John Abodeely

Arts Education: Intrinsic? Or Instrumental?

Posted by John Abodeely, Aug 09, 2007 1 comment


John Abodeely

By Nick Rabkin
Center for Arts Policy
Columbia College Chicago
August 8, 2007

It is so rare that arts ed or arts ed research gets coverage in the daily press. The recent article in the New York Times about the "Studio Thinking" research project (1) is significant first because of its rarity. It is already generating a buzz about arts education that we rarely feel.

It is important for another reason as well, though. For the last decade or more a debate has raged about the "intrinsic" vs. the "instrumental" value of arts education. Ellen Winner, one of the "Studio Thinking" researchers, played a very big role in that debate several years ago, when she and colleagues published a "meta-analysis" of arts education research in which she found no evidence that arts learning contributes to student academic achievement. (2) Hence, she argued, it was scientifically irresponsible to make a case for the arts' place in schools because they improve student performance in other subjects. Furthermore, she suspects that education policymakers will reason that if they want to improve math achievement, they will teach more math, not more arts. In the end, the arts are important in their own right and should be justified in terms of the important and unique kinds of learning that arise from the study of the arts.

Some researchers who believed that there was good evidence the arts did contribute to higher achievement across the curriculum criticized Winner's meta-study, arguing that it excluded good research from its scan.  As one of many places in the country where teaching artists were inventing new ways to improve schools by connecting the arts to other subjects, many folks here in Chicago felt Winner's study simply ignored their work and contributions. Others, more committed to arts education traditions, thought Winner bolstered their argument against "arts integration" and for "sequential and discipline-based instruction" in the art forms.

Judging from her recent comments in the Times, Winner stands by her "intrinsic" argument for arts education.  But the new study identifies much more precisely what she means by 'intrinsic value,' and it turns out to be a kissing cousin of the arts' 'instrumental' values. According to the article, the study found skills and "habits of mind" developed in art classes that are not unique to the arts at all. Winner says, "Students who study the arts seriously are taught to see better, to envision, to persist, to be playful and learn from mistakes, to make critical judgments and justify such judgments."

These 'habits of mind' are qualities that can be useful in virtually any classroom (or life situation), not just the art room.  Teachers College Press, which will publish the new study next month, goes a step further in their website blurb on the book, which will be published next month.  "Here, at last, are the results of the first in-depth research on the "habits of mind" that are instilled by studying art—habits the authors argue that could have positive impacts on student learning across the curriculum."

This strikes me as a very important step toward reconciling the ongoing debate about the "instrumental" and the "intrinsic" values of arts education. It is not a zero sum game, not either/or, but both/and. The new study makes clear, as others have done before, that the arts are profoundly cognitive. They help us think, and they help us connect thinking and feeling in ways that nothing else does. Winner may disagree, but I suspect her new study will be an important contribution to a reconciliation that recognizes that the sharp division between intrinsic and instrumental values is specious.  It is an intellectual construct that serves little or no useful purpose except to divide advocates of arts education.

1  Robin Pogrebin, Book Tackles Old Debate: Role of Art in Schools. New York Times, August 4, 2007.
2  Published as a special issue of The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 34, Nos. 3& 4, Fall/Winter 2000.

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Comments

Nelda Cameron says
August 15, 2007 at 8:57 pm

I hope we can keep our eyes on the arts and the need for all children to have access, and not divide those who recognize this. We advocates need to work together, for there are not enough of us. Any publicity can be helpful if it's used well. We must keep the main goal of increased arts programs in the front of the "battle".

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