What is Arts Integration?
The UNF Fine Arts Center is pleased to be partnering with the Kennedy Center Partners in Education program. The program provides innovative professional development opportunities for elementary and middle school educators to gain the skills and the confidence to integrate the arts into the curriculum.
Arts integrated instruction has become an area of great interest over the past decade as schools across the country are discovering the power of the arts when used as a catalyst for teaching across the curriculum. Arts integration is not a substitute for teaching the arts for their own sake but rather a methodology and an approach to education that creates a level of personal connection and added depth in the classroom through a creative process of teaching and learning. The goal is to increase knowledge of a general subject area while concurrently fostering a greater understanding and appreciation of the fine and performing arts. As a result, educators have become aware of the successes that have been demonstrated when students become engaged in their own learning via arts integrated instruction.
As a tool, Arts Integration:
- Develops critical thinking skills; capacity to reflect, question and judge; ability to envision alternative possibilities
- Engages through deep personal connection with the work
- Motivates students to achieve
- Increases openness to exploration
- Allows for diversity of interests
- Addresses diverse learning styles
- Facilitates differentiated teaching
- Develops persistence and other desirable work habits
- Assists academic performance
- Provides context and meaning
- Empowers students to compete in school and work
Arts Integration Downloads
Additional Resources
