Rashid Johnson Ideas about Color

 Rashid Johnson, Kansas City

Nick Cave

 Kathy Meuhlemann

Fidalis Beuhler

histories of art education curricular content

Themes of Curriculum Theory that Define the Content of Art Education

For example: Victor Lowenfeld and Franz Cizek who focused on child study and the psychological development of the child. In art, the emphasis was on ,  personal expression and  creativity. 

DBAE theorists felt that this emphasis lacked the rigor of disciplinary study and sought to define what are the disciplines of art and art education. This search continues today.  Michael Day, from BYU, Barkan, Elliot Eisner, Brent Wilson and Jerome Bruner were involved in these discussions. The research that Brent Wilson did (Brent, by the way, is from Utah, and taught junior high in Utah before ending up at Penn State) did research of child art and found that it was always influenced by the surrounding culture.  It was never innocent and untouched by adult or other children's ways of making images. DBAE theorists put the work of art at the center of the curriculum, not the child, and placed art criticism, art history,  aesthetics and studio work as the central disciplines of the field of art education.  

Critics of DBAE, including Brent Wilson, Paul Duncum, and Judith Burton (my teacher at Columbia) felt that the focus on art was too limiting, especially since museums and museum art was often esoteric, Euro-centric and exclusive. To remedy this, they proposed Visual Culture Studies as the content of art education. Visual Culture studies included popular visual culture such as comics, movies, built environments that were studied in their social cultural context using the lens of critical theory.

Meanwhile, many art teachers adhered to Modernist ideas about art making such as creativity, originality, the grand history of art, and especially the formal elements and principles of art, which were seen as universal ideas in all art.  Arthur Wesley Dow and the Bauhaus are important touch stones that place the elements and principles of design at the center of art education content.  

Olivia Gude, among others, criticized this approach as being anachronistic and not relevant to contemporary art practices and proposed postmodern principles for art educators including  hybridity, re-contextualization, appropriation and the primacy of the social and cultural contexts of art, art-making, and children. 

Others, including Nick Jaffee and Judy Burton felt that the exploration of materials, art mediums, and processes is the best way for children to find a way to express things that are important to them.  

Recently, the idea of  Design Thinking has become important in art education as a way to structure curriculum and learning. 

Play and Playgrounds

Every classroom community problem is a curriculum problem. 

Play and Playgrounds

Play: What does play afford?

Exploration

Learn social skills

Stress relief

Develop empathy

Learn role playing

Therapeutic

Fun, pleasure, excitement, motivation

What is play? How is play different from work?

Play is fun

Work is not fun work is required, work has goals

Play is unstructured, play does not have goals.

Sometimes play has goals if you play soccer

Work can be fun

Play creates an environment where experiments and mistakes are allowed.

What do play environments look like?

2nd Draft Due March 29

Curriculum Unit Organization

I. Title

II. Table of Contents

III. Rationale

 Why are you teaching this unit? What is important for you as a teacher and researcher?  

IV. Conceptual Framework

V. Assessment Policies and Principles

VI. Unit Overview

VII. Key Concepts

What are the key concepts associated with your content,  theme or enduring idea?

VIII. Essential Questions.

What are essential questions associated with your themes or enduring ideas?

Are the questions generative and conducive to divergent answers? Are the questions open-ended, inviting further research and speculation?  Do the questions connect to the enduring ideas of your unit?

IX. Learning Goals.  

What do you want your students to know or understand or be able to do? What do you want them to feel or experience?  What are your goals for yourself?

Do the goals reflect a “big idea” in the discipline?

Do the goals align with national art standards?

Do the goals reflect a variety of levels of learning (see Bloom’s Taxonomy)

Are the goals appropriate to the expected development and cultural background of your students?

X.  Art Learning Standards

How does your unit and learning goals align with state or national standards?

XI. Lesson Plans including Culminating Project

First Draft Curriculum Due March 6

1st Draft Curriculum Unit Summary

I. Rationale

 Why are you teaching this unit? What is important for you as a teacher and researcher?  Big Ideas: What are the Themes or the Big Ideas or Enduring Ideas  (see Stewart & Walker, 2005) that this unit is organized around?

Discipline Based Art Education: The content should be at least as robust as the best DBAE unit. Ask yourself, how will the students experience the artwork you are studying, how will they learn to describe, interpret or evaluate the work, what kinds of questions will you be asking about beauty, meaning or aesthetics.  

Critical Theory, Visual Culture, Design Education: How does your curriculum connect to ideas about visual culture and critical pedagogy?

Postmodern Principles: How does your curriculum connect to ideas about postmodern curriculum elements, as described by Olivia Gude (2007, 2013)?

Design Education: How does your curriculum connect to modernist ideas about art and learning? How does you curriculum account for design education, including the teaching of elements and principles of design?

II. Students. Who are your students? 

III. Key Concepts

What are the key concepts associated with your theme or enduring idea?

IV. Essential Questions.

What are essential questions associated with your themes or enduring ideas?

V. Learning Goals.  

What do you want your students to know or understand or be able to do? What do you want them to feel or experience?  What are your goals for yourself?

VI.  Art Learning Standards

How does your unit  and learning goals align with state and national standards?

VII. Art and Artists Histories and Methodologies Mediums and Methods

VIII. Learning Activities and Lesson Plans

IX.  Culminating Project.

X. Assessment

 How will you tell if what you are doing is working?  What evidence will you gather?