The U.S. K-12 Art Education Curricular Landscape: A Nationwide Survey

Overview & Synopsis

In the midst of future-oriented dialogues within the field, we turned our attention broadly toward the multiplicity of educational approaches that might characterize U.S. K-12 art education today. Through large-scale descriptive survey research (N = 742), we explored K-12 art teachers' emphasis on 10 common educational approaches: choice-based art education/teaching for artistic behavior (TAB); community-based education; discipline-based art education (DBAE); design education; ecological/environmental education; interdisciplinary education or arts integration; multicultural education; social justice; science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)/science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM); and visual/material culture. The results confirm we are in a period of plurality, albeit more defined by visual/material culture and multicultural education. The range of ways in which these 10 educational approaches can exhibit theoretically and in practice raises a number of critical questions. We recommend any future sketches of the field explore these nuances--delving deeper into how each of these curricular movements is conceptualized and enacted in K-12 art education practice.