to Newsletters and Articles.
| Dr. Merryl Goldberg of California State University, San Marcos, appears to be making a breakthrough in developing didactic methods for teachers - even those who have no particular art background - to use art to teach a number of classroom subjects in the elementary school level. |
| Because of her work and that of three other professors at the university, they received a grant of $150,000 to continue their research and experimentation. Many classes using concepts involved have been undergoing testing in several North San Diego County schools. |
| The grant, to be paid over the next three years, is from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Spencer Foundation, under the Professional Development Research and Documentation Program. |
| The money will fund research related to the SUAVE model of professional development for teachers. |
| SUAVE is a Spanish language acronym taken from Socios Unidos Para Artes Via Educacion (United Community for the Arts in Education). The program was developed by Goldberg and has entered into its third year of research. |
| She said the program pairs classroom teachers with art "coaches" so ways to use arts in non-art educational subjects may be developed. |
| Among the areas so far experimented with are the teaching of literacy, history and social studies, science, math, and others. |
| Officials of the MacArthur and Spencer Foundations termed the research "an exemplary program" in making the financial award. The money will be used, according to a report from CSUSM, to focus "on the nature of coaching as a professional development model that potentially could inform other teacher-training models." |
| Some of the researchers' work showed how the arts can be used as a powerful tool for motivating students to apply their knowledge, to work cooperatively, and make learning connections across study content areas. |
| The research showed involved students learned critical thinking skills "while at the same time they imagined possibilities, sought solutions and became active discoverers of knowledge," Goldberg said. |
| [Goldberg] said she documented SUAVE "with great success in multicultural and multilingual classrooms in several North San Diego County schools." |
| Rap songs on photosynthesis were among the "arts" vehicles used to focus in on the learning process. So were the making and utilizing of paper mache puppets of American presidents, the utilization of poetry in teaching about the American Revolution, and a wide variety of other means. |
| The professor theorized that when students used the arts, "they were more deeply into the subjects, and therefore, learned more." |
| [Goldberg] is the author of "Arts and Learning." It describes ways teachers - even those with no art background - may integrate the arts into kindergarten through eighth-grade classrooms. |
| The findings of the research and its use in North San Diego County, apparently with a high degree of success, could be the harbinger of things to come in teaching methodologies used around the country, especially in school systems involving highly-noticeable language and cultural backgrounds among the students. |
| Goldberg became a faculty member at CSUSM in 1993, teaching courses in learning, instruction, and music. |
| She earned her masters degree and doctorate in education from Harvard University, and still has ties there insofar as she is co-editor of "Arts in Education," periodically published by the Harvard Education Review. She also has numerous other published articles and papers. |
| CSUSM professors working with Goldberg are Laura Wendling, Victoria Jacobs, and Tom Bennett. |
To the Press Clippings Page.