Educational Insights
Whole Personhood in Medical Humanities Education: Integrating Arts and Humanities with an Equity Lens View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lisa Abia-Smith, Elizabeth Lahti
Arts and humanities are increasingly being included in health sciences education, with innovative programs designed to improve physicians’ and nurses’ diagnostic tools, empathy, resiliency, and communication skills. The application of the creative arts in educational initiatives for medical practitioners is expanding within the larger field of medical humanities and the arts across the globe. Research suggests that physicians benefit greatly when the arts are included in their clinical training. Our team of 6 medical faculty and art museum educators developed and tested a curriculum as part of a 12-month research study of 3rd-year medical students integrating works of art and literature by artists who identify as BIPOC, LGBTQ+, or have a disability. The works of art served as focal points for inquiry, observation, reflection, writing, art production, and dialogue. We evaluated the impact of the new curriculum to improve implicit bias awareness and to increase empathy and perspective-taking. The format created an environment for the medical students to find connections to their patient encounters, personal experiences, and other medical education courses. Demonstrable outcomes included increased empathy, improved observational skills, enhanced communication skills, and an improved ability to treat people at various stages of life and from different cultures. Excellent opportunities exist for medical schools throughout the nation to partner with art museums in developing similar arts-based training programs which result in compassionate patient care and resiliency building for medical personnel.
Reimagining Arts Education with Ideas from Critical Pedagogy and Reciprocal Teaching View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Daniel Abrahams, Frank Abrahams
This paper describes a critical cultural study, suggesting engaging imagination, intellect, creativity, and performance are arts education goals. Designing experiences fostering artistic citizenship and giving voice to the human spirit are constrained by hegemonic practices that are routine challenges to arts educators. Additionally, interest in culturally responsive teaching, social/emotional learning, and social justice are high on the educational agenda in the United States. All teachers are encouraged to add these topics to their syllabi. The purpose of this session is to describe a study where the researchers applied the tenets of critical pedagogy and the scaffolds of reciprocal teaching as appropriate pedagogy to ensure the arts remain a part of the human experience and not a subject to master in school. Working at their respective schools, they applied these precepts to teaching musical repertoire in the choir and band. Critical pedagogy enables the acquisition of critical consciousness, conscientization, and the ability to read and write the world in meaningful ways. This fosters a transformation of perception within the student as they see themselves as individuals and citizens in the world. Reciprocal teaching, which includes predicting, summarizing, clarifying, questioning, and connecting, facilitates understanding. The researchers found that this theoretical framework fosters a transformation of perception within the student as they see themselves as individuals and citizens in the world. Reciprocal teaching, which includes predicting, summarizing, clarifying, questioning, and connecting, facilitates understanding. This view of arts education gives voice to the voiceless, liberates the spirit, and unlocks human potential.
Humanities Meet STEM through Great Literary Works: Breaking Down Disciplinary Walls
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nancy Dixon
Dillard University of New Orleans is the oldest Historically Black College in Louisiana. Initially founded as a liberal arts college, it also houses the oldest African American nursing program in the country. Since then, at Dillard, as in many universities, there has been a shift among students' majors from the humanities to STEM. There is also a more pronounced divide between the fields of study than originally existed. Scholars in the sciences have long been armed with the knowledge necessary for those of all majors by the reading of great works of literature, or transformative texts. Solid writing and speaking skills are vital to students of all majors, yet more often students in the sciences try to avoid literature and writing classes, to focus on only their scientific pursuits. History tells us that those who focus only on abstract formulas have made poor decisions that have changed the course of human history, and the future of society depends not only on scientific advancement but on scientists and scholars who understand moral, ethical, and ideological forces that shape humanity's future. Reading great books opens a window for historical and aesthetic values for students' understanding of thoughts and ideas about human nature that shape humanity's future. For example, epidemiologists can study the causes and effects of the recent COVID epidemic, but they can also learn historically from Camus' "The Plague," and Boethius' "The Consolation of Philosophy." In fact, the humanities disciplines are vital to all scholars.
