Promoting integrative teaching through inter-disciplinary Arts and Crafts after-school club collaboration

Abstract

This article presents an art-teacher-researcher’s perspective on issues related to project-based integrative visual arts teaching to primary school students attending after-school activities. Based on the theoretical assumption that contemporary art forms are a suitable pedagogical solution for integrative visual arts teaching, the study explores the transformation and materialisation of a conceptual contemporary art installation into a performance. The described processes reveal the potential of contemporary art forms for encouraging integrative teaching through multiprofessional collaboration, which enhances the simultaneous application of the four integrative teaching styles as defined by Bresler (1995): subservient, co-equal, affective and social. The study demonstrates how artistic multiprofessional collaboration, triggered by the contemporary art expression can, in practice, extend the integrative learning opportunities by putting the students into authentic creative processes. The results of this action research confirm that after-school activities provide a favourable environment for quality integrative teaching as they give the freedom to plan educational thematic projects that allow active co-equal collaborations. Such projects unfold the possibilities for learning in collaboration through artistic expression and multidisciplinary discovery, which in turn fosters knowledge and skill transferability that go beyond the discipline-based school curriculum.