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Transforming education through art-centred integrated learning

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 VI 3 (3) pp. 361–376 Intellect Limited 2014

Visual Inquiry: Learning & Teaching Art

Volume 3 Number 3
© 2014 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/vi.3.3.361_1

Curriculum and Arts Integration

as an Agency of Change

Julia Marshall
San Francisco State University

Transforming education
through art-centred
integrated learning

Abstract Keywords
Art-centred integrated learning is a version of art integration that uses art enquiry art-centred integrated
processes to promote deep and holistic understanding of concepts and ideas that learning
matter to our students while fostering their abilities to handle complexity and art integration
think flexibly, capacities they will need in order to prosper in a complex and uncer- creative leadership
tain world and become leaders in shaping that world. To meet these needs of their creative enquiry
students, the Alameda County Office of Education in Northern California has through the arts
adopted Integrated Learning, an approach to education that promotes integrative systemic change in
thinking and integrated knowledge through art-centred learning. Because Integrated education
Learning presents solutions for education across the board, it provides a model that arts in education in
leaders in general education could consider when formulating pedagogy. And since Northern California
this model draws from contemporary art practices, it provides both education in the
arts and a strong rationale that art education leaders can use to argue for a robust
presence of the arts in education. Moreover, the Integrated Learning approach delin-
eates a set of principles and practices that are germane to creative leadership and
could be integrated into leadership education.

361
Julia Marshall

1. PZ is an educational Equipping every child to thrive in a world of perpetual change and increas-
research group
at the Harvard
ing complexity is the challenge of our time. How do we transform education
Graduate School of to meet this challenge? How do we motivate and empower young people to
Education. Begun in participate in and shape the world – to become ‘change leaders’ (Fullan 2011)?
1967, PZ investigates
learning processes Likewise, what good ideas from K-12 education can we apply to leadership
in children, adults and the education of leaders?
and organizations. Change requires rethinking priorities. The new Common Core and New
Its many projects
include investigations Generation Standards, which redirect the focus of education away from rote
of creativity, learning towards grasping concepts and building thinking skills, represent
understanding,
thinking and
one welcome change. While transformation demands a fundamental rethink-
intelligence (www. ing of what students learn in school and how they perceive what is worth
pz.harvard.edu). learning (what the standards purport to do), it also requires adopting pedago-
gies that reach all students. Indeed, it is time for alternative models that help
students meet the new standards and thrive now and in the future – as full
participants in the world and as future leaders who can shape that world. This
article explains a model, Art-Centred Integrated Learning, designed to meet
this K-12 challenge, which we believe also provides good ideas for leader-
ship education. This is a model in progress, but it is already transforming the
way we teach, how students learn and how we, as leaders, make necessary,
systemic and meaningful change in education in Northern California.

Integrated learning through arts-centred learning

The Department of Integrated Learning of the Alameda County Office of
Education (ACOE), which oversees seventeen school districts in the East Bay
Area of Northern California, has adopted a new approach called Integrated
Learning that guides their thinking and practices across the board from
county-wide policy to the nuts and bolts of classroom practice.
The following is an explanation of the Integrated Learning approach
and what drives and supports it. We begin with a core building block of the
approach, the concept of understanding, and we explore how understand-
ing can be fostered through art-centred learning, the primary method the
approach employs.

Understanding and art-centred learning

Things that matter – from ideas and issues, to events and people, to culture
and values – are complex. The capacity to understand and embrace complexity
is critical to our well-being and a productive, fulfilling life in our intricate, inter-
related and fast-paced world. Complexity is characterized by perpetual change
and uncertainty (Wheatley 2006). Coping with change and an uncertain future
requires flexibility of thought and action to deal with complexity – to navigate
it and sort through it to focus on what matters. Therefore, the core capacities
required of us all are grasping what matters and the complex nature of things
along with being flexible in dealing with them. These are the skills our young
people need if they are to thrive in the present and the future. Similarly, they
are abilities required for effective leadership (Fullan 2011; Wheatley 2006).
Building these capacities begins with going beyond mere learning infor-
mation, to going beneath the surface of it to discern its meaning and impli-
cations, that is, to understand it. The Integrated Learning approach takes its
insights into understanding from Harvard’s Project Zero’s (PZ)1 Theory of
Understanding, which directly connects understanding to the core competen-
cies we aspire to foster: grasping complexity and thinking flexibly.

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 Transforming education through art-centred …

In regard to complexity, Perkins, a principal figure at PZ, defines under-

standing as seeing something within its ‘web of associations that give it mean-
ing’ (1988: 114). This denotes connecting an idea or entity to all the things that
are related to it, and, in so doing, making one’s grasp of it more comprehen-
sive and complex. Understanding, in other words, is grasping the complexity
of something – what it is associated with, how it is seen in different ways, how
it affects other things and how it is part of a system. It follows that when we
practice looking at a phenomenon in an associative systemic way – when we
understand it – we become more comfortable with it and this comfort builds
over time into an inclination to embrace intricacy, ambiguity and multiplicity.
In regard to flexibility, Project Zero’s Wiske (1998) characterizes under-
standing as the capacity to use information flexibly. That is, understanding
is the ability to apply knowledge and skills in different contexts – to take
what you know from one area and apply it somewhere else or repurpose it.
Understanding, therefore, is directly connected to flexible thinking; it enables
flexible thinking, it is a characteristic of it and it is demonstrated through it.
Furthermore, flexible thinking generates new understandings; it is essential to
exploring subtle or hidden connections.
Since complex understandings and flexibility of thought are so intertwined
and generating them is so fundamental to preparing learners for the future, it
makes sense that these two elements should constitute the centrepiece of an
educational model. What could this new model be? Learning through the arts, or
art-centred learning, provides one promising model. Why? Art-centred learning
puts connection-making and flexibility of thought and action front and centre,
providing multiple creative ways to build complex and flexible understandings.

Complexity and art-centred learning

How does art-centred learning promote connection-making? Producing art
about a topic is a rich and generative way to apprehend or construct webs of
understanding and, therefore, to make meaning. This is because interpreting
a topic through art processes invites the artist-learner to think about the topic
more deeply, expansively and personally while he or she devises a subjective
response to it. Also, since art entails associative thinking strategies, such as
constructing analogies and metaphors, a learner can break away from conven-
tional associations to make oblique connections (partial associations that are
unorthodox and surprising, but also make sense) that allow him or her to see
something from a different, often new and imaginative perspective.
Connection-making is the central mechanism of curriculum integration.
Since art practice is such a rich and multifaceted way to make connections,
it makes sense to use it to integrate academic concepts and information.
Moreover, art is naturally integrative. Unlike more conventional disciplines,
art is not confined to particular areas of knowledge; it explores everything.
Art-centred learning, therefore, easily transcends disciplinary boundaries to
reveal connections and commonalities that conventional academic structures
tend to conceal. When we employ art-making processes to make connections
across disciplines to deepen, expand and ‘complexify’ our understandings, art
practice becomes integrated learning through art-centred learning.
Integrating knowledge – understanding how it all connects – is essential to
K-12 education. So is understanding and embracing complexity. Fullan (2011)
and Wheatley (2006) argue that effective leadership requires integrated and
complex understandings of all things related to organizations and leadership.

363
Julia Marshall

Since art-centred enquiry fosters these things, we need to infuse it into K-12
classrooms. Similarly, highlighting integration and employing art-centred
enquiry in leadership education could build the kinds of thinking and disposi-
tions we look for in leaders.

Flexibility and art-centred learning

How does art-centred learning help students become flexible thinkers? In art-
centred learning, students apply knowledge in multiple, imaginative, flexible
and often unscripted ways. In doing so, they play with ideas, they question
them, they experiment with them and they transform them. This they do as
part of their enquiry. Artists enquire and, since enquiry is a venture into the
unknown, it is a particularly supple approach to learning and doing. In their
enquiry, artists ask questions that are probing and open-ended, and they do
not often know where their enquiries will take them. Because art enquiry is
primarily fluid and open-ended, artists must be flexible; they must embrace
uncertainty and improvise. Improvisation, which includes being aware of
one’s opportunities, responding to occurrences and situations as they pop up,
making impromptu decisions, learning from mistakes, and not being discour-
aged along the way, builds self-reliance and confidence.
Art enquiry provides a flexible structure for developing all of these skills
and dispositions young learners need. Furthermore, these are the skills lead-
ers require to solve complex and subtle problems, and to envision possibilities
(Wheatley 2006). For these reasons, art-centred learning should be included in
education at all levels, from pre-K to leadership education.

Art-centred learning versus art integration

So far I have used the term ‘art-centred learning’ instead of the more conven-
tional term ‘arts integration’. I do this intentionally because arts integration
is such a nebulous term. Art-centred learning and arts integration are some-
what interchangeable terms. Art-centred learning, however, is clearer and
more concrete – and it emphasizes learning. To most people, arts integration
denotes using the arts to depict academic content in visual, kinaesthetic, musi-
cal or narrative forms. This is the simplest meaning of the term. Arts integra-
tion could also signify a far more expansive and meaningful practice: exploring
academic content (ideas, concepts and information) and looking at it through
the lens of art. While arts integration could imply these things, the term ‘art-
centred learning’ seems a more fitting encapsulation of them.
Distinguishing between the illustration of content and exploration of it
through an arts lens may seem like nit-picking, but this difference has broad
implications; it shifts our understanding of the arts away from seeing them
simply as a means of display and a way to depict content, to viewing them as
forms of enquiry – as ways to enquire into content, to question that content and
to perceive it differently. When we view art as enquiry, we also can see its capac-
ity to tackle the disciplines themselves – to enquire into why and how different
domains construct content. Opening up the lens of art in this way enables us to
direct art-centred learning towards practice – towards generating consciousness,
not just of knowledge and concepts, but also of how scholars, researchers and
practitioners have constructed and continue to construct knowledge through the
various disciplines, including art. Indeed, approaching art as a means of enquiry
can lead to a metacognitive art-centred learning that taps into the curiosity, the
passion, the process and the craft that are inherent in all areas of enquiry.

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 Transforming education through art-centred …

Leadership, practice and art-centred integrated learning

How does integration through art-centred enquiry connect to leaders and
leadership? First, education leaders should take the importance of creative
experiential enquiry and its benefits into account when setting priorities;
they should encourage it. Second, they should understand how deliberate,
purposeful creative practice is germane to leadership itself. Fullan (2001)
provides three key elements of effective leadership that directly connect to
creative enquiry: (1) a disposition towards learning: leaders must see them-
selves as active learners; (2) learning through practice: leaders must learn by
doing, not by following others or by applying theory prior to practice; and (3)
awareness of one’s learning and actions: leaders must know themselves and
be metacognitive in their learning and actions. These are skills, dispositions
and knowledge developed in art-centred enquiry. Both Fullan (2001, 2011)
and Wheatley (2006) emphasize openness to change, resilience in the face of
setbacks and flexibility of thought as key elements in effective leadership – all
qualities related to and fostered in creative work.
While Wheatley (2006) and Fullan (2011) emphasize the importance
of leaders identifying as co-learners who remain flexible and able to learn
from experience, they also expand on this idea to cast successful organiza-
tions as flexible, creative systems that learn through experience. Because the
art enquiry process manifests flexible, improvisational, progressive learning
through discovery and invention in such a tangible, accessible way, and it
promotes complex thinking and integration, it should be supported by leaders
in K-12 education and also be woven into leadership education.
Fullan (2001) also stresses motivating workers to engage with the work,
and this has implications for teachers. He argues that people are motivated to
do more when they learn through experience, their experiences are intrinsi-
cally purposeful and meaningful, and they acquire skills through that experi-
ence that help them develop clarity and coherence (understanding). It follows
that allowing young learners to enquire creatively into something of meaning
to them and to develop understanding through purposeful play is a smart act
of leadership in the classroom. This classroom can be a pre-K classroom or a
graduate school seminar in leadership.

Background and foundations: Integrative Education

and Significant Learning
Understanding the cyclical, dialogical relationship between theory and prac-
tice is key to good leadership (Fullan 2011). For that reason, I mention here
the theory and models that influence our art-centred integrated approach.
First, the Integrated Learning model is informed by the Progressive theo-
ries and models in education of Johann Pestalozzi (1746–1827), John Dewey
(1859–1952), Maria Montessori (1870–1952) and Loris Malaguzzi (1920–1994)
that promote experiential, kinaesthetic and student-centred learning. Second,
the approach aligns with Social Justice or Culturally Responsive pedago-
gies formulated by Paul Freire (1921–1997), the father of Critical Pedagogy,
and more recently by education theorists, activists and leaders, Geneva Gay
(Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research and Practice (2010)), and Mary
Stone Hanley (Culturally Relevant Arts Education for Social Justice: A Way Out
of No Way (2013)). Providing a foundation of theory and practice, these two
strands come together to form the basis of a broad comprehensive and coher-
ent vision of education, called Integrative Education, that is the foundation of

365
Julia Marshall

ACOE’s approach. Integrative Education denotes a holistic system of knowl-

edge and pedagogy that encompasses not only the intellectual and academic
aspects of schooling but also the cultural and personal/emotional facets of it.
Ken Gnanakan, the theorist who formulated Integrative Education, states:

Integrative education is defined as education that promotes learning

and teaching in non-fragmented ways that embrace notions of holism,
complexity, and interconnection. Integrative education rejects the
common emphasis on transmitted knowledge. Rather it proposes that
knowledge and meaning are constructed by the learner through proc-
esses of interaction with others, the material, and the social and physi-
cal contexts. Integrative education calls to question the traditional gulfs
between teacher and learner, and rejects the divisions between physiol-
ogy, cognition, and emotion in the learning process. Furthermore, inte-
grative education embraces links, rather than divisions, between the
academic disciplines and between various subjective and objective epis-
temologies and methods of inquiry.
(2011: 14)

While Gnanakan supplies the theoretical foundation of ACOE Integrated

Learning model, Fink (2013) imparts the specific building blocks. These are
the components of what he calls Significant Learning. They are: Integration:
connecting ideas, learning experiences and realms of life; Foundational

Figure 1: Integrated Learning Framework.

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 Transforming education through art-centred …

Knowledge: understanding and remembering information and ideas; Learning

How to Learn: becoming a better student, learning how to research a subject
and becoming a self-directing learner; Application: acquiring skills in applying
knowledge and managing projects, and developing skills in thinking critically,
creatively and practically; Human Dimension: learning about oneself and
others; and Caring: developing new empathy, interests and values.
Just as Integrative Education and the elements of Significant Learning
provide a foundation for the Integrated Learning model, they also supply the
guiding principles behind ACOE’s Integrated Learning Framework, which
summarizes the philosophical groundwork for the approach and the prac-
tices inherent in it while providing a set of tools for teaching and curriculum
development. The three key elements of the Framework are: (1) a multidimen-
sional structure for exploring and integrating knowledge that focuses on the
why, what and how of the academic disciplines (the dimensions of the disci-
plines); (2) a delineation of the kinds of knowledge engaged, built upon and
constructed in the approach; and (3) a set of habits of mind fostered through
Integrated Learning.

The Integrated Learning Framework

Part 1 of the Framework: Substantive multidimensional
exploration of knowledge and disciplines
A substantive approach to knowledge requires digging beneath the surface of
academic facts and information to investigate the critical ideas, concepts and
issues that all disciplines address and the reasons why they attend to them. A
substantive or deeper understanding of all knowledge, whether it is of infor-
mation,‘big ideas’ or underlying concepts, also requires knowing where knowl-
edge comes from and how it comes to be. This deeper understanding calls for
a multidimensional approach to the disciplines. Mansilla and Gardner (1998)
provide a framework for this multidimensional deciphering of the disciplines
that they call the dimensions of understanding. According to Mansilla and
Gardner, every discipline has four dimensions, which include a purpose for
constructing knowledge, a body of knowledge, a set of methods to construct
knowledge and an array of forms to represent that knowledge. Breaking disci-
plines such as biology, English language arts, mathematics, history or art
down into these four dimensions shifts the focus towards purpose, while it
also highlights practice, allowing students to understand how humans shape
and understand knowledge. It also prompts learners to see disciplines as
active systems of knowledge driven by passion, curiosity, pleasure and hard
careful work.
A corollary benefit to an emphasis on the four dimensions of the disci-
plines is grasping the nature of knowledge – seeing it not as complete or fixed
but as contextual, provisional, changing with the times or evolving towards
deeper understandings. Recognizing this important concept has enormous
benefits for young learners; it enables them to look critically at academic
content and to see it complexly. It allows them to see how integrating what
we know – not compartmentalizing it – creates new insights and knowledge.
Furthermore, it creates an opening for learners to make new knowledge; it
tells them that they too can be constructors of knowledge who can participate
in and contribute to the generation of knowledge yet to come. For all these
reasons, a multidimensional approach is critical to developing all three kinds
of knowledge described below: foundational, integrated and new.

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Julia Marshall

Part 2 of the Framework: Kinds of knowledge

It is critical to any pedagogy to understand the nature of knowledge and how
different kinds of knowledge fit together, interact and build on each other.
Starting with Fink’s (2013) two forms of knowledge (foundational and inte-
grated), the Integrated Learning approach adds a third kind of knowledge:
new knowledge. This delineation clarifies how knowledge, creativity and
learning fit together.

1. Foundational knowledge: Knowledge that forms the basis of new learn-

ing: academic knowledge and the prior knowledge and understandings
that stem from the learner’s experience.
2. Integrated knowledge: Understanding of how all knowledge and ways of
knowing and learning fit together in a holistic system. Finding common
purposes, methods and thinking, knowledge and forms. Understanding
how disciplines fit together, their commonalities and differences.
Understanding what matters.
3. New knowledge: Knowledge that comes out of foundational and inte-
grated knowledge. This consists of new perspectives, new inferences, new
connections and new inventions. Interpreting the known, projecting from
the known, inventing based on the known and imagining the unknown.
Taking what matters forward. Acting on it. Creative application of founda-
tional and integrated knowledge.

Foundational knowledge
An Integrated Learning perspective on foundational knowledge enables us to
see why academic learning and students’ home knowledge are both impor-
tant; they set the stage for the two other kinds of knowledge. That is, foun-
dational knowledge is not an end unto itself, but the basis and catalyst for
integrated knowledge and new knowledge. Moreover, foundational knowl-
edge is the foundation and springboard for creativity. Indeed, the broader,
deeper and more complex foundational knowledge is, the more solid the base,
the ‘springier’ the board. That is why the Integrated Learning approach encour-
ages teachers to incorporate students’ knowledge from outside of school in
their enquiries, and endorses a substantive multidimensional approach to
academics.

Integrated knowledge
Integrated knowledge is the next level of knowledge. As noted above, inte-
grated knowledge entails understanding the big ideas, concepts and issues that
all disciplines address. It also means understanding their common or similar
purposes, methods, forms and practices and how they fit together as a system.
Integrated knowledge is extended, expanded and energized by a substantive
multidimensional approach to integration. This is because this multi-level
approach can reveal cohesion on all levels (purpose, knowledge, methods and
forms) using diverse disciplinary methods and thinking to do so.
Finding commonalities and patterns and discerning what matters involves
associative thinking and synthesizing – the hallmarks of creativity. The proc-
ess of integration and developing integrated knowledge is definitely creative.
How extensively the process engages knowledge, forms and practices, and
how creatively it constructs connections, determines just how incisive and

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 Transforming education through art-centred …

meaningful the integration can be. This is why we advocate for a multidimen-
sional approach.

New knowledge
Constructing new knowledge is where creativity becomes most apparent. New
knowledge includes the skills and understandings learners did not previously
possess. To gain this knowledge, learners must synthesize and apply what they
already know. They must also question established knowledge. Generating
new knowledge also calls for inferring, projecting ahead, envisioning and
inventing new entities, new ideas and new ways of thinking based on estab-
lished knowledge. With new knowledge, learners go into the unknown to be
proactive and handle uncertainty and the new. New knowledge also includes
fresh or transformed perspectives on issues and ideas and new, deeper under-
standings of others. The viability of new knowledge resides in the breadth and
depth of its foundations, the foundational and integrated knowledge out of
which it emerges. The creative strength of new knowledge lies in how much
it draws from its roots. A substantive multidimensional enquiry makes these
roots more expansive and extensive, and accessible.
It may seem from the points above that the relationship between the three
kinds of knowledge is hierarchical, with foundational knowledge coming first,
integrated knowledge second and new knowledge third. In many ways, this is
true; when we begin, we begin with foundational knowledge. However, it is
also true that integrated and new knowledge become and/or transform foun-
dational knowledge. Indeed, as learning progresses, the relationship among
forms of knowledge becomes ever more cyclical and interdependent. It follows
that foundational knowledge evolves over time, adapting and informing new

Figure 2: Map of foundational to integrated to new knowledge.

369
Julia Marshall

Figure 3: Integrated Learning Habits of Mind, Significant Learning and Integrative

Education.

ways of thinking and new kinds of knowledge. The intermediate step of inte-
gration is critical to this evolution – as is creativity.
Grasping the relationship of the three kinds of knowledge is important
for education leaders because it calls attention to the four central princi-
ples of education: (1) the essentials of academic knowledge (the big ideas,
concepts and meanings); (2) honouring and employing student life experi-
ence and knowledge; (3) focusing on the changing nature of knowledge and
the complex interconnection of all things; and (4) the importance of learners
creating new ideas and perspectives. It also puts systemic understanding and
creativity at the core of education, giving students and leaders on all levels
permission to teach and learn in open-ended, flexible ways – ways that grow
unexpected knowledge. At this time of change, leaders in education must
understand this and set up structures that allow for and encourage the new
and the unforeseen.

Part 3 of the Framework: Integrated Learning Habits of Mind

The Integrated Learning Habits of Mind is a collection of dispositions and
ways of thinking and doing that expands Fink’s tenets of Significant Learning
to include the contributions of art-centred learning and the two pillars of
understanding: flexibility and connection-making.

The habits of mind

1. Enquire creatively: Investigate open-ended questions through a crea-

tive process that employs multi-sensory, aesthetic, imaginative, play-
ful, conscious and intuitive investigations and thinking processes. Apply
poietic logic in enquiry. Poietic logic is the braiding of linear/logical reason-
ing with non-linear/associative thinking (Trueit 2005).

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 Transforming education through art-centred …

2. Think systemically: Explore common ground and interconnections of

disciplinary knowledge, ideas and practices.
3. Understand academic knowledge and disciplines: Have a grasp of signifi-
cant academic knowledge (information and concepts). Understand the
individual disciplines, including the arts, as areas of enquiry: their purposes,
knowledge, methods and forms.
4. Make meaning: Find connections between academic knowledge, oneself
and life outside of school.
5. Think flexibly: Adeptly apply knowledge and ideas to new contexts.
6. Be open and resilient: Develop curiosity regarding the unknown; engage
and navigate challenges, ambiguity and uncertainty.
7. Be metacognitive: Understand and monitor one’s thinking and learning.
8. Care: Develop care about issues and ideas and the motivation to act or
engage in further exploration.
9. Think independently: Develop and follow one’s own personal learning
path. Develop autonomy.
10. Work collaboratively and interdependently: Learn from and with others.
Be able to research and create with others.

The Integrated Learning Habits’ primary innovation is the four habits

directly related to creative practice: being open and resilient, working inde-
pendently, working collaboratively and doing creative enquiry.

Creative enquiry
Notice that the Integrated Learning Habits cite creative enquiry instead of
art production or creation as a habit. I bring this up because creative practice
is often seen to be limited to creating a product. The term ‘creation’ refers to
generating a product or inventing and shaping something new. This is a learn-
ing process; in constructing a product, the artist-learner solves problems and
learns about materials and techniques as well as about the ideas and content
embodied or expressed in the output or product.
Creative enquiry is a broader term than creation; it signifies exploring in
inventive and imaginative ways. Creative enquiry can take any form or use
any method. This means that creative enquiry may include creating a prod-
uct, but a product is not always necessary. Creative enquiry is the core of the
Integrated Learning approach because it goes beyond conventional notions
of art production to emphasizing investigation through artistic thinking and
means. As noted above in our discussion of flexibility, creative enquiry is a fluid,
flexible and generative way to construct knowledge. It is, therefore, an engag-
ing, open-ended alternative to conventional ways of learning that empowers
students to learn through discovery and construct knowledge themselves. This
allows learners to experience the challenge, joy and satisfaction of breaking
new ground or discovering something new.
Furthermore, the Integrated Learning model emphasizes creative enquiry
because it is inherent in all disciplines, and, therefore, a common denomina-
tor among them. Creative enquiry, then, is a basis of integration and a method
for accomplishing it. And it is most innovative when it integrates discipli-
nary practices – when it appropriates creative strategies and ways of thinking
from all the disciplines and creates from them new hybrid methods and ways
of thinking. These mixed processes Klein (2000) calls ‘interstitial practices’.
Interstitial practices spring up on the margins of existing disciplines or in the

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Julia Marshall

spaces between disciplines – in ‘interstitial spaces’. While they exploit discipli-

nary practices, interstitial practices are not hampered by disciplinary traditions
or rules (Klein 2000). The freedom of interstitial practice – working outside and
across borders and choosing and mixing methods – enables scholars and prac-
titioners to creatively tackle critical ideas, issues and problems that transcend
narrow disciplinary concerns. Art-centred enquiry is a particularly eclectic
interstitial practice; it rises out of the arts and education, and it takes its knowl-
edge, methods and forms from both places, and from the academic disciplines
(Marshall 2014). Its roots in disciplinary practices and its freedom to penetrate
and integrate them make it a powerful vehicle for understanding.
An emphasis on creative enquiry highlights the powerful role of creativity and
imagination in learning and building understanding. Meaningful learning and
deep, complex understandings are generated through creative play, investigation,
interpretation and creation. The Integrated Learning approach, consequently, in
foregrounding creative enquiry as a mode for integration and integrated learn-
ing, promotes investigatory learning that fuses and plays with practices in all the
disciplines, the natural sciences, the social sciences, math and the humanities.
Although it is eclectic and inclusive in its methods and practices, the Integrated
Learning model uses non-art methods and thinking within the context of art
practice, emphasizing art practice and art-based perspectives. This is because the
arts can engage disciplinary practices in playful unconventional ways and they
often see disciplinary knowledge and ideas through a critical, iconoclastic lens.
Understanding the critical and creative functions of art-centred enquiry
and art’s kinship with enquiry practices in the academic disciplines can prompt
students and leaders alike to see the arts from a systemic perspective, where
art is viewed as a key component of the knowledge system. As a vital part
of the system, art is not a marginal enterprise with the primary purpose of
making beautiful or expressive products, but is a serious intellectual enter-
prise. It is a means of knitting discrete discipline-based knowledge together
(integrating) and it is also a way to disrupt conventional ways of thinking – to
question established knowledge and norms.
It should also be noted that all of the Integrated Learning Habits pertain
to effective leadership. Indeed, they echo the primary qualities Fullan (2001,
2011) argues as essential to ‘change leaders’ (2011).

Implementing Integrated Learning

How do we make Integrated Learning work? Where do we begin? First, we
work with teachers and teaching artists to develop curricular models that put the
core ideas into action. Then we use these concrete examples to help spread the
word. We create models by working with teachers and administrators to build
on their strengths and needs, and what they already do. We help them to see
that the art-centred integrated learning approach is not just another educational
initiative added to their workload, but an effective way to reach their goals.
This aligns with Fullan’s (2001) and Wheatley’s (2006) premise that effective
change occurs when leaders understand the nature of change – that change is
incremental, complex and non-linear. Furthermore, catalysing change requires
starting where you are, taking workers (or students) through meaningful
experiences that build enthusiasm and clarity of purpose, and helping them to
see that the change they are undertaking promotes their goals.
We need visionary leadership that makes all participants – students, teach-
ers and administrators – into creative leaders who lead through complex,

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flexible, integrated networks. To build these leaders and networks, we work

with teachers who are open to the approach and align with them to trans-
form the culture of their classrooms. This means helping teachers re-envision
their role in the classroom, their relationships with students, the curriculum
they develop and teach, and the teaching strategies they use. We help teachers
evolve from authorities who transmit knowledge to students into knowledgea-
ble co-learners who guide, think and learn with them. We also give teachers the
tools to develop their own innovative and meaningful art-centred curriculum
based on the Integrated Learning approach. Above all, we work with teachers
to develop a community of learning and enquiry – one that encourages crea-
tivity and innovation in teaching and supports teachers in their work – where
teachers become co-leaders with students and their administrators.
With the above as the overarching goals, the Alameda County Department
of Integrated Learning offers a certification programme, the Integrated
Learning Specialist Program (ILSP), for teachers and teaching artists that
provides professional development courses in integrated, culturally respon-
sive teaching and learning, curriculum design, and assessment. In the ILSP,
a team of mentor artist-educators introduces ILSP participants to tools such
as Harvard’s Teaching for Understanding Framework (TfU) (Blythe 1998;
Wiske 1998), Making Learning Visible (MLV) (Richhart et al. 2003) and the
Studio Habits of Mind (ShoM) (Hetland et al. 2007). These frameworks supply
a common vocabulary and the structures that frame and guide our practice.
They also provide a context in which we nest the specific goals and tenets of
the Integrated Learning approach and its framework.
The ILSP is not just a set of professional development courses, but also
the epicentre of a network of practitioners/leaders. Former and present partic-
ipants in the ILSP programme are individual teaching artists, teachers and
teams of teachers from various schools around the Bay Area, many of whom
are developing models built on Integrated Learning ideas and frameworks
in their elementary, middle or high school courses. We find that when these
teachers demonstrate how art-centred integrated learning works in their
schools, their peers and administrators take notice, and often schools adopt
these practices. This is occurring in schools and districts, and among teachers
across the Bay Area and beyond.
We find that the strategies and processes we engage in our work tie in
with Fullan’s (2011) principles of effective leadership for change: learning
through practice, being clear and resolute in purpose, building relationships
among stakeholders, fostering collaboration, and maintaining a growth mind-
set. This mindset is the disposition towards continuously learning and adapt-
ing in order to take advantage of the ‘adjacent possible’ (Johnson 2010), which
is a combination of the wisdom within the organization and the insights the
organization gleans from others outside. Underlying all of this is the central
premise that social organizations are interconnected living systems that learn
as they adapt and regenerate (Wheatley 2006).

Concluding remarks: Systems and systemic change

Transforming education requires a clear vision grounded in effective ideas
and practices, and a comprehensive grasp of all the parts of that vision and
how they fit together (Fullan 2001, 2011; Wheatley 2006). For the Integrated
Learning Program in Alameda County, the Integrated Learning Framework,
supported by the Harvard Frameworks (TfU, MLV and ShoM), provides the

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Julia Marshall

vision, clarity and cohesion we need. That is, it affords us what Fullan (2011)
quoting Kruger (2008) calls ‘Simplexity’: a clear, concrete and easy to under-
stand vision that frames and drives complex practices.
In working on multiple levels, the Integrated Learning approach aligns
with a systemic view of education. The systems metaphor comes from Systems
Theory (Bertalanffy 1968; Laszlo 1996), which describes living systems as
complex organized wholes that are governed and structured by processes
within them. Systems theory stresses the way parts of systems are interde-
pendent and integrated. The systems metaphor works well as a lens on both
social institutions and knowledge structures.
In regard to knowledge structures, understanding knowledge as a living
system allows us to see how all the parts of knowledge and learning fit
together as an integrated whole. It also explains how knowledge adapts in
response to outside influences and also changes through the dynamics within
disciplines. Art-centred integrated learning is part of the knowledge system
within the education system; it is a kind of learning, a stimulus for learning
and a catalyst for changing knowledge systems. Indeed, an art perspective can
transform the way knowledge is understood. From a systems perspective, this
reframing of knowledge is an alteration of its system; it can affect the think-
ing and methods that produced it. Changing perspective on knowledge can,
therefore, have a transformative effect on the social institutions, the disciplines
and the education system that generate, support and disseminate knowledge.
We see here how an intellectual system affects a social structure, in particular
how an integrated approach to knowledge can have a domino effect on teach-
ers, students and policy-makers.
Through a systems lens, institutions such as schools, districts and commu-
nities are cast as social systems; they are integrated interdependent living
systems that work through social networks. Schooling, therefore, is an organic,
dynamic system of knowledge and learning in which all parts coexist, interact
and work together. Seeing education in this way shapes our approach to educa-
tional change; we want the Integrated Learning approach to change the system
systemically, and we network to build strong networks to make that happen.
Systems theory highlights change in living systems. Systems must change to
thrive; they must regenerate and evolve. This calls for creativity. It entails altering
or scrapping old ways of thinking and outdated processes that do not function
well, and replacing them with new, wiser and more effective ones. It also entails
rethinking system structures and the roles and relationships of players within the
system. Because it presents alternative ways of thinking and doing, and reframes
our understandings of stakeholders, we believe art-centred integrated learning
is the instrument of change our schools need to evolve and flourish. Indeed, art-
centred integrated learning is working in Northern California. It is permeating
and invigorating our system, our networks of teachers, teaching artists, admin-
istrators, parents and students. It is bringing us together as collaborators and
agents of change, as ‘change leaders’ (Fullan 2011). And it is going ‘viral’. In a
nutshell, we believe this is a promising model for transforming education on all
levels – from pre-kindergarten to professional development of leaders.

Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Louise Music, Ann Wettrich, and all of the Integrated
Learning Team for their wisdom and ideas in developing the Integrated
Learning Framework and for their ongoing efforts to put it into action.

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Suggested citation
Marshall, J. (2014), ‘Transforming education through art-centred integrated
learning’, Visual Inquiry: Learning & Teaching Art 3: 3, pp. 361–376,
doi: 10.1386/vi.3.3.361_1

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Julia Marshall

Contributor details
Julia Marshall is a Professor of Art Education at San Francisco State
University in San Francisco, California, USA. A specialist in teacher educa-
tion, she is Design and Development Consultant to the Alameda County
Office of Education Department of Integrated Learning where she guides the
Integrated Learning Specialist Program. Her interests lie in arts integration,
creativity and learning, and the uses of contemporary art in the classroom. She
has published a series of articles on these interconnecting topics in various art
education journals and anthologies, and is co-author with David M. Donahue
of Art-Centered Learning Across the Curriculum: Integrating Contemporary Art in
the Secondary School Classroom (2014).
Contact: Art Department, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway
Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA.
E-mail: [email protected]

Julia Marshall has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was
submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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