Curriculum Design for Art + Design Education

This course explores the development of a conceptual framework for teaching art and design to children and adolescents that is inquiry-based and which has meaning-making at its philosophical core. While there is certainly a national climate of accountability in education, this course adopts the stance that originality, discovery, and even play need to be essential elements within K-12 art and design education. Students are introduced to the principles of curriculum design and unit and lesson planning through the development of a series of demonstration lessons that are based on subjects, themes, and media and which are crafted to meet the cognitive, social and personal interests of a particular grade level of students.

The course introduces students to standards-based curriculum design, and to formative and summative assessment methods that can be used to capture and evaluate levels of student understanding. Throughout this course there is an emphasis on the development of instructional strategies that encourage K-12 students’ problem solving abilities, performance skills, and critical thinking. In this course, curriculum theory is translated into practice in a RISD Museum teaching experience with high school students from Providence schools.