NAB: Discipline-Specific Art Education
New Art Basics considers its primary duty to provide designs for discipline-specific art education to all students. The term Discipline-specific implies that the learning activities students are asked to participate in are soundly grounded in the specific thinking styles and skills, creative sources and aesthetic standards, and productive decision making abilities that are specific to the nature of the art process. New Art Basics makes a distinction between a traditional kind of art instruction, aimed exclusively at the production of "hot house" type end projects and instruction that consistently plans for support of the learner throughout the process of learning by teaching discipline-specific skills.
Not "Hot House" Projects
New Art Basics philosophy does not support learning activities that merely present initial instruction in art materials and techniques with a command to then produce an art object. What is missing from this equation is the educationally sound support for the process that the learner must engage in, in order to produce a successful outcome. You can grow anything in a "hot house" (greenhouse) no matter what the exterior climate. In a similar way art teachers can ask students to produce art objects even if the school climate does not support the student in learning the skills and knowledge inherent in the discipline.
Discipline-specific Support
Discipline-specific New Art Basics asks teachers to design strategies that promote sound art learning throughout the time the student is engaged in a learning activity. This should involve not only foundational instruction in art materials and techniques but also aid in the search for visual sources, support in dealing with the complexity of graphic ideation processes, improvement in problem solving abilities, and an appreciation and application of historical precedents that are applicable.
Old Art Basics |
New Art Basics |
Discipline-Specific Art Education |
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