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.
Highlights
The present paper is part of a larger research project which I am conducting with primary school students who attend an after-school art programme at an international school in Helsinki
The programme complies with the guidelines set in the National Framework for Before- and After-School Activities in Basic Education for the primary school level, drafted by the Finnish National Board of Education (Finnish National Board of Education [OPH], 2015)
To answer the research questions set below the analysis focuses on integrative teaching moments which demonstrate subservient, co-equal, affective and social integrative teaching styles and maps them with the integrative potential of contemporary art expression within the after-school educational setting
Summary
It opens a discussion on the possibilities of introducing multiprofessional collaboration within the after-school teaching-learning environment so as to support cross-disciplinary knowledge and skill integration and to foster their transferability on a primary school level Such a direction of the present research is in line with the emphasis on integrated and multidisciplinary learning laid out in the renewed Finnish National Core Curriculum for Basic Education, which calls for encouraging ‘transversal competences in instruction of all subjects’ (Turkka et al, 2017; OPH, 2015). In my view, calls for a focus on the affective side of the process of art creation and the aesthetic qualities possessed by the artistic product In her discussion on art integration, Chemi (2014) defines two pedagogical teaching models of arts integration: one that elevates the intrinsic values of art, which in Bresler’s terms (1995) corresponds to the affective/co-equal approach, and one that ‘advocates instrumental application of the Arts in other contexts’ (Chemi, 2014, p.375), i.e. the subservient approach (Bresler, 1995). The article addresses the following two research questions: ● How does the integrative nature of contemporary art forms encourage integrative teaching through multiprofessional collaboration within the after-school environment? ● How are the subservient, co-equal, affective and social integrative teaching styles realised through multiprofessional collaboration?
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