Re-imagining Arts Integration: Rhizomatic Relations of the Everyday

Abstract

Curriculum integration often appears complex and when this happens those who are involved with providing professional development or teacher education may be inclined to promote simplistic or solution-oriented approaches to facilitate integration. Many variants of a problem-solution model exist, and programs that encourage teachers to identify a few difficulties and then strategize possible ways to remove those difficulties more than likely minimize the very benefits of an integrative program. In contrast to this, we propose a conceptualization of curriculum integration that is rhizomatic. Supporting and extending the research that integrative arts practices lead to imaginative, flexible, and embodied pedagogical praxis, a rhizomatic integration of the arts values complicated and disruptive possibilities that enliven the imagination toward more socially just ways of living and learning. Integration, when understood as rhizomatic, will enable teachers to better respond to the everyday multiplicity of surprises that are part of their ever-changing world.