Since its inception, ArtsSmarts has monitored the impact of its work in schools and communities across Canada.

Evidence of our model's success has been documented in the rich stories that artist-teacher teams have told us about the differences they see and feel in classrooms when students have opportunities to learn through creative inquiry.

Arts education research provided an initial framework for interpreting the lessons ArtsSmarts was learning from its partners. Too often, however, this area of research tended to describe the effects of learning through the arts versus capturing the potential of artistic inquiry - the iterative cycle of inquiry, design, expression and reflection - as a way of learning.

As a learning organization, ArtsSmarts practices collaborative action research. Our goal is to test ideas and build new theory about the possibilities inherent in designing classroom environments where the combination of knowledge, innovation and creativity is seamless in students' experience and expression of learning.

Research Agenda

With a focus on student engagement, ArtsSmarts' research also contributes to a growing awareness of the need to build greater reciprocity between what we know about effective teaching and understand about effective learning.  When teachers and artists collaborate in effectively implementing ArtsSmarts in classrooms, students are invited to engage with the curriculum by way of rich and authentic learning for the 21^st century.

ArtsSmarts' research agenda has emerged as a strategy for capturing instructive accounts and evidence that is meaningful and relevant to the goal of improving teaching and learning in Canadian schools.

Our research aims to help us strengthen the theoretical foundations of our approach, understand how to improve the impact of our work and generate new knowledge about the important contributions that creativity and innovation are making to the 21^st century educational change agenda.

Early development of our research agenda began in 2006 with the publication of Engaged in Learning: The ArtsSmarts Model, which developed the ArtsSmarts theory of learning centred on the concept of student engagement.  Based on a synthesis of research about student engagement, the results of prior ArtsSmarts project evaluations, and input from a variety of ArtsSmarts participants, we theorized that the presence of four factors in students' experience of learning would lead to higher levels of engagement: content, context, process and product.

Additional research on student engagement undertaken in 2007 further enhanced our research agenda by reflecting the growing potential of the multidimensional construct of engagement in learning across behavioural, affective and cognitive domains (Chapman, 2003 & Fredericks, Blumenfled and Paris, 2004).

Research Instruments

To assess how ArtsSmarts' model of creative inquiry can improve teaching and learning, ArtsSmarts has developed unique quantitative and qualitative research instruments for evaluation.

Our research instruments allow us to build practice-based knowledge about the dynamics of engagement in classrooms when students have the opportunity to experience creative inquiry as a powerful way of learning.

Quantitative
The quantitative research instrument is the ArtsSmarts Student Engagement Questionnaire (ASEQ) administered to students for self-reporting before (pre-questionnaire) and after (post-questionnaire) participating in an ArtsSmarts project.

Launched during the 2007-08 school year, the questionnaire asks students a series of questions which allows us to assess the effects of ArtsSmarts projects on each of the three dimensions of engagement - which we call doing, feeling and learning - while also contributing to our knowledge of engagement as a promising outcome of learning contexts, concepts, processes and products.

This tool was validated in a 2007-08 pilot, and in 2008-09, it was rolled out and available for use by all ArtsSmarts partners across the country.

Qualitative
To accompany this quantitative research tool, ArtsSmarts developed a qualitative tool that allows artists and teachers to plan for their project and simultaneously document and reflect on the work they undertake together.  This tool also enables ArtsSmarts to gather local data about projects over time and then share that information with our national level learning community via symposia, mentorships and joint-work projects.

Called the ArtsSmarts Inquiry Template (AIT), the AIT was based on a template originally designed by Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education and customized for ArtsSmarts projects by our partner ArtsSmarts Durham Region with support from the Ontario Ministry of Education.

This tool was tested in five partner locations in 2008-09 and made available for use by all partners in 2009-10.