Author: Davis, Meredith

Publication Year:

Media Type: Periodical (article)

Summary:

Abstract:

I hope to acquaint art educators with some of the thirty-year history of design education in K-12 classrooms, show its relationships to the goals of education reform, illustrate its success as a strategy for integrating curricula, and discuss its potential for curbing marginalization of the arts in schools. In each case, I will argue that the inclusion of design education in the preparation of teachers and administrators, within and outside of the arts, offers additional strategies for improving teaching and learning.

The reform research and classroom examples that I use come largely from a two-year study by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) on the use of design in K-12 schools. The results of that study appear in Design as a Catalyst for Learning (1998), published by the NEA and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. The book documents the work of more than 160 teachers at all grade levels and in all subject areas and presents a convincing case for the inclusion of design activities in curricula.

Design educators have turned their attention to demonstrating how the pedagogy of design education and the problem-solving processes of designers provide practical strategies for achieving the goals of education reform in today's classrooms. Since the 1960's, a small cadre of architects, graphic designers, industrial designers, landscape architects and planners have worked with K-12 teachers to illustrate how design can be used to teach other subjects.

Their goal has not been to introduce yet another subject into an already full curriculum or to promote professional education that would result in increased applications to college design programs. Neither are they interested in providing purely aesthetic or technical dimensions to work in other disciplines. Instead, they seek to expand the pedagogical repertoire of teachers to improve the delivery of whatever content teachers must impart and to demonstrate the application of creative problem solving to improved student performance in any subject area and in daily life, (p. 7, 8).

CONTENTS
Design as a catalyst for learning.
Understanding design and the design process.
Design and education reform.
A nation at risk.
Goals 2000.
Educate America act.
The Secretary's commission on achieving necessary skills.
Voluntary national content and performance standards.
New performance standards in applied learning.
What role will art education play in the adoption of design-based approaches?
Notes and references.

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Arts Education