Arts, Community, and Education: Master of Education in Community Arts 

Arts, Community, and Education is a 36-credit Master of Education in Community Arts that provides a dynamic and interdisciplinary foundation in community arts work, including arts-based work, grant writing, arts administration, networking, fundraising, curriculum planning, assessment, and advocacy. In addition to core courses, the program of study requires students to pursue more in-depth knowledge in one of five specializations. Integral to the program are research and field experiences that expose students to the power of community arts as an instrument for social change. Development of a portfolio will also be an end result of the program.

Students in the program have made a wide-reaching impact through the arts. Heading non-profits, forming experimental dance programs for youth, creating after-school programs, and working in hospitals and museums are just a few examples of the transformative work our students do. See below for a list of core faculty, who work from the Creative Arts in Learning Division, which has earned a far-reaching reputation for its innovative perspective on the arts and the impact they can have on learning.

Program Specializations (specializations in parentheses after course choices below)

• Arts and Literacy Specialization (AL) The connection between the arts and literacy is emphasized in this specialization in which students focus on practical and theoretical approaches in arts-based literacy curriculum for schools, community organizations and other environments. Students work with practicing artists, writers, performers and educators.
• Integrated Arts Specialization (IA) Students interested in exploring multiple arts modalities, including art, drama, music, poetry, and storytelling, will learn to facilitate an integrated arts approach for school curriculum, community organizations, and other environments.
• Multicultural Education Specialization (MC) An ideal choice for those who want a better understanding of diversity in social contexts and for work in community settings. Themes explored in related courses include social and personal identity; socio-political context; multiple perspectives; and power and privilege in social context.
• Theatre Studies Specialization (TH) Participants get an opportunity to develop artistic skills necessary to facilitate a drama-based approach for school curriculum, community organizations and other environments. Students work with practicing drama educators and directors.
• Visual Art Specialization (VA) Appropriate for current teachers, artists, or other professionals who want to develop the artistic skills to facilitate a visual art-based approach for school curriculum, community organizations and other environments. Students work with practicing artists and art educators to understand the ways in which communities are vital in our framing and teaching of visual art.

EARTS and EARED courses formerly GARTS and GARED, prior to June 1, 2009.

Course Descriptions

EARTS 6001 Collaborative Symposium: Power of Arts in School and Community
Series of workshops led by artists and leaders in multicultural education offering a variety of arts modalities and avenues to understanding cultural differences. Participants will explore the integration of drama, dance, music, visual arts, storytelling, and poetry into multicultural approaches to teaching and learning. This symposium will emphasize collaborative work in the arts as a path toward democratic schooling and social justice.

[back to top]

EARED 6117 Theory and Practice in Community Arts: Ideas Into Action
In this course, we will examine the historical and contemporary theoretical frameworks that have shaped community arts in a wide span of artistic disciplines. Why has the community arts movement taken hold in the United States of America and across the international spectrum? Research proves that the arts bolster economic development, serve as connectors between neighborhoods and cultural/ethnic groups, and revitalize (physically and emotionally) urban and rural places. To achieve these dynamic possibilities, we must know how to turn ideas into action by gaining crucial skills in arts administration, audience development, and project development.

[back to top]

EARED 7106 Multiple Literacies: Family, Communities, and Schools
The course is designed to involve participants in the process of exploring the creative use of some of the arts- including, visual arts, poetry and telling stories. Participants will use the arts to redefine literacy, understand their students' literacies, and to enhance students' skills. The course will involve three major elements, research, artmaking, and curriculum development all of which draw on what participants discover about the lives, families and communities of their students and themselves. We will use a critical pedagogy approach in finding and using the voices and experiences of participants and their students in shaping curriculum, in understanding the broader contexts of schooling, and in creating knowledge together. The course will also focus on the use of the arts for basic literacy and numeracy in the classroom.

[back to top]

EARED 5009 Drama and Critical Literacy
Drama and Critical Literacy uses theatre-based learning to bridge literacy skills with meaningful community interactions within the school and in the larger community. The course will explore diverse cultural perspectives and multiple paths to learning. It will also enable teachers to engage in critical questioning, explore language as social practice; create and employ spoken, written, visual, and spatial texts across the curriculum. This process supports integration of drama into subject areas such as language arts and social studies. The course also investigates issues of diversity and differences in schooling, applying dramatic learning strategies to the social dimensions of classroom, family and community dynamics.

[back to top]

EARED 5010 Creative Movement: Kinesthetic Learning Across the Curriculum
This course integrates kinesthetic modes of learning with the use of movement as a language for interdisciplinary inquiry. Students will explore embodied approaches to curriculum applications, and the critical questioning and exploration that exists at the heart of creative movement as an art form will deepen the students’ comprehension and retention of curriculum themes. Furthermore, students’ work with the social, cultural, and political dimensions of non-verbal communication will allow them to engage with issues of cultural diversity, critical pedagogy, and democratic schooling.

[back to top]

EARED 5014 Environmental Arts and Education
This course will promote understanding, appreciation, and responsible action toward the environment through hands-on arts activities151including Music, Bookmaking, Poetry Outdoors, Storytelling, Eco-Web Galleries, YouTube, and Eco-Blogs. Students will study history of environmental arts including ecological artists, materials and processes. Students will research key environmental issues and develop lesson plans using the arts.

[back to top]

EARTS 5351 Cultural History Through Storytelling
Students explore stories and story types from various oral and written traditions. Drawing on culture and family, students develop original stories while integrating other art forms. Finally, students explore curriculum uses for storytelling in order to bring subject matter to life and motivate student learning.

[back to top]

EARED 6005 Multicultural Experience Through Dance
Dance is a participatory art that also acts as expression, communication, and social ritual. This course uses dance as a vehicle to explore the diversity of cultural identities. Participants recognize dance as language and use dance to enable learning in the context of recognizing diversity, both within and around the individual. We engage in movement exploration in each class and together make diverse applications to our lives and work. For dancers and non-dancers.

[back to top]

EARTS 6008 Arts and Technology
This course will engage students in arts-based technology, using a variety of software programs. Students will gain an understanding of technology and its many applications across the disciplines and in the world around them. Working collaboratively and/or independently, students will use technology in a caring, stimulating, safe, and creative learning environment.

[back to top]

EARED 6100 Integrated Arts Approaches in the Curriculum
This course introduces several main themes: arts rationale, critical pedagogy, ways of knowing, reflection, assessment and multiculturalism. These themes are explored through practice, research and theory. Strategies for reaching all learners are considered as each art form is introduced. Students consider how multiple arts modalities strengthen learning across the curriculum.

[back to top]

EARTS 6104 Art and Visual Inquiry
This course will engage students in art-based investigations using a variety of materials and processes. Students will also gain an understanding of art as an interdisciplinary medium that can address learning across the curriculum. Art will also be presented as a language that enables students to utilize voice as an agent for social change. Art as a vehicle for seeing and knowing will further students’ ability to interpret, analyze, and speak about art.

[back to top]

EARTS 6105 Multiple Perspectives Through Music
This course opens the door to rethinking music from broader and deeper perspectives. Students examine their cultural assumptions about the role of music in their lives and in education. Through practice and theory, the many connections between music and curriculum are actively explored. Students are challenged to reconsider and expand their definition of music and to move beyond the traditional Western framework. The course takes students on a path of inquiry that examines multiple musical concepts.

[back to top]

EARED 6113 Teaching the Fundamental Elements of Visual Art
This course for students in the Initial Licensure strands of the Master of Education Degree as a Teacher of Visual Art students (preK-8 and 5-12 grades) is designed to provide ways for students to become effective art makers and art teachers. The 6-hour per week format provides for the focusing on the major components of being art educators: art skills and techniques that can be used in the classroom; artmaking in the context of pedagogy and curriculum development; and effective classroom management. Students will examine their own views on art education and through presentation, collaboration, critique, and reflection will develop curricular and pedagogical approaches that will aid in the development of their own philosophies of art and teaching.

[back to top]

EARTS 6203 The Language of Poetry
By writing, sharing, and reading contemporary and traditional poetry, course participants gain skills in using poetry to augment language, writing, and literacy skills in their own students. Students develop ways to combine poetry with other art forms and to integrate poetry into elementary and secondary curriculum.

[back to top]

EARTS 6393 Interactive New Media
The course will introduce the student to the technology and processes of Interactive Media by a demonstration/hands-on approach. It will cover a variety of devices and processes including computer, video, and web technologies. Learning theories involved in the design and presentation of complex information will be examined, as will issues relating to how these media influence society. The students will be encouraged to explore the various technologies with a goal of producing an interactive media piece. Students will address how these technologies can be utilized in curriculum for different age groups.

[back to top]

EARED 5018 Arts and Human Development
This course familiarizes students with stages of human development from childhood through adulthood. Knowledge of human development is enhanced through interaction with art materials, music, movement, drama, and writing.

[back to top]

EARED 6002 Arts and Children With Special Needs
Understanding children whose emotional, physical, and social issues require special consideration. Art, drama, and movement are explored as stimuli for personal expression and remediation. This course focuses on how the arts can support children with special needs in both separate and inclusive settings. The course gives particular attention to developing methods of using arts as the primary vehicle for encouraging cooperative learning and self expression, building self esteem and self confidence, attending to different learning styles, developing decision making skills, and improving basic language and communication skills. Participatory activities in both visual and performing arts are included with opportunities to develop individual applications for children with varying abilities.

[back to top]

EARED 6003 An Arts Approach to Multicultural Education
This course explores ways to approach human diversity and build understanding about similarities and differences through drama, movement, visual arts, music, poetry, and literature. Application is made for the classroom and other work settings.

[back to top]

EARTS 6006 Power of the Image: Media Literacy
This course examines the nature and origins of images, the visual representation of minority groups in the mass media, and the use of images to create a sense of place, tell one's story and affirm personal/cultural identity. Students develop sophistication about the power, sources and uses of imagery, and engage in the creative process using drawing, computer-generated imagery, and video as art forms.

[back to top]

EARED 6013 Film, Representation, and Identity
This course examines selected representational works of art(primarily film & photography) to explore such issues pertaining to identity as transnationalism, gender, reflexivity, and cultural mediation. The class will view films in the genres of ethnography and transcultural filmmaking. Students will analyze works for their form, content, artists' intentions, and audience perception, and will develop a critical perspective of understanding visual documents in terms of questions as authorship, intentionality, power and epistemology as a result of cultural encounter.

[back to top]

EARED 6090 Critical Pedagogy Through the Arts
This course is an exploration of the theory and practice of critical pedagogy within arts-integrated teaching and learning. Participants will engage with issues of justice and equality in education as they explore the arts as a medium for critical inquiry and multicultural understanding among learners of diverse sociocultural backgrounds. This course will provide participants with the opportunity to translate theoretical analysis into arts-based curriculum development and pedagogical practice.

[back to top]

EARED 6091 Transformational Leadership Through Drama
This course orients students to the use of drama for education, issue resolution, empowerment, and leadership for change in schools and communities. There will also be opportunities to explore various interactive applications of drama to foster democratic education, multicultural education, and social justice in the classroom and beyond. We will examine how the process supports the curricular standards of the state.

EARTS 6101 Art and Culture in Community
This course will define community, both local and global. It will guide students in the process of identifying and utilizing arts and resources within communities. Students will develop an expansive definition of visual culture from the traditional to the popular and the contemporary. Through art-based work, they will obtain a complex understanding of the role of art in communities near and far while developing advocacy strategies.

[back to top]

EARED 6103 Literacy and the Arts: Vision and Voice
Students gain an understanding of how the arts can be integral to the process of whole language, and gain skills in designing integrated learning projects. Through participating in aspects of music, drama, visual arts, movement and related language arts activities, students develop individual ways of building curricula in reading, writing, speaking and listening, based on creative modalities.

[back to top]

EARED 6109 Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment: Vision and Voice
In this course students engage with theories and practices of arts-integrated curriculum and the implications and manifestations of these for responsible educational decision-making.  The integration of curriculum, instruction and assessment will be explored from historical, theoretical and practical dimensions.  Topics addressed include critical perspectives on contemporary curricular trends and issues, personal constructs of curriculum, exploration of various instructional strategies, ideological orientations and alternative methods of assessment.

[back to top]

EARED 6110 Arts and Education: History and Philosophy
Considers the history and philosophy of American education with special emphasis on the arts and their place in education. The approach includes using both mainstream sources and those (especially biographical narratives) from minority groups (African-American, Asian-American, Native American, Latino, religious minorities, and recent immigrants). How the arts emerge from various racial and cultural communities and how schools, communities, and the arts can come together in the education enterprise are examined.

[back to top]

EARED 6114 Rites and Rituals: Assessment in Art Education
In this course, students will develop comprehensive formal and informal assessment and evaluation techniques and methods. These methods will lead to improving teaching practice through knowledge of student learning, teacher reflection, and an understanding of the impact of students’ individual differences on learning.

[back to top]

EARED 6115 Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Arts, History and Social Science
This course is designed to provide the participants with an introduction to integrating the arts into the teaching of history and social science in the elementary classroom. The course will provide the participants with an opportunity to explore the arts as a powerful language to express and integrate knowledge in the teaching domains of history, geography, civics, economics, and social studies. Note: Offered in intensive format both fall and spring semester.

[back to top]

EARED 7003 Diversity and Reflective Practice
Through exploration of autobiographical, feminist and critical theories, this course looks at social and group identities in community settings. Through the arts, there will be learning about socio/political contexts and the impact these contexts have on learning styles, cultural identity and power. Research and reflective practice are at the core of this course as well as approaches to civic engagement and creating democratic schools.

[back to top]

EARED 7100 Educator Inquiry: Seminar and Thesis Project
In this final course, students combine research, practice, and theory in order to reflect critically on their teaching and learning. Students identify skills and understandings gleaned from the program and assess the impact of these learnings on their teaching practice. They consider new roles for themselves as agents of change in the field of education. Their work culminates in a substantive project that makes an original contribution to the greater educational community.

[back to top]

EARED 7700 Internship and Seminar in Community Arts
This course is a seminar delivered in a hybrid model. Students participate in on-line discussions and attend a  bi-weekly faculty sponsored seminar. Students will complete a 150-hour field based experience, conduct arts-based research, and examine issues in the field of community arts pertaining to their area of specialization. Students will also create a reflective portfolio documenting and assessing their learning in community arts.

[back to top]

EARED 7702 Arts-Based Research
This course reviews arts-based research methods of data collection and analysis and uses the arts to organize and interpret data and to communicate research findings. Through the study of arts-based research methods students will learn that there are many ways to construct and impart knowledge.

[back to top]

Faculty

Kerrie Bellisario earned an M.F.A. from the University of Connecticut and a B.F.A. from the Maryland Institute, College of Art. As an artist, she engages in the arts as a mechanism for social change—bringing together ideas and images in personal narratives that prompt investigations into a larger scale of human issues. As an educator, she is interested in facilitating the voices of students and leading discussions that make us all think more about the world we occupy. She currently teaches Theory and Practice in Community Arts, Art and Culture in Community, and Art and Visual Inquiry.

Alison Cimino received her M.F.A. in poetry at Texas State University-San Marcos and her B.A. in English at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. Her poems have appeared in a variety of literary journals, as well as the Cambridge Codex Project, a visual art installation to promote literacy in Cambridge, MA. Alison currently works as an artist in residence teaching poetry through arts integration to teachers and administrators and writing poetry with students in the middle and elementary schools. In Fall, 2006, she worked as an artist in residence for Attleboro middle schools through the "ABC 1" and the National Endowment for the Arts' "Big Read" projects. At Lesley, Alison teaches the Language of Poetry and serves as the Internship Placement Coordinator for the Arts, Community, and Education program. In addition to her work at Lesley, she also teaches writing composition at Suffolk University and Middlesex Community College. She presently volunteers at The Children's Room, a center for grieving families in Arlington, MA.

Lisa Donovan is currently the Director of the Creative Arts in Learning Division. She is a theater artist and arts-based researcher who teaches arts integration, arts-based action research, and arts-based literacy courses. She has a broad range of experience working as an arts educator and arts administrator in a variety of arts organizations, including Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, the Berkshire Opera Company, University of Massachusetts' Department of Theater, as well as Boston University's Theater, Visual Arts and Tanglewood Institutes. She was formerly the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Alliance for Arts Education. She has presented her work at national and international conferences, including the Qualitative Inquiry Group in Georgia, the American Educational Research Association in New York City, and UNESCO's World Conference on Arts Education in Portugal. Her arts-based research script, Ah-Sess, was performed as the centerpiece of the Assessment Conference at New York University in 2004. Her script, The Voices that Matter, was performed recently at the University of Massachusetts. Lisa holds a Ph.D. from Lesley University.

Priscilla Sanville received her Ph.D. from the Union Institute in Multicultural Education and her M.A. from Lesley University in the Independent Study Program. She earned her B.A. in Speech and Theatre with a minor in Education from the University of Denver. She was an elementary school teacher for fifteen years and a supervisor of a drama/theatre program for another 15 years in the public schools. She has also worked in various community organizations. Her passion is directed toward social justice through the arts in schools and community settings. She is interested in the dialogue that can occur in communities and schools cross-culturally and multiculturally. She has taught in Russia, Israel, British Columbia, Quebec, and in many settings across the United States. At Lesley, she teaches The Collaborative Symposium, Drama and Critical Literacy, Arts Approach to Multicultural Education, and the Educator Inquiry thesis class.

Robert Shreefter has an M.A. in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received an M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill where he concentrated on painting and printmaking. He has done extensive work with children in schools as a special art and literacy resource teacher and as an artist-in-residence. Much of his work has been in community organizations—including work with pregnant teens and homeless people—literacy councils, and libraries. At Lesley he trains art teachers and teaches classroom teachers in using visual art to enhance literacy instruction. Robert teaches Multiple Literacies, Arts and Literacy, and the thesis course for art educators and those in the visual art specialization in the Community Arts program.

Sam Smiley earned her M.F.A. at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Electronic Arts, and her B.F.A. at Massachusetts College of Art in the Studio for Interrelated Media (S.I.M.). She is a media artist and educator who works within the intersection of digital media, video art, and the sciences. She was the first assistant director for the Boston Cyberarts Festival and has worked with community media and youth in arts centers throughout New England. Her passions in community arts are media literacy, bridging the digital divide, and public media art. She has presented work in Germany, Mexico, Switzerland, France, and Holland as well as in other national and international venues. She currently teaches Arts and Technology, Arts and Culture in Community, and Power of the Image: Media Literacy.

[back to top]