"When I started teaching in the 1970s, art was something to make you feel good and involved lots of self-expression," says Mark Coates, who chairs the art department at River Hill High School in Clarksville, Md. Back then, students who exhibited a talent or special interest in drawing or painting took a studio class that focused on producing artwork. "Art wasn't a specific body of knowledge to be taught beyond technique," Coates recalls.
Times have changed. "Now art educators teach a wider body of knowledge that connects to the rest of the school day and to the real world," Coates explains.
Making such connections is important, art educators contend, because visual arts give shape to and help us understand our world. "People forget that someone has to design cars, buildings, and furniture," says Michael Day, president of the National Art Education Association and professor of visual art at Brigham Young University. "But these—and graphic images that we see every day—influence our lives."
Being able to interpret these images helps us understand our culture, the cultures of others, and those that existed before ours, says Day. "Visual arts is a first language," notes Sarah Tambucci, principal of Chartiers Valley Intermediate School in Pittsburgh, Penn. "Dating back to prehistoric cave paintings, people have communicated using the visual arts."
Because the visual arts—which include drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, architecture, graphic design, and landscape design—have such an impact on our lives, says Day, "we have a commitment to prepare those who will design and interpret these things in the next millennium."
According to Day, the aim of art education should be twofold: to prepare students for fulfilling and productive lives as citizens and to prepare students for a vocation or avocation as lifelong learners.
Even those students who do not excel at making art can learn valuable real-world skills, says Day. Although studying art is meaningful in its own right, it also teaches students to make judgments, to think metaphorically, and to provide multiple solutions to a problem. "These are highly desirable skills in our constantly changing world," Day explains.
Building on Student Experience
The first thing you notice when you walk into Chartiers Valley's cafeteria is the colorful mural that covers the wall. In chronological order, the mural depicts the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, a yellow ribbon symbolizing the Gulf War, and even a visit to the school by a local television weatherman. Since 1988, each 5th grade class has added its own section to the mural as the culminating project in the school's visual art education program.
Rather than simply being required to paint a mural, students are prepared to undertake the project starting in the 3rd grade. All students spend 40 minutes each week with the school's full-time visual arts instructor. They learn that "historically, people have produced images, such as cave paintings and murals on barns," explains Tambucci. Individually or collaboratively, the students produce a design on a large piece of paper.
In the 4th grade, students begin to investigate the ways that art can communicate thoughts and feelings that cannot be articulated in words. For example, the students might look at a Picasso painting about the Spanish Civil War. "Although he wouldn't have been permitted at that time in history to express his ideas about war and fear, he could express his feelings through his art," explains Tambucci.
In the 5th grade, students are asked to reflect on their experience "right now, this year, in our life, in our community, in our nation, and in our world," says Tambucci. Students decide together what images will be added to the mural. A problem-solving component is added to the assignment when the students are told they must incorporate ventilators, speakers, and other items on the wall. In the past, for example, a clock has become a baseball.
Sequential experiences such as the mural project are important for children, says Tambucci. During the three years the students studied murals, she says, they have exercised their creativity; viewed things from multiple perspectives; taken materials and manipulated them; learned to work together; developed problem-solving skills; and practiced expressing themselves.
A Broad View of How to Teach Art
Arts educators can provide such rich learning experiences because the teaching of art has evolved, say experts. Jean Detlefsen, a visual arts specialist at Columbus High School in Columbus, Nebr., began teaching art 23 years ago. She remembers "spending a lot of time defending artists to students. I felt like I had to get every student to love each artist."
Now, she and her school have adopted a more comprehensive approach to arts education, which involves creating art, learning how to appreciate it and respond to it, learning about a place or culture in time, and making judgments about what constitutes quality in art.
These ideas have been articulated as Discipline-Based Art Education (DBAE), but many art educators were teaching these concepts before they were labeled discipline-based, according to Thomas Hatfield, executive director of the National Art Education Association.
Detlefsen weaves the concepts described in DBAE into an elective painting course. She has designed the class around the work of Robert Henri, an artist who spent part of his childhood in Nebraska. Henri influenced American art and how it was taught.
In addition to studying Henri's life, the class reads a book he wrote that outlines his art philosophy. Next, students experiment with Henri's method of painting. In this technique, students add more paint before the first brushstrokes have dried. This way, the students are able to experiment with color and create impressionistic images.
As the students continue to study Henri's life, they learn about art he saw in Europe and try the techniques of those artists. Later they take these techniques and form a personal style, says Detlefsen. Throughout the course, students are also required to critique their work and keep sketchbooks that double as writing journals.
Using DBAE has "added a lot of freedom of thinking to the classroom" by allowing students to talk about what they like and don't like about an artist, find out what they can learn from the artist, and move on, says Detlefsen.
And as students investigate the role of art and artists in our lives and society, "they are making better connections between art and other parts of the curriculum," she notes.
Engaging Students
To help make connections between visual arts and literature, Mark Coates teamed up with an English teacher at River Hill High School. Coates' advanced-level art elective class joins students taking the required 11th grade English course in American literature.
During the unit, the English students select a piece of literature, find a painting that corresponds to its style or content, and write a paper describing why the painting was chosen. For example, if a student chooses Jack Kerouac's On the Road, she reads the book and conducts research using the Internet or the library to find examples of abstract expressionism as it was being practiced on the east and west coasts of the United States.
At the same time, a student in the art course selects a poet or author to base a piece of art on. If a student chooses Kerouac, for instance, he reads On the Road. Then he conducts research and produces a series of paintings based on the work of Bay area artists in the 1950s and 1960s.
All students visit the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., during this unit. Coates prepares the students for the trip with a slide show of art from the Gallery's collection. Once there, students locate paintings that relate to the authors or artists they are researching.
The students also participate in a structured activity. They place markers in front of paintings they think took the most skill to make or are worth the most money. The activity, says Coates, gives students a chance to say why they like an image or why they think it's important. "Often the art students are astounded by what they consider to be their fellow students' ignorance of art," he says. As a result, heated debates and discussions among students ensue.
Once a security guard approached Coates to warn him that the group was getting too loud. But Coates felt no chagrin. Any time students feel passionate enough to argue over the merits of a painting is a wonderful moment for an art teacher, he says.
Arts Assessment Strategies
Because studying art can be an emotional—and therefore subjective—process, art educators are continually seeking the best ways to assess student learning.
Michael Day, professor of visual art at Brigham Young University, says that some parents worry that their children might receive bad grades if they are not artistically talented. He attributes this attitude to the parents' memories of art in school, when it was based solely on production.
"Just like in math and science, you have a range of abilities in art. One thing that people need to hear is that all students can learn in the arts," Day says. He maintains that having a general understanding of art is as important as having a general knowledge of math and science concepts.
Mark Coates, who teaches art at River Hill High School in Clarksville, Md., agrees, saying, "The arts aren't just for the talented few. Drawing is a skill that can be taught." Maryland requires students to earn one fine arts credit for graduation, which can be fulfilled through visual arts, music, theatre, or dance. As a result, students in Coates' class have a range of abilities. Because his students are particularly grade conscious, he lets them know the first day of class what they'll need to do to earn an A and frequently uses rubrics that don't make grades dependent only on the quality of the art.
For example, a rubric for a project might ask students to use design tools properly; create an assymetrical design that leads the viewer's eye to the corner of the drawing; incorporate something with personal meaning; and employ two cultural symbols. As the semester continues, lessons and rubrics become progressively layered.
In addition to rubrics, portfolios are a natural way to document student learning, says Evelyn Pender, who teaches art at Kate Sullivan Elementary School in Tallahassee, Fla. Nevertheless, portfolios are not practical for her because she works with every child in the school. "I have 780 students. I tried to have portfolios once but ran out of storage room after one project," Pender notes. Instead, she uses rubrics and student self-assessment. Like many art educators, Pender says, she is still experimenting with assessment techniques.
