The Integrated Approach to Teaching Visual Art in After‐School Activity Classes

Abstract

Abstract The present article discusses the possibilities of interdisciplinary integration for teaching art to primary‐school students in after‐school activities. Integrated teaching, as one of the ways for putting into practice the socioconstructivist approach to learning and the theory of the guided construction of knowledge, is used as a basis for conceiving and implementing the two projects described in the empirical part of the article. The research questions, addressed here, aim at finding out how a project‐based approach and the knowledge gained in school and through the students’ individual experiences can be applied pedagogically in after‐school art activities. To achieve the aims of the study a two‐cycle action research was conducted where the integrated teaching was viewed as a developmental spiral, in which the insights, experiences and results gained from the first project fed into the planning and realisation of the second one. The outcomes of the two projects suggest that the integrated presentation of teaching material enhances the students’ learning abilities to make associative connections between the different subjects, to transfer their skills from one project into another, and to apply their knowledge from one subject area to another by processing various sources of visual or verbal information in their creation of artworks. The two projects have proven empirically the validity and educational relevance of the integrated approach to teaching art, and the usefulness of the ideas in the New Finnish Core Curriculum for the holistic development of the child in the complexity of today's world.

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