I just returned from the National Art Education Association (NAEA) convention in Seattle, Washington. After going to 24 sessions on different topics related to art education over the course of 4 days, Im in that post-conference stage of trying to reflect on all the discourse and fit it into my work at the Rubin Museum and my personal perspectives on the larger field of art education.
The theme of the conference was Creativity, Imagination & Innovation arguably three of our favorite words in the field right now. While the theme was central to every session, an equally prevalent and related theme was 21st Century Learning Skills. The organization that was cited repeatedly was The Partnership for the 21st Century, or P21. This is a national organization that advocates for 21st century readiness for every student by fusing the three Rs and four Cs (critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation). P21 advocates for policies that support this approach to learning and has partnerships (hence the name) with a number of states with which they work on designing standards, assessment tools and professional development resources. While New York is not currently one of the states, I think there is still a lot to be gained from being part of this discussion and keeping this model in mind as we design our programs. You can learn more about P21 on their website, http://www.p21.org.
Below is a diagram used to illustrate the ideas of 21st Century readiness and how that fits into an educational model.
www.p21.org
At the conference many presenters said, We were already doing this type of work, but didnt realize it until we learned about P21. Since the conference Ive been pondering which of our programs are linked to this model, and how we can make even more explicit connections and arguments for the work we do. Which of our programs do you think are already doing this work? What programs at other institutions do you think are doing a good job of equipping students with 21st Century Skills?
(Even just reading a few of the blog entries of my colleagues below this one, I can see evidence of this in our programs – but making those connections explicit is one of our challenge as arts educators in a field when, historically, so much of what we do has been considered implicit…)