A Ray of Light

The National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Department of Education funded an extensive study that analyzed the considerable arts education research literature in an attempt to resolve issues that relate to the assessment/standards movement and arts education. What emerged, Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development (2002), is an excellent carefully selected compendium of 62 studies that the task force considered best able to help resolve the issue of the role of the arts in contemporary K-12 education.

They examined research studies and position papers in dance, drama, music, visual arts, and also studies that explored multi-arts issues. Many of the studies were meta-analyses of a large number of related studies. Educators interested in arts education and/or assessment and curricular standards should certainly read this thoughtful and thought-provoking analysis and discussion.

In essence, the project discovered that it's currently difficult if not impossible to identify substantive cognitive changes that occur quickly as a result of exposure to the arts. It takes at least 20 years for our brain to reach maturity, and arts abilities and values (like many other value-laden elements of life) emerge gradually.

Transfer in learning from one cognitive domain to another isn't a one-way process (such as the belief that the arts must improve reading scores in order to be of value). Rather transfer is a reciprocal process in which all curricular areas in a good school provide support for the mastery of other areas.