Art education as a didactic strategy for meaningful learning in secondary school

This theoretical manuscript analyzes arts education as a didactic strategy to foster meaningful learning in secondary school, moving beyond its reduction to a supplementary or merely motivational activity. Based on a critical synthesis of recent literature, it argues that the arts can act as a pedagogical tool when designed with intentionality, sequence, and coherent assessment. Four explanatory mechanisms are proposed: (1) aesthetic experience that sustains attention and engagement; (2) the emotion-identity connection that enhances the personal meaning of the content; (3) multimodal representation that drives conceptual reorganization and the construction of meaning; and (4) critique, iteration, and reflection as metacognitive drivers for consolidating understanding and transfer. Risks and counterarguments are also discussed: empty aestheticization, talent-based assessment, exposure that increases anxiety, and the perpetuation of inequalities related to cultural capital or access to resources. As a contribution, the article establishes minimum implementation conditions—explicit objectives, conceptual scaffolding, teacher mediation, interpretive dialogue, and assessment based on criteria focused on understanding—and proposes a research agenda aimed at strengthening evidence, indicators, and comparable designs in diverse school contexts.