Views of College Lecturers on the Integration of Music, Art and Design and Physical Education into Expressive Arts in Zambia: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

The concerns of an overloaded curriculum persisted in Zambia’s education system as far back as 1992. This lasted until 2002 when the number of subjects was reduced from 11 to 5 in primary schools and from fourteen to six in colleges of education. The study established lecturers’ views on the integration of music, art and design and physical education subjects into expressive arts in colleges of education in Zambia in order to gain insights on prospects and challenges of how the process of integration was done and its implications on the subjects involved. A qualitative approach was adopted for the study in order to gain an understanding of arts integration through the views of college lecturers who train primary school teachers. Twenty-four lecturers were conveniently selected from ten colleges of education. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews and analysed along common themes that arose from participants narratives. The findings revealed that college lecturers saw arts integration as the merging of three subjects into one, a combination of more than two subjects that are related to one another in a number of ways such a s having similar competencies, and merging them into topics. The study reported some benefits and prospects of arts integration as ranging from according lessons a more practical approach, enhancing creativity among leaners, promoting transfer of learning, to supporting collaboration among lecturers and learners. Further, it was found that there were a number of challenges to arts integration ranging from time constraint, lack of human resource, lack of teaching and learning materials to limited knowledge to teach subjects as integrated. The study concluded that lecturers lacked a philosophical understanding of integration and were largely unable to integrate the subjects as expressive arts in actual teaching.