Education and Learning: Transformative impacts of arts, culture and creativity
February 2020
How arts and culture impacts educational outcomes
Factsheet 5 drawn from ANA’s 2019 Insight Report, ‘Transformative: Impacts of culture and creativity
Today’s young people may expect to be employed in up to 17 different jobs – and across five different careers – during their working lives. Adaptable skills and flexible mindsets will be key employment factors for future workforces. Tomorrow’s employees will be expected to navigate a wide range of tools and tasks, specialised skill requirements and diverse workplace cultures as they move through multiple roles and careers.
Investing in arts and culture-based education opportunities will support the development of essential skills, enhancing and strengthening the employability of future generations. That’s why we need to be systematic and strategic about developing a strong, rich arts and cultural environment that helps our young people develop their social and intellectual capacity.
The need to prepare Australia’s youth for their personal and professional futures Just as Australia is facing unprecedented catalysts for changing the way our workforces and industries operate, we are also declining across a range of educational indicators. For example, the 2018 PISA international student assessment test showed that Australian students’ mean performance in reading, maths and science had all decreased since the early 2000s when PISA testing began.
Results like this have long term ramifications, not only for our young people’s futures, but also for the economy. One study estimated that recent falls in Australia’s PISA results will equate to an economic cost of $120 billion.
Why use arts and culture to develop children’s intellectual and social capacity?
Young people demonstrably benefit from arts and culture-based learning: the positive relationship between exposure to arts and culture, arts and culture education and student outcomes is well researched and documented. The knowledge, skills and insights arts and culture-based learning provide are helping young people build enduring social and personal capabilities and positive educational outcomes and experiences.
Education that includes arts and culture can help students in a wide range of subjects, including maths, reading and science, by building transferable skills that ‘spillover’ from one subject to another. For example, learning a musical instrument at a young age involves auditory training, which has been found to improve the skills needed for speech perception, as well as increasing ‘soft skills’ like self-discipline that help kids excel at school.
These kinds of interventions can also prepare today’s students for the future’s increasingly diverse working environments. The evidence shows when students engage with arts and cultural activities in school, they are more likely to develop the adaptability necessary to operate successfully within our evolving labour market. Investment in arts and cultural education will contribute greatly to a future where coming generations of Australians hold their own on the international stage.
As the new ways of working become further embedded in the economy, providing learning environments that include quality arts and cultural content is essential. These educational environments enable young Australians to develop both specialist knowledge and general adaptability.
