The practice of Integrated Arts is essential to a child’s education as by implementing it into the curriculum, children are able to improve their confidence and concentration on an academic level alongside developing their social and emotional skills. Educators in Scotland are required to teach the arts within their classrooms as Education Scotland believes that “the inspiration and power of the arts play a vital role in enabling our children and young people to enhance their creative talent and develop their artistic skills” (Education Scotland, n.d). The arts can not only be taught within their own subject area, but they can also be used to enhance the learning of another subject through a cross-curricular approach. However, during my time exploring the expressive arts, I have discovered that it is vital that children have the opportunity to experience lessons based solely on the Arts in order to explore their strengths and weaknesses within this subject area. Furthermore, it is necessary that children are able to develop their creativity through the arts as they may not have the opportunity to do so in the more general curricular areas such as Mathematics and Science.
The involvement within integrated arts in education is crucial to a learners creative development and educators should strive to include the four areas of: visual arts, dance, drama and music into cross-curricular areas through inter-disciplinary learning alongside focusing lessons devoted exclusively to the arts themselves. The educators principal role is to permit children to develop their own identity through the arts by allowing them to explore the creative side of their minds (McAuliffe, 2007). Therefore, in order for children to receive the best possible outcome when experiencing the arts within their education, it is fundamental that educators are confident across all areas of the arts and are willing to continue to improve and enhance their own knowledge of the arts alongside the children and young people within their classrooms. The arts allow learners to communicate and express themselves in ways that would not be viable through any other subject within the curriculum. Thus, it is essential that as a future educator I am able to provide children with the opportunities to explore the arts and communicate with one another through their own creativity. Having completed this module, I have been able to expand my passion for teaching the arts in addition to developing a strong understanding of the importance of allowing children to explore their creativity and the creative processes involved in the arts that I look forward to increasing during my career as an educator.
References
Education Scotland (n.d) Expressive Arts. [Online] Available: https://education.gov.scot/scottish- education-system/policy-for-scottish-education/policy-drivers/cfe-(building-from-the-statement- appendix-incl-btc1-5)/curriculum-areas/Expressive%20arts [Accessed 13th December 2017].
McAuliffe, D. (2007) Foundation and Primary Settings. In Teaching Art and Design 3-11. (Edited by Sue Cox, Robert Watts, Judy Grahame, Steve Herne and Diarmuid McAuliffe) London: Continuum.
