Arts Education 10-12

The Nova Scotia English arts education curriculum includes expectations that incorporate media education themes. The curriculum document Foundation for the Atlantic Canada English Language Arts Curriculum: Arts Education (2001) includes a section that demonstrates the complementary relationship between media literacy and arts education:

Through engagement in arts learning processes, students broaden their awareness and understanding of social, economic, and political issues, history, and cultural diversity. This respect for others fosters a sense of both local and global community. Creative and performance processes require complex decision making. Consequently, arts curricula provide students with an opportunity to

  • examine and challenge global, political, social, and economic systems
  • explore and understand the interdependence of the various components of societies and environments
  • use knowledge and skills learned in and through the arts to demonstrate value and respect for cultural richness in local and global contexts
  • value community

In arts education, technology is used for learning and creating, as well as for manipulating sound, sight, and other senses. By linking the arts and technology, students can increase their ability to synthesize, integrate, and construct meanings from a wealth of resources and information. Such experiences also expand their career opportunities. The arts curricula, therefore, enable students to

  • utilize technical resources to gather information, satisfy curiosity, experiment with processes, and solve problems
  • recognize that technological tools and processes are intrinsic to creating, making, and performing in the arts
  • develop, strengthen, and apply critical thinking in the use of technological devices and processes in art making
  • engage in activities through technological innovations, that explore, extend, deepen, enhance, and nurture creative expression
  • develop skills and competencies in technologies as a means to expression
  • recognize the possibilities of technologies of production as a means to make contributions to the aesthetic dimension of life
  • develop vocabulary to analyse, interpret, and evaluate the impact of technology on process, purpose, and product
  • develop familiarity with technologies of production and their potential impact on culture, society, and the natural and built environments

Click on a grade level under Visual Arts for a list of media-related outcomes and links to supporting resources from the MediaSmarts site. (Note: as many of our lessons can be adapted to suit different grade levels, specific lessons may be listed for more than one grade. Teachers should also note that individual lessons often satisfy a number of learning outcomes.)