Integrate or syntegrate? : models for integrating music across the primary curriculum

![CDATA[In many primary schools, generalist teachers say they do not have the time to teach music due to the crowded curriculum. This then has led to some teachers finding different ways of teaching all they need to teach within the given time period, which has sometimes led to their integrating the learning experiences. For many years, teachers and academics have advocated the use of integration in the educational classroom to provide children with holistic and meaningful learning experiences from which they can generalise understandings and then apply these to other situations, as well as addressing the issues created by the crowded curriculum. However, in investigating how to integrate the curriculum effectively, practitioners and researchers have found that, in many cases, integration has become a meaningless and often overworked word. Everyone seems to have a different understanding and explanation of the word. Some are ardent proponents for their interpretation of integration, and others are just as ardently against it, seeing integration as a diluting of important outcomes within subjects such as music or visual arts. This paper discusses three models or levels of integration where curriculum subjects can work together to achieve outcomes. Each is valid in itself when used by a creative and resourceful teacher to promote the children’s understanding and application of their learning and can also be used alongside the other models within the context of a program of work. They are service connections (one subject servicing learning in another subject), symmetric correlations (two subjects using the same material to achieve their own outcomes), and what we will call syntegration (a created word which indicates that different subjects are working together synergistically to explore a theme, concept, or focus question and achieving their own outcomes as well as generic outcomes). This paper will examine the three models and give examples of how they can be used to teach music within the primary school curriculum.]]