratory for process over  own learning and receive 
product, where ​making  real-world, real-time 
mistakes is how to learn​.  feedback. 
 

Studies show disadvantaged students who are at risk of 

failure and who participate in arts education or arts 
integrated programming show ​improvements in 
self-esteem, engagement, school achievement and 
grade point averages.