Understanding the impacts of engagement: a systematic review of the research on learning impacts for young people; Understanding the impacts of engagement; technical report for the systematic review

Institution: The EPPI-Centre (Institute of Education, University of London)

Summary of key findings

One of three strands in the CASE review, this report covers in depth reviews of quantitative research on the learning impacts for young people, based on quantitative research. Quantitative research was specifically chosen in order to aid future analysis to derive economic values.

Strong consistent effects on learning measures were found for young people engaging in structured sports or arts activities. The report suggests there is a balance of evidence to indicate that, when compared to non-participation in structured arts activities:

• Participation in structured arts activities improves academic attainment in secondary school aged students.
• Participation in structured arts activities improves pre-school and primary school aged children’s early literacy skills.
• Participation in structured arts activities improves young people’s cognitive abilities (based on various measures of intelligence).
• Participation in structured arts activities improves young people’s transferable skills.

While there is promising evidence of learning benefits from school libraries, museums and heritage site visits, the evidence was too weak to draw strong conclusions. A key conclusion is that stronger research and evaluation designs are needed to generate more persuasive evidence of the learning impact of this kind of provision for young people.

Research questions & methodology

This project used systematic review methods to examine the cultural/sporting literature. The review was carried out in three stages:

Stage one: creating a repository (database) of studies.

Stage two: a mapping exercise describing a sub-section of the wider literature included in the database created at stage one. The subsection was defined as high quality quantitative studies of impact.

Stage three: in-depth review. The third stage involved an in-depth analysis of a sub-section of the studies mapped in the second stage that measured impacts quantitatively, focusing on impact of learning outcomes for children and young people of participation in structured arts activities. Among the studies selected as offering high quality data is research commissioned on the impact of Creative Partnerships (Kendall L, Morrison J, Yeshanew T, Sharp C (2008) The longer-term impact of creative partnerships on the attainment of young people: results from 2005 and 2006. Final report. Slough: National Foundation for Educational Research.). Detailed data extraction and quality assessment of the included studies was undertaken and the findings synthesised in order to provide answers to the in-depth review question.

The technical report provides a detailed technical description and details of the way the systematic review and construction of the CASE database was carried out.

Go to the journal article.