Our collaborative research and development team has just completed our first study about the teacher experience in the Foundation Course and Summer Institute. As we prepare to submit the study for publication, we wanted to share that the results look really promising for the hybrid online and in-person professional development approach. We evaluated teachers’ beliefs and perceptions related to creativity and arts integration comparing survey responses from before and after the program. We also conducted focus groups with 30 participating teachers to find out in more detail how they felt about the experience and how they have been using what they learned in the classroom.

We found positive changes in teachers’ creative mindsets, value of creativity for students, confidence for teaching for creativity, and awareness and understanding of the benefits of arts integration for student engagement. We also found that teachers decreased their anxiety to face creative challenges.

Based on what the teachers told us in their focus groups, we learned that teachers found a new sense of creative growth and possibility in their teaching practice as a result of the experience.

I did believe that creative growth was possible, but it was like I maybe believed that it was a much more difficult thing to achieve. And going through some of those practices made it seem like there was something that about [that I] could do.
– makeSPACE participant

Teachers tried new techniques with creative and arts integrated routines, found new opportunities for creative learning in what they already teach, and became more open to taking creative risks in the classroom. In addition to those results, we found high levels of satisfaction from participants along with detailed feedback on how to make improvements. All of this research has supported continued refinement of the professional development materials, which will be launched with a new cohort of teachers from new and existing school partners starting July 2020. Check out our join makeSPACE Recruitment page to find out how you can become part of the makeSPACE community.

To help document and share the teacher experience in the makeSPACE project to date, we also created a teacher testimonial page on this website found here. Please check out what teachers have had to say. Stay tuned for upcoming blog posts about the teacher perspective.