EFFECTS OF ARTS AND CULTURAL EDUCATION FROM AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
CULTUUR + EDUCATIE 18 (2007)

This edition offers a description of international and national research on evaluation in visual arts education. Supplemented by three examples of research into the learning outcomes of arts education.

Need for legitimising research
Legitimisation of arts education continues to be a topical issue. This explains the need – often expressed in policy – for research into the intrinsic and extrinsic learning outcomes of arts education. The focus on evaluation in educational programmes and research on pupil assessment also arises from this demand for legitimisation. In the first article, Folkert Haanstra (Utrecht University and AHK) and Diederik Schönau (Cito and ArtEZ) offer an overview of research in this field.

Impact seen primarily in the arts
British research Pippa Lord (National Foundation of Educational Research) worked with John Harland and others to research the impact of a large-scale arts project in schools. They concluded that the most convincing impact on the pupils was intrinsic, i.e. on the area of the arts themselves. Another conclusion was that successful cooperation between artists, teachers and pupils produces the most high-impact outcomes.

Social skills
Helen Turner (University of London) and Rachel Dickinson (National Theatre London) researched the impact of National Theatre drama projects on primary school pupils in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. These British researchers are more optimistic than Lord and Harland about the extrinsic impact of arts education, such as its effect on personal development and the development of social skills.

Artful thinking
In the final article, Patricia Palmer and Shari Tishman (Harvard University) evaluate the Artful Thinking programme. The programme was developed by the researchers themselves to teach pupils to think about art. The question was whether thinking about art would improve the development of the pupils’ general cognitive abilities.
Dutch overview