Syntegration or Disintegration? Models of Integrating the Arts Across the Primary Curriculum

Abstract

In a time when schools are focussing on increasing their numeracy and literacy scores, teachers are often required to spend the majority of their time teaching Mathematics and English and have little time left for the arts and other subjects. This has led to some teachers developing integrated programs in order to cover all the required learning experiences. However, practitioners and researchers have found that in many cases, integration results in superficial learning with few subject-specific outcomes being achieved. This paper presents three models or levels of integration (service connections, symmetric correlations and syntegration) where curriculum subjects can work together to achieve subjectspecific as well as generic outcomes, then gives examples of how these models can be used within the primary school curriculum. It concludes with a real-life example of a syntegrated learning project.