Winner and Hetland maintain that first and foremost art affects children's ability to envision the world around them. They believe this effect stems from visual artists' ability to translate visual stimuli into some type of artistic display of that stimuli. Winner and Hetland also maintain that the ability to translate what one sees into a painting or sculpture also benefits students' ability to metaphorically "envision" non-visual things, such as problems and solutions. They further note that non-visual arts, such as music or dance, may also have a similar connection to a student's ability to hear and move.
Winner and Hetland believe that just as sports are promoted in schools across the country because of their extracurricular benefits (teamwork, leadership, cooperation), so too should art be promoted because of its extracurricular benefits. They maintain that the most beneficial of these traits is that of persistence. As artists attempt to recreate or reflect upon something in their work, they must return again and again to the original subject and their work until they are comfortable with their depiction. This type of persistence has direct applications in other disciplines, such as English where students may need to return again and again to a difficult text or math where students may need to attempt to solve a problem several times.
In addition to persistence, Winner and Hetland believe that art is also well-suited for developing a student's playfulness. They believe that continued focus on standard disciplines, such as English, math and science, can actually inhibit a student's ability to approach problems creatively and playfully. By encouraging students to engage topics in a non-traditional manner, art allows students to maintain a sense of creativity which could benefit them as they work in other disciplines.
Both aesthetics and ethics are labeled under the philosophical heading of "value theory." Winner and Hetland believe that as students' aesthetic judgments develop, so too do their ethical judgments. That is, as students begin to better understand why some piece of art can be considered good or bad, so too will they begin to better understand why some actions can be considered good or bad. Winner and Hetland maintain that since U.S. education was framed by the nation's founders as both an attempt to educate in standard disciplines as well as develop conscientious citizens, developing the students' sense of ethics is as important as developing their ability to conjugate verbs and solve equations.