Building knowledge through arts integration

ABSTRACT

Educational research has shown the importance of adopting a multimodal approach to pedagogy by combining, integrating, and organizing diverse semiotic resources for learning. As aesthetic content and forms are significant aspects of multimodality, arts integration is crucial to achieve multimodal knowledge practices. In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework for analysing, discussing, and designing arts-integrated processes of teaching and learning. The framework integrates a social semiotic theory of multimodality and the Legitimation Code Theory of Semantics as a methodology through which teachers may avoid segmental learning practices in favour of an arts-integrated cumulative pedagogy. In this way, multimodal approaches to text and context relate to a social realist view on knowledge building, where boundaries between knowledge practices are weakened and meaning is condensed through processes of cumulative learning.

Keywords:

• Aesthetic education
• arts integration
• arts-based pedagogy
• cumulative learning
• multimodal pedagogy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jonathan Lilliedahl

Jonathan Lilliedahl is a senior lecturer in pedagogy at School of Education and Communication, Jönköping University, Sweden, and an associate member of the LCT Centre for Knowledge-Building, University of Sydney, Australia. His interest centres on the selection and recontextualization of educational knowledge, particularly with respect to aesthetic knowledge practices.