Stop Calling it “PREP”! Article Reflection
EDUC-5499
The article, “Stop Calling it ‘PREP’!” by Terry Sefton, Ph.D., and Jonathan Bayley, Ph.D., is an article about the introduction of the new Ontario arts curriculum in 2010 and how principals reacted to it and how they handle arts programs in their schools.
The part of the article title about “prep,” refers to the fact that teachers who were on prep were typically the teachers who were teaching the arts classes, rather than a teacher dedicated to teaching the subject(s).
Principals of schools were interviewed as a part of this research that the authors did, and their responses were quite interesting. They found that a lot of principals responses had very similar topics, as well as some that differed. For example, most principals did not know what an “arts specialist” was and how they were different from someone who volunteers to teach arts classes as well as those who had additional arts qualifications.
The research also found that there was almost a priority when it came to what arts subjects were taught and how specific they were taught. They found that at most schools, Music seemed to be the highest priority with dedicated classes, while Visual Arts was not so well taken care of. Additionally, Drama and Dance were not typically taught as their own classes, but rather folded into other classes.
This article was a very interesting topic that I enjoyed reading about. Arts teaching is certainly better today, 12 years after the article was written, but there are certainly some similarities that I can think of between this article and grade schools in particular, where the arts are not taught as well as in secondary schools. I think that the Arts still need to be looked at well and could use some more work in getting it to be just as an important subject as the core courses that all students are taught every day.