What? | hchsartsintegration

"Arts Integration" can be a confusing and contested term. Check out some helpful arts integration definitions from leading experts in the field:

What is Arts Integration?

Arts integration similarly juxtaposes diverse visions and methodologies towards inspiring students to make the most of their education. In the school environment, arts integrated lessons offer students the opportunity to see how diverse disciplines can be mutually beneficial.

- Maria Barbosa

[The arts'] purpose is to enable individuals to find meaning in the world of art for life in the everyday world.

- Arthur Efland

Arts integration should not be understood as a substitute for arts education...Instead, arts integration generates well-rounded scholarship where students experience and explore connections among disciplines traditionally separated for the convenience of education delivery.

- Maria Barbosa

Unlike interdisciplinary work, art integration unites concepts and parallel skills, and employs real world-based organizing components related to the learner, thus authenticating each individual's experiences.

- Cathy Smilan & Kathy Marzilli Miraglia

True Arts integration is so much more than "doing Art" …
Arts learning that is deeply immersed in other content areas is …
• a strategy to move the arts off the sidelines of education.
• a negotiation between the learner and the community.
• a new way of thinking about teaching and learning.
• a way to teach beyond the standards.
--from Renaissance in the Classroom: Arts Integration and Meaningful Learning
by Gail Burnaford, Arnold Aprill, and Cynthia Weiss

Integration comes in many forms, ranging from the most superficial (illustrating content from other domains) to deeper explorations (examining concepts that domains have in common). True integration is a substantive approach that explores and explicates connections between areas on a conceptual and structural level.

- Julia Marshall

Arts integration is embedding the arts with other disciplines in order to augment student learning in both areas.

- Dorinne Dorfman

[Using] innovative interdisciplinary teaching strategies using creative projects and activities to stimulate learning.

- Alice Arnold

Arts integration goes beyond including art projects in class; it is a teaching strategy that seamlessly merges arts standards with core curricula to build connections and provide engaging context.

- Mariko Nobori

Integration is a way to explore concepts from all areas of inquiry through art and to connect art to real life issues and ideas.

- Julia Marshall

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[Integration] relates ideas to form, crosses disciplinary boundaries to reveal conceptual connections, and locates art in context with other disciplines. Integration represents a concrete and feasible approach to teaching art in a postmodern way.

- Julia Marshall

Integrated curriculum is a holistic approach to learning that stresses connections and relationships rather than delineations across the disciplines.

- R. C. Burns