Arts and Cultural Education during Early Childhood: A Critical Analysis of Effects and Impacts

Many voices in policy and practice have emphasized, on many different occasions, the importance of arts and cultural education for the very young. A mélange of arguments are given in this regard, primarily stressing the positive effects and impacts of this type of education. If arts and cultural education is considered important because it leads to specific valuable outcomes, it is important to have a clear overview of what these outcomes are. Often this type of overview is missing. In this paper we analyze different types of effects that arts and cultural education can lead to and we categorize those effects. Subsequently, we focus on the function of these effects within a broader discourse that advocates arts and cultural education for the very young (0–6 years). Our analysis shows that research does not pay equal attention to all types of effects, but also that the over-emphasis on one type of effects (e. g. personal effects, extrinsic effects) can divert attention from other important effects (e. g. social effects, intrinsic effects). We also show that despite the claims that effect research makes, the implementation of that research in an impact narrative can still go in different and even opposite directions.