ABSTRACT
The 1970s and early 1980s were years of rapid curriculum development when many educators advocated forms of teaching that would provide opportunities for children to experience the arts not only within the separate disciplines but also through more holistic activities. In a series of initiatives there was frequent reference to terms such as integrated arts, interdisciplinary inquiry in the arts, and inter-related arts, and curriculum innovators recommended strategies designed to bring teachers together in the implementation of new and broader programmes of artistic activity. These proposals were often based on the assumption that the arts disciplines share certain common unifying features, and to recognise this in curriculum planning and practice would be to deepen and enrich children's experiences. Of course, the idea of integrated or interdisciplinary studies was by no means new to many teachers; neither were suggestions for this type of work confined to one area of the curriculum. In a number of national projects integration was applied across the curriculum and often associated with a progressive tendency to break down subject barriers and thereby overcome what was regarded by some educationists as the unacceptable and restrictive compartmentalisation of knowledge.
