Sinergias educativas
July - September Vol. 9 – 3 - 2024
http://sinergiaseducativas.mx/index.php/revista/
processes in the field of education was emphasized. Although it is
generally assumed that creative capacities and cultural awareness
must be fostered in the 21st century, it is necessary to strengthen the
theoretical scaffolding to support this assumption. It is therefore
necessary to promote the collection of data and cases that will form
a body of information aimed at influencing the formulation of
policies that integrate the arts into education systems (Cf. UNESCO,
2006).
Along these lines, the UNESCO report mentions a series of current
programs focused on the relationship between the arts and formal
levels of education in different countries as a starting point for the
development of theories and future recommendations, and mentions
numerous specific experiences originating in different countries
around the world. In general, the need to foster cognitive
development, in its intellectual, social and cultural dimensions, by
improving formal education through the arts was recognized.
For its part, the Organization of Ibero-American States for
Education, Science and Culture, in its Educational Goals 2021 (OEI,
2014) considers it important to improve the curricula of formal
public education, for which the arts are fundamental, due to their
importance in human development. In this sense, school spaces
constitute a great opportunity to contextualize the knowledge and
practices of the arts, in their functions for citizen culture, human
development and cultural diversity (Marchesi, 2009). "The
development of creative capacity, self-esteem, willingness to learn,
the ability to work in teams and the development of abstract thinking,
find in arts education a powerful strategy to achieve it" (Marchesi,
2009: 126).
In this sense, in this article we seek to note preliminary results of a
research guided by the question: Can the arts influence human
cognitive development in a way that formal education alone does
not? In order to approach an answer, we focus our attention on an
initiative undertaken in the city of Cochabamba (Bolivia),
specifically that of the "Eduardo Laredo" Institute, where formal
education is integrated with arts education. Based on sequential
mixed methods (surveys, interviews, focus groups and application of
the Wechsler WAIS IV test), we seek here to give a brief sample of
the positive impact of arts education on cognitive development.
The development of this article is structured in two parts: in the first
part we briefly outline a general panorama of the teaching of the arts
in the formal educational system of Bolivia, with a particular section