AI & Curriculum
Art and design teachers may find AI helpful when developing the art curriculum. For instance by contributing to the production of teaching materials and professional information quickly and easily.
Thinking allowed:
- Is using AI to develop curriculum ideas somehow unethical?
- What issues need to be considered in the use of AI to generate ideas for lessons?
- Is it legitimate to ban all use of, and reference to, AI from the art room?
- This is new to us all, and yet old art teacher-sharing communities have all but disappeared. How can we share ideas as this evolves?
AI and Professional Support
Schools and teachers in all subjects are experimenting with AI to generate lesson plans, curriculum plans, worksheets and assignments. The pace of change in the use of AI in professional practice is too dramatic and rapid to record here. At the time of writing the government has launched a dramatic new plan to dramatically develop the nation’s capacity to use AI in all fields, including education. This is only the beginning, and teachers will need to learn from each other. Because there are not any educational experts who have been doing this succesfully for years. However, here are some ideas that may be of interest as starting points. It will be helpful if teachers find ways to share how they have used AI prompts to develop their thinking and practice.
Examples and suggestions:
Lesson Planning:
AI can act as a planning partner, helping to generate creative, age-appropriate lesson ideas that align with specific learning objectives and national curriculum requirements. By providing fresh perspectives and tailored suggestions, AI can help teachers break out of routine teaching strategies and introduce more dynamic, engaging learning experiences.
Example Prompt:
“Please adopt the role of an experienced and successful subject leader of Art and design in a UK secondary school. Please help me improve my teaching by generating three KS3 art lesson ideas exploring identity that incorporate mixed media techniques and contemporary artist references”
click here for an example of the AI response to this prompt – from Claude 3.5
Curriculum Mapping:
AI can assist teachers in developing comprehensive, progressive curriculum frameworks that ensure systematic skill development. It can suggest incremental learning pathways that balance technical skills, creative exploration, and critical understanding across different key stages.
Example Prompt:
“Please adopt the role of an experienced and successful subject leader of Art and design in a UK secondary school. Please help me improve my teaching by creating a progression framework for drawing skills from Year 7 to Year 9, highlighting key learning milestones and skill complexity”
Breadth and Range:
AI can help teachers design curriculum experiences that authentically support students’ development as artists, designers, and craftspeople. By providing context-specific examples and activity suggestions, AI can help ensure students engage with a diverse range of creative practices across different educational stages.
Example Prompt:
“Please adopt the role of an experienced and successful subject leader of Art and design in a UK secondary school. Please help me improve my teaching by suggesting age-appropriate creative activities that help Key Stage 3 students experience professional design thinking processes”
Assessment Support:
AI can generate nuanced assessment language that is developmentally appropriate, helping teachers create clear, constructive feedback frameworks. This supports more meaningful self and peer assessment, encouraging students to develop critical reflection skills.
Example Prompt:
“Please adopt the role of an experienced and successful subject leader of Art and design in a UK secondary school and an experienced art examiner. Please help me improve my teaching by generating pupil friendly assessment descriptors for GCSE art coursework that provide clear, supportive language for different achievement levels across the range of national curriculum aims and objectives“
Research and Context:
AI rapidly provides concise, accurate summaries of art movements, artist biographies, and cultural contexts. This enables teachers to quickly enrich teaching materials with authoritative background information, supporting more contextually informed art education.
Example Prompt:
“Please adopt the role of an experienced and successful subject leader of Art and design in a UK secondary school. Please help me improve my teaching by providing a concise overview of the Bauhaus movement suitable for Key Stage 4 students, highlighting key principles and influential artists”
Differentiation Strategies:
AI supports inclusive teaching by generating multiple approaches to teaching similar concepts. This helps teachers create flexible lesson plans that can be adapted to support students with diverse learning needs, ensuring all students can access and engage with art education.
Example Prompt:
“Please adopt the role of an experienced and successful subject leader of Art and design in a UK secondary school. Please help me improve my teaching by suggesting three differentiated approaches to teaching perspective drawing that cater to all my students“
Professional Development:
AI acts as a collaborative tool for teacher reflection and growth, helping educators articulate their teaching philosophies, draft professional statements, and explore innovative pedagogical approaches in art and design education.
Example Prompt:
“Please adopt the role of an experienced and successful subject leader of Art and design in a UK secondary school. Please help me improve my teaching by drafting …“
Important Considerations:
AI should be used as a supportive tool, not a replacement for professional judgment. Teachers should always critically evaluate and adapt AI-generated suggestions. It would always be sensible to cumulatively refine the prompts being used and test them on different AI programmes.
Increasingly, teachers are coming to view AI as a collaborative planning tool that (with informed prompts) can save time and provide inspiration, support, and fresh perspectives in education.
Further reading
Resources
Click here to go to a page which illustrates how AI might help a teacher prepare for an interview which will typically include a demonstration lesson. The use of AI reviews the nature of the criteria being assessed in the 30-minute demo lesson, what the observer will be looking for and how this can be built into a 30-minute art lesson with a strange class.
Click here to go to a prompt and response from the AI programme Claude from a teacher who was interested in including more design focussed activities in the curriculum. This was as initial brainstorming prompt to generate ideas.