discipline-based art education

   (DBAE)

   An approach to art education integrating content from four distinct disciplines, or branches of knowledge: art production, art history, art criticism, and aesthetics. This approach, formulated in the late 1980's, differs significantly from the "creative self-expression" approach that dominated the field during the previous forty years. The content of that earlier approach was exclusively the making of art for self-expression, in a personal exploration of a variety of art materials and methods. DBAE is a more holistic, comprehensive, and multifaceted approach to art education. Not only do teachers incorporate painting, drawings, sculpture, and architecture into their lessons, but they also include fine, applied, craft, and folk arts, such as ceramics, weaving and other textile arts, fashion design, and photography. Students work with and study a variety of visual images and objects that carry unique meaning for human beings from all cultures and times. Although there are DBAE curricula, DBAE itself is an approach to instruction and learning in art and not a specific curriculum; though it should have sequential, cumulative, and articulated implementation. It exists in many forms to meet the needs of the community in which it is taught. Examples of variation include selecting one or more of the disciplines as a central or core discipline(s) for helping students understand works of art; featuring settings such as art museums or community centers and the original artworks they collect or display; integrating the arts with other subject areas; and pursuing newer technologies. DBAE requires content derived from valid information and practices within the professional art world, much as content for the study of mathematics, history and literature is derived from those professional fields.