Student involvement in the arts brings positive academic and social development

Attribution

James S. Catterall, Richard Chapleau, and John Iwanga (1999), "Involvement in the Arts and Human Development: General Involvement and Intensive Involvement in Music and Theater Arts," Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts on Learning, Arts Education Partnership

Item Text

Enlisting the National Educational Longitudinal Survey (NELS:88) (a panel study that followed more than 25,000 students in American secondary schools for 10 years), these researchers found

"Children engaged in the arts exhibit positive academic developments between 8th and 10th grade as well as between 10th and 12th grade. "The comparative gains for arts-involved youngsters generally become more pronounced over time....These patterns also hold for children from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds."

Researchers defined "involvement in the arts" as taking arts-related classes in or out of school as well as involvement and leadership in school activities such as theater, band, orchestra, chorus, dance, and the visual arts.

"Our analyses found substantial and significant differences in achievement and in important attitudes and behaviors between youth highly involved in the arts on the one hand, and those with little or no arts engagement on the other hand....the achievement differences between high- and low-arts youth were also significant for economically disadvantaged students." The studies looked at academic measures and also at indicators of students' regard for community service and measures of their television watching habits.

The results:

• "Achievement differences favoring youngsters involved in the arts are not simply a matter of parent income and education levels."
• Consistent involvement in the arts shows increased advantages for arts-rich youngsters over time.
• "The arts serve to broaden access to meaning by offering ways of thinking and ways of representation consistent with the spectrum of intelligences scattered unevenly across our population."
• "The arts have also shown links to student motivation and engagement in school, attitudes that contribute to academic achievement."
• "Arts activities also can promote community--advancing shared purpose and team spirit required to perform in an ensemble musical group or dramatic production, or to design and paint an urban mural. With community surely comes empathy and general attachment to the larger values of the school and the adult society which high school students will soon join."
• There are likely positive peer associations accompanying involvement in the arts: "Students involved in the arts are doing better in school than those who are not."
• "The relative advantage of involvement in the arts increased appreciably over time. (By 12th grade, a nominal 18 percentage point difference amounted to a 46 percent advantage for the group with high arts involvement.)

SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS AND INVOLVEMENT IN THE ARTS

The probability of having a high level of involvement in the arts is almost twice as high for students from economically advantaged families, and the probability of low involvement in the arts is about twice as high for students from an economically disadvantaged family.

The researchers examined achievement differences for low socio-economic status (SES) students:

• In a manner similar to patterns for all students, the relative advantage for arts-involved youngsters increased over the middle and high school years, especially between grades 10 and 12.

Links

www.aep-arts.org (under Publications)

Submitter Information

• Name: MENC Staff
• Email: advocacy@menc.org