The Arts and Design in 21st Century Education: Towards a New Synthesis

The Arts and Design in 21st Century Education: Towards a New Synthesis by Dain Olsen “Design” would be assumed to be included as a distinct component in art education, or more specifically “visual arts education”, and, to some degree, it certainly is. Design has gained great prominence in global culture in recent decades, due in part to the rise of the “creative economy”, as well as to the ever-increasing sophistication of products and consumer tastes. Visual arts education, already well established as a “fine art” among four arts disciplines (dance, music and theatre), has not necessarily kept pace with these cultural shifts. Thus, there have been growing concerns over design’s limited presence in visual arts education and education as a whole (Lozner, 2013). Recently, there have been a few significant developments within both disciplines with implications for their ongoing and complimentary relationship. In addition, the emergence of “media arts” as a digitally based “fifth arts discipline” (Olsen D., Burrows R.W., Jensen, A., McCaffrey, Paulson, P., Rubino, N., Wilkerson, C., & Hill, E., 2014), adds support for design in a promising reconsideration of arts education for the 21st Century. “Design Education”, as a distinct arts content area with a breadth of practice, has not had a prominent position in traditional visual arts education for the latter part of the last century. There has been some longstanding bias within the “fine arts” against the so-called “crafts”, and “applied arts”, which have been defined as primarily technical subjects with practical intents and commercial purposes (Kim, 2014). The far end of these areas, known as the “folk arts”, such as woodworking, weaving and calligraphy, have largely vanished from the arts education lexicon. The various commercial arts such as interior and fashion design, and illustration are considered vocationally oriented. This underrepresentation of design would also be due in part to the sparse and diminishing time available within the limited offerings of the arts as “electives” in school schedules. One of the primary challenges with design is its extreme diversity and amorphous presence, which has made it difficult to develop as a focused K-12 practice within the 2-D visual arts curriculum. “Graphic design” is the one exception as a 2-D form, and is a more common offering, but even its specialization is difficult to encapsulate within a generally focused course. Visual arts, which has its own broad range of sub-categories, is challenged in just conveying “the basics” of a few artistic methods, historical precedents and visual culture in a typical, year-long secondary course. Also, the arts in general have tended to emphasize their academic profile in order to maintain parity with other “core” subjects, as well as to aspire to the “highest” expressions of their forms. It is these distilled forms in the visual arts, dance, music, and theatre that have had the greatest popular recognition and support as “the arts”, primarily based within a canon of Western historical masters, and representative ethnic artworks and styles. This legacy has earned widespread respect, and is connected with major civic and higher education institutions, with the foundations necessary to sustain and promote them, and to develop curricula around them. The compelling arguments for the increased inclusion of arts education, from Dewey to Greene and Eisner, have centered around these premier references, with an emphasis on free expression, experimentation, diverse points of view and alternative forms of cognition. The more recent evolutions of visual arts education have continued to emphasize philosophical propositions, albeit with postmodern twists, into new directions, audiences and expanding diversity in representation (Gude, 2007). Design, which must primarily service the established environment, has not been a key factor in these arguments, but has been gaining greater inclusion with the advent of “community-based” engagement in visual arts education, where visual arts catalyzes a beneficial social or civic impact (Bergmark O’Connor, 2014). The National Art Education Associaton (NAEA), has made some large strides towards the overt inclusion of design in their nomenclature. Their new national standards, published by the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS) in 2014, repeatedly reference “design”, as in, “(students will) create works of art and design” across all of its process strands (NAEA, NCCAS, 2014). Significantly, the 2015 NAEA annual conference is focused on design, and a Design Special Interest Group, which they have hosted for several years, has been invited to assist in this multi-faceted presentation. Much new information and growth should come out of this event. Additionally, it should be noted that the NAEA assumes that “design education” is an intrinsic aspect of visual arts education, and have included it within their research agenda (NAEA, 2014). The visual arts national course descriptions already include specific instances of design, such as graphics, architecture, and industrial design. These forms are also somewhat represented within the “customary” visual arts curriculum as perspective drawings, poster designs, and a range of 2D design principle problems. The College Board’s Advanced Placement portfolio assessments in 2D Design have given collegiate validity to more commercial forms, and raised the bar on quality. Design is so assumed within the visual arts curriculum, one is probably hard-pressed to find an art teacher in America who does not make any reference to, nor include some project with “design” as a process or product. Nevertheless, this inclusion has limitations and design specialists strive for greater and discrete emphasis of the discipline. As it exists in the contemporary world, design has become a mature discipline unto itself, with a rich cultural realm and strong industrial presence. In addition to the aforementioned boom in product choices and savvy consumers, the issue of sustainability and the growing role of “green” design, as a solutions-based process, is another contributor to this increased awareness. Design is important because it is the pervasive human process of conforming the constructed environment to aesthetic needs and preferences. Design has its own range of categories, aesthetics, historical precedents, vocabulary, applications and techniques, which would require specific critical practice and theoretical study. Design education, industries and practices play a major role in the concept of the “Creative Economy”, as a market model that is sweeping major cities and many industrialized countries, in Europe, America and much of Asia (UNESCO, 2013). “Design Thinking” is an innovation practice in organizational methods and reforms that is gaining wide recognition across the professional spectrum (Martin, et al, 2006). With the projected growth of progressive reforms in education, including interdisciplinary and project-based learning, “arts integration” and STEM education, design is well suited for greater inclusion. Design education is very adaptable, allowing for integration into a wide range of projects and processes. Furthermore, it inherently fosters 21st Century workforce skillsets, including: collaboration, problem forming and solving, innovation, brainstorming, iteration, aesthetic and cultural awareness, empathy, materials fabrication and engineering concepts. As a standalone content area, design education is showing increased discrete offerings within the K-12 educational institution. Martin Rayala Ph.D, Chief Academic Officer for DesignLab Schools, editor of “anddesign” online magazine, and a decades long promoter of the discipline, believes that design education is gaining momentum. He is a thought leader in the Design-Ed Coalition, made up of professional and educational design organizations, whose mission is to promote and support the distinct establishment of K-12 Design Education. DesignEd will be holding their 3rd annual convention in late June, 2015. They are currently developing a core curriculum that condenses the design process into a practical sequence for K-12 educators. Their website lists various activities and organizations demonstrating this growing movement, including an increasing number of “design high schools” across the country, with design as the centralizing curriculum to which all subject areas connect. There are also an increasing variety of “design challenges” for students, including: NASA’s “Imagine Mars” community design challenge, the National STEM Game Design Challenge, the Visioneer Design Challenge, the Cooper-Hewitt Design Challenge, etc. In higher education, Stanford’s “d.school” has become a flagship program with a strong focus on K-12 education through their “REDlab” research program and K12 Lab Network. They offer curricula, training, professional development, and online resources for educators and students, such as a crash course in “design thinking”. Higher-education, pre-service teacher training programs in visual arts education are beginning to include and emphasize design, at least in their program descriptions and course titles. Among the handful of programs with the deliberately expansive title of “Arts and Design Education”, is the Vermont College of Fine Arts, whose new formation may be indicative of the direction that these programs are taking (full disclosure – I am on founding faculty). Marni Leikin, Program Director, states that design needs to be an intrinsic aspect of arts education, moving towards a unified synthesis. “K-12 arts students now require an array of 21st Century skillsets that would span both fine arts and design, moving beyond mere technical skills to include higher order abilities: flexibility in thinking, experimentation, considering outcomes, and understanding user experience, along with the need to connect to community”. The program’s appeal to professional and graduate designers, its focus on community-based practices and social justice, and its central inclusion of “media arts”, structures a unique configuration that applies artistic and design practice as a positive social catalyst within contemporary cultural contexts. The emergence of “media arts” as a distinct arts discipline within NCCAS, and its potential adoption across the U.S., is the other recent aspect of arts education that supports the full inclusion of design. At first glance, this addition may appear to only increase the fracturing and competition between a growing range of categories in the arts arena. However, when understood as a digital, intermediating or “nexus” discipline, media arts would purport to reconsider the entire arts and design domain as an inter-connective whole for 21st Century education. With projected increases in technology infusion, this is an area that the K-12 arts need to understand more thoroughly. Similar to its position on design, the NAEA has specifically named “media arts” as another assumed inclusion, emphasizing it in the 2014 convention, and has even presented media arts standards alongside its own in visual arts professional developments. Media arts is thus institutionally recognized as both distinct and overlapping with visual arts. “Media arts” encompasses digital arts and design practices across the categories of imaging, multimedia, sound, virtual and interactive design, which are experienced as the creative center of our contemporary, media-based society. Media arts can function as an integrating transit, or conduit across forms and domains, much as the Internet serves as a versatile and convergent forum that presents the diversity of communications formats and genres. “Media arts education” therefore reflects the content and culture-forming role of media production and design, specifically for student learning and expression. Media arts standards frame the circulatory, design-based production process, as in: conceiving, modeling, testing, assembling, presenting, evaluating, and reflecting. Media arts’ proposed courses are primarily design-oriented, yet they also support conventional, contemporary and experimental arts forms. Media arts students therefore can create just about anything imaginable, including: graphics publications, multimedia presentations, web sites and transmedia productions, broadcasts and videos, architectural and product designs, interactive apps, and 3D games and virtual environments. In essence, media arts amounts to a sort of “holo-deck”, capable of constructing whole virtual worlds for learning and creating. This diversity and adaptability presents ample opportunities to integrate the entirety of arts and design with academic subject areas, so that students can exercise and demonstrate core learning through authentic performance. Ideally, this can become a media arts studio or “makerspace” within the school, with the possibility of even large-scale, community-based projects and events that literally “dissolve the walls” of the traditional classroom. For example, students could investigate their community through historical research, interactive mapping, and news and documentary segments. They could then determine areas of concern in the community, such as a lack of recreation areas, and develop and present 3D design solutions to community leaders. Seen from this new perspective, where knowing, learning and creating are understood as culturally situated and aesthetically informed processes, the arts and design would be well positioned as a central conveyor of 21st Century learning, as the process of continuous creative adaptation to a changing environment. This promotes the student’s central role within the learning process, and as an active participant in the development of community and culture. This new entirety of the arts and design is a compelling and dynamic configuration that has heretofore been unconsidered within the educational institution. If this expansive model demonstrates consistently increased academic success for students, its proliferation across grade levels could provide increased opportunities for all of the arts and design in K-12 education. Author: Dain Olsen is a nationally recognized media arts education specialist with over 25 years of experience in instruction, leadership, administration and development. As the Media Arts Writing Chair for the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards, he led the development of national K12 media arts standards and model assessments. He led the establishment of media arts in LAUSD through distinct standards, curricula and programming, including the development of 14 middle and high school programs. He current teaches at El Sereno Middle School in LAUSD, UCLA, and is on the founding faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Bibliography: Bergmark O’Connor, J. (2014). Community‐based Art Education Through Multiple Lenses: The Potentials of Empowerment and Advocacy Through the Arts. Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign. Accessed December 20, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2142/50525 Design-Ed website accessed December 21, 2014. http://design-ed.org/ Kim, N. (2014). Conceptual, Biological and Historical Analyses of Craft. Crafting Creativity & Creating Craft. Advances in Creativity and Giftedness, Volume 14. Accessed December 20, 2015. http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-6209-839-8_10 Gude, O. (January, 2007). Principles of Possibility: Considerations for a 21st-Century Art & Culture Curriculum. Art Education. Vol. 60, No. 1, pp. 6-17. Lozner, R. (January, 2013). Where is Design in the K12 Curriculum? (And Why Isn’t It Taught in Arts Education Programs?) AIGA website accessed December 20, 2014. http://www.aiga.org/where-is-design-in-the-K12-curriculum/. Markusen, A. Gadwa, A. (2010). Creative Placemaking. Markusen Economic Research Services and Metris Arts Consulting. Accessed December 20, 2014. http://kresge.org/sites/default/files/NEA-Creative-placemaking.pdf Martin, R. and Dunne, D. (2006). Design Thinking and How It Will Change Management Education: An Interview and Discussion. Academy of Management Learning and Education, Vol. 5, No. 4 National Art Education Association. (2014). National Core Visual Arts Standards. National Coalition for Core Arts Standards. Accessed December 20, 2014. http://nationalartsstandards.org/ NAEA Research Commission (2014). NAEA Research Agenda, 2014. Accessed December 20, 2014. http://www.arteducators.org/research/commission/findings-resources Olsen D., Burrows R.W., Jensen, A., McCaffrey, Paulson, P., Rubino, N., Wilkerson, C., & Hill, E. (July, 2012). The Inclusion of Media Arts in Next Generation Arts Standards. National Coalition for Core Arts Standards. Accessed on December 20, 2014. http://nationalartsstandards.org/sites/default/files/Media%20arts_resources/NCCAS_%26_Media _Arts_7-28-12%20FINAL.pdf UNESCO (2013). Creative Economy Report, 2013 Special Edition: Widening Local Development Pathways. United Nations/UNDP/UNESCO. Accessed December 21, 2014. http://www.unesco.org/culture/pdf/creative-economy-report-2013.pdf