You are here:
Owhango School – bringing the arts back into our curriculum
Owhango School is a very small, full primary school situated in the middle of the North Island, close to Mt Ruapehu.
Leaders and staff at the school made a decision in 2018 to bring the performing arts back into the teaching and learning in their school. They consider the performing arts to be an area that deserves attention in the era of post National Standards (archived), where there is more emphasis on cross-curricular learning.
Target
To support the children to become more confident and competent in the performing arts learning area of the curriculum.
A quote from The New Zealand Curriculum in their report introduces the rationale for their decision:
'Learning in, through, and about the arts stimulates creative action and response by engaging and connecting thinking, imagination, senses, and feelings. By participating in the arts, students’ personal well-being is enhanced. As students express and interpret ideas within creative, aesthetic, and technological frameworks, their confidence to take risks is increased… Arts education values young children’s experiences and builds on these with increasing sophistication and complexity as their knowledge and skills develop. Through the use of creative and intuitive thought and action, learners in the arts are able to view their world from new perspectives. Through the development of arts literacies, students, as creators, presenters, viewers, and listeners, are able to participate in, interpret, value, and enjoy the arts throughout their lives.'
Studies measuring creative thinking, critical thinking, problem solving and reasoning all find these functions increase and improve when arts education is added to the educational mix.
Correlative studies also show a strong relationship between arts education and:
- positive emotional development that leads to stronger abilities to self-regulate
- deep engagement in learning
- motivation to learn for understanding
- a decrease in disciplinary issues in schools
- self-awareness, self-concept and self-expression
- self-efficacy and self-confidence.
Return to top
