ABSTRACT
I think the children are on a journey but they don’t realise what they’re learning.
(Harriet Smith, visual arts teacher)
With the current focus on mandated, standardised tests in numeracy and literacy, the arts in schools find themselves in a tenuous position, often needing to justify their place in the curriculum in terms of how they improve students’ performance in ‘more academic’ subjects. In order to move the conversation from anecdotal and superficial claims of transfer, some scholars have opposed the argument that:
studying the Arts either as separate disciplines or infused into the academic subjects, raises grades in academic subjects or improves performance or standardised verbal and mathematics tests.
