INTRODUCTION

Dear Colleagues,

The Maine Art Education Association is pleased to present their revised Visual Arts Curriculum Framework. When Maine's Visual and Performing Arts Standards were developed, the arts became a part of the core curriculum for Maine Schools. The purpose of the MAEA Visual Arts Curriculum Framework is to provide a context in which schools and teachers can examine and improve their art curriculums and teaching practices to be in alignment with Maine's Visual Arts Learning Results. We are indebted to a core group of volunteer art teachers for their expertise in revising the framework and to the Maine Arts Commission for partial funding of this project.

The framework includes the Guiding Principles, applicable to all disciplines, and three content standards to be achieved by students in grades Pre-K-2, 3-4, 5-8 and Secondary. Performance indicators identify what students should know and be able to do at the above grade levels. They become progressively more complex, requiring greater reflection and analysis as students develop proficiencies from pre-K to grade twelve.

Art content standards are included to help ensure the scope and sequence of student learning in visual arts. The standards for curriculum content focus on students' abilities to respond to and interpret works of art as developmentally appropriate. At the conclusion of a comprehensive art program students can be expected to analyze relationships of works of art to one another in terms of history, aesthetics, and culture, justifying conclusions made in the analysis and using these conclusions to inform their own art making.

This document is intended as a guide for Maine art teachers, classroom teachers, administrators, parents, and students as to what the important principles and concepts are in a visual arts educational program. Like the Maine Learning Results, it is a work in progress. Use it like a road map, sometimes taking a different path if it will help students achieve their educational goals. It is not a prescriptive document, but rather a suggested one so that we are all on the same path toward the same destination.

Included are suggestions for integrating art with other content areas, working with special needs students, resources for scope and sequence, community resources, art advocacy, developmental approaches, and assessment.

Learning about the visual arts, exploring artistic avenues of inquiry and creative problem solving, developing an appreciation of how the visual arts reflect and contribute to various cultures, cultivating aesthetic sensitivity so that one is open to a deeper and broader understanding of human nature -- these are essential components of general education, part of what each and every student needs in order to function well in today's society.

The visual arts provide an aesthetic dimension in the development of the learner. This aesthetic dimension, unique to art, is what gives the visual arts their educational power in such things as interpreting cultures, communicating feelings, and sharing human aspirations. "The visual arts must enable students to reflect on what they inherit from past and present world cultures both as the background for understanding and as a library for inspiration." (NAEP Arts Education Assessment Framework)

The visual arts are explorations and celebrations of diversity and commonality among the peoples of the world, unique, indispensable channels for communicating human feelings across cultures.

It is hoped that implementation of the framework will provide a focus and foundation for schools to implement programs where none exist, to improve programs in place, and to help school districts meet the Visual Arts Learning Results.

Sandra T. Long

Consultant for the Arts, MDOE (Retired)