The Technical and Vocational Education Training Unit within the Department of Education is working toward expanding the teaching of visual arts to reach younger students.
While visual arts has been studied within secondary schools for a number of years, the unit wishes to introduce more primary school students to the subject.
Delthia Naitrum is a Visual Arts Teacher assigned to the TVET Unit.
“For a number of years TVET has really been overseeing visual arts in a number of secondary schools across the island, but currently we are trying to expand our reach from Grades K right until the end of secondary school,” Ms. Naitrum said. “This involves writing a new arts curriculum which will cover Grades K – 9. So far we have been pilot testing it and trying it out with teachers and seeing what the needs are in order to implement a curriculum like that across the board.”
The Visual Arts teacher believes that the skills and practices associated with the subject can only lead to a greater output from students.
“We are looking to build a more holistic approach towards arts education. In fact, one of the main key areas of the new curriculum is the development of literacy. We are looking at personal development; the development of identity and citizenship; and the development of critical thinking in our students. So it is not just about churning out artists because we know not every child will be Dunstan St. Omer, but at the end of the day we want them to develop the kind of thinking, the process thinking, the design thinking that artists use in order to create, and we think that it will be beneficial to them in all of their subjects.”
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