Art History and Education

Art history and education is a combination that connects the academic study of visual and material culture with the theory and practice of teaching and learning. Art history asks why art, design, and architecture take the forms they do, examining the historical, social, cultural, and economic forces that have shaped what human beings make and how they make meaning from it. Education studies examines how knowledge and values are transmitted, how learning happens, and what formal educational institutions do and fail to do for the people within them.

Together, the two subjects prepare you for careers in which cultural understanding and educational awareness are both relevant.

At Liverpool Hope University, this three-year full-time programme includes a sandwich year in industry, a year abroad, and work placement opportunities, providing a rich combination of academic study and practical professional experience. The art history strand develops your skills in visual analysis, art criticism, and historical research, engaging with objects, images, buildings, and sites across different cultures and historical periods. The education strand gives you a grounded understanding of how education systems work, how children and adults learn, and what effective teaching and curriculum design look like in practice.

A typical tariff of 104 points makes the programme accessible to students with strong creative and academic interests.

Graduates of art history and education programmes work in museums and galleries as educators and outreach practitioners, in schools as art teachers following additional professional training, in heritage organisations, in arts administration, in publishing, and in educational consultancy. The combination of visual literacy and educational understanding is particularly valuable in contexts where learning happens through engagement with art, objects, and material culture. The placement and international experiences built into the programme strengthen both strands of your professional development.

Postgraduate study in art history, museum education, or teacher training is a natural next step.