A Case of Legitimation: Art Education's Movement toward Core Curriculum Membership (CCM).

Overview & Synopsis

How art education has evolved to become similar to academic subjects and the art education movement trend toward core curriculum membership (CCM) is the topic of this paper. The approach to art testing methods is used as an example of how qualification, accountability, and predictability of learning outcomes are being employed to legitimate art study as a discrete discipline with core curriculum status. To examine the characteristics and processes of legitimation as art education moves towards CCM, the following issues are discussed: (1) current trends in art education and art policy, (2) characteristics of general education, (3) relationships between current trends in art education and characteristics of general education, and (4) the testing of art learning as illustrative of the movement toward general education characteristics. It is essential that these aspects of change in art education are documented and analyzed. The modernity characteristics of standardization and efficiency, which testing embodies, obscure the fact that this model for art education is a matter of choice and that there are other possibilities for change. (KM)