Integrative Technologies of the Formation of the Subject Matter Competencies of Primary School Pupils Studying the Integrated Course “Art”

Abstract

This article focuses on the content of the concept of competencies. It analyses scholarly approaches to the examination of secondary school pupils’ competencies. The author offers her interpretation of pupils’ subject matter competencies in the system of general art education in Ukraine.

Attention is paid to the content of the subject matter/ sphere competencies (i.e. subject matter competencies lato sensu) that absorb and integrate musical, painting, choreographic, theatrical and cinema segments (subject matter competencies stricto sensu). Personal and social competencies (metacompetencies) are embedded in subject matter competencies. Such metacompetencies hinge on value-based orientations and global outlook priorities of a person, as well as her or his mental and aesthetic experience.

In addition, this article provides a classification of integrative art-and-pedagogical technologies aimed at the formation of the subject matter competencies of pupils studying the integrated course “Art” in the light of New Ukrainian School requirements. Depending on the leading integrator or a few decisive integrators, the author groups these integrative technologies in accordance with the following types of integration: 1) the global outlook or thematic type of integration, occurring within the framework of topics that are common to the different arts and connected with an artistic depiction of various aspects of life and environment; 2) the aesthetic and art studies type of integration, presupposing the mastery of aesthetic, art-and-language, genre-related, style-related and other concepts and categories that are cognate in the different arts; and 3) the complex type of integration, where the leading integrators of the first two groups are combined or where other integrators are added to this combination.

Finally, the features of integrative art-and-pedagogical technologies and their realisation in art classes are unveiled by using the example of all-Ukrainian award-winning textbooks for primary schools.