The U.S. K–12 Art Education Curricular Landscape: A Nationwide Survey

In the midst of future-oriented dialogues within the field, we turned our attention broadly toward the multiplicity of educational approaches that might characterize U.S. K–12 art education today. Through large-scale descriptive survey research (N = 742), we explored K–12 art teachers’ emphasis on 10 common educational approaches: choice-based art education/teaching for artistic behavior (TAB); community-based education; discipline-based art education (DBAE); design education; ecological/environmental education; interdisciplinary education or arts integration; multicultural education; social justice; science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)/science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM); and visual/material culture. The results confirm we are in a period of plurality, albeit more defined by visual/material culture and multicultural education. The range of ways in which these 10 educational approaches can exhibit theoretically and in practice raises a number of critical questions. We recommend any future sketches of the field explore these nuances—delving deeper into how each of these curricular movements is conceptualized and enacted in K–12 art education practice.