Core Values

Art education is contextual: Since art education takes place in multiple settings with diverse learners, students must understand how and when to use different approaches to engage their students.

Teaching is a social, political, and cultural practice: To be an effective teacher requires active reflection and critical engagement with our own and our students' identities.

Making art is empowering: Art education should encourage learners to actively engage with creating and analyzing works of art in ways that are personally relevant, empowering, and authentic.

Art can impact injustice: The act of making art can be a practice of critical social justice whereby artists impact conditions of inequality.
Effective educators are compelling advocates: To best serve our students, we must be articulate and informed advocates for the educational benefits of the arts.

Effective educators are compelling advocates: To best serve our students, we must be articulate and informed advocates for the educational benefits of the arts.

Program Goals

Students in the Art Education Program at CCNY will:

• Develop the necessary dispositions to be a reflective practitioner (i.e. responsiveness, improvisation, leadership, problem-solving, reflection, etc.)
• Understand the cultural, political, social context/purposes of art education in our society.
• Analyze contemporary and historical trends in art education as they relate to educational theory
• Reflect on the role of power, privilege, and identity as they pertain to the responsibilities of educators
• Write critically about their own experiences in arts education and about current issues in the field of arts education
• Create and teach scaffolded, idea-centered, developmentally-appropriate, inquiry-based, and social justice oriented curricula for teaching art in multiple settings
• Understand the differences between teaching in multiple arts education settings (i.e. museums, schools, after school programs, community centers, etc.)
• Employ effective assessment tools for evaluating learning in the arts
• Design and implement self-directed research in arts education
• Integrate their own art-making with their own teaching practice