Art Education
CCS’s Master of Arts in Art Education (MAAE) celebrates and illuminates teaching as a complex creative practice by deeply exploring the intersections of the artist, researcher, and teacher in both classroom and studio settings.
The Program
The MAAE is designed to nurture and inspire the Artist/Researcher/Teacher, recognizing the complexities and intersections of these three lenses and identities. Candidates explore multiple layers of meaning and experience by combining both verbal and visual literacies, connecting theory to practice in order to better understand the complex whole of culturally relevant pedagogy in the field of contemporary art and art education.
Degrees Offered
Students in this low-residency, hybrid program are able to maintain their current teaching position while earning their master’s degree in 25-months. Several components contribute to transformative learning in the MAAE which also align with the College’s strategic plan and goals:
Low Residency
The design of this low residency hybrid program is at the forefront programmatically in the region. Unique to CCS and regional programs, it combines the strengths of face-to-face learning with the flexibility of online coursework, affording students the opportunity to develop their professional practice while simultaneously maintaining their teaching positions in their community.
Cohort Model
Each year, a small group of diverse artist-teachers is invited to become a cohort that experiences all aspects of the program (on-campus and online) together, as a community of practice. This cohort then becomes a mentoring group for the next year’s cohort as they enter the program. This model of mentorship sets the stage for leadership early in the program.
Faculty Collaboration
The faculty collaborate on curriculum and pedagogy in order to support every candidate in integrating teaching, research, and art-making practices in personally authentic and meaningful ways while fostering an ethic of excellence.
Specialized Context
Being situated in a world-class professional school of art and design in the culturally dynamic city of Detroit, MAAE candidates work in centrally-located studios, with easy access to a wealth of specialized campus resources, as well as a broad array of online resources through CCS’s digital services and archives.
Contextually Relevant Research
Allows teachers to utilize their classrooms as an action research site for authentic real-time investigation of theories and practices for the benefit of their students and communities.
Peer Collaboration
Emphasizes collaborative research investigations that translate into practice, resulting in published documents.
In-depth Studio Immersion
Candidates work in their own studios for three consecutive summers cultivating the artist identity and its connections to pedagogy resulting in an end-of-program exhibition
The curriculum gives graduates the necessary skills to participate in highly collaborative, interdisciplinary settings. Specifically, the students will be knowledgeable of:
- Contemporary policy issues in art and design education
- Issues of diversity, equity and inclusion
- Developing pedagogical trends within the field of art education and education in general
- Implications of visual literacy within the field of education
- Advocacy
- Pedagogical theories and intersections with practice
- Current assessment practices of both students and teachers
- Community art
Join the Evolution
CCS prepares students to enter a global economy in which creativity shapes better communities and societies. Here, creative minds can both explore and thrive. There is nothing like it anywhere in the world.