Children's Ideas about Selected Art and Economic Concepts before and after an Integrated Unit of Instruction

Abstract

The problem of this study was to explore fifth-graders' (i.e. eleven-year-olds') ideas about selected art and economic concepts before and after an integrated art-economics unit. Seventy children within three classrooms participated in the study. The unit, taught by regular classroom teachers but designed by university-based economic educators in cooperation with university-based art educators, was built upon principles of discipline-based art education (DBAE) and shared curricular integration. Using both written and oral measures, students were pre-tested and post-tested on their understanding and application of art and economic concepts. Pre- and post-unit data were analysed by (a) identifying categories of responses post facto using constant comparison methods, and (b) tallying the number of responses in each category. Results indicated that students increased their understanding of both art and economic concepts. Some misconceptions identified at pre-test were still present at post-test, but these misunderstandings were not directly addressed during instruction. The economic concepts were learned somewhat better than the art concepts, and higher-achieving students learned somewhat more than lower-achieving students. When shown familiar and unfamiliar works of art and asked to state what ideas were expressed, students gave more inferential-interpretive and integrative-applied responses at post-test than at pre-test. The findings support the claim that the coupling of disciplines can facilitate the deep learning of concepts for transfer.