What is standard-based education and its relation to art

Standard-based arts education encourages learners to apply critical thinking to the artifacts and processes that they find most compelling: the artwork of their own, of their peers, and of the artists in the wide world they are growing to understand. Precisely because of the emotional connections that students make to and through works of art, the application of critical thinking to understanding and evaluating those works leads to the development of structures or elements of thought implicit in all reasoning: purpose, problem, or question-at-issue; assumptions; concepts; empirical grounding; reasoning leading to conclusions; implications and consequences; objections from alternative viewpoints; and frame of reference. Critical thinking also builds contextual awareness as an indirect but fundamental aspect of artistic practice and appreciation.

Further more, standards-based arts instruction, by its very nature, engages learners with each another, helping them:

• Develop, implement, and communicate new ideas to others effectively.

• Be open and responsive to new and diverse perspectives; incorporate group input and feedback into the work.

• Demonstrate originality and inventiveness in work and understand the real-world limits to adopting new ideas.

• View failure as an opportunity to learn; understand that creativity and innovation is along-term, cyclical process of small successes and frequent mistakes.

• Demonstrate ability to work effectively and respectfully with diverse teams.

• Exercise flexibility and willingness to be helpful in making necessary compromises to accomplish a common goal.

• Assume shared responsibility for collaborative work, while valuing the individual contributions made by each team member.

The National Core Arts Standards

The voluntary National Core Arts Standards being developed with this framework are a re-imagining of the 1994 National Standards for Arts Education, and more recently, the 2005 Standards for Learning and Teaching Dance in the Arts. These standards are being crafted to guide arts curriculum, instruction, and assessment in America’s schools. Toward that end, they emphasize the process-oriented nature of the arts and arts learning that guide the continuous and systematic operations of instructional improvement by:

• Defining artistic literacy through a set of overarching Philosophical Foundations and Lifelong Goals that clarify long-term expectations for arts learning.

• Placing Artistic Processes and Anchor Standards at the forefront of the work.

• Identifying Creative Practices as the bridge for the application of the Artistic Processes across all learning.

• Specifying Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions that provide conceptual throughlines and articulate value and meaning within and across the arts discipline.

• Providing Model Cornerstone Assessments of student learning aligned to the Artistic Processes.

Artistic Processes

The identification of these Artistic Processes was informed by two studies conducted by theCollege Board: A Review of Selected State Arts Standards and International Arts Education Standards: A Survey of the Arts Education Standards and Practices of Fifteen Countries and Regions. The former reviewed a series of recently revised arts education standards from states and large districts nationwide, noting trends in the structure and organization of these standards, as well as finding commonalities among their guiding philosophies. The researchers found that the NAEP framework was a significant source of influence in many recent standards revisions. The framework of creating, performing, and responding became a foundational element for the structure and content of the standards of several states: Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Washington, among others. In the other study, College Board researchers reviewed the recently created standards of 15 countries worldwide. In 14 of the studied countries, the skills of creating, performing, and responding were found to form the core of these international examples as well, though the terminology varied. 

Included in the NAEP framework were definitions for creating, performing, and responding. The writing groups of the National Core Arts Standards have broadened the NAEP definitions and in some cases made them discipline-centric. Though the NCCAS definitionsare shorter, the use of verbs suggests that the arts operate in an active “hands-on” and “minds-on” capacity.

CREATE (NAEP definition) Creating refers to generating original art. 

CREATING (NCCAS definition) Conceiving and developing new artistic ideas and work.

PERFORM (NAEP definition) Performing/interpreting means performing an existing work, a process that calls upon the interpretive or re-creative skills of the student.

PERFORMING/PRODUCING/PRESENTING (NCCAS definition)

• Performing (dance, music, theatre): Realizing artistic ideas and work through interpretation and presentation.

• Presenting (visual arts): Interpreting and sharing artistic work.

• Producing (media arts): Realizing and presenting artistic ideas and work.

RESPOND (NAEP definition) Responding varies from that of an audience member to the interactive response between a student and a particular medium.

RESPONDING (NCCAS definition) Understanding and evaluating how the arts convey meaning.

The current set of arts standards emerges from the Artistic Processes of Creating, Performing/Presenting/Producing, Responding, and Connecting. Each artistic process branches into two or three anchor standards. The performance standards, which describe student learning in each of the specific arts disciplines, align with anchor standards. Collectively, the design reflects a cohesive and aligned system that allows for commonality across the disciplines and specificity within each discipline, therefore establishing the appropriate level of breadth and depth required for national standards. The model below represents the learning sequence:

ARTISTIC PROCESSES > ANCHOR STANDARD > PERFORMANCE STANDARD

Anchor standards

Anchor standards describe the general knowledge and skill that teachers expect students to demonstrate throughout their education in the arts. These anchor standards are parallel across arts disciplines and grade levels and serve as the tangible educational expression of artistic literacy.

Anchor Standard #1. Generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work.

Anchor Standard #2. Organize and develop artistic ideas and work.

Anchor Standard #3. Refine and complete artistic work.

Anchor Standard #4. Select, analyze and interpret artistic work for presentation.

Anchor Standard #5. Develop and refine artistic techniques and work for presentation.

Anchor Standard #6. Convey meaning through the presentation of artistic work.

Anchor Standard #7. Perceive and analyze artistic work.

Anchor Standard #8. Interpret intent and meaning in artistic work.

Anchor Standard #9. Apply criteria to evaluate artistic work.

Anchor Standard #10. Synthesize and relate knowledge and personal experiences to make art.

Anchor Standard #11. Relate artistic ideas and works with societal, cultural and historical context to deepen understanding.

Performance standards

Performance standards are discipline-specific, grade-by-grade articulations of student achievement in the arts N-12 and at four proficiency levels: 

• ND, needs development

• AE,  approach expectations

• ME, meet expectations

• EE, exceeds expectations

Every art unit, learning experience, skill development, discovery of functions, structures, media and processes at IAA are based on National Art Core Standards. As such, the performance standards translate the anchor standards into specific measurable learning goals. In this way we can track each students development and give them the support they need in order for them to grow, acchieve and gain self confindence becoming unique, creative global citizens.