Can reading skills be enhanced by instruction in the visual arts? Arts education researchers have sometimes made this claim and have argued that the visual arts can play a strong role in the teaching of basic skills in the kindergarten and elementary school years. There are two possible mechanisms by which visual arts instruction might enhance reading ability, one cognitive, one motivational. The cognitive mechanism would involve transfer of skill. Perhaps visual arts training strengthens visual perception skills that can be deployed in reading.
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Kristin BurgerEllen WinnerUniversity of Illinois
Progress in understanding cognitive developmental change mechanisms requires methods that yield detailed data about particular changes. The microgenetic method is an approach that can yield such data. It involves (a) observations of individual children throughout the period of the change, (b) a high density of observations relative to the rate of change within that period, and (c) intensive trial-by-trial analyses intended to infer the processes that gave rise to the change. This approach can illuminate both qualitative and quantitative aspects of change, indicate the conditions under which