Doing Well and Doing Good by Doing Art: The Effects of Education in the Visual and Performing Arts on the Achievements and Values of Young Adults

First-time offered at a discount - ORIGINALLY $19.99 Professor James S. Catterall of UCLA her presents his analyses of long-term outcomes for the students featured in Champions of Change a decade ago, 12,000 students now followed through age 26. The impacts of intensive involvement in the visual and performing arts during secondary school on young adults are shown to include doing better and going further in college (doing well) and greater involvement in community service and pro-social activities (doing good). The book presents assessments of arts-rich versus arts-poor schools, an intriguing comparison of passionate involvement in the arts versus athletics in school, and the fortunes of limited English speakers in arts-rich versus arts-poor schools. Nick Rabkin, formerly Senior Arts and Culture Program Officer at the MacArthur Foundation writes: ... Unlike other research on the effects of arts education, Catterall was able to show that low-income students benefited from arts learning even more than more privileged students. This new study picks up the same thread and shows that the positive effects of arts education last well into adulthood. And Professor Shirley Brice Heath, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University and Professor, Brown University writes: This book will show students how someone can make statistical analyses comprehensible for those who work in schools, and those who need to think much more theoretically and in terms of research findings... Several of the findings were quite surprising to me, for I had forgotten that the NELS data would provide data with such "long arms" beyond school and family. Such a gift the book will be for so many. (Los Angeles: I-Group Books, 172 pp. (2009).


About the Author
James S. Catterall is Professor Emeritus at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. He is currently Principal Investigator (and founder) of the Centers for Research on Creativity at the California Institute of the Arts and the University of the Arts, London UK. For the past two decades, his research has focused on measurement of children's cognitive development and motivation in the context of learning in the arts. Professor Catterall has published leading studies on learning music and its effects on visual and spatial intelligence; and learning in the visual arts and the development of creativity, originality, and self-efficacy beliefs. He was a principal author on the Critical Links and Champions of Change projects as well as the AERA and US Education Department's New Opportunities for Research in Arts Education. He is now writing a book about the roles of creativity in basic cognitive processes, working title: The Extraordinary Importance of Ordinary Creativity: A theory of creativity, cognition, and behavior. Catterall chaired the National Technical Advisory Panel for Kentucky's state assessment between 1998 and 2008; he currently serves as an appointed member of the Advisory Board for California's Public School Assessment and Accountability Act and of its Technical Design Group. Professor Catterall holds degrees in economics from Princeton University, public policy analysis from the University of Minnesota, and a Ph.D. in Education from Stanford University.