Building arts education policy using the tools of out-of-school time youth arts organizations

With the rise of COVID-19 and growing awareness of racial injustice, the last few years have been exceptionally tumultuous for our systems of education and their stakeholders. But scholars critical of traditional paradigms of schooling and accountability have argued that these crises kindle opportunities for profound change. Gloria Ladson-Billings, who has long argued for an approach to education that embraces cultural and epistemological diversity, has called for a "hard re-set” in education and has urged stakeholders to fundamentally reconsider the kind of human beings we want to nurture. With a reset in mind, we have turned our attention to studying out-of-school-time (OST) arts learning environments. The arts—dance, theater, music, the visual arts, and the digital and design arts—offer us a way to reimagine what good learning and teaching look like and how to design learning environments that work for all young people, and perhaps particularly for our most vulnerable youth. In this article, we draw on findings from our national critical qualitative study of out-of-school time community youth arts organizations. We offer policy recommendations for arts education and school improvement in four major categories: (1) Focus on youth and community assets;(2) Expand beyond a program-centric model of funding and design;(3) Support creative professionals;(4) Rethink the design and implementation of assessment systems. Within each category, we make recommendations specific to the various stakeholders who affect arts education policy—arts education leadership, funders and policy makers, and researchers. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Arts Education Policy Review is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

"Finding the Right Window Into What They're Doing": Assessment of Maker-based Learning Experiences Remotely.

During the pandemic, teachers whose practice depends on maker-based learning have had the added challenge of translating their hands-on lessons for remote teaching. Yet with students making remotely, how can a teacher monitor the students' progress, offer timely feedback, or infer what the students understood? In short, how are teachers assessing this work? Working with a learning community of teachers who center hands-on making in their instruction regardless of academic discipline, this study was conducted to examine how teachers are supporting and assessing maker-based learning. Our study draws on observational field notes taken during the community's meetings, interviews with four focal teachers, and artifacts from the teachers' maker projects. Taking a values-based assessment approach, our findings reveal interesting shifts in teaching practice. Specifically, teachers incorporated social-emotional goals into the activities they design and monitor, students documented their artifacts and process, and teachers adapted to using low-tech materials to ensure accessibility while engaging remote students in their learning goals. These findings imply that not only can remote maker-based experiences can influence the role of students as assessors and the tools and materials they use for making but also how these practices revealed in remote settings could inform in-person settings.