Creativity. Critical thinking. Working collaboratively. Communication. Digital skills. These competencies have been a key part of teaching work for years. However, teachers do not always have the right tools to integrate them into the curriculum consistently. Getting a diverse range of students involved while also fostering their ability to create, think and communicate in a digital environment has become one of the great challenges for teachers today.

"The key is designing meaningful learning experiences which connect the student's knowledge with their interests, their questions, the things that concern them and with real problems around them," noted Nella Escala, a doctoral student in Education and ICT and researcher with the Edul@b group at the UOC, who is leading an international study proposing a response to these challenges: an education model that combines art and digital technologies as drivers for learning. Participants in the study include Teresa Romeu and Professor Montse Guitert, both of whom are members of the UOC's Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences. The results have been published openly.

A new model integrating art and technology

Published in the British Educational Research Journal, the study found that there is a growing interest among schools to work on creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, communication and digital skills, but that teaching staff do not always get practical guidance on integrating these into the curriculum consistently. To achieve this, the researchers propose working with an ABL+DT model (Arts‐Based Learning with Digital Technologies).

"The arts allow us to see reality from other languages, to interpret it and question it, to express and construct a meaning in different ways," explained Escala. "And that is exactly what the ABL+DT aims for: students learning content but also understanding their environment better and developing skills for participating more critically, creatively and with more awareness in their school, their home and their community."

According to the project, arts and digital technologies usually take separate paths within schools. Arts are often relegated to a complementary or entertainment role, while technology has a more instrumental role. "The ABL+DT model is conceived to respond to this gap, integrating both dimensions as mediators for learning, creation, documentation and participation," she added.

The proposed model organizes educational design based on four interconnecting components:

• Relational context. The set of actors, resources and conditions that influence learning, from the student and their family to cultural institutions.
• Design. The planning of learning experiences that integrate arts, digital technologies, the curriculum and contextual needs.
• Implementation. The development of activities through a learning sequence based on observing, reflecting, creating, presenting and sharing.
• Evaluation. Continuous monitoring of the process and the results to assess learning, participation and the improvement of educational experience.

The model also puts students at the centre in relation to their context (teachers, families, senior leadership team, cultural institutions and local community). Finally, it offers a practical sequence for implementation: observing, reflecting, creating, presenting and assessing. "This sequence allows the student to look at their environment more carefully, to dialogue, to interpret, to create something of their own that contributes to the community, to share it and to reflect on what they have learned," Escala pointed out.

How to prepare students for a future marked by AI?

The model proposed by the UOC researchers is not purely theoretical but has been validated by experts and teachers, whose feedback was used to simplify the model, make it more practical and move forward with its implementation in schools. "There is no need for major technological infrastructure or to become an art school to implement the model. What is needed is an attitude open to reviewing in-house practices to be able to design learning experiences that are more significant, creative and connected to context," explained Nella Escala, who is affiliated to the UOC-FuturEd centre.

Based on this, the study has found that there are certain key conditions for the implementation of this new educational model: leadership and institutional support, time for teachers to plan and reflect, training and support for teachers, the school being open to the environment and to the community so that learning is not just limited to the classroom, and a different assessment culture that is not concentrated only on the final product.

"This focus does not work on competencies in an abstract way, but through specific situations linked to art, the curriculum and real problems in the student's environment. For example, we do not work on creativity by saying to the student: 'Be creative', but rather by offering opportunities to observe, imagine, compare ideas, create and review what they have done. And critical thinking is developed when students interpret a piece of work, analyse a social problem, compare points of view and justify their decisions," she noted.

"These ideas become even more important now that generative artificial intelligence has taken a firm hold in education. We need to strengthen students' agency so that they are capable of asking better questions, comparing answers, making decisions and not delegating their criteria to AI," said the UOC researcher. "When the students make the connection between what they learn and real problems, with their environment or with forms of artistic expression, they feel they have a more prominent role in their learning, and this can increase their involvement," she concluded.

This research has been conducted within the framework of the UOC's research mission The education of the future and contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 4, Quality education.

Related article

Escala, N., Guitert, M. & Romeu, T. (2026). Validation of the ABL + DT model: An ecosystemic framework for integrating arts and digital technologies in primary education. British Educational Research Journal, 00, 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.70164

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