Promoting Positive Youth Development and Transforming Learning through Performing Arts and Community Engagement: Implications for Policy and Practice Aimed to Target Developmental Health, Educational, and Socio-Economic Inequities

Purpose: El Sistema is a Venezuelan music program that has inspired a global movement due to its social mission to fight poverty and improve the human condition. The El Sistema model provides high-quality instrumental instruction to children from a broad range of socio-economic backgrounds in over twenty-five countries. Inspired by El Sistema’s paradigm for social change, this model emerged as the catalyst for the University of Michigan (U-M) to develop an innovative, multi-disciplinary community engagement, teaching, and scholarship approach. The U-M School of Music, Theatre and Dance (SMTD), School of Social Work (SSW), and School of Education partnered with Ann Arbor Public Schools to develop an afterschool music intervention program. The El Sistema Inspired (ESI) program was designed to target underperforming schools in under-resourced communities for purpose of addressing racial and ethnic disparities in student achievement and improving overall school outcomes. The initiative also encompassed the development a social engagement curriculum for SMTD graduate students, while creating research and training opportunities for students in the SSW. Methods: Through an interdisciplinary initiative, faculty, graduate students, school administrators, and key stakeholders utilized a participatory research approach in designing, implementing, and evaluating the ESI program. SMTD students provided string instrument instruction to 22 fifth-grade students in partnership with the school’s music teacher. A single group pretest-posttest multi-method research design using standardized scales was employed to evaluate the ESI project. Formative and outcome evaluations were performed to document the program’s emerging curriculum and its effectiveness.  Results: The evaluation offered evidence that: i) students’ feelings of acceptance from family members, teachers, and peers improved significantly; ii) students’ showed significant positive improvement in the way they felt about school; iii) students’ experienced high levels of musical achievement, increased opportunities for learning, an understanding of the benefits of discipline, perseverance, and hard work; iv) there was a greater sense of school pride and school community post program; v) graduate instructors developed a greater sense of self and social consciousness in relation to their instruction on the impact of improved student music and developmental outcomes, and the increased level of school and community support; and vi) graduate instructors also experienced personal and professional gains from teaching and engaging the students, their families, and the school community. Implications for practice and policy: The ESI afterschool instructional approach created a stimulating learning environment that facilitated a strong sense of community between the fifth-grade students, elementary school personnel, parents, university students, faculty, and administrators. The findings from the interdisciplinary research approach used to evaluate this ESI program provide useful data for university and community leaders who are developing approaches for responding to challenging health, social, education, and economic concerns. ESI programs may be able to serve an important role by providing supplementary beginning level instruction to underserved populations, thus providing a positive social transformation through community development. It is important for the proponents of ESI programs to continue research-based evaluation so they can develop efficient and effective means for addressing the specific needs of underserved youth in their communities.