In the Dana Consortium study, researchers grappled with a fundamental question: Are smart people drawn to the arts or does arts training make people smarter? For the first time, coordinated, multi-university scientific research brings us closer to answering that question. Learning, Arts, and the Brain, a study three years in the making, is the result of research by cognitive neuroscientists from seven leading universities across the United States. It advances our understanding of the effects of music, dance, and drama education on other types of learning. Children motivated in the arts develop attention skills and strategies for memory retrieval that also apply to other subject areas. Also see the article on the study from the Dana Foundation website.
Arts Education/Youth
The Art of Collaboration: Promising Practices for Integrating the Arts and School Reform (2008)
This second publication in the Arts Education Partnership’s research and policy brief series describes promising practices for building community partnerships that integrate the arts into urban education systems. The publication, which is the result of a roundtable conversation among the directors of eight of the demonstration sites participating in The Ford Foundation’s Integrating the Arts and Education Reform Initiative, details the sites’ early strategies and successes in the areas of organizational infrastructure; partnership development; integrated arts education; and communications and advocacy.
Tough Choices or Tough Times: the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce
The National Center on Education and the Economy is a nonprofit organization created to develop proposals for building the world class education and training system that the United States must have if it is to continue to be a world class economy. Tough Choices or Tough Times is a monumental analysis of the future global workforce and the U.S. Part of that world-class education and training system must focus on innovation in order to remain globally competitive — and arts advocates note the importance of arts education and community arts for a healthy creative economy. The National Center engages in policy analysis and development and works collaboratively with others at the local, state and national levels to advance its proposals in the policy arena.
An Unfinished Canvas. Arts Education in California: Taking Stock of Policies and Practices
California’s goals for educating our children in and about the arts already are on the books. But as the new data from SRI make clear, we are not giving our students the kind of understanding of the arts that our own standards envision. So the question today for all Californians is this: Are we willing to lower our standards and view our goals as unreachable – or use this report to spur a commitment to provide high-quality arts education to all students?
Teaching the Art of Writing
Teaching the Art of Writing: An arts-based approach to writing captivates reluctant writers.
Arts Instruction of Public School Students in the First and Third Grades
This Issue Brief uses the First- and Third-Grade Spring Teacher Questionnaires of the ECLS-K to examine the changes over time from first to third grade in how often young children are exposed to arts education in the general classroom. In both first and third grade, most public school students received instruction in music and art at least weekly, while instruction in dance and theater occurred less often within each year. About 32 percent of students in high poverty public schools never received theater instruction in either grade compared with 24 percent of students in low poverty public schools.
