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Sinergias educativas
July - Septiembre Vol. 9 - 3 - 2024
http://sinergiaseducativas.mx/index.php/revista/
eISSN: 2661-6661
revistasinergias@soyuo.mx
Page 69-95
Received: January 10 , 2024
Approved: June 11, 2024
Incidence of arts education on cognitive
development. Case study: Eduardo
Laredo Institute
Incidencia de la educación artística en el desarrollo
cognitivo. Estudio de caso: Instituto Eduardo Laredo
Franklin Anaya Giorgis
*
Abstract
Recommendations for education in the 21st century focus on the
need to incorporate the arts into school education programs as a way
to strengthen interculturality and citizenship. There are also
experimental trends that link the arts with intellectual and cognitive
development. An empirical study on the subject is presented here,
showing the first evaluation results of the incidence of the arts on
cognitive development, in an educational institution that combines
them with the official programs of formal education, in a political
and administrative context of education, which historically has not
formally recognized arts education for children and adolescents. The
case study of the experience of the "Eduardo Laredo" Institute of
Cochabamba - Bolivia, allows us to reaffirm the positive impact of
incorporating the arts in regular education, as an element of
intellectual/cognitive development and social being.
Keywords: Arts, education, cognitive development, intellectual
development
B.A. and M.A., Psychology.
D. Candidate, Centro de Estudios Superiores
Universitarios - Universidad Mayor de San
Simón. Bolivia
franklin.anaya.g@gmail.com
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4721-153X
Article
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Resumen
Las recomendaciones para la educación en el siglo XXI se centran
en la necesidad de incorporar las artes a los programas de educación
escolar como forma de reforzar la interculturalidad y la ciudadanía.
También hay tendencias experimentales que vinculan las artes con
el desarrollo intelectual y cognitivo. Se presenta aquí un estudio
empírico sobre el tema, que muestra los primeros resultados de
evaluación de la incidencia de las artes en el desarrollo cognitivo, en
una institución educativa que las combina con los programas
oficiales de educación formal, en un contexto político y
administrativo de la educación, que históricamente no ha reconocido
formalmente la educación artística para niños y adolescentes. El
estudio de caso de la experiencia del Instituto "Eduardo Laredo" de
Cochabamba - Bolivia, permite reafirmar el impacto positivo de la
incorporación de las artes en la educación regular, como elemento
de desarrollo intelectual/cognitivo y del ser social.
Palabras clave: Artes, educación, desarrollo cognitivo, desarrollo
intelectual.
Introduction
In 2006, UNESCO held the World Conference on Arts Education in
Lisbon. Its objectives were to analyze ways to enrich the processes
of education for creativity and the exercise of an inclusive
interculturality. This conference was the platform for the discussion
of ideas that recommend the large-scale promotion of educational
programs that include artistic activities in their formal content. Some
of the questions that were raised there were the following:
Does art education serve only to appreciate art or should it
be considered as a means to enhance the learning of other
subjects?
Should art be taught as a discipline, for its intrinsic value,
for the body of knowledge, skills and values it conveys, or
for both reasons?
Should arts education be aimed at a few students who are
especially gifted in very specific disciplines or at all
students in general (cf. UNESCO, 2006).
These issues generated a consensus that we consider fundamental as
a background. In the first place, the importance of academic and
scientific contributions to demonstrate the effectiveness of arts
education and serve as an argument for political decision-making
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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
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for the case of the "Eduardo Laredo" Institute (hereinafter, IEL),
which is different from the general one. In the second part, we
present the results of the field work undertaken in order to verify
whether arts education has an impact on cognitive development.
Regular education and arts education.
In this section we will briefly describe the situation of formal
education in Bolivia with respect to arts education, on the one hand,
and the educational model applied by the IEL, on the other hand, in
order to summarize the preliminary results of the field study.
Education policy in Bolivia
As in the Latin American context in general, literacy (of adults), the
optimization of access to school and the permanence of children and
youth in the educational system are also problems in Bolivia that are
accentuated by deep socioeconomic, gender and ethnic-cultural
inequalities. These structural problems are aggravated by the
inefficiency of the state bureaucratic apparatus, obsolete legislation
and educational reforms that are insufficient to propose long-term
solutions. Most of the scarce resources allocated to the field of
education by the States are allocated to the basic needs of the
education systems and there is no room for discussion of the benefits
that art brings to society.
However, a systematic inclusion of the arts in formal education can
be of help in responding from resilience and creativity to needs
arising from the context, as evidenced by various experiences. An
example of this is the Venezuelan experience of the social musical
training project El Sistema, which, being outside the formal
education system, included thousands of children and young people
in alternative spaces in music education programs in order to reduce
delinquency, generating a positive impact in their context (Cf.
UNESCO, 2016).
Given that the arts have the capacity to contribute positively to
society, the need for comprehensive arts education is explicitly
mentioned among the goals established by the OEI: "The learning
and experience of art in schools constitute the most powerful
strategies for the construction of citizenship. The presence of art in
education, through arts education and education through art,
contributes to the integral and full development of children and
young people" (OEI, 2014, p. 147).
Despite the recommendations of international organizations
regarding arts education, the inclusion of the arts in school curricula
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has not advanced significantly in the region. In the Bolivian case, in
the history of the different educational policies implemented in the
country, the arts have not been treated as a relevant element of
curricular competence. Arts education subjects are seen as a space
for technical learning and a civic vehicle for the ideological
reproduction of values of the different political hegemonies (Cf.
Arze, 2015).
The economic and social conditions also did not allow for the
consolidation of another approach. The different educational reforms
focused on other problems rather than on artistic content. For
example, the education reforms of 1955, within the framework of the
national revolution, reflected other circumstances and their main
challenge was to enable access to education for the majority of the
population and "to expand the ruralization of Bolivian education.
The results were meager. In 1966 an evaluation was made with
UNESCO and other international organizations, and only 40 percent
of the rural school population had been covered, after 10 years of
implementation" (Galindo, 2023, p. 250).
The 1994 reform, through Law No. 1565, incorporates for the first
time elements of evolutionary, structural and social psychology,
conceiving the child as a being in cognitive development and not as
a recipient of content. Law N°070 of 2010 on educational reform
gives continuity to this line. However, in both cases, no progress has
been made in new perspectives in traditional education, nor has it
been thought of establishing a change of scenario that contemplates
the inclusion of artistic training in formal education. An example of
this is that the hourly load of the music subject for schools is from
one to two weekly periods of 40 minutes, time dedicated to the
repetition of civic songs with anachronistic contents.
On the other hand, certain contents drawn from isolated experiences
and/or private initiatives that, under the structure of the Ministry of
Education in force since 2017, have become part of the higher
education subsystem of the Vice-Ministry of Higher Education and
Vocational Training. This means that the few places where it is
possible to reach to cover an acceptable minimum of contents for a
training that can be considered artistic -in the areas of music, theater,
dance, plastic arts and cinema-, are exclusively destined to students
graduated from schools of the schooled education system of the
Vice-Ministry of Regular Education, being their access requirement
to be high school graduates over 18 years old.
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At present, the arts are recognized as a technification or
craftsmanship, as it was in Bolivia during the 19th century, with the
difference that nowadays the prerequisite of the baccalaureate is
established to formally access a training in arts in the higher levels
that the formal system recognizes: Medium Technician and Higher
Technician. The instances in which this training can be accessed are
under the responsibility of the Directorate of Technical,
Technological, Linguistic and Artistic Formation, which in turn
refers the responsibility to a small and hard-working group of people
surrounded by the general bureaucracy of the ministry with the
impossible task of supplying the five branches that they requisition
and administer: music, dance, theater, cinema and plastic arts.
We mention this scenario with the intention of illustrating the scant
importance given to the arts in the framework of formal school
education in Bolivia. The political changes in the different
administrations of the Bolivian State have not generated and even
less consolidated an education focused on the optimization of the
teaching-learning process, but rather an education of reproduction of
the political forms of the moment. Part of the problem is a unionized
and pragmatic teaching profession that, focused on its own interests,
has not contributed - with the exception of individuals - significantly
to improving Bolivian education processes. Apart from this
structure, there are few initiatives emerging from civil society as a
response to this shortcoming, among which the IEL stands out, as
described below.
The IEL model of arts education
Located in Cochabamba - Bolivia, the "Instituto de Educación
Integral y Formación Artística Eduardo Laredo", is today an
internationally recognized educational model. Its foundation dates
back to the 1960s, when the brothers Rafael and Franklin Anaya
Arze, together with a group of citizens who supported the process,
created the IEL as a response to the educational context of the time
(Cf. Anaya & Del Granado, 2023). To this end, they established a
regular education school that, in addition, articulated theoretical and
practical principles of music, mainly choral and piano,
complementing this program with some additional musical
instruments and classical dance. As Bayá points out, "it is necessary
to recognize that Laredo is a product of the history of its country, but
also of the spirits that operated for this project to exist and be
possible" (Bayá, 2012, p. 120).
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Originally, the school was established with a few students and a
group of teachers and artists who worked ad honorem for three years,
until 1964, when it obtained state recognition and a small budget
allocation. However, since its inception it has been confronted with
state educational policies that put its own subsistence at risk. Being
a somewhat autonomous experience and having emerged from a
citizens' initiative, the school did not reflect governmental political
interests or those of the teachers' union in the country, but with the
passage of time it has consolidated itself as a local and legitimate
response to the educational needs of its context. In this sense, it is
located within the framework of circuits parallel to the formal field
of state policy, that is, in the "third sector" (cf. Roitter, 2005), which
is driven by associations in the exercise of citizenship.
The institutional development of the IEL has added important
achievements over the decades and its educational model has been
consolidated in an exceptional way in Bolivia and in the region. An
example of this is, among others, Law N°123 of the Plurinational
State of Bolivia in 2011, which protects this educational experience
in the cultural dimension. In 2018, Law N°839 of the Department of
Cochabamba was enacted, declaring the IEL Cultural and
Educational Heritage. Finally, in the year 2021 the IEL obtains
international recognition through the Res. 06 of the Andean
Parliament of South America that presents it as a Heritage and
Educational Referent of this Andean zone of countries.
The artistic training model developed by the IEL has a complete
curriculum for specialized theoretical and practical training in the
areas of music, dance and theater. The Music specialty contains a
wide range of academic possibilities: all families of instruments are
taught, there is a youth symphony orchestra and a children's
orchestra, as well as choirs and lyrical singing, modern
contemporary dance and performing arts in theater.
The design of the workload combines in similar proportions the
contents of formal education with the artistic training program.
Currently, 7 thousand academic hours are covered in each of the
specialties of Music and Dance, while the Theater specialty has an
hourly load of 4 thousand academic hours. These hours per specialty
are distributed over 10 years, from 3rd grade to 6th grade of
secondary school, the time the student spends from entry to the
formal humanistic baccalaureate.
The IEL student population is constantly exposed to the points of
connection that different artistic practices offer in their daily lives.