The first large-scale, longitudinal study adapted into the regular school curriculum finds that structured music lessons significantly enhance children’s cognitive abilities — including language-based reasoning, short-term memory, planning and inhibition — leading to improved academic performance. Visual arts lessons were also found to significantly improve children’s visual and spatial memory.
Arts Education/Youth
LEAP Dialogues: The Educator’s Guide
Since the publication of LEAP Dialogues: Career Pathways in Design for Social Innovation by Designmatters in 2016, we have heard from many educators and students from around the world who have embraced the publication and used the content as an integral part of their studies and curricula. Inspired by these stories, Designmatters decided to create LEAP Dialogues: The Educator’s Guide, an open-source digest of some original content from the book along with new resources specifically tailored to educators.
The Educator’s Guide contains 12 select dialogues, each accompanied by a set of open-ended questions to provoke critical reading and to jumpstart classroom discussion. Five case studies are included to ground the theoretical discussions about the future of careers by showing what the emerging field looks like. Unique to this Guide is an annotated bibliography that provides students with complementary readings on topics related to designing for social innovation to inspire new and expanded directions of study.
Arts Alumni in Their Communities
This research, based on a national survey of arts graduates, demonstrates that arts majors — whether they went on to work in the arts or not — continue to make art, teach, manage, volunteer, attend events and donate to the arts in their local communities.
Beyond the Core: Advancing Student Success Through the Arts
This Education Trends report explores research on how the arts bolster the development of deeper learning skills, provides examples of programs that successfully increased access to the arts in education in public schools, and includes state- and local-level policy considerations.
Review of Evidence: Arts Integration Research Through the Lens of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)
This report scours research on activities that use arts to improve student achievement-an approach known as arts integration-and identifies those that qualify for federal education funding.
ESSA: Mapping opportunities for the arts
This special report highlights the ways that states and districts can engage the arts in the ongoing work of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Designed to continue growing as ESSA implementation proceeds, this report currently contains chapters exploring the opportunities for arts education within the following topics: Accountability, Assessments, Stakeholder Engagement, State Plans, Tiers of Evidence, Title I and a Well-Rounded Education.
