Integrating Students Needs in Art Curriculum

Integrating Students Needs in Art Curriculum
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Globally, students fall into diverse patterns of behaviour and abilities. Whereas students from the same cultural and ethnic groups, gender and socioeconomic backgrounds depict almost similar behaviour, they consistently differ from learners in other groups. Thus, if teachers are not careful, they risk teaching standard lessons that do not accommodate all learners need. The traditional classrooms, for example, are curriculum-centred and learners are required to adapt to the curriculums irrespective of their needs and capabilities (Ahmad, 2015). To effectively learn in general classroom settings, students with learning challenges often receive accommodations and services. However, when those services and accommodations are paired with a rigid curriculum, these learners are left out.
Learning institutions share the same objectives – to help students achieve their full potential. Nevertheless, teachers encounter learners in class depicting significant diversity in their needs and interests. In reality, students are different in terms of their prior knowledge and skills, motivation, interests, backgrounds, learning styles, intelligence and physical ability (Halladay & Moses, 2013). Therefore, to tap to each student potential, teachers need to value each learner as an independent individual capable of making progress.
Arts are the equalizer in education. It is accessible to all students irrespective of their background, language proficiency, intellectual, or physical ability. Arts are nonverbal and focus on imagination and creativity, learners in any classroom can contribute in different sustaining ways. Involvement in arts helps improve understanding as well as performance in other academic subjects that may demand well-developed capabilities with language (Iglesias & Ye, 2019). As such, effective learning of arts is supported and facilitated through arts courses that are permeated throughout the curriculum.
The breadth of diversity in classrooms span in multiple disabilities including orthopedic, emotional, intellectual, hearing and visual impairments. Fortunately, arts can be taught to all types of students regardless of their capabilities. Because arts permeate other vital core subjects, infusing arts into integrated curriculum provides natural and learning to students with diverse needs. As such, teachers need extra planning and integrated curriculum that can accommodate various requirements of the students (Christianakis, 2017). Also, arts are the entry point where students develop strategic knowledge, improve motivations in other subjects as well as make connections. In reality, increased participation helps increase divergent and critical thinking in students.
As a lead art teacher, it is not only vital to create arts but also developing a learning environment that ensures that every student feels valued, included and encouraged. Similarly, it helps develop positive experiences in an all-inclusive art room. In such classroom settings, students feel valued and represented in learning. As such, students can build art inspired by the diverse variety of artists and themes. In reality, students study and succeed by appreciating t...