Arts Integration as Potentiality for Professional Development for Teachers

This paper investigates the potentialities for professional development, when teachers work with integration of arts and academic subjects in the classroom. The idea of integrating arts and academic subjects can be seen as a way of experimenting with teaching. Experiments in the classroom as a way of creating new knowledge about teaching is very closely linked to ideas from action research approaches to development of both new practices and new knowledge. Therefore, we will draw on concepts from action research theory to explore how teachers learn and at the same time develop new knowledge when they experiment with artistic and academic subjects at the same time. Therefore, the action research approach will be elaborated and underpinned with learning concepts deriving from pedagogue and philosopher, John Dewey. We term this the three e’s of learning, and furthermore of professional development: Experience, Exploration, and Experimentation. In this way, the action research approach has the possibility of creating not only new practices, but also to develop new theoretic understanding of the learning processes involved in creating change in a living practice as classroom teaching.
As an empirical basis of the paper is data from an action research project within the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts Learning Program (BTS ALP) in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.