How can we add to the future enrichment of our disciplines? How do we make our future teaching a more meaningful practice? This semester-long professional practice course is for artists, designers, architects, and educators and is designed for students who will be teaching during their course of study at RISD and or who plan to teach in higher education after graduation. The course draws upon the varying expertise and pedagogical practices of RISD faculty and guests from all disciplines to provide graduate students with models of teaching that can inform their development as future faculty. The goal of this seminar is to introduce graduate students to reflective teaching principles and to provide an orientation to the collegiate teaching and learning experience.
The course is composed of readings, reviews, discussions and Individual Teaching Consultations (ITCs), where students engage in microteaching sessions and receive feedback from faculty and peer observers. The major products resulting from the course include a personal statement of teaching philosophy and a proposal for a course description and course syllabus.
Graduate elective
Also offered as GRAD 044G

This course examines the development of visual arts education in its connection to general education. At each stage of the investigation, issues are examined in terms of the relationship between, context, content, and pedagogical practice. There is a particular emphasis in this course on exploring the manner in which belief systems shape curriculum construction within elementary and secondary schools. Major topics of investigation include: varying curricular shifts in visual arts education, standards and accountability, the diverse classroom, political mandates, public school re-design, and the role of unions and professional associations.
Major graduate requirement for MAT and MA (professional development); MAT and MA only

This seminar provides an opportunity to critically examine topics and issues within various arts learning contexts. The course is designed to provide students with a primer to practices and scholarship of the intersections between the arts and education. The course is grounded in types of learning that occur in a range of institutional and organizational settings that include schools, colleges and universities, museums as well as non-profit sector community-based organizations. The seminar explores the role of art and design in individuals' lives from the perspective of the past and present as well as contemporary shifts that suggest a re-examination of focus and pedagogical approach.
The course draws extensively from key documents from the arts learning literature as well as the expertise of scholars and practitioners who will join the course throughout the semester to share with students perspectives that illustrate both common ground and a diversity of thinking surrounding some of the more pressing topics and problems within the guests' respective professional fields.
Throughout the course, students are required to provide annotations of journal articles, present reaction papers, make presentations on designated topics, and at completion of the course present a proposal for a potential thesis/degree project.
Major graduate requirement for MA (community arts education & professional development); Elective for all other graduate students.

This field-based class provides graduate students with an opportunity to experience and examine the dynamics of teaching and learning within an elementary school setting - particularly, Providence's Highlander Charter School. The course is predominantly concerned with the development of teaching and learning strategies with which to incorporate art and design into general education while at the same time maintaining both disciplines' integrity. There is a special emphasis on utilizing art and design to support any school's literacy initiative. The course is constructed with two complementary elements - a participatory component in which pairs of graduate students work collaboratively with a non-art specialist or general classroom teacher. Graduate students have the opportunity to lead small groups of children in formal teaching and learning experiences and to use these opportunities to reflect on matters of content, student understanding, and the effectiveness of communication. The second component of the course is a seminar that uses the graduate students' authentic classroom experiences as an opportunity to examine a broad range of educational issues that include: the impact of teaching and learning environments, the diversity of learners, arts integration, culturally responsive teaching, technology in the classroom, and classroom management.
Major graduate requirementfor MAT; MAT only

This course is designed to provide an overview of the educational psychological and social needs of learners with disabilities, to discuss the impact of special education law on public school programs, and to provide a background for designing appropriate interventions for students with a variety of special learning needs in the art and design classroom. The course will focus on the identification of various disabilities, their characteristics, and the legal and philosophical basis for interventions and adaptations needed in the art and design classroom.
Major graduate requirement for MAT, MAT only

This course explores the development of a conceptual framework for studio-based teaching and learning for children and adolescents. The course introduces an approach to pedagogy for art and design that is informed by artistic practice and which revolves around meaning-making. Students examine the principles of curriculum mapping and instructional design through the development of a series of units of instruction based respectively on themes, subjects, and media - all of which are crafted to meet the cognitive, social, and personal interests of children and youth. The course explores the relationship between curriculum, instruction, and assessment and where curriculum and instruction is focused on deepening K-12 students' understandings of art and design as expressions of enduring ideas. In explorations of assessment, students consider and design various formative and summative strategies to capture and evaluate levels of student understanding. Throughout this course, there is an emphasis on the development of curriculum design and instructional strategies for elementary and secondary students that encourage discovery, creativity, innovation, personal voice, and even play!
Major graduate requirement for MAT,MA (Community Arts Education); MAT & MA only

The Department of Teaching + Learning in Art + Design requires MA candidates submit a capstone thesis in partial fulfillment of degree requirements. Candidates are given a degree of flexibility in determining the format for this work, but typically it takes the form of either a thesis research paper or a thesis workbook. The thesis research paper provides candidates with the opportunity to focus on a deep investigation of a single subject framed within the context of learning and through art and design. An essential characteristic of this approach to the thesis is in how it provides evidence of the candidate's ability to move beyond description to analysis and how she/he is able to place the subject of investigation within the realm of scholarship. The thesis workbook provides a candidate with the opportunity to make sense of their journey thorough her/his program in a more autobiographical and documentary manner. The thesis workbook format affords candidates the opportunity to explore how form can be exploited to visualize research. Whether presented as a thesis research paper or thesis workbook, this capstone requirement provides MA candidates with a formal opportunity to make public her/his understanding about a specific aspect of the nature of arts learning gained through her/his coursework, excursions into the scholarly literature and fieldwork experiences. The purpose here, therefore, is to conceive of the thesis not merely as an academic exercise but also contributing to program development as well as providing a reservoir of understandings that will inform the candidate's future professional practice as an educator..
Graduate requirement for MA (community arts education & professional development); MA only

This course provides students from any major with the opportunity to explore the field of teaching as a possible career option beyond graduation. The course involves completing an internship with an art teacher two days a week in either public or private schools. Students enrolled in this course will hopefully, be able to translate some of their excitement for art and design to the school setting, and in doing so, become a valuable resource to both the art teacher and his/her students. Students taking this course are also required to attend and participate in a weekly seminar to discuss their experiences and to further explore a variety of issues related to teaching art and design at the K-12 level. Selected readings, a directed reflective journal, presentations, and a leave-behind contribution to the assigned school are among the assignments for this course.

The urban landscape is comprised of designed elements at multiple scales, ranging from a city's infrastructure to the architectural details of street furniture and building fagades. Although people are more and more likely to inhabit urban places, whether a small town or large metropolis, it is rare that we look carefully at the details and making of a place in such a way that we truly know the "genius loci" or spirit of the place. The unique meeting of the geographic underpinnings of a place, its natural resources and amenities that made it a likely place for settlement and the layers of design undertakings over time that build the structure of a city are critical to place-making. Knowing and understanding the environment is a critical piece of design education that can take many forms and be addressed through projects at many scales.

This course is designed to build your vocabulary for understanding the design of place and then provide opportunities to use your skills as teachers of art + design to translate that vocabulary into projects that can open up the designed world to young people. We will look at design of place and urban space from three vantage points relating to children: PLACES FOR CHILDREN; PLACES AND CHILDREN; and PLACES BY CHILDREN. To address these issues, we will conduct a series of design exercises exploring the urban environment working with scale, perspective, and mapping elements of the city's built and natural environment. In addition, we will look at the local and global role of sustainable design in the fields of architecture and urbanism and work to develop ways to present these integrated design challenges to young people.
Major graduate requirement for MAT; Open to other grads by permission of instructor

Using RISD as a site for the exploration of strategies for studio-based teaching and learning is the goal of the course. It is designed for students who will be teaching during the course of study at RISD or who plan to teach after graduation. The course draws upon the varying expertise and teaching methodologies of RISD faculty and visiting faculty from other institutions to provide graduate students with models of practice. Learning to teach in a generative and attentive manner can bring teaching closer to one's studio practice. The course is composed of readings, reviews, discussion, project assignments, lectures, and peer presentations. The final outcome will be formation of a condensed teaching portfolio including a teaching philosophy, course proposals, a detailed syllabus, sample class assignments and assessment guides.
Graduate elective
Also offered as GRAD 055G

The most compelling arguments in support of the value of the arts in education and the case for arts as an agent of transformation in the lives of children and youth become most evident through the analysis of high quality contemporary practices in arts pedagogy situated in a range of settings both in and out of schools. This seminar, in addition to students' personal case study investigations, utilizes conversations with visiting arts administrators, artists, curators, educators, and scholars as lenses to inform the analysis and discussion of models of practice that result in meaningful experience that inspire in children and youth creative thinking, making, and innovation. Key products from the course include response papers, a case study report and final presentation.
Major graduate requirement for MA (community arts education & professional development); Elective for all other graduate students

The Degree Project is the capstone event of an MAT student's program in which she/he presents comprehensive documentation of her/his coursework and teaching to a review committee consisting of RISD faculty, cooperating teachers, and external critics. The work presented includes the following required components: Online Program Portfolio, Teaching Portfolio, and an Interpretive Exhibit. The Degree Project is reviewed and evaluated in the context of the assessment framework of the Rhode Island Professional Teaching Standards (RIPTS). .
Major graduate requirment for MAT; MAT only

Drawing has been called the distillation of an idea. Drawing sensibilities pervade all visual media yet drawing can be independent of all other media. Can we make our drawing ventures have resonance? The goal is to understand drawing in a multivalent way through paced experiences and investigations via short research projects, three generative series and development of a sited-drawing plan. Methods will include teamed technical presentations of expertise or interest as well as examples of ancient and historical means of silverpoint, transfer drawings, panoramas and dioramas. Drawing epochs represented in the RISD Museum of Art, collection will be examined (through works by artists such as Wilfredo Lam, Gego, or the Rimpa period Korin Gafu.) Focused critiques, readings and guided and self-directed independent studio production are components.
Major graduate requirement for MA (community arts education); Elective for all other graduate students
Also offered as GRAD 658G

A field-based student teaching (clinical teaching) experience at theelementary level in a public school in Rhode Island or Massachusetts, supervised by school-based cooperating teachers and faculty from RISD's Department of Teaching + Learning in Art + Design. A student teachers performance during this six-week teaching assignment is assessed using the performance benchmarks of the Rhode Island Professional Teaching Standards (RIPTS).
Major graduate requirement for MAT; MAT only

A field-based student teaching (clinical teaching) experience at thesecondary level in a public school in Rhode Island or Massachusetts supervised by school-based cooperating teachers and faculty from RISD's Department of Teaching + Learning in Art + Design. A student teacher's performance during this six-week teaching assignment is assessed using the performance benchmarks of the Rhode Island Beginning Professional Teaching Standards (RIPTS).
Major graduate requirement for MAT; MAT only

The Department of Teaching + Learning in Art + Design requires MA candidates submit a capstone thesis in partial fulfillment of degree requirements. Candidates are given a degree of flexibility in determining the format for this work, but typically it takes the form of either a thesis research paper or a thesis workbook. The thesis research paper provides candidates with the opportunity to focus on a deep investigation of a single subject framed within the context of learning and through art and design. An essential characteristic of this approach to the thesis is in how it provides evidence of the candidate's ability to move beyond description to analysis and how she/he is able to place the subject of investigation within the realm of scholarship. The thesis workbook provides a candidate with the opportunity to make sense of their journey thorough her/his program in a more autobiographical and documentary manner. The thesis workbook format affords candidates the opportunity to explore how form can be exploited to visualize research. Whether presented as a thesis research paper or thesis workbook, this capstone requirement provides MA candidates with a formal opportunity to make public her/his understanding about a specific aspect of the nature of arts learning gained through her/his coursework, excursions into the scholarly literature and fieldwork experiences. The purpose here, therefore, is to conceive of the thesis not merely as an academic exercise but also contributing to program development as well as providing a reservoir of understandings that will inform the candidate's future professional practice as an educator..
Graduate requirement for MA (community arts education & professional development); MA only