Integrating Artful Practices as a Sustainable and Innovative Approach to French Language Learning

Abstract

This study investigated the successes and barriers that surround the implementation of artful practices into French elementary classrooms within Ontario. The literature demonstrates that integrating the arts has many benefits, allowing students to become more engaged and kinaesthetically involved in their language learning. By examining the narratives of educators who use music and the arts as a teaching tool, this narrative inquiry explored the experiences of teachers integrating the arts into their teaching practices, and also identified the supports needed to implement more elements of the arts into the French programs of teachers who may not be implementing arts-based strategies. Along with my own personal narrative as a co-participant, the remaining 2 participants were engaged in their storied landscapes through qualitative interviews, focusing specifically on what Dewey (1938) refers to as the nature of experience. Particularly, the relationships between teachers and the arts, and teachers and French were examined to uncover how these relationships have affected their teaching experiences with this integration.