Contemporary trends in art education

This research aims to present the most important contemporary trends in Art Education focusing on the analysis of the relationship between these trends and their related concepts. It also aims to revive some traditions of art education that are based on a scientific approach, with the aim of improving current practices to achieve quality in both art teaching and art production. The aim is also to offer recommendations for developing the teaching of art in accordance with the most recent approaches in the field. The researcher used the descriptive analytical approach to review and analyze these trends. The study shows that there are a number of trends which can be adopted to improve the quality of the input, the process and the output of teaching of art. These include quality assurance standards in art education, cultural diversity in art education, making use of professional artists in schools, creating partnerships with art museums and teacher education colleges and other educational institutions, using new technologies in teaching art, and assessing students’ performance using the “art portfolio” method. Most of these techniques and approaches have proved successful in developed countries. Thus, the researcher recommends that these trends be encouraged in order to improve the curriculum and instruction of Art Education in the Arab countries.