This study explored foundational conceptions of knowledge currently influencing secondary cinematic arts education, their curricular and instructional expressions, and their relation to instructional methods practiced in this environment. "Congruence" was developed as a method for exploring the assumptions, dimensions, and relations outlined for this and for similar inquiries. This method established (1) a conception of knowledge for the cinematic arts, representing and balancing syntactic/process and substantive/product dimensions; (2) a meta-scheme displaying elements of thought and practice constituting curricular/instructional environments; (3) the questions mapped, in the affirmative, as fundamental assumptions; and (4) aesthetic principles of relationship, translation, and integration as tools for criticism and theorizing with respect to the degree of unity existing in environments. (Author/AA)