The Art of Learning- Calgary Arts Academy’s Arts Immersion approach

to Learning and Cross Curricular Education

In the following, Calgary Arts Academy’s approach to the Alberta Program of Studies will be explored
within the overall context of an Arts Immersion methodology. Arts Immersion is one of several
interdisciplinary models of education that have been implemented in special programs in many
progressive schools. Here, Calgary Arts Academy’s interdisciplinary programing model is discussed and
demonstrated through its grounding in academic rigor, student engagement and a multifaceted arts
based approach to teaching and learning.

Arts Immersion presents learning communities with the opportunity to embark on an interdisciplinary
approach to curricular and project planning, assessment and collaboration; further, the Arts Immersion
model serves as an implicit interdisciplinary nexus. Unlike more conventional models of teaching and
learning, Calgary Arts Academy’s approach to curriculum is largely ‘skill centered’, and as such, is able to
approach the Alberta Program of Studies from several simultaneous perspectives. This presents an
opportunity for teachers and students to engage their course content across any perceived curricular or
subject divisions. In doing so, educators scaffold skill development with knowledge and resources from
many discipline fields. In doing so, students are able to engage in their learning in various subjects
through diverse art forms as artists, exploring considered knowledge and experience as the fundamental
structure through which skills may be learned.

Arts Immersion provides learners with a cross-curricular nexus. The relevance and contexts of course
material is provided across the curriculum as the learning that students engage in, in discreet discipline
fields, are connected in ways that make that knowledge and learning necessary, immediately applicable
and real. In making these connections, education moves away from fragmentation and towards the
generation of wonder, as students become generative designers of their education.

Cross-curricular education has become a trend in recent years and has been the subject of many a
journal article.

"By extolling the separate subject curriculum, [education reform efforts] have at best diverted attention
from connections between and among subjects; at worst, they have perhaps aggravated the
fragmentation of the high school curriculum... students no longer study subject matter as an end in
itself, but for the narrower end of passing a test... subject matter must be treated not as an end in itself,
as inert knowledge students are expected to regurgitate on a test; rather, it must be food for thought,
connected to students' experiences beyond school" (Wraga, 2009)

Using the Arts Immersion model, the notion of experience becomes very important, because it is
at this point where a departure from the standard discipline field paradigm becomes readily apparent.
We must briefly look at the nature of learning experiences under a light of developmentalism. The way
in which we learn is not to be paralleled with a computer writing bits of code to its hard drive. When we
learn, we are not just placing facts about the world in the memory banks of our brain, to be filed away
and accessed when needed- rather, in learning, we are constantly structuring contextual relationships.
As we learn, we make meaning. We take those elements of our experience, and actively engage them in
forming meanings, these meanings which are, " ...linked to situations in which they are learned and
used, a process that is mediated by our individual neurophysiology and experience" (Barab et al, 1997)
Arts Immersion provides students with these meaning-making contexts.

If we are to approach education using a truly Arts Immersion focused interdisciplinary model, not only
would we be acknowledging how teaching through the fine arts practically is, we could begin to see the
fine arts as not only elective courses, peripheral to a student's overall learning- but rather as the nexus
in which all the subjects are approached as interconnected and necessary to one another in an overall
project of 'meaning-making'. The fine arts, in a very genuine sense, are necessarily approached as an
interdisciplinary anchor.

The Arts Immersion approach of Calgary Arts Academy is uncommon in most school settings that take an
arts integrated approach to learning. At Calgary Arts Academy, the skills of the fine arts are not
developed explicitly, but rather come through explorations of multi-faceted curricular content. There
are parallels between interdisciplinary approaches to the fine arts and emergent systems; that is to say,
the development of a complex cohesive whole from a multitude of relatively simple interactions.

“Certain kinds of thinking rarely surface in school settings. A good example is systems-oriented thinking
where families, economies, ecologies, living organisms, and so on are all viewed as complex interacting
systems that display ‘emergent’ system properties.” (Ackerman, 1989)

Emergence in this sense is the way in which complex patterns and ideas are developed from a
multiplicity of simple interactions. This also speaks to the overall use of elements of design thinking
while addressing the problems generated through learning in an authentic way.
 "The common characteristics are: (1) radical novelty (features not previously observed in systems); (2)
coherence or correlation (meaning integrated wholes that maintain themselves over some period of
time); (3) A global or macro "level" (i.e. there is some property of "wholeness"); (4) it is the product of a
dynamical process (it evolves); and (5) it is "ostensive" (it can be perceived)”. (Corning, 2002)

In this sense, we can see how we may approach Arts Immersion as an emergent system. In the creation
of an artwork, our students engage in the creation of something new, out of the integrated wholes of
the disciplines across the curriculum- the artwork exhibits a wholeness in that there is the idea of
‘product’ attached- there is something to see; and of course, given the nature of creative work, it does
evolve through the knowledge and experience of its direct participants as well as an audience. In
teaching through the Arts Immersion model, the arts, and students being exposed to the process of
actively creating- the role of Arts Immersion in the overall curriculum becomes amplified. Not only are
fine arts one subject amongst many in the school curriculum, they becomes the lens through which all
other disciplines must focus through, to give their creativity meaning, content and context. The Arts
Immersion educator opens the floodgates to encourage and necessitate the open exchange of ideas
within the school.

In using the Arts Immersion model, educators begin their approach to the Alberta Program of Studies
with an art form. What this art form is, is highly varied and adaptive to the interests of students as well
as in the curricular outcomes being examined. From that art form, educators then identify multiple
curricular outcomes that can be actively explored and linked through the creation of the artwork and
seek further opportunities to examine the higher order thinking skills developed through collaboration
and student generated work. This is a process that is consistent and ongoing, so that students and
educators alike have the opportunity to revisit and assess skill development in many instances and
contexts throughout the school year.

For example, in staging a theatrical production, educators will identify the various art forms used in
putting together this work, including, but not limited to, dance, acting, animation, directing, set design
etc. From these art forms, for example, set design, educators will identify key elements of their
respective curricula that can be engaged in through the exploration of that particular art form. In
designing a set, the math curriculum may be addressed through using geometry, spatial reasoning and
use of equations in determining various design elements. The science curriculum can be explored
through recreating ecosystems relevant to the design, as well as in the structures and forces and
mechanical systems used in constructing the set. Social studies skill outcomes can be explored through
consensus building, collaboration and perspective examination in design. In addressing Language Arts
outcomes, such as interpreting the broader themes of a text, or representing text in a different form,
the very process of designing a set requires use of these skills.

How this is done involves Calgary Arts Academy educators working collaboratively and actively seeking
these opportunities to make these cross-curricular connections, using principles of design, while at the
same time planning and assessing for learning.

References

Ackerman, D. & D.N. Perkins Integrating Thinking and Learning Skills Across the Curriculum
Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Design and Implementation Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development. Alexandria, VA. 1989

Barab, Sasha A. & Landa, Anita Designing Effective Interdisciplinary Anchors Educational Leadership,
March 1997

Corning, Peter A. “The Re-Emergence of Emergence”: A Venerable Concept in Search of a Theory

H.H. Jacobs ed. Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Design and Implementation Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Development. Alexandria, VA. 1989

Wraga, William G. Toward A Connected Core Curriculum Educational Horizons, Winter 2009