The evolution of art education curriculum in response to technology and social issues

A number of modifications have occurred within the area of arts instruction, leading to a redesigning of the whole curriculum. A few transformations involve modern trends like literacy training via art, worldwide popular culture, 21st-century abilities, social justice, art evaluation, cultural diversity, and interdisciplinary approaches.

Teaching Literacy through Art

According to Moody-Zoet, art-teaching offers distinctive and useful intellectual behaviors and skill sets which aid in the learning of other academic disciplines. The following skills are introduced, cultivated and honed by arts education: craft creation capacity; task involvement and determination when it comes to task completion; envisioning, expression, and seeking of a vision for oneself; observation; reflection; stretching; exploration; and understanding of the art community/world. Arts education represents a vital component of every learner's holistic scholastic literacy. The arts, after all, are entrenched in representation and cognition, in addition to be profoundly involved in the way education expands as well as deepens people's meaning in life.

One means to instruct students is by making them curious, attentive, interested and speculating about the topic of study. It is found that students learn best if they are allowed to speak, move about freely and study by touch. The use of art for teaching comprehension approaches enables students to apply various channels of learning and, most notably, employ the approached within a written text-free setting, prior to utilizing them in learning textual matter. The integration of reading, speaking, visual literacy, and writing tactics into syllabi of visual arts courses combines numerous learning techniques. Innumerable interesting and efficient approaches are available that help children to ponder over and read, write and speak about instructional content (Moody-Zoet).

Further, Moody-Zoet claims that it is imperative to take into consideration which kind of approach is adopted: indirect or direct. For aiding students in grasping key philosophies, theories, and abilities, educators must necessarily offer direct instruction in the form of offering students information, demonstrating specific skill-based classroom activities, demonstrating inner speech or inquiry forms linked to reflective learning, and explaining and offering corrective feedback. Meanwhile, indirect instruction entails educator engagement in directing children in undertaking investigations individually as well as in groups. Children learn best through active engagement in academic activities; thus, instructional strategy design must offer students appropriate involvement opportunities. Direct and direct classroom instructional strategies include book clubs, journaling, literacy-based tasks, bell ringers, provision of professional magazines in the field (like Scholastic Art), visual thinking strategies and book arts.

Global Pop Culture

Art instruction deals with the need for appreciating and understanding modern society's visual components. Visual media have assumed increasing significance and constitute a prominent element of communication, economic progress, knowledge attainment, work-related practices, entertainment, creative growth and cultural identity. These form the fundamental facets of mankind's relationship with the overall society, reflecting their capacity of taking part in and contributing to culture. Cultivation of the aforementioned skills proves critical to all modern academic systems (Arts Education Victoria).

Therefore, in arts education promotion via worldwide popular culture, restructuring of the instructional domain have deemed instruction quality to be the key factor in enhancing child achievement. Funding of superior-quality art instructor training is vital to guarantee the creation of competent graduates who can provide stimulating, meaningful school-level art programs. Suitable opportunities for professional growth prove imperative to the cultivation of specialist skills, knowledge upgrading, and earning of advanced degrees. Every child must independently create art as well as respond to peers' creations. Inspection, communication, insight, expression, imagination and technical skill constitute the bases for every kind of art instruction and modern life-skills. By means of art, children acquire long-term skills of creative thinking, cultural awareness, liberalism, progressiveness and technical ability. Syllabus design has to create sufficient time for arts instruction, to allow the cultivation of such qualities among children (Arts Education Victoria).

For achieving requisite visual understanding levels in modern culture and ensuring superior quality education, school resourcing is vital. Within the context of art instruction, this implies specialist visual arts training from educators skilled at covering art's conceptual as well as practical facets, technology and library resourcing, and specialist schoolroom resourcing, for keeping up with advances in culture (Arts Education Victoria).

Social Justice

In Driskell's view, the social justice concept is explicitly related to inequalities in the following contexts: democratic themes, cultural and economic conditions, citizenship, activism and social responsibility. Artists typically employ visual imagery's strengths for highlighting societal inequalities and wrongs. Visual arts may be utilized as a force to stimulate and transform society. Protesting artists ascertain youngsters' and adults' inner emotions and give these a central position when interpreting and informing community members as they gain awareness of their significance within and to the community. Such art expresses overall community needs rather than individual expression.

Social justice instruction must attempt at producing a community feeling, expressing overall community needs and actively engaging students at school as well as in society. For understanding the way social justice instruction is applicable to arts education, considering multiple art training movements dealing with cultural and social subjects is necessary. Multicultural, postmodern, social reconstruction and visual cultural arts instruction represent visual arts training strategies which urge learners to raise questions with regard to their presumptions and to engage in critical thinking with respect to social issues. The implicit objective is societal reconstruction via action in learner communities. Present theoretic concepts from the disciplines of anthropology, theology, political science, sociology, etc. shape the above movements (Driskell).

According to Driskell, social justice elements of art instruction encompass inquiry, examination, and action, with the former component being youth-driven. When posing issues, educators question children on matters stemming directly from their lives. Inquiry outcomes shift from distinct scenarios to a more generalized, society-wide context. Students personalize, deliberate on, and generalize their problems. Analysis entails observing others' complex contexts and discussing potential resolutions to their issues. Students collaboratively and critically analyze artwork in relation to the issue presented, concentrating on examining every aspect of the issue and on developing consensus. Art creation and action emerges directly out of this analysis. Art creation forms a communication channel and a means by which learners raise awareness among community members and come up with and express potential resolutions to problems. In social justice-linked art instruction, learners mingle and communicate with community members, contributing to culture formation.

Cultural Diversity

Life within a multicultural society necessitates a superior grasp and respect of foreign cultures. The ideal means of inculcating cultural tolerance and understanding is by way of education. One instructional channel that serves this purpose is art, which represents a potent and ubiquitous force which assists in shaping individual thoughts, conduct, views and ideals. A grasp of art education and multiculturalism concepts aids teachers in constructing a bridge between children hailing from diverse cultural backgrounds (Isa).

Multiculturalism within the educational system best defines the understanding that cultural differences ought to be expressed in school-level art instruction so that children tolerate, acknowledge and respect different cultures in their society. Teaching technique's emphasis has shifted from traditional to more innovative strategies, delivering lessons that can reach children from diverse backgrounds. Multiculturalism in education represents a broadminded approach to transform education, holistically censuring and tackling existing discriminatory practices, weaknesses and flaws in the educational system (Isa).

Further, Isa asserts that within multicultural societies, curricular development, especially when it comes to art education, must take into account ethnic and cultural diversity. Thus, art curriculum should be culturally-sensitive and -- oriented, concentrating on all, and not just the dominant, culture. Cultural diversity within art curricula will be able to effectively bridge ethnic gaps.

Observation and analysis of artworks belonging of diverse world regions and periods teaches students that culture represents a dynamic thing, developing progressively via the change process. Artworks can express specific populations' and cultural groups' narrative history. More importantly, this strategy aids students in learning about gradual culture modifications via art, with time. Educators can further improve multiculturalism within art instruction through the promotion of cross-cultural empathy by the determination and acknowledgement of similarities (especially in art functions/roles) between cultures. Recognition, acknowledgement and celebration of art-based cultural and ethnic/racial diversity at school and within pluralistic society affirm and boost children's pride in their corresponding artistic heritage. Hence, art can effectively tackle issues like bigotry, wrong preconceived notions, racism, ethnocentrism, typecasting, discrimination, etc. (Isa).

Art Assessment

Sabol asserts that arts evaluation teems with challenges not requiring other academic disciplines to intervene. Conventional evaluation techniques typically fail at exploring the most major forms of arts-learning, like thought advancement, creative thinking or problem-solving skill development, etc. Other student art-education facets are vague and hard to depict in work samples and grading guidelines. Art teachers frequently struggle with assessing areas like creativity, personal expression, and idea/concept evolution within pupils' artworks. Still, some kind of appraisal, entailing systematic collection of particular proofs of pupil accomplishment, proves central to art-learning.

Educator-established criteria form the foundations for performing pupil artwork evaluation; however, different issues arise at different learning stages. For instance, at the elementary school stage, experts are rare to find and most art educators teach and evaluate student art performance with scant formal training or experience in the field. Secondary schools have proportionally more specialists formally trained and experienced in art. Further, school programs' elective nature can motivate children to perform better basically because of the 'student choice' factor (Sabol).

At present, art education evaluation is internally carried out by class teachers. It is imperative to gather descriptive data on educators' current art evaluation practices, given the growth in alternate evaluation methods at their disposal. Arts evaluation dynamics are complex; they necessitate development of proper resources and adequate faculty training to ensure suitable evaluation procedures are utilized. Furthermore, combined acquired information can create a picture which produces insights into educators' evaluation criteria and methods (Sabol).

Interdisciplinary Strategies

Via interdisciplinary curricula, pupils can acquire fresh insights and forge links between concepts. Some aspects central to interdisciplinary learning via art include: detailed examination of subject matter, through the use of correct, carefully-chosen material, language and examples; learning experiences which foster meaningful associations within and between fields of study; evaluation methods well-suited to the arts; and student engagement in art-authentic processes (creation, performance, and response) (Suraco).

One means to employ interdisciplinary methods in arts training is via Interdisciplinary Curricular Models. Integrated lessons may be developed using multiple steps. For instance, arts educators can employ common standards like getting pupils to create and express their responses to specific artworks. Some interdisciplinary curriculum guidelines are: use of aesthetic principles, common interdisciplinary functions, settings or aspects, important ideas and philosophies within other disciplines, and broad generative standards and themes within disciplines. Another approach is Curriculum Mapping, which may aid educators in seeking ways of building cross-disciplinary linkages in the development of integrated units. Educators must also exhibit a stronger knowledge base with regard to classroom management and subject matter related skills for critical instruction and effectively addressing students' learning requirements. Education must aim at understanding, and children ought to master skills rather than acquire them through rote learning, as the latter learning technique doesn't coach children in applying skills to other or out-of-classroom contexts (Suraco).

Interdisciplinary art instruction approaches' implication is: art teachers must know about curricular duality and the need to actively involve themselves in pupil education. Art teachers mustn't become neglectful in teaching children and only concentrate on the artworks children are able to effectively produce for pleasing school administrations. Instead, their emphasis should be the creation of a stimulating syllabus that facilitates students' creative expression and long-term learning. Their professional objective must be to promote critical instruction within all academic settings (Suraco).

Twenty First Century Skills

Such skills are considered vital in pupil development and core-discipline learning progress, and include teamwork; critical thinking; inventiveness; communication; originality; media communication, technology and information literacy; self-direction; adaptability and flexibility; efficiency and responsibility; leadership; and cross-cultural and social skills (North Carolina Department of Public Instruction).

21st-century skill development has been extensively accepted as the way to improve learning in every discipline. Such skills are apparent in visual arts, music, dance, and theater courses. Also included are interdisciplinary education themes like global awareness; civic literacy; economic, financial, entrepreneurial, and business literacy; environmental literacy; and. health literacy. Superior arts training programs normally help promote all the aforementioned skills as well as interdisciplinary education themes (North Carolina Department of Public Instruction).

Art teachers are in charge of imparting skills and knowledge to pupils that will prove beneficial in current education and future life. They can achieve this by requesting pupils to create an artwork or perform a dance, song or drama. Further, they can urge learners to create personal artwork portfolios demonstrating modern skills and arts mastery for their teachers and potential employers. Arts instructors must show fluency in providing valuable, continuous and constructive feedback to their pupils, to enable them to constantly make performance adjustments and meet learning goals. A holistic, balanced system of evaluation must promote formative learning as well as aid in determining the amount of learning that has transpired at a given point of time (North Carolina Department of Public Instruction).

Works Cited

Arts Education Victoria. "Art Education and Contemporary Culture." Arts Education Victoria, 2016, http://www.aev.vic.edu.au/art_education_and_contemporary_culture.pdf. Accessed 14 November 2016.

Driskell, Catherine A. "Critical Voices in Action: Teaching for Social Justice in Community-based Art Education." Georgia State University, 20 November 2008, http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/art_design_theses. Accessed 13 November 2016.

Isa, Badrul. "Multiculturalism In Art Education: A Malaysian Perspective." UNESCO, 2005, portal.unesco.org/culture/en/files/29700/1137685935. Accessed 13 November 2016.

Moody-Zoet, Erin. "Integrating Art Education and Literacy Education: A Curriculum for the Secondary Level." Western Michigan University. 2014. http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/ masters_theses. Accessed 14 November 2016.

North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. "Arts Education and 21st Century Skills." North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 2006, http://www.dpi.state.nc.us/docs/curriculum/artsed/resources/21stcentury.pdf. Accessed 13 November 2006.

Sabol, F. Robert. "Seismic Shifts in the Education Landscape: What Do They Mean for Arts Education and Arts Education Policy?" Arts Education Policy Review, Vol 114, Issue 1, 26 Dec. 2012, pp. 33-45. Taylor & Francis Online, HYPERLINK "http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10632913.2013.744250" http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10632913.2013.744250.

Suraco, Terri Lynn. "An Interdisciplinary Approach in the Art Education Curriculum." Georgia State University, 3 August 2006, scholarworks.gsu.edu/ art_design_theses. Accessed 13 November 2016.