Art-Integrated Learning (AIL): An Effective Learning

Approach for 21st-Century Learners

Sheetal Prajapati and Narendra Kumar

Central University of Rajasthan, India

Keywords: Art-Integrated Learning (AIL), 21st-Century Learner, 21st-Century Skills.

Abstract: Learners can construct and demonstrate their understanding through an artistic medium using the Art-

Integrated Learning Approach. AIL Approach can be used as a pedagogical tool & this approach aims for the

active participation of learners in the teaching-learning process. In the present era, children and adolescent’s

must-have 21st-century skills to be empowered to deal with challenges and concerns when it comes to the

workplace. These skills can bring positive psychological and behavioral changes in the students. The primary

goal of AIL Approach is to develop skills among the learners because NEP 2020 put light on skill-based

teaching & competency-based teaching. This research paper includes how AIL is important for 21st-century

learners, characteristics of 21st-century learners, in this era why it is needed to integrate art with learning,

how AIL & socio-emotional learning is related to each other and what are the strategies for the implementation

of AIL in the classroom. The mindful inclusion of AIL in teaching practice will result in the eradication of

the rote-learning habit of learners

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Need for Effective Learning (at the

School Level)

21st-Century learners are facing psychological stress

related to their studies, their careers after schooling,

and how they effectively work at their workplace

after schooling, and for this Art-Integrated Learning

can become an effective and innovative teaching-

learning process for 21st-century learners. It is a

cross-curricular approach in which different art forms

are integrated with the school subjects to meet the

outcomes of the subject, objectives of education,

objectives of the learner, objectives of the society, &

objectives of the nation. This innovative approach

also helps in developing a conceptual understanding

of different subjects. Mohalik, R., & Basu, M.

conducted a study to check the effectiveness of Art-

Integrated Learning in developing an understanding

of the concepts in geography, especially at the middle

stage. They found that Art-Integrated Learning

significantly develops the conceptual understanding

of geography at VII standard. This shows that Art-

Integrated Learning is more effective than the

traditional method of teaching.

1.2 Learning Need of the 21st-Century

Learners

A teacher must adopt the method through which

creativity enhances among the learners. Learners

must have their own choices that enhance their

creativity that nurture their soul instead of killing it.

For this, we have to look at Finland’s education

system which is at 1st position in the world in 2019

for their education. For this, they give a lot of freedom

to the teachers to adopt any teaching method to teach

the students and they adopt generally innovative

teaching methods for the students and have the

freedom to choose their way to connect with students.

We ought to be freeing educators and learners from

the constraints of burdensome subject standards.

Learning “how to learn” and organizing information

is a more effective method of empowering learners.

These skills would allow students to explore their

interests and with the help of this motivation

enhances vastly. Students wouldn't have to be

"shoved" with content by teachers. Teachers only

facilitate them to move in the proper direction or in a

positive direction. This is the basic need of 21st-

century learners that plays a crucial role in everyone’s

life so that they become responsible citizens of

society, and nation.

718

Prajapati, S. and Kumar, N.

Art-Integrated Learning (AIL): An Effective Learning Approach for 21st-Century Learners.

DOI: 10.5220/0012502400003792

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 1st Pamir Transboundary Conference for Sustainable Societies (PAMIR 2023), pages 718-723

ISBN: 978-989-758-687-3

In 2020, the United Kingdom was at the 1st position

in its education system with a quality index of 78.2.

At the age of 5 years, the kids are sent to school. In

the U.K., primary education is having two key stages.

In the first key stage, two years are mainly associated

with pre-primary education, and in the second key

stage when the learner reached 11 years the education

is associated with junior school education. In the U.K.

each country is having their own curriculum like

England, Scotland, etc. The primary school

curriculum includes subjects like arts, cultural

studies, social studies, science, linguistics, religious

education, moral education, and technology-related

education. This helps their personal development, and

enhances mutual understanding, being creative, etc.

For secondary education, some advanced subjects

were included in their curriculum like ICT, Modern

foreign languages, sex and relationship education in

some cases, design and technology, citizenship, &

physical education with the main subjects.

In 2021, the United States was at the 1st position in

its education system. In the U.S. there is a tutoring

system that totally involves parents to plan their kids'

schooling accordingly. There is more diversity in the

U.S. The U.S. educational system offers a wide range

of programs that draw students from throughout the

globe. More importance is given to sports and

extracurricular activities. They use the latest

technological method in their teaching-learning

process.

In the light of above data, this can be concluded that

in the present time, education needs the proper

involvement of parents for their children’s schooling

in India, learners have the flexibility to choose their

subjects accordingly, and techno-pedagogical

teaching-learning must be involved in the classroom,

teachers must have facilities to choose the way they

want to interact with their learners, make the

conducive environment & always adopt innovative

teaching practices in the classroom. These are the

major things that must be included in India’s

education system & also for the benefit of 21st-

century learners.

1.3 Characteristics of the 21st-Century

Learner

There is a huge difference in the characteristics of a

traditional learner and a learner living in this digital

age that is a 21st-century learner. These students are

renowned for having many imaginative ideas and

embracing a collaborative and communicative

culture. They employ a wide variety of brainstorming

strategies to reach their objectives. They may have

huge, radical ideas as well as useful ones. They think

there are countless options.

A teacher should do for their 21st-century learners:

Develop proficiency and skills in using technology-

based tools which will help them to work better at

their academia and at their workplaces. With this,

they are able to choose the appropriate tool that will

help in addressing their needs.

Develop cross-cultural connections with one another

because while working collaboratively the work can

be done effectively. And it's crucial for students in the

twenty-first century to comprehend how connections

enhance learning and to be purposeful when forming

connections and networks.

Create materials that can be shared, interpreted, and

distributed that can be for a variety of purposes.

Students in the twenty-first century must be able to

access information from various sources, in a number

of different formats, and in various languages.

21st-century learners have the knowledge of ethical

responsibilities to deal with ethical practices and

accordingly create information and use resources.

These are the characteristics of 21st-century learners,

as a teacher we have to develop these skills among the

students with the help of Art-Integrated learning.

2 WHAT IS AIL & HOW IT

HELPS IN ENHANCING

LEARNING?

Arts integration is a method of academic instruction

in which an arts area is linked to a content area to

increase student engagement, acquire knowledge, and

ability to reflect (Anderson, 2012; Loughlin &

Anderson, 2015).

Art-Integrated Learning helps in enhancing interest &

curiosity to know something. Also, Kisida et al.

undertook a study in 2020 and the result of the study

revealed that arts integration using drama art form

was successful in history lessons for third to the fifth

standard also demonstration creates accurate

academic knowledge, encouragement for hisory,

interpersonal functioning, and curiosity in the arts.

Rinne et al. conducted a study on the retention of

vocabulary knowledge in 2011 and discovered that

explicitly teaching academic vocabulary within

multiple sensory arts integration enhanced

vocabulary retention among students from three to

fifth standard students.

The method is novel since the artworks enhance the

history, philosophy, and sociology of the scientific

curriculum by equipping learners with motivation

Art-Integrated Learning (AIL): An Effective Learning Approach for 21st-Century Learners

719

(Vazquez-Manassero et al., 2021). The integration of

science and art history may also play a significant role

in increasing instructors' and students' interest and

motivation for teaching and learning science

(Vazquez-Manassero et al., 2021).

2.1 Why Do We Need to Integrate Art

with Learning?

Learners in arts-integration classroom settings work

"with" & "through" different art forms to achieve

educational, interpersonal, and internal objectives

said Cornett in 2007. In this study, arts integration is

considered as a strategy for linking the advancement

of skills and concepts with skills and concepts from

other aspects of learning through different modalities

of interaction in classrooms. Somehow, Art-

Integrated Learning promotes physical &

psychological well-being. With the help of Art-

Integrated Learning learners can build creative habits

among themselves like they can generate artistic

ideas, organize ideas in a different manner, & deepens

their understanding. It can be used as a tool for

motivation, and thinking, and for better academic

achievement.

● Students will comprehend their fundamental

abilities and be able to communicate their

ideas more effectively.

● It can instill creativity, intelligence,

compassion, & respect in the young mind.

● They develop and grow in confidence in

their capacity to learn and perform tasks.

● It can make our leaner better

communicators.

● Art is the medium in which kids are

instructed to pursue their own learning and

academic interests is art.

● Develops the ability to gain more insight

from their mistakes & in this way they

become better at every day.

● Learning becomes more holistic, joyful, &

more experiential.

● The students learned more effectively and

more enjoyable through active learning

methods, and their self-esteem also grew.

2.2 AIL & Socio-Emotional Learning

Art-Integrated Learning helps in enhancing the

learners' socio-emotional aspects (Casciano et al.,

2019). It promotes engagement, interpersonal skills,

self-control & leadership skills among the learners as

results showed by Casciano in his study. The data

shows the impact of art integration on student’s socio-

emotional aspect in two ways such as implementing

easy and simple activities that brings growth in

learners’ social-emotional competencies and

providing a methodology to the teacher which

encourages learners’ engagement, which brings a

positive change in learners’ social-emotional growth.

This study shows that art integration can be adopted

and implemented and positively affect the classroom.

In this approach, students are also free to explore

tasks and resources at their own pace.

2.3 Different Approaches of AIL

Bjorklund & Ahlskog found that there is an approach

that can be used in the integration of art and

mathematics i.e., the Process-Oriented Approach

with this a learner can do a good illustration of

mathematizing, as Freu-denthal defines the process of

acquiring mathematical knowledge. Children are

urged to examine mathematical links and ideas

openly in these projects. This also supports the

learning process of the learners which they are going

to learn. The integration seemed to provide additional

support that made it easier to build aesthetic skills

(Björklund & Ahlskog-Björkman, 2017).

A comprehensive view of learning objectives,

especially for learning mathematics, helps in

developing conceptual understanding and reasoning

abilities, as represented in the developmental-

oriented approach. Conceptual learning appears to be

primarily made possible by real integration with the

art (Björklund & Ahlskog-Björkman, 2017).

2.4 Benefits of Art-Integrated Learning

Art-Integrated Learning (AIL) is beneficial for the

learners to gain or enhances skills like creating

something new with the help of existing knowledge.

Art-Integrated Learning helps in developing 21st-

century skills among 21st-century learners. These

21st-century skills can be broadly categorized into

three domains: learning skills, Literacy skills, & life

skills.

● Learning skills include 4C’s which implies:

Collaboration, Communication, Critical

Thinking, & Creativity.

● Literacy skills include IMT which implies:

Information Literacy, Media Literacy, &

Technology Literacy.

● Life skills include FLIPS which implies:

Flexibility, Leadership, Initiative,

Productivity, & Social skills.

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Art-Integrated learning helps to develop a deep

insight into the concepts because when students share

their experiences and work in a group then they learn

several things. Incorporating artists and the arts into

this programme emphasized social contact engaged

various senses and encouraged participants to think

imaginatively (Jacobson et al., 2016). The integration

of arts with the content of different subjects also helps

in retention. The content remains in their mind for a

long time. Hardiman et al., 2014 found in the study

that there was better retention in Art Integrated

condition when compared with the traditional

teaching method. This shows that the Art-Integrated

condition is having a positive effect on students’

retention power. The flexibility of art history in the

K–12 art curriculum, both historically and currently,

can offer distinctive and potentially illuminating

insights to discussions about the subject's waning

importance in higher education and possible

strategies for its survival (Madeline Rislowa and

Kipton D. Smilie 2020). Students were able to

communicate their learning visually because art

integration boosted engagement and understanding

(Hunkins, 2019). The use of different music

pedagogies helps in building a positive change in the

aspect of 21st-century skills and also in academic

achievement (Vasil, 2020).

3 STRATEGIES FOR

IMPLEMENTATION OF AIL IN

THE CLASSROOM

Teachers and students can depict and communicate

concepts in a variety of multimodal ways using

visual, performance or dramatic, musical, and dance

or movement art genres (Anderson & Valero, 2020).

In order to meet the multifaceted demands of today's

students, arts integration and 21st-century skills are

becoming more and more important in education

(Corbisiero-Drakos et al., 2021). They discovered

that through arts integration strategy, there was a

positive influence on learners’ academic achievement

and the development of 21st-century skills. Students

gain valuable life skills while using their knowledge

of math, physics, computer science, and the arts

(Howe & Ruberg, 2019). The result found by Howe

& Ruberg in the study is that learners believe DigiPen

had a big influence on their job and higher education

decisions. This study found that Art-Integrated

Instructions in science showed a better result when it

comes to the conventional method of teaching & also

helps in increasing the long-term memory of learners

(Hardiman, 2017).

● Students are encouraged to participate in

role-playing activities.

● Allow learners to use drawing and labeling

to articulate their feelings, ideas, and

emotions.

● Make art a part of other subjects.

● Motivate the learners to use vocabulary

related to the arts.

According to Peppler et al., 2014; Robinson, 2013;

Scripps & Paradis, 2014, they found that the

involvement of arts with the content has a strong

correlation between them. Art-Integration is a

creative process, that can help in personal

development, helps in becoming a responsible

citizen, enhances 21st-century skills, helps in

interpersonal development, and helps in professional

development.

4 CONCLUSION

With the help of different art forms like performing

art, visual art, role-play, etc in the classroom can

easily enhance 21st-century skills. Learners and

instructors may be capable of adjusting cultural

systems to satisfy a more equal and fair range of

human needs if they are allowed to reflect critically

on their progress and strong points. While middle

school is an important time for all children to develop

their STEM careers (Maltese & Tai, 2009). The study

shows that there was a positive impact on learners’

career planning. This study was limited to female

students only (Mark, Ph.D. et al., 2021). Blended

mode enhances the soft skills & hard skills among the

learners, GPA of the learners also increased

additionally (Universitas Jambi, Indonesia et al.,

2021). Integration of the arts enables

contextualization and relationships, both actual and

imagined, that may enhance systems thinking (Grace

et al., 2021). There is a need to shift the education

system towards 21st-century education. It is

suggested that AIL be implemented in all elementary

schools to make teaching more enjoyable and

effective.

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