Guiding Principles

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GUIDING PRINCIPLE I:

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An effective arts curriculum provides a sequential program of instruction in dance, music, theatre, and visual arts for all students beginning in preschool and continuing through high school.

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“Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang,

except those that sang best.”

- Henry Van Dyke

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Every student can benefit from a sequential PreK–12 education in the arts. Every student deserves to learn about our common artistic heritage, and each has the capacity to add dances, stories, songs, plays, and images to the world. A sequential program of instruction in the arts provides experiences in creating, performing, and responding to students each year they are in school. Centered in the practice and history of the arts disciplines, a sequential program of arts instruction takes into account students’ evolving needs and interests, builds on their prior experiences, provides a valuable means of creative expression and enjoyment, and enables insightful connections to be made with ideas from other disciplines.

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The Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993 defined the arts as a component of the core curriculum, along with English language arts, foreign languages, history and social science, mathematics, and science and technology/engineering. However, the goal of establishing equitable access to sequential arts education has yet to be achieved. Issues that require visionary leadership include the provision of qualified staff; district wide sequential curriculum, instruction, and assessment; well-equipped facilities designed to meet program needs; and adequate instructional time and materials.

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The writers of this Framework recommend that:

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• preschools and elementary schools provide all students basic education in the four arts disciplines: dance, music, theatre, and visual arts;

• middle schools provide all students a choice of more advanced curriculum and instruction in at least two of the performing arts disciplines and in visual arts;

• high schools, including vocational-technical schools, provide all students a choice of courses that will enable them to communicate at a proficient level in at least one of the arts disciplines; to analyze competently works in the four arts disciplines; and to explore careers and opportunities for further education in the arts beyond high school; and

• adult basic education programs provide instruction about the arts as cultural heritage and as a source of potential careers.

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GUIDING PRINCIPLE II:

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An effective arts curriculum emphasizes development of students’ skills and understanding of creating, performing, and responding.

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“We need a more generous conception of the sources of human understanding. The poet, the painter, the composer, the playwright, as well as the chemist, the botanist, the astronomer have something to teach us. Paying adequate attention to such forms of understanding in schools is the best way to make them a meaningful part of students’ intellectual lives.”

-Elliott Eisner, “What Really Counts in Schools,” 1991

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Well-rounded education in the arts consists of experiences in three interrelated kinds of artistic activity: creating, performing, and responding. Students involved in these ways of learning gain knowledge about the arts, refine their perceptual and expressive skills, and exercise their powers of analysis in order to make and justify judgments about works of art. Students who are given such opportunities in school are better prepared to continue active engagement with the arts as adults.

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Creating refers to generating original art. Students learn to use the symbolic languages, structures, and techniques of each discipline. With these skills they may express and communicate their own ideas and feelings when they draw, paint, or sculpt visual images, write dramatic works, or compose original pieces of music or dance. Students need opportunities in and out of school in which they can discover who they are as individuals, express their reactions to the world around them, tell their own stories, and show their own vision.

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Performing refers to interpreting an artwork that already exists (such as a play, a song, or a music score) or improvising a new work. Here students apply skills in singing, reading music, playing instruments, directing, acting, or dancing. Performing before an audience adds a public dimension to dance, music, and theatre education; in the visual arts, exhibiting artwork outside the classroom plays a similar function.

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Responding refers to analyzing and evaluating artistic expression. Students demonstrate their ability to respond with understanding when they describe, analyze, interpret, and evaluate their own artwork and the artwork of others. Critical response is an important dimension of studio and rehearsal discussion because it can lead to thoughtful revision and refinement.

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GUIDING PRINCIPLE III:

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An effective arts curriculum promotes knowledge and understanding of the historical and cultural contexts of the arts.

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“The search for roots and beginnings is really the quest for continuations. For how can human beings know where they are going unless they know where they have been?”

-William Fleming, Arts and Ideas, 1980

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This Framework emphasizes inquiry into the role played by the arts in history. Students need to learn about exemplary works of dance, music, theater, the visual arts, and architecture from world cultures and discover why certain of them are considered “great.” They also need to go beyond these individual examples to explore how and why art forms develop in specific cultural, historical, political, and environmental contexts, and to examine the dynamics of tradition and innovation in the histories of the arts.

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Throughout their schooling, students should have opportunities to discuss criteria for making value judgments about works of art. At the middle and high school level, they can be introduced to examples of arts criticism as well as to aesthetic theories. Contemporary artists who shape our future cultural legacy are influenced by elements of the world around them, including the media, politics, economics, and popular culture. Similarly, students integrate their daily experiences and influences from their environment into their artwork. Educators can encourage students to respond to the world and develop their ideas by providing examples of how artists in other times and places have expressed their understandings of their surroundings and the human condition.

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GUIDING PRINCIPLE IV:

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An effective arts curriculum uses a variety of assessment methods to evaluate what students know and are able to do.

 

“The search for roots and beginnings is really the quest for continuations. For how can human beings know where they are going unless they know where they have been?”

-William Fleming, Arts and Ideas, 1980

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The Massachusetts Arts Curriculum Framework presents Learning Standards that define what students should know

and be able to do in the arts. Each school district in the Commonwealth is encouraged to establish reliable, valid, and useful assessment practices in order to determine the extent to which their students achieve these standards.

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A balanced approach to assessment is encouraged. Evidence relating to a student’s achievement of standards should be gathered through use of a variety of formal and informal assessments including observations, traditional tests and quizzes, portfolios, projects, and student self-assessments. Since learning in the arts occurs over time, assessment should be thought of as a collection of evidence over time instead of a single event that happens only at the end of instruction.

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Performance and portfolio assessments, which have recently been adopted by other disciplines, have traditionally been used in the arts. Merely completing a performance task such as a recital or assembling a portfolio, however, does not constitute an assessment of learning. Assessments must also employ the use of criteria based on the Learning Standards as well as valid and reliable scoring procedures. When scoring criteria are made explicit, assessment is more likely to result in the improvement of student learning.

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GUIDING PRINCIPLE V:

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An effective arts curriculum provides opportunities for students to make connections among the arts, with other disciplines within the core curriculum, and with arts resources in the community.

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“Assessment is not so much a test as an episode of learning. ...(A) major, perhaps the primary reason for assessment is to teach students how to be rigorous critics of their own work.”

-Dennie Palmer Wolf, Taking Full Measure: Rethinking Assessment through the Arts, 1991

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An important aspect of education reform is the search for ways to help students synthesize knowledge from multiple disciplines. Interdisciplinary teaching that includes the arts requires students and teachers to use their intellects and senses to explore relationships among ideas. This approach invites educators from a variety of disciplines to consider an integrated role for the arts in their classrooms and a collaborative role for arts educators in the overall design of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

The role the arts can play in schools is further enhanced when schools cultivate partnerships with cultural resources within the community, such as museums, performing arts organizations, arts departments of colleges and universities, local artists, arts councils, and local businesses. Such collaborations can extend students’ appreciation of the possibilities available to them for learning, recreation, and potential careers.