The impacts of a high-school art-based program on academic achievements, creativity, and creative behaviors

Abstract

This article evaluates the impact of an Art-based program, which consisted in bringing artist to do workshops in public schools, on academic achievements, creativity (i.e., the skill) and the external manifestation of creativity in action (i.e., creative behaviors). The main contribution with respect to previous literature is a quasi-experimental design—propensity score matching—that makes the causal link between these aspects more plausible, and which had a sample of 297 children between 14 and 16 years old. Four main findings are derived from the empirical investigation. First, substantial practice is crucial. Participation in at least two semester-length workshops is a necessary condition to observe significant impacts. Second, participation has a significant impact on academic achievements. Grades increased by 0.61 standard deviations (sd) for language, by 0.36 sd for math, and by 0.33 sd for art. Overall GPA increased by 0.55 sd. The program also increased participant willingness to consider postsecondary education. Third, the impact of the art-based program on various innovative graphical psychometric measures of creativity was positive and significant. Fourth, related to creative behaviors, the program had a positive impact on certain cultural activities, such as time spent watching films at home and creating cultural goods (e.g., handicrafts, poetry, music). In conclusion, our study presents substantial evidence on the effective enhancement of creativity, the fostering of creative activities, and the improvement of academic performance through the deployment of art-based programs.

Art Knowledge Training Shapes Understanding, Inspires Creativity and Stimulates Thinking

“…Furthermore, our study has larger implications for art education policies and alongside other scholars (Ampartzaki et al, 2022;Egana-delSol, 2023) our research emphasises that art education has the potential to foster deeper understanding, thinking and creative ideas. This is a pressing topic, especially as art education is frequently affected by budget cuts and considered less valuable than STEM (Allina, 2017;Kraehe et al, 2016).…”

“…Given that our dependent variables are ordered categories (a 1-5 rating scale) we used ordinal regressions models. We ran two different types of ordinal regression modelsone for To build the models incrementally in complexity, we followed the same multivariate modelling strategy as in our previous work (Bara et al, 2022;2023) Factors associated with training and image type were coded according to a deviation coding style, where factors sum to zero and the intercept can then be interpreted as the grand mean and the main effects can be interpreted similarly to a conventional ANOVA (http://talklab.psy.gla.ac.uk/tvw/catpred/). As such, both training and image type were coded as -0.5 (pre/Realism) and 0.5 (post/Sorolla).…”

“…Model bg3.3 was the full model. Regarding the priors, we used a similar strategy as in our previous work (Bara et al, 2022;2023). We set priors using a weakly informative approach (Gelman, 2006).…”

Effect of out-of-school visual art activities on academic performance. The mediating role of socioeconomic status

“…There is a rich body of evidence about the application of in-and-out-of-school extracurricular activities (ECAs) in children and adolescents’ cognitive and noncognitive adjustments [e.g., 1–4]. Western countries provide ECAs (sport, music, theater, scouts) after formal classes, which are supervised by an adult so that students can enhance their physical, social, psychological, and academic well-being [ 3 , 5 – 8 ]. In-school ECAs are mostly known as "after-school programs" since children are involved in various ECAs with the same peers they meet in the classroom, although out-of-school ECA programs include children with another group of peers with different skills, communication, and behaviors [ 5 , 8 , 9 ].…”

“…Regardless of children’s SES, the likelihood of participating in several ECAs depends on their gender; boys are primarily interested in ECAs such as sports, dancing, and band/music, and girls prefer visual arts, theater, and music instruments [ 18 , 19 ]. Boys stereotype painting, drawing, and music training as girlish, and girls feel sports activities, dancing, and playing an instrument are masculine [ 3 ].…”