The place of the arts within integrated education

Abstract

If we are to address the complex needs of contemporary education, then reflection on the arts when talking about integrated education is somewhat logical and should be considered as one principal objective of Arts Education. Current educational policies at the international level point toward a more integrated education, however, there is no consensus over a real arts integration, nor significant reflection within the classroom. This situation has worsened over recent years, even when the arts are being incorporated in some models of integrated education in full expansion. In this study, we present a state of the question of the place of the arts in integrated education. To do so, we place arts integration within its historical context, and define and explain four major problems (instrumentalization of the arts, undervaluation of the arts, poor teacher training, neglecting evaluation). We then go on to present the significance of the arts within integration as the basic axis of the existing theoretical discourse in the literature, defining five styles of integration according to their significance (subordinated or service-based, peripheral, collaborative, leading role, artistic). Finally, we compile and discuss the main approaches to have arisen in the context of arts integration. This study may be added to the contributions in defense of arts integration, rescuing and clarifying the currently submerged and confused debate, in order to restore its full potential in accordance with the new social and political demands.

Keywords:

• Integrated education
• disciplinary integration
• arts integration
• state of the question

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 ‘The arts’, a less restrictive term widely used in the literature, is employed when discussing integration. Nevertheless, the term ‘art’ is retained whenever used in the original source material. In addition, due to the authors’ training and artistic backgrounds, some examples and references included throughout the manuscript belong to the field of visual arts.

2 This contextualization is mainly based on the context of the United States, a representative country of the integrated education discourse later expanded worldwide.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation (Spain) who financed the research project PCI2S [PDC2021-121498-I00].