A Partnership across Boundaries: Arts Integration in High Schools

In this article, the author talks about innovative high school curricula that engage students through the study of visual art in conjunction with critical study of history and social movements. Just as historians place a premium on locating and interpreting events in time, the visual arts are centered on getting an idea across in a visual form, which can lead to rich cross-disciplinary understandings. Still, historians strive for accuracy of information, while the arts often emphasize ambiguity and multiple meanings, which can lead to contradictions. This article is guided by how well-designed arts integrated curricula can help young people to combine such distinctive forms of literacy to create meanings in the classroom and of the world, particularly those that help students "identify and challenge social constructs, underlying assumptions, and ideologies". As an art educator, the author shares Paul Duncum's interest in "the making of meaning through the interaction of different communicative modes" and how art curricula can encourage that play across boundaries, for meaning is created not through transfer, but in relation. (Contains 1 note.)