<p>“Three Learning Themes” as Scopes of Curriculum in Art textbook</p><p>Mitsuru Fujie (Aichi University of Education, Japan)</p><p>I have been one of the authors of art textbook for elementary schools since 1992. And I have studying art textbooks published in the U.S., therefore, I am concerned about comparative study of the curriculum in the art textbooks between Japan and other countries. Here I introduce the curriculum of the art textbook for which I work, and propose new three disciplines in art education, mentioning some points from a viewpoint of comparative study, if necessary. </p><p>“Course of Study” for Art Education in Japan</p><p>In Japan, the “Course of Study”, noticed by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (i.e. the Education Ministry) has regulated school curriculum (K-12) since 1872. Policy makers of the Education Ministry reconsidered the meaning of the Course of Study lately, and they have shifted it from a condition of upper-limit to a minimum standards that all students should achieve by learning at school. As to art education in elementary schools, the course of study has worked as a kind of guidelines for developing curriculum, because the way of describing objectives and contents in the course of study is so abstract that schoolteachers could interpret the meaning of that text arbitrary to some degree. The course of study for the subject of visual arts, namely “Art and Handicraft”, consists of the three parts (I~III) as shown in Table 1.</p><p>Table 1: The goal, objectives and contents of the “Course of Study” (since 1998) I. Goal of the Subject “Art and Handicraft” Through activities of hyougen (Expressing and representing) and appreciation, students will experience a joy of creation, raise their fundamental abilities needed for creative activities in visual arts, and cultivate aesthetic sentiment. II. Objectives and contents for each grade (1+2, 3+4, 5+6) Hyougen Artistic play with/in materials, place, environment Contents (Creating) Expressing and Making 2D or/and 3D works of art Representing What student feels, imagines, observes, communicate and so on. Making what student wants to make. ------> Producing a design work and handiwork Appreciation Being interested in looking at familiar objects -----> (Responding) Appreciating the quality of the works of art III. Noticed points of teaching</p><p>All formal textbooks should clear the official screening by the Education Ministry, not excepting art textbooks. The criteria for this censorship are based on this “Course of Study”.</p><p>Formal art textbooks for elementary schools in Japan</p><p>There are three kinds of formal art textbooks for elementary schools in Japan. Different companies publish them. I work now as a chief author of the Nihon Bunkyou Publishing Co. (the NB for short),</p><p>1 so I will introduce the textbook published by the NB1, here. The goal and objectives of the curriculum of formal art textbooks in Japan are not different, because they should be based on the same guideline, the course of study. But there is still room for arrangement of contents for editing art textbook. As to sampling works of art, we use more art works made by children in Japan than in the U.S. One of the reasons, why there are much children’s works in the textbook, is that child- centered idea is still prevails a mind of art educators, as compared with the tendency in the U.S. after DBAE. On the other hand, most art educators in Japan are struggled with to establish systematic teaching methods and criteria for assessing the performance of students. Though both Japanese and American art educators consider “art” as an essence of art education, Japanese educators incline to notice the aspect of sensitive, imaginative, and active behaviors in art, in other words, a significance of “Artistic Play”.2 American educators incline to consider art as system of visual culture, heritage of mankind. The NB textbook aims for the both artistic activities for student and systematic approaches to teaching for teacher. </p><p>Concept of “Learning Themes” </p><p>The key concept of the curriculum in art textbook by the NB is “Learning Themes”. That concept is derived from the result of observing children’s activities in artwork. We analyzed phenomena of artistic activities and found the ten components there. Then we put them into three groups from the two different points. One is for making the contents of learning clear for children and another is for developing curriculum for teachers, as shown in Table 2.</p><p>Table 2: Ten components of artistic activities, and three Learning Themes (LT). Components of Three LT Essence of Learning Theme Artistic Activity Learning Themes No. Environment Making good use of Recognizing the qualities of places and materials Materials places and materials LT through looking, touching, manipulating the Body 1 materials and/or moving around the places. Action-Manipulating Enjoying to develop Acquiring and developing the skills for using Skill-Technique skills for activities LT materials, tools and process through enjoying Sense 2 manipulating and feeling of actions. Seeing Expanding Identifying the own imagination through expanding Looking and enhancing LT and deepening ideas, based on his/her own Imagery Imagination 3 experiences of responding to art works, listening to Wish music, reading a story, and so on. </p><p>“ Learning Themes” are new disciplines, set up for recovering vitality of artistic activity, avoiding the conventional classification of visual arts as painting, sculpture, handicraft, graphic design and so on. Though those learning themes cannot be divided clearly in practice and relate each other, as Figure 1 indicates. The number attached each learning theme does not mean hierarchy. Each learning theme gives the clue to develop teaching plan by teachers and to check the aims and contents of learning by students before starting a lesson. At the learning theme 1, children will be encouraged to confirm and express his/her own imagery and idea through moving around the place and manipulating the materials. They will find characteristics of various media including natural objects and environment, and will be encouraged to express their feelings about various materials and environment. Multisensory experience makes children be aware of an environment teeming with sensory data. Through the learning theme 2, children will learn how to use tools and techniques, by trying, </p><p>2 Figure 1:Relations of three Learning Themes</p><p>Making good use of places and materials</p><p>Creating + Responding</p><p>Developing Expanding of skills for and enhancing activities imagination</p><p> repeating, and recognizing different techniques. But the aim of this learning theme 2 is not only acquiring skills and techniques of making artwork, but also enjoying the action itself. Enjoying action itself bring with behaviors for getting ideas and making what children wish to make. Kinesthetic movement fosters creative thinking by offering a chance to try by themselves. At the learning theme 3, children will enhance their imagination through looking at the works of art, listening to the music, watching the movie, and reading the literature etc. They will find the way that artist communicate his/her idea and discover how to express their own idea. They will view a wide variety of expression in various art forms and develop idea and imagery what they wish to express. So to speak, imagery leads the process of learning in this learning theme.</p><p>Correspondence of the Learning Themes to the Course of Study</p><p>Formal art textbooks should pass the official screening by the Education Ministry. The course of study is the criteria for that censorship as I explained above. Learning themes as scopes of the curriculum should accord with the course of study that consists of the four contents, Artistic Play, Making 2D/3D works of art, Handicraft, and Appreciation as the figure 2 indicates. </p><p>Figure 2; Scopes and sequences of the art textbook Grades 5-6</p><p>*“LT” means “Learning Theme” Grades 3-4 Grades 1-2</p><p>Artistic Play ● Hyougen Making 2D or/and 3D</p><p>(Creating) Handicraft</p><p>○ Appreciation (Responding) *LT-1 LT-2 LT-3 As to the learning themes, it is also a fact that early learning creates readiness for later learning. Take the LT1 (places and materials) for example; developing of working space and increasing in</p><p>3 variety of materials make stepping up on the stages. At the grades1-2, the place for children’s activity usually stays in classroom or schoolyard. At the grades 3-4, children go out of the schoolyard to the woods, the beach or the nearby park etc. At the grades 5-6, children challenge to display their works in the local shopping area thorough negotiation with manager of the shopping store. They try to communicate with various persons in their community through art.</p><p>Scope and sequence of “Zuga-Kousaku (Art and Handicraft)” by the NB textbook</p><p>According to the course of study, school hours (one hour is 45 minutes on average) for the subject “Art and Handicraft” should keep 68 hours at the first grade, 70 hours at the second, 60 hours at the grades 3-4, 50 hours at the grades 5-6 in a year. Fourteen lessons are included in each grade of the NB textbook as the Table 3 indicates. Tough each lesson is provided on the center-page spread as a rule, in the lower grades, most lessons are divided into a few sections as branch lessons. </p><p>Table 3 Scope and sequence of “Zuga-Kousaku” by the NB(2003) ●＝creating, ○＝responding Pages Grades1-2／Lessons from the 1st grade 3-4 5-6／Lessons from the 5th grade 01 Cover 02~05 Introduction and contents for each grade 06~07 ●LT 3 What is your favorite thing? ●LT 1 ●LT 1 Dynamic space (Artistic play) 08~09 You are great friends Making with liquid clay 10~11 ●LT 1 Let us do what you can do ●LT 2 Making ball game with various materials 12~13 Making objects from paper boxes ●LT 3 My favorite time (Painting) 14~15 ●LT 2 Putting everything side by side Animation Box (partly with computer) 16~17 Adding up with clay ●LT 3 Carving and printing (Wood printing) 18~19 ○LT 1 Touch and feel it! (Responding) ○LT 2 Joyful illusion (Optical illusion) 20~21 ●LT 1 Come here to hide yourself ○LT 3 ●LT 2 Making from clay-panel 22~23 From various materials ●LT 1 Lights and shadows 24~25 ●LT 3 Look at my story (Paint a story) Cutting out board (Wood working) 26~27 Great! My favorite animals ●LT 3 ●LT 3 A scene from favorite story (Painting) 28~29 Painting of a joyful time Living with art - Application of art works 30~31 ●LT 2 Peta Peta (Stamping) ●LT 2 (Collaboration work) 32~33 Making toy with familiar materials ○LT 3 Tradition of Japanese art 34~36 Home page of colors and tools 37~39 Imagery guide for artistic activities 40 Back cover</p><p>Comparing the processes of teaching between Japan and the U.S. </p><p>The validity of the curriculum should be examined by educational practice. A typical device for educational practice is textbook. Textbook is just connecting the theory of curriculum with practice of teaching. But ordinary teaching in art class is not always carried out depending on textbook. Although each teacher uses his/her initiative to plan strategy for his/her own art class, there are contrasting strategies between Japan and the U.S. I examined three kinds of art textbooks including the NB in Japan3 and also the three kinds of the textbooks in the U.S.4 I found the contrasting processes of teaching by comparing the process of teaching suggested in the teacher’s guides in Japan with the process of teaching in the teacher’s guide in the U.S. In the process in Japan, students start with trying to express and make it without analyzing works of art and they understand meanings of the visual arts elements and principles of design toward the end, namely, learning by</p><p>4 doing. In the process in the U.S., contrarily, students start with analyzing works of art or methods of making and they apply the knowledge or methods to making or expressing, namely, applying after understanding. Of course, I know that there are always a lot of exceptions to this contrasting. </p><p>Comparing the scopes of curriculum between the NB and the Ohio Plan </p><p>As to the structure of curriculum, I will compare the curriculum in the NB textbook with the art curriculum for the elementary schools of Ohio (1992)5, because the both have the same schema as the Table 4 and 5 indicates. Table 5 Currivulum Plan in Ohio Table 4 Curriculum in the NB Aims Personal Artistic Art in LT 1 LT 2 LT 3 Development Heritage Society Hyougen Expression Appreciation Response Hyougen means expressing and representing.</p><p>The both curricula have two scopes, expression (hyougen) and response (appreciation), and three aims. But the learning themes in the NB are different form the Ohio plan in content. The learning themes rather focus on the first aim of the Ohio plan, “personal development”, though including some of “artistic heritage”. The learning themes lack the viewpoint of “Art in Society” or what is art for society. We, Japanese art educators, need to pay more attention to this viewpoint. On the other hand, the learning themes consider rather that children should enjoy artistic activity itself than that children should understand what is art. Especially after DBAE, it seems current trends in the U.S. that students should apply the knowledge, acquired through analyzing works of art, to create a work. In the U.S., idea of art education has shifted from child-centered position to art/society-centered position In Japan, idea of child-centered position still remains. Most examples of art works, appeared in the NB textbook, are children’s works, however, we can find few samples of children’s art works in textbooks in the U.S.</p><p>5 1 M.Fujie, Y.Iwasaki, N.Mizushima et al.; Zuga-Kousaku (Art and Handicraft), Nihon-Bunkyou Publishing, Osaka, 2003 2 The word “Artistic Play”, official terminology used in the Course of Study, is the key concept, which symbolizes basic idea of creating in art. Mitsuru Fujie; A comparative study of artistic play and Zoukei-Asobi, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, The University of Illinois Press, 37(4), Winter 2003, pp.107-114 3 The rest of the two textbooks are published by Kairyu-do Publishing and Tokyo-Shoseki Publishing in 2003. The title of these books is the same, “Zuga-Kousaku”, because regulated by the Course of Study. 4 Those are “Discover Art (1985)” by L. Chapman, “Adventures in Art (1994)” by L. Chapman and “Art Express (1998)” by V. Daniel. 5 State of Ohio Department of Education; Planning a balanced comprehensive art curriculum for the elementary schools of Ohio.1992</p>