Thank you so much! Yes, throughout the professional development portion of the project, teachers are introduced to different strategies that make the learning environment accessible to students with disabilities. For example, teachers practice running the dance portion of the lesson from a seated position in the event that students are unable to stand or walk. We also spend a significant amount of time supporting teachers in promoting a safe dance environment so that personal space is respected for all students. 

Great question! To start off, one of the potential pitfalls of labeling a lesson or curricula as STEM or STEAM is that it can often focus on only a single subject area without paying due diligence to the other content areas. So, to define STEAM, we first defined STEM for the context of our study.

In this study, we define STEM as an integration of two or more of the content areas of science, technology, engineering, and math. Our inquiry curriculum is based on the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which integrates science and engineering throughout (with other content integrations occurring depending on the standard). Therefore, our training and curriculum for the inquiry portion of our curriculum focused primarily on science-engineering integrated learning. 

As we moved on to define STEAM for the context of this study, we expanded on the definition we used for STEM. Therefore, we define STEAM as the integration of two or more of the STEM content areas in addition to the integration of art. In order to ensure our integration was rigorous, both our inquiry and VAPA (STEAM) lessons addressed a single NGSS performance expectation, but our VAPA (STEAM) lessons ALSO addressed specific visual art and dance standards in the context of science learning. 

At this time, we have not focused primarily on math or technology specifically, however, our study does focus on lessons that align with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which integrate science and engineering practices. Each year of the program focused on a different content area within science and the NGSS, including Life Science, Physical Science, and Earth Science. 

Much of the literature that our study was based on comes from arts-integration to support math learning and English literacy. Few studies have rigorously studied arts-integrated curriculum compared to a non-arts-integrated curriculum to support science learning, which is one of the main goals of the study. Our results thus far suggest that the arts can provide significant learning benefits to students, which could indicate promise for similar outcomes in other subject areas as well. 

We very much look forward to sharing our online vs. in-person results in the upcoming year!

The curriculum focuses on both visual art and dance. For the visual art components, students learn strategies used in the creation of art, often through critiquing examples from fine art to see how the techniques are used. The students then create their own art that is directly related to the science content being studied. For the dance portion, students learn elements of dance and then apply those elements by creating their own movements to represent science vocabulary, concepts, and processes. While students do not critique professional dance, they are encouraged throughout the lesson to watch what different students come up with and discuss why students chose to represent certain ideas with certain movements. 

Hi Sally, 

Yes, developing the online version of the program required a lot of creativity and followed best practices in both professional development and instructional design. To provide some context, the original on-ground program took place over three years with teachers participating in a 40-hour week-long Summer Institute and 20 hours of follow-up professional development for each year of the study. Each year focused on a different content area (Year 1= Earth Science, Year 2=Life Science, Year 3=Physical Science). A team of graduate and undergraduate students filmed all 180 hours of professional development for all three grade levels. We also filmed classroom implementation of all 54 VAPA and Inquiry Lessons. This provided us with a wealth of video to utilize in the design of the online version. We organized the online course in such a way that teachers would first experience the lessons from the point of view of a student (i.e. they were the student) and then would break down each inquiry, visual art, and dance strategy used in the lessons from the perspective of the teacher.

To recreate the lessons from the "student perspective" we utilized a program called Articulate Storyline. Using Storyline we were able to design gamified web-based inquiry lessons, which simulated the intent of the original lesson plan. For our VAPA lessons, we merged simulated activities with actual classroom footage of students participating in the dance and art lessons to provide teachers with an immersive experience. 

To create our "teacher perspective" strategy trainings, we used Articulate Rise, which provides a mixed media learning experience. We were able to use text, video, discussions, quizzes, and other instructional design components to provide teachers with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to implement these strategies in their own classroom. 

Since the on-ground version of the program also provided teachers with opportunities to practice specific inquiry or VAPA techniques, we required teachers to submit assignments demonstrating these skills as part of the course. We also created "Experience Logs" that were designed to align with the content of the course as a place for teachers to take notes on both their experience as "the student" and also "the teacher," which teachers could refer back to as they prepare to implement the curriculum. 

The entire course was housed in Canvas with many discussion activities included throughout the course, which helped to create a sense of community and support for participating teachers. Our very first online course ran in Fall 2018 and we adapted the Quality Matters rubric into an exit survey to collect teacher feedback regarding course quality. The survey is a set of eight General Standards and 43 Specific Review Standards used to evaluate and aid the design of online and blended courses. Out of 100, our first course averaged a score of 90.9 (a score of 85 or higher qualifies a course to receive a QM Certification for quality course design). Lower scores were actually related to the fact that Canvas's SCORM feature (which should allow each Storyline and Rise item to be automatically graded) was not working correctly all of the time. We used feedback from the first course to create a second version of the course, which is currently running. We hope to see improved Quality Matters rubric scores based on our iterative revision model. 

Yes, teachers who completed the 40-hour ESCAPE Online Course received either 4 units or a stipend of $1000 for their participation. These teachers then moved on to our 20-hour ESCAPE Implementation Course, which provided them with support and resources as they actually implemented the lessons in their own classrooms. Teachers were compensated with a choice of 2 units or $500 for participation in this course. 

The entire study collected many different data pieces, both for teachers and students participating in the program. For teachers, we administered a pre- and post-test of knowledge and pedagogy for each content area. We also administered the STEBI, a self-efficacy measure, and an adapted perceptions measure to see how teachers view the use of inquiry and VAPA for teaching science. Teachers also completed implementation logs for each lesson, which allowed us to measure implementation fidelity and also provided us with lesson-specific feedback from the teachers. 

At the student-level, we tested the students at three time points: prior to the lessons, after receiving the first set of lessons (inquiry or VAPA) and after receiving the second set of lessons (inquiry or VAPA). Our student assessments used questions from MOSART and AAAS and were aligned based on content topics with the NGSS standard used in the lessons. Unfortunately, since no NGSS assessments existed at the time that the study was developed, we do not have questions from any state or national NGSS assessments. In California, students will begin state testing of NGSS next year so this data is not yet available. Prior to running our online version of the program, we did modify the student assessments to collect student perceptions about STEM and STEAM learning. Data for these measures is currently being collected. 

thanks for sharing!

Thank you for your question, Delene Hoffner - I think our biggest lesson learned was that moving a fully on-ground program, particularly one of this size, into an online course is a major feat. Our teams spent thousands of hours editing hundreds of hours of video footage, a process that took three years to complete. A second team then had to rewatch all the footage to determine how best to utilize it in the design of our online course. We also had to train a large team of graduate and undergraduate students to become instructional designers, using programs that professional designers use in industry. The instructional design itself has also taken three years to complete.

The original grant writers did not anticipate just how large this scope of work would be, but the payoff has been incredibly rewarding. Not only are we able to disseminate this program across the state and increase our impact, we have also provided over 100 students at the University of California, Irvine with invaluable media production, course design, and instructional design experiences, and brought together a diverse group of individuals from the departments of Drama, Digifilm, Biology, Psychology, Education, Chemistry, Engineering, and Physics. 

Thank you, Coralie. We hypothesize that various characteristics about integrating the arts may provide mechanisms for reversals of misconceptions. Now that we have found initial support for such outcomes, our next steps will be to investigate the finer grains of causal relationships for specific psychological mechanisms at play.

We appreciate your interest in ESCAPE.

Best wishes,

Maureen

Thanks, Sharon.

We found that leading science learning with visual and performing arts (VAPA) methods followed by science instruction utilizing hands-on inquiry led to significantly higher learning gains when compared to the alternative scenario of inquiry learning followed by VAPA-integrated science learning. These outcomes were even more pronounced for English Learner students. We believe that VAPA-integrated science learning may help to decrease anxiety about science, which tends to be very vocabulary dense, thereby reducing students' affective filters and promoting science language development. What we have found is that introducing new scientific vocabulary and ideas in a fun and creative way may better prepare students to engage with these concepts in a more traditional inquiry-based lesson and increases learning overall. Qualitative feedback from our participating teachers overwhelmingly note that students are getting more excited about science as a subject now that they are learning through both inquiry and VAPA. In fact, teachers are observing that students who previously were not interested or did not often participate are much more invested and engaged. We are currently implementing the curriculum in classrooms this Spring and have added a student perceptions measure in the hopes of better measuring and understanding how students feel about VAPA-integrated science as well. 

Thank you for your interest,

Maureen