Arts education supports the development of the whole child and prepares the child for a

life filled with opportunities for learning and joy. The article, “The Arts and Australian Education,”
discussed about the roles of art in learning more generally as enhancing students’ learning.
Dewey (1934) highlighted the artistic nature of young children’s play seeing it as the foundation
for all learning and contended that art is a quality of experience rather than a product. The
article also analyses about the exemplars from a range of art forms to demonstrate how the arts
with other subjects and across the curriculum can function as crucial and quality pedagogy in
school context. These art forms include music, movement and visual arts. According to Rena
(2011), experiences in the arts offer many intrinsic and extrinsic benefits to elementary children.
As a result, students will be able to develop their creativity and imagination while experiencing
joy and wonder. At the same time, arts education also plays a crucial part in enhancing
students’ language competency. Arts activities afford a beneficial opportunity for young students
to practice language skills. Hence, this writing will be focusing on the issues of creative arts in
facilitating learning mainly in English language learning.

First and foremost, music provides the gateway to better understanding of human
cognition, because learning music has been shown to change dendritic connections in the brain
(Ewing, 2010). The brain has structures that respond to the visual and auditory stimuli
associated with art learning. Forgeard, Schlaug, et al. (2008) conducted a longitudinal study
with normal-reading children and children with dyslexia, which found that there was a strong
relationship between musical discrimination abilities and language-related skills. Therefore,
music instruction might transfer to skills associated with successful reading and phonological
awareness. According to Overy (2000), phonological awareness in children with dyslexia
improved after a singing and rhythm game intervention. Phonological and reading skills were
strongest for normal-reading children with musical training, who were also superior in the area
of melodic discrimination. According to Gardner (1983), as a particular kind of intelligence, there
is no doubt that learning music enables the experiencing, creating and communicating of ideas
and emotions. Hence, through music education, students’ competence in language increases as
well as expressing and communicating ideas and emotion.

Furthermore, dance and drama activities build up self-confidence and self-efficacy which
are necessary for creative and flexible thinking (Ewing, 2010). McKechnie (1996) asserts that
dance enables both a sensory and aesthetic way of knowing, in bones, nerves and muscles,
and in the exercise of imagination, aesthetic discrimination and skill. Participating in such
performances like dance and drama is the opportunity to develop variety of skills like planning,
engaging in discussion and learn how to collaborate in a group. Planning, engaging and
collaborating in discussion or group work actually stimulate children’s zone of proximal
development as introduced by Lev Vygotsky in his theory of social constructivism where
children always learn something new from their interaction. These benefits also help the
children to develop expressive skills and interest for competency in learning English language.
Dramatic play and creative movement come naturally to young children and serve a crucial role
in their construction of meaning (Piaget, 1962). For example, they examined literary devices
such as hyperbole through finding its corollary in dance (exaggerated movement creating
comedy). Other than that, they looked at action verbs and students constructed dances
embodying these words. Unconsciously, the students became the authors of new stories and
creators of new dances as they oscillated between words and movement, demonstrating
improved writing and movement skills. Therefore, through these processes in dance and drama,
students will be able to enrich their vocabulary stores and language skills.

Next, using visual art advocates learner to think through their senses, develop empathy
and communicate through visual and spatial symbol (Ewing, 2010). During the early years, most
young children show a little interest in the final product; instead they are focused on the process
of creation (Isbell & Raines, 2013). For example, the young child is more interested in mixing
colours than in the hue that appears on the paper. Next in their primary grades, they will start to
become interested in final product and represent ideas realistically. These processes support
the developmental stages proposed by Piaget (1960) that preschoolers in preoperational stage
are developing symbolic representation while in formal operational stage, children are able to
construct understanding by using abstract thinking. By using their sight and cognitive senses,
they will be able to observe and interpret their surrounding as their imaginative cognition is
triggered. Learning visual art improves a range of literacy skills including description,
hypothesizing and reasoning. Brain research also support the value of integrating art in
English(“Art as a tool for teachers of English language learner,” 2010). As evidence, Stanford
University conducted a study to measure the relationship between reading and the arts and
found the likely connections among brain regions involved in the development of reading skill
and how exposure to the visual arts might relate to phonological awareness like the ability to
manipulate speech sounds, which is correlated with reading ability. Hence, integration of the
arts into academic lessons facilitates students to learn more deeply because they use varied
ways of thinking and problem solving.
 In conclusion, elements of art do contribute in the development of children in physical,
emotional, spiritual, cognitive and social (JERIS) aspects as emphasized in KSSR to ensure
holistic development of students in order to face the challenges of 21st century globalization.
Music, movement and visual art are the main elements of arts that trigger the creativity of
children to explore, experience and express themselves in a fun and beneficial way as well as
learning generally in English language learning. Through implementation of creative arts in
teaching and learning process, both teachers and students will be able to interact and
collaborate in the activities in a fun and motivating environment. Hence, educators specifically
English language teachers should grab the opportunity to change the traditional way used in the
classroom by implementing the creative arts to grab students attention and develop their
potential in learning without limit.
 References

Art As A Tool For Teachers Of English Language Learners (2010). Retrieved March 5, 2017,
from The New York State Education Department,
http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/scmsAdmin/media/users/nbm3/art_tool.pdf

Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. New York, NY: Putnam.

Ewing, R. (2010). The arts and Australian Education: Realising potential. Victoria, Australia:
ACER Press.

Forgeard, M., Schlaug, G., Norton, A., Rosam, C., Iyengar, U., Winner, E. (2008). The relation
between music and phonological processing in normal-reading children and children
with dyslexia. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 25, 383–390.

Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York, NY: Basic
Books.

Isbell, R. T, & Raines, S. C. (2013). Creativity and the Arts with Young Children. United States
of America: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

McKechnie, S. (1996). Choreography as research. In M. M. Stoljar (Ed.), Creative

investigations: Redefining research in the Arts and Humanities. Canberra: The
Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Overy, K. (2000). Dyslexia, temporal processing and music: The potential for music as an early
learning aid for dyslexic children. Psychology of Music, 28, 218–229.

Piaget, J. (1962). Play, dreams and imitation in childhood. (C. Gattegno & F. Hodgson, trans.).
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Piaget, J. (1960). The child’s conception of the world. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams.

Rena, U. (2011). Arts Education For the Development of the Whole Child: A case study.
Unpublished doctoral thesis, Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario.
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