The contributions of learning in the arts to educational, social and economic outcomes.
This report was prepared by Rachel Bolstad, New Zealand Council for Educational Research for the Ministry.
This review of international and New Zealand literature explores the arguments made, and evidence for, the contribution of participation and/or formal learning in arts disciplines to educational, social/cultural and economic outcomes, with a key focus on school-aged learners.
A number of international reviews and meta-analyses have sought to provide a rigorous research base for understanding the contributions of learning in the arts. This review focuses on all the arts disciplines included in the Arts learning areas of The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007) and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa (Ministry of Education, 2008), with a particular focus on music education as requested by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. It draws on widely-cited international examples such as the Champions of Change (Fiske, 1999) and Critical Links (Deasy, 2002), and a range of other literature. Search criteria focused mainly on locating research with substantive findings about students’ learning and other outcomes in relation to arts education, but a variety of other literature was also reviewed to provide a contextual picture of the state of arts education research, particularly in New Zealand.
This research consists of the following two reports:
Part 1: A review of the literature (word version)
Part 2: A literature synthesis (word version).
Key Results
• Arts learning can contribute to high-level goals: preparing New Zealanders to help create a prosperous and sustainable knowledge economy; fostering creativity and innovation; and preparing New Zealanders to be national and global citizens.
• Most research focuses on the short-term, individual benefits of arts learning and participation. Increasingly, researchers are interested in how these benefits accumulate and spill over into the public sphere.
• Studies indicate positive effects from arts learning and participation. Some studies suggest particular outcomes for specific kinds of arts learning and participation (e.g., music learning and spatial thinking), while a few large studies suggest that students in “arts-rich” learning environments do better overall than students whose schooling environments are “arts-poor”.
• Each arts discipline has its own history, culture and practices. For school students, arts learning occurs in several ways: in the curriculum as a stand-alone subject or integrated across curriculum areas; as a cocurricular or leisure activity; and as an individual or collaborative pursuit.