Embracing unpredictability: A rhizomatic approach to arts integration in literacies and literary education

This chapter explores a notion of embracing unpredictability in trans-curricular teaching by exploring events from arts-integrated teaching in literacies and literary education. We present two vignettes, created from data from two research projects that combined poetry with other art forms: dancing in primary education and video-making in lower secondary education. Theoretically, we engage with a rhizomatic approach, acknowledging that teaching and knowledge-creation are constantly unpredictable. In the vignettes, we showcase various forces and struggles in facing students’ unpredictable doings in arts-integrated teaching in literacies and literary education to further discuss how the notion of embracing unpredictability might have provided possibilities to do teaching otherwise. By proposing the question What happens if?, we discuss how the question might enable teachers to embrace the unpredictable turns that can happen in arts integration. In conclusion, we discuss what embracing unpredictability might set in motion for arts integration in literacies and literary education and the opportunities and challenges it may bring to trans-curricular teaching more broadly.