Instruction in Visual Art: Can It Help Children Learn to Read?

Abstract

Can reading skills be enhanced by instruction in the visual arts? Arts education researchers have sometimes made this claim and have argued that the visual arts can play a strong role in the teaching of basic skills in the kindergarten and elementary school years.' There are two possible mechanisms by which visual arts instruction might enhance reading ability, one cognitive, one motivational. The cognitive mechanism would involve transfer of skill. Perhaps visual arts training strengthens visual perception skills (e.g., pattern recognition, attention to details) that can be deployed in reading. If children with poor reading skills are deficient in reading because of a weakness in visual perception, and if visual arts instruction enhances the same kind of visual perception skills needed for efficient reading, then such a suggestion is plausible. The motivational mechanism would involve the visual arts as an entry point into reading. Given engaging art projects that are integrated with reading and writing, children may become motivated to read and write. In this case, however, there would be nothing necessary about the visual arts as a vehicle for reading instruction. An engaging project in gymnastics integrated with reading (or community service, or sports, etc.) might also improve reading skills via the same mechanism. There have been several arts and reading programs designed to help remedial readers improve their reading achievement: for example, Learning to Read through the Arts (LTRTA), begun in 1971, Children's Art Carnival (CAC), begun in 1974, and Reading Improvement through the Arts (RITA), begun in 1975.2 All three of these programs (housed in New York City) were based on the strongly held view that visual art is an effective vehicle through which to improve reading skills.3 The method of these three programs was similar. Children participating in LTRTA received considerable extra art and reading instruction (about 813 hours a week). Typically, students worked on visual art projects with an artist-teacher, along with reading and writing linked to the art projects. For instance, they were given lists of vocabulary words connected to their art