Teaching Writing through the Arts in Urban Secondary Schools: A Case Study

Abstract

This article explores commonalties between literacy instruction and learning to understand the symbolic languages of the visual and performing arts. A detailed case study of an urban professional development program for secondary arts teachers looks at the learning initiated by writing assignments that prompted students to reflect on arts experiences. Evidence of the effectiveness of integrated arts and literacy instruction is provided by a quasi-experimental study, which showed that the expository writing skills of the students of participating teachers improved significantly.