This study reports on the development of a curriculum guide to insure some degree of experience uniformity in the first art course available to students in high schools in Mesquite, Texas. Current general education and art education literature as well as curriculum guides from American schools provided the behaviorally oriented framework and objectives, content, and teaching strategies. The guide reflects a balance between the ideal and the real physical environment in which the guide will be implemented. Conclusions include the concepts that teacher education in using behavioral objectives is necessary, that a behaviorally oriented guide will work in Mesquite high schools, that behavioral objectives will facilitate evaluation, and that the trend toward tri-part subject content will increase in art curricula.

Because the terms art and aesthetic are often ambiguously used, the purpose of this study was to develop a method of analyzing and clarifying their usage in written texts. Chapter I includes hypotheses and assumptions of this study. The first hypothesis was that it is possible to develop a systematic, objective, and replicable method of analyzing and clarifying the usage of art and aesthetic in art education texts. The second hypothesis is that, as a result of this analysis, it is possible to compare the usage of art and aesthetic in one text with the usage of these same terms in another. The two texts chosen as sources of data were Becoming Human Through Art by Edmund Burke Feldman and Emphasis; Art by Frank Wachowiak and Theodore Ramsey. The assumptions upon which this analysis was based are (a) that frequency of mention indicates author emphasis, and (b) that, based on analysis which indicates emphasis, summary definition of an author's teaching beliefs regarding art and aesthetic would be possible. Although both hypotheses are accepted, limitations of the method result from the subjectivity which existed in the selection of variables, the inference of contextual meaning which determined placement of variables in categories, …