Aim: To enable students to understand and value arts expressions throughout life.
Creative/Productive Component
Critical/Responsive Component
Cultural/Historical Component
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The aim of the arts education program is: to enable students to understand and value arts expressions throughout life. This aim describes the main outcome for students and the primary reason for including arts education in the Core Curriculum for all students.
The aim of the program can be achieved through meeting the following goals. By participating in the arts education program, students will be supported to:
The foundational objectives for each of the four strands (dance, drama, music, and visual art) are aimed at meeting these goals so that all students can benefit from what the arts have to offer.
The arts education curriculum, including dance, drama, music, and visual art, has been developed for all students in the province. For this reason, the program is broad in scope and includes a diverse range of arts experiences. “Arts” includes fine arts, popular arts, traditional arts, commercial arts, and functional arts with the understanding that there is much overlap among these categories.
At various times in the history of arts education, different reasons have been given justifying the arts as having a place in the classroom. The resulting programs have ranged from the purely creative (letting the child's creativity “unfold” without interference from the teacher) to the purely historical (prescribing a body of content based on perceived history) to the purely academic (focusing the program on the formal elements of the particular arts area – art for art's sake).
The Saskatchewan arts education curriculum includes the benefits of these three approaches, but switches in focus to the aesthetic benefits of an arts education. The arts provide a unique “way of knowing” about the world and human experience.
There is a tremendous amount of research that clearly demonstrates the benefits of arts education for all students, not only for those students who have a special interest in the arts.
Students studying arts education will have opportunities to:
In order for students to benefit from this unique way of knowing, the arts education program encourages the following:
In addition, the program recognizes that artists are thinkers. Their ideas have contributed and continue to contribute to an understanding of human existence. The arts education curriculum provides a place for their ideas.
To fully appreciate the arts throughout life, students need to study each of the four strands of the program. It is true that certain concepts pertain to more than one strand, but each strand has unique content that can be learned only through specific studies in that strand. For example, the concept of movement applies to dance, drama, music, and visual art. However, if students study movement in dance, they cannot be expected to understand movement as it applies to music, drama, or visual art. To apply concepts to music, for example, students must first have a basic understanding of the content of the music strand.
Each of the arts has played a unique role in history and continues to play a unique role in contemporary cultures and societies. Most students are exposed to dance, drama, music, and visual art at home through cultural events and the mass media even before entering school. By extending what the students already know about the arts, lifelong enjoyment and critical understanding can be achieved.
The foundational objectives describe the required content for each strand. In Grade 1 to Grade 5 Arts Education, the foundational objectives are broad in scope and take all of the elementary years to develop. However, what the teacher does at each grade to develop a particular foundational objective differs. The learning objectives describe the specific knowledge, attitudes, skills, and processes that students should develop at each grade level in order to achieve the foundational objectives. Detailed descriptions of the foundational objectives for each strand and a chart showing how the specific learning objectives develop from grade to grade are included in this curriculum guide. These objectives guide the unit planning, instructional processes, resource selection, and assessment and evaluation. Individual student needs and abilities may require an adaptation to instruction, resources, or environment to help students achieve these objectives. For more information on adaptation refer to the Adaptive Dimension on page 6.
The Saskatchewan Goals of Education state that a body of knowledge and a range of skills and attitudes are necessary to function in a changing world. The arts education curriculum includes the development of knowledge, skills, and attitudes in the areas of perception, procedures, conceptual understanding, and personal expression. These categories were taken into consideration when determining objectives for each strand.
Arts Education: A Curriculum Guide for the Elementary Level is structured, through the inclusion of the following three components, to achieve a balance in focus. The components are not to be segregated but are intended to be interwoven throughout the program.
This component includes the exploration, development, and expression of ideas in the language of each strand or art form. In order for an activity to be creative, the student must be engaged actively in a critical thinking process. The student learns where ideas come from, and how ideas can be developed and transformed. Reflection, both ongoing and summative, is an essential part of the creative process, and allows students to evaluate their own growth in their creative endeavours.
This component deals with the role of the arts in culture, the development of the arts throughout history, and the factors that influence the arts and artists. It includes the historical development of each art form. In addition, it focuses on the arts in contemporary cultures, and includes popular culture and various cross-cultural studies. The intent of this component is to develop students' understanding that the arts are an important means of passing on various societies' cultural histories, and are also an integral aspect of living for all people.
This component enables students to respond critically to images, sounds, performances, and events in the artistic environment, including the mass media. Students become participants in the interactive process between artist and audience rather than passive consumers of the arts. The curriculum suggests several processes to help teachers guide discussion and encourage various responses to works of art; for example, visual art works, musical compositions, or dance and drama performances. The processes are intended to move students beyond quick judgement to informed personal interpretation, and can be used with each of the four strands. These processes are described in the section on page 45 entitled Responding to Arts Expressions.
The curriculum encourages students in this province to explore the rich and exciting arts community that exists here. It is important that students become familiar with their own artistic heritage and surroundings. As students study Saskatchewan and Canadian arts, students recognize themselves, their environment, their concerns, and their feelings expressed in a diverse range of materials, styles, and art forms. Students learn that artists deal with personal, cultural, regional, and global concerns, and that the artistic accomplishments in this province and in Canada are cause for celebration.
Many opportunities exist for schools and school divisions to enter into formal and informal partnerships with local artists, musicians and composers, dancers and choreographers, dramatic artists, filmmakers, or arts and cultural organizations. Gallery programs and studio visits, workshops and exchanges with music groups or dance and theatre companies, and long- or short-term artist residencies are examples of schools and communities working together to enhance the learning program for all students.
Often teachers are expected to use the arts education program as an opportunity for providing entertainment or decorations for school events. This might result in a conflict for the teacher, as artistic products and presentations are not always the focus of arts lessons. Time required for the planning or presentation of special events such as the Christmas concert should be taken from across the curriculum, not just from arts education.
Much of the daily work in arts education is process oriented and of a problem-solving nature. While students must be encouraged to take pride in their artistic products, the creative process is of equal importance to the resulting product. It should not be expected that the aim of all students' work be for public presentation, although presentation can provide opportunities to demonstrate acquired learning to parents, administrators, and the public at large. Artistic products should be an outgrowth of supporting student achievement of objectives.
