CAN’s approach to action research illustrates how teachers implemented their learning. During their participation in CAN, arts educators engaged in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) to investigate the following line of inquiry:

How can instruction grounded in Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education and Social-Emotional Learning enhance students’ learning in the arts, support deeper self and peer understanding, and prompt critical engagement with issues of equity and artistic voice?

According to this brief video by John Spencer, “Action research dissolves the barrier between the participants and the researchers. The teacher actively participates in the situation while also conducting the research.” CAN arts educators started the year with “wonderings” about how to improve their curriculum and arts instruction for their students.

CAN used action research in order to:

• Bridge theory and practice: Use real classroom data to design strategies that meet the diverse needs of all students.
• Grow personally and professionally: Create a personalized pathway of reflective and reflexive processes for professional growth that deepens both teaching skills and artistic practice.
• Reflect and refine: Develop habits of ongoing reflection that enhance and refine arts-based teaching and build a stronger sense of community and belonging in our classrooms and professional learning communities.

CAN structured PLC leadership and instruction around three frameworks:

• The Five Cultural Competencies by CASEL
• Social Justice Standards
• The Five Pursuits by Hill Pedagogies