Here is a list of research papers and studies that investigate the role of arts in education.

Acts of Achievement: The Role of Performing Arts Centres in Education. This 2003 report comes from the Dana Foundation provides the first study of K-12 education programs offered by performing arts centres across the US, and showcases 74 performing art centre institutions partnering with their local schools.

Art, Artists and Teaching. This brief 2002 report comes from a symposium hosted by Bennington College and the J. Paul Getty Trust. The report notes that effective change comes from collaborative partnerships and posits that the teaching of art is fundamental even critical to developing a healthy and creative post-industrial society.

Artists Residencies: Evolving Educational Experiences. This 13-page essay comes from the Dana Foundation, 2003, and outlines the development of school residencies and offering four checklists for arts organization coordinators, artists, teachers, and school coordinators planning to develop residencies. The essay provides guidance for developing and improving school residencies.

Cultivating Demand for the Arts. This 2008, 150-page, study was commisioned by the Wallace Foundation and undertaken by the Rand Corporation. It offers a framework for thinking about supply and demand in the arts and suggests that too little attention has been paid to cultivating demand. It identifies the roles of different factors, particularly arts learning, in stimulating interest in the arts and enriching individuals’ experiences of artworks.

Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts on Learning. This 1999 study comes from the Arts Education Partnership and the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities. The study used seven teams of researchers to examine a variety of arts education programs and explore why and how young people are changed through their arts experiences and how the arts impact learning.

Creative Connections: An Arts in Education Policy Consultation Paper. This 2003 paper comes from the Western Australia Department of Education and Training and Department of Culture and the Arts. It is intended as a first step in designing an arts education policy for the State of Western Australia. The paper identifies the arts in education are not merely curricular subjects, but an area of learning that should be integrated into the overall education system.

Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development. This 2002 report comes from the Arts Education Partnership and provides not only synopses of studies, but overviews in each of the arts and across the arts. The reviews of 62 outstanding arts education studies—and the interpretive essays—reveal important relationships between learning in the arts and cognitive capacities (thinking skills) and motivations that underlie academic achievement and effective social behavior.

Engaged in Learning - The ArtsSmarts Model
In the spring of 2006, ArtsSmarts compiled the results of eight years of studies, along with a like number of reports by outside researchers, to create a synthesis of possible directions for future work. The paper develops an ArtsSmarts theory of learning centred on the concept of student engagement.

For the Greater Good: A Framework for Advancing State Arts Education Partnerships. This 2003 study comes from the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies summarizes factors that have contributed to successful arts education partnerships at the state level in the US. Much of the advice on how to build and sustain arts education partnerships is relevant for Canadians and others looking to move arts education projects forward.

Gaining the Arts Advantage. Undertaken by the Arts Education Partnership, this study examined school districts in the US that valued art education. They sought to find out how these districts sustained a vibrant arts education curriculum in the face of enourmous pressure to prove thier succeess schools by accountability measures
that focus largely on reading, math, and writing.

Gifts of Muse. This 2004 study commissioned by the Wallace Foundation and conducted by the RAND corporation addresses the widely perceived need to articulate the private and public benefits of involvement in the arts.

Learning and the Arts: Crossing Boundaries. This 2000 study comes from an invitational meeting for education, arts and youth funders and organized by Geraldine R. Dodge Foundatrion, J.Paul Getty Trust, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Touches on reasearch, advocacy and innovation and includes discussions and remarks by such arts education luminaires as Ken Robinson, Elliot Eisner and Shirley Brice Heath.

Learning Through The Arts. This 2003 report contains the results of a three-year, nation-wide study on the value of arts in education of which ArtStarts was a key participant. The study was designed to determine the effects of arts education on learning. In total, more than 6,000 students and their teachers in LTTA and control schools were involved in the research.

Policy Guidelines for Arts Education in Canada. Developed by the National Symposium on Arts Education, October 2004, these guidelines provide direction for arts education in Canada along the following dimensions: learning in, through, and about the arts; curriculum; culture and diversity; teachers and teacher education; resources; partnerships; research, and leadership.

The Arts and Education: New Opportunities For Research. This 2004 report by the Arts Education Partnership provides a research agenda that begins with contemporary understandings of cognitive and personal development and offers an approach that the researchers believe can move arts education research into the mainstream of social science research.

The Arts Make a Difference
This 2006 paper by Nick Rabkin and Robin Redmond sets out to prove that arts integration make schools better places to learn, and they raise student achievement.