Southeast Center for Education in the Arts

   INSTRUCTION

Disciplinarity

There is a difference between subject matter (facts and formulas) and discipline (a distinctive way of thinking about the world). There is great value in going deeply into subjects to learn and master content knowledge and skills. But the discipline-based content standards have further segregated learning into isolated silos at a time when we need to be developing integrative thinkers.

IntInterdisciplinarity

We live in a society that prizes depth in a single discipline over breadth in multiple areas. But there is an increasing desire and need to break down the traditional discipline silos in favor of a more integrated study and understanding of complex systems. Integrative education cuts across subject-matter lines, bringing together various aspects of the curriculum into meaningful association to focus upon broad areas of study that recognize the interdependent nature of reality.

Integration

Separating teaching into discrete courses complete in themselves denies teachers and students exposure to a variety of pedagogical principles and practices in other disciplines. Side-by-side learning does not equate to integrative understanding that is critical in our interconnected world. The strategies of arts integration are educationally powerful because they are grounded in deep connections between knowledge acquisition, cognition, and social and emotional development.

Literacies

Frequently defined simply as the ability to read and write, literacy incorporates abilities to identify, understand, interpret, compare, analyze, evaluate, create, and communicate across a variety of media in addition to text. Cultural, environmental, information, kinesthetic, mathematical, media, musical, scientific, technological, and visual literacies are just a few components of a holistic understanding today’s students need to engage in a global environment.

Communication

Oral, written, symbolic, and nonverbal communications are processes by which we assign and convey meaning in an attempt to create shared understanding. Communicating requires a vast repertoire of skills in intrapersonal and interpersonal processing, coding and decoding, listening, observing, speaking, questioning, analyzing, and evaluating.