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Comprehensive Arts Education
Comprehensive arts education (also known as discipline-based arts education)
is a conceptual approach, not a prescribed curriculum. It is taught as
an essential component of general education and as a foundation for specialized
arts study.
The goal of comprehensive arts education is to develop students’
abilities to understand and appreciate the arts by:
- exploring the nature and meaning of the arts (aesthetics),
- responding to the arts (criticism),
- discovering contexts of artworks (history), and
- creating works of art (production and performance).
Curriculum is:
- written with sequentially organized content at all grade levels;
- developed around enduring ideas and works of art from Western and
non-Western cultures from ancient to contemporary times;
- structured to provide creative inquiry from four perspectives (aesthetics,
criticism, history, and production); and
- organized to increase student learning and understanding while recognizing
appropriate developmental levels.
Full implementation of a comprehensive arts education program is marked
by:
- systematic and regular arts instruction, arts education expertise,
administrative support, and adequate resources; and
- student achievement and program effectiveness, which are confirmed
by appropriate evaluation criteria and procedures.
Blending teaching practices often thought of as separate, comprehensive
arts education expects instruction in the arts — and in any art form
— to:
- include knowledge and skills in creating or performing, aesthetics,
criticism, and history and culture;
- integrate with other subjects around important themes or big ideas;
and
- use the set of practices that have come to be called “constructivist”
or “inquiry-based” and that adjust to the diverse learning
styles of students, especially those at risk of educational failure.
For more information, see:
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