Dr. James Catterall, professor at UCLA's Graduate School of Education, says that his academic career has taken him down three main paths over the last few decades. The first was the examination of the economics of education, a pursuit that extended naturally from his undergraduate background in economics and from his graduate work at Stanford University with renowned educational economist, Dr. Hank Levins. In this, Catterall says he was interested in, among other things, the public support of private education-an issue that is once again in the spotlight. "I had," he says, "a lot of equity concerns with policies then being proposed-things like tuition tax credits and vouchers."

This work led him into the next phase of his career, which involved doing research on the educational opportunities available to at-risk students. "Over the course of seven years of work in this area," he says, "I went from beginning work with school dropouts to becoming one of the national authorities on the nature of their experience."

Around ten years ago, the work with at-risk students sent Catterall, almost inadvertently, into the largely uncharted waters of arts education research, where he has spent most of his time since. In the course of the last decade, he has emerged as one of the leading figures in this field. He has been involved in a multitude of arts-related projects and intervention studies, like the Galef Institute's "Different Ways of Knowing Program" and the "Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education." These programs bring artists and teachers together to plan and deliver instruction that integrates the arts with academic subjects.

That Catteral has found himself studying the effects of the arts on learning seems fitting, as he has been a musician nearly his entire life. After playing the baritone horn in the school band in Summit, New Jersey, where he grew up, he later taught himself to play both guitar and bass guitar, so he could play in rock bands. During his college years at Princeton, he and his friends had a band called Tyger Dynasty that, he says, had great success playing venues along the eastern seaboard.

Before beginning his doctoral studies at Stanford in the mid-1970s, Catterall held varied posts mostly having some tie to education, including an internship with the Chancellor of Higher Education in New Jersey, an education finance advisor position for the Minnesota State Legislature, and, for four years, a high school math teaching position.

He is in his 20th year at UCLA.

BrainConnection: How did you come to study arts education?