Core Strategies

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Inquiry

Central to CAPE’s research is the idea of inquiry.   What are the large questions that we can look at across grades, across schools, and across programs?  What are the questions that will help us gain a deeper understanding of teaching and learning through the arts?  What questions can motivate change in school culture and in school systems?

For teachers and artists working together in the classroom, inquiry guides their curricular planning.  What do they want to know about their teaching?  Their students’ learning? About art?  What questions are open-ended, critical, and lead to more than one answer, or even more questions?  Teachers and artists form what they teach in response to their inquiry question, and revisit their question frequently during their arts integration partnership as they reflect on what their students are learning through arts integrated curriculum.

Documentation

CAPE teachers and artists train in documentation methods and theory as to why documentation has a positive impact.  The curriculum from our teacher/artist partners working with students is documented throughout the process, beginning, middle, and end.  The teachers and artists use different mediums and methods to document (video, photography, interviews, journals, etc.), and different ways to organize, understand and present their documentation, including portfolios, documentation panels, and on-line digital documentation.  All these rich documentation sources provide extensive data for teachers, artists, and external researchers to access a broader and deeper understanding of what is happening in CAPE classrooms.

External researchers

CAPE’s approach—where teachers, artists, and students engage in developing inquiry questions and documenting their work to answer those questions—is called action research.  CAPE partners learn much from their action research, and it has a direct impact on how they teach.  To develop a bigger picture of what is happening in multiple CAPE schools, we work directly with external, university-based researchers.  These research professionals work with CAPE program staff in order to create research plans and tools, and ways to analyze CAPE data.  They report back to CAPE staff and teachers and artists what they are seeing in terms of teacher and student impact across schools.

Professional Development & Dialogue

Bringing together teacher/artist teams from schools across the city is central to how CAPE forms and sustains partnerships.  It is also central to research.  In these meetings, teachers and artists offer valuable input on researcher inquiry questions and tools.  They also discuss research findings, and reflect oh how these findings can impact their work at the schools.