Copyright 1999 National Arts Education Consortium
Overview of the Instructional Unit Guidelines

Through a unit of a comprehensive approach to arts education, students should be provided opportunities to become proficient and competent in:
  • making artworks.
  • interpreting and judging artwork.
  • examining the historical, social, and cultural context of artworks.
  • exploring the nature and value of art.
  • making connections between art and other content areas.
  • demonstrating learning and complex understandings and skills.
Guideline Concepts

Included are charts that detail the five major concepts of the Guidelines.You'll need Adobe Acrobat to view these files. Contents

Download all charts at one time in PDF format. You'll need Adobe Acrobat to view this file.


The following narrative provides elaboration on the concepts of the guidelines detailed in the charts.

Design

The concept of design enumerates criteria that the user should keep in mind as the process of curriculum development begins, as the work progresses, and as a final check for looking back over the work that has been completed.

On a practical level, the format of units and lessons must initially be considered. The suggested unit and lesson format provided below was developed by the TETAC Curriculum Task Force. Revised or different formats may be used if the key components are present and clearly indicated. A variety of other worksheets are provided later in this document to offer choices of approach for the design of curricula format.

Another critical aspect of curriculum design concerns content. When designing curriculum, teachers should be sure that:
  • objectives are truly outcomes for learning.
  • there is diversity in the artwork and artists studied.
  • units are centered on works of art or ideas about art.
  • technology components, if available, should promote learning.
  • local museums and artists are utilized if available and appropriate.
Suggested Unit and Lesson Format


Unit Format
  1. Unit Title
  2. Rationale and Overview of Unit
  3. Unit Objectives
  4. Overview of Lessons
  5. Resources and Materials for the Unit
    • Reproductions
    • Videotapes
    • Publications
    • Handouts
    • Audiovisual Equipment
    • Consumable Materials
 
Lesson Format
  • Overview
  • Objectives
  • Materials and Resources
  • Planning and Preparation
  • Background Information for Teachers
  • Vocabulary
  • Body of the Lesson
  • Summary and Closure
  • Assessment
  • Extensions/Interdisciplinary Connections
  • Correlated Local, State, and National Standards


Unit Foundations

The Unit Foundations are ideas that underlie our culture. They are drawn from philosophical, religious, ethical, and other sources. They are the big questions which artists and other thinkers have pondered over time. Additionally, the unit foundations include enduring ideas that are important for the arts. Each discipline brings a unique perspective to the exploration and expression of the human experience. These enduring ideas and essential questions guide students to understand what it means to be human, to live alongside others, and to live in the natural world.

Such ideas can serve as an overarching guide to aligning instructional activities to assessment. Unit goals and objectives will grow out of these ideas to provide paths of investigation through making and experiencing art. The process of developing the content of a unit begins with the unit foundations. You may start with a big/enduring idea or through the choice of artwork(s), but the key concepts and essential questions must provide the focus of the unit.

Content

The Guidelines for content fall into two categories. The first category addresses the content of art:
  • art production, criticism, history, and aesthetics,
  • key concepts and terms, and
  • the ways appropriate art knowledge and skills can make natural and logical connections to other disciplines.
The second category offers ways to organize content to draw attention to:
  • the way content is sequenced in a logical way.
  • the need for overall cohesiveness within the unit.
  • providing for appropriate developmental levels.
  • listing resources.
Instructions/Pedagogy

Instruction/Pedagogy refers to the ways teachers construct and shape the learning environment, the experience of learning, and the order of learning activities. Teachers must provide paths to substantive learning and help students make connections to real life. They must reference new skills and concepts in art and advise students of assessment expectations. They must guide discussions and individual inquiry and provide a variety of learning activities that help students arrive at an understanding of the enduring questions.

Assessment

The construction of assessment tasks that are integral and embedded in learning experiences helps teachers insure that learning activities for students are relevant and engaging and display continual evidence of learning. These guidelines provide ways for teachers to understand assessment as a range of activities. The assessment criteria provided encourage teachers to:
  • align unit goals with assessment as an integral process in curriculum development.
  • gauge accomplishment according to stated objectives during the learning experience.
  • assess student mastery of art ideas and skills at the completion of the unit.
  • enable students to pay attention to their own methods of learning.