This Integrated Resource Package (IRP) sets out the provincially prescribed curriculum for Visual Arts 11 and 12. The development of this IRP has been guided by the principles of learning:
- Learning requires the active participation of the student.
- People learn in a variety of ways and at different rates.
- Learning is both an individual and a group process.
Rationale
The art of image making is a unique and powerful human endeavour. In visual arts, images give shape and meaning to ideas and feelings. Images take many forms and transcend boundaries of time, culture, and language. Image development involves students in a design process--a purposeful and inventive artistic activity involving the use of a variety of materials, technologies, and processes to organize visual elements according to principles of art and design.
Visual arts education in grades 11 and 12 builds on previous learning by providing students with a range of opportunities in the visual arts and by responding to each student's particular needs and interests. Students have opportunities to explore a variety of materials, technologies, and processes in a general way, and to specialize in areas of particular interest. They are able to design self-directed studies, explore career paths, and access community resources.
Visual arts education provides opportunities for all students to perceive, respond to, and create images. These opportunities contribute to the individual's aesthetic, social, emotional, and intellectual development, and expand his or her career opportunities.
Aesthetic Development
An education in visual arts fosters visual literacy skills that contribute to students' development as educated citizens. Visual literacy skills provide the impetus to enhance personal enjoyment of the arts as students increase their knowledge about and critical appreciation for visual arts.
Social Development
Visual arts both reflect and affect the social, cultural, and historical contexts in which they exist. For this reason, visual arts education provides a unique opportunity to foster respect for and appreciation of a variety of values and cultures. In addition, an education in visual arts promotes understanding of the role of the arts in reflecting and challenging social values throughout history.
The visual arts are an essential form of communication, indispensable to freedom of inquiry and expression. Visual literacy skills enable students to evaluate the contributions of artists in society, and to work with images to better understand social and environmental issues.
Emotional Development
Experiences in the visual arts allow students to use their imaginations to explore and communicate their attitudes and feelings. Through experiences with the visual arts, students gain pleasure, enjoyment, and a deepened awareness of themselves and their place in their environment, community, and culture. By making learning personally relevant to students, visual arts education fosters lifelong learning.
Intellectual Development
Learning in visual arts enhances learning in all other areas. Through visual arts, students make connections between previous and current learning in various subject areas. Visual arts education promotes intellectual development by expanding students' capacities for creative thought and encouraging critical-thinking skills such as curiosity, open-mindedness, persistence, and flexibility.
Career Opportunities
Visual arts education enhances career development by fostering attitudes, skills, and knowledge valuable for a variety of careers. In Visual Arts 11 and 12, students will have opportunities to develop some of the design and image-development, technical and production, communication and visual literacy skills needed to pursue careers related to the visual arts.
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© Copyright 1997. All Rights Reserved. Standards Department.
Maintained by: Fine Arts Coordinator - Visual Arts
Revised: January 25, 1999
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