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ArtsEdSearch: The Search Is Over … or Maybe It Is Just Beginning

Date: 22 August 2018

Help! I need information — and fast — about the impact of arts-focused professional learning opportunities for teachers.

I want to learn more about how engagement in the arts throughout a child’s academic career impacts their success, but I don’t know where to start.

Our school is considering implementing a new field trip program and I’m looking for information about the benefits of student visits to museums and attendance at live performances.

ArtsEdSearch is an online clearinghouse of research focuses on the outcomes of arts education for students and educatorsThis is where ArtsEdSearch can assist. Developed by the Arts Education Partnership (AEP), this online clearinghouse of research focuses on the outcomes of arts education for students and educators — both during and outside the school day — and supports policymakers and education stakeholders in better understanding and articulating the role that arts education can play in preparing students to succeed.

With implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act underway, states, districts and educators have opportunities to develop and enhance innovative arts education curricula that creatively engage students and support their present and long-term success. And with these new opportunities, questions may arise that are new to those ready to take advantage of ESSA’s well-rounded education components: How does dance education impact a child’s development during the early years? We have a vibrant, local arts community — what do the outcomes of partnerships between schools and arts professionals look like? What are the academic benefits of arts participation for at-risk students?

This publicly available database allows users to easily search through a comprehensive collection of more than 260 research studies — each summarized across key evaluation areas to ensure that all the research is accessible to a general audience. Users can search using key terms or can refine their search by more specific criteria, including school- or student-based topics, art form and type of research, among others.

To ensure that ArtsEdSearch remains a proven resource for those seeking to learn more about the outcomes associated with arts learning, AEP staff and a team of arts in education leaders working across the country conduct ongoing reviews of existing research. All included studies must meet a set of criteria for excellent research developed in consultation with the American Educational Research Association and the American Evaluation Association.

AEP is pleased to share the addition of five new studies to this expanding collection that explore topics including the development of children’s attitudes toward art and the potential impact of arts integration in students’ transitions to middle school.

As the landscape of education shifts and new opportunities and challenges for the arts surface, ArtsEdSearch will continue to grow and evolve to address timely topics in education research and practice.

To submit a study or learn more about the criteria for inclusion in ArtsEdSearch, please click here.

ArtsEdSearch is supported by funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the U. S. Department of Education, the Wallace Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Title: 2280 Pasos Bajo un Cielo Nublado | Artist: Hernán Jourdan | Medium: Film

When I was asked to create a work of art exploring literacy, I wanted to create a dance but I had no dancers or a studio, so I chose to use my own body in the space I had, my yard. Fluent Nature is video of micro-choreography that explores what cannot be expressed with words, how nature has its own language, and how placing the human body in nature changes the story.

Title: What Is Me and What Is Not Me | Artist: Alex Chadwell | Medium: Music

My thinking on arts and literacy centers around the concept of literacies and artmaking as both sense-making and meaning-making processes that organically and inevitably overlap, intersect, and reciprocate. Compositionally, What is me and what is not me is a sound collage of sorts (there is no notation for the piece, and I'd be hard pressed to recreate it accurately) that abstractly and aurally represents the relationships between literacies and artmaking.

Title: A Curious Honeybee | Artist: Gideon Young | Medium: Film

Offering welcome through traditional and digital elements of literacy, A Curious Honeybee provides an experiential learning environment by activating visual, musical, natural, and emotional literacies.

Title: Tercera Llamada | Artist: Karilú Forshee | Medium: Audio

La Carpa Theatre is a project that I am currently directing in the Detroit Latinx community. The project aims to strengthen and uplift youth voices through devised theatre, in the style of the Mexican Carpas. This audio was created in the theatrical environment envisioned for our project. The ways in which literacies are re-defined are at the heart of La Carpa Theatre's mission.

Title: Literaseas | Artist: MJ Robinson | Medium: Graphite and ink on paper with digital edits

Title: A Riddle | Artist: MJ Robinson | Medium: Graphite on paper with digital edits

Title: False Binaries | Artist: MJ Robinson | Medium: Graphite on paper with digital edits