Arts-based literature education
Arts-based approach to literature is suitable for all readers, because different forms of art provide ways to express one’s personal reading experience and expand on it alone or together. Language and art are both connected to, for example, emotional life, materiality, corporality, objects and locations. This is how arts-based methods make it possible to change people’s actions and views. (Pöyhönen & Paulasto 2020.) The provided musical instrument or watercolor brush, along with the child’s body, are tools for the child to express the inner emotions, impressions and experiences that are related to the world created by the text. When a child lives through the adventures and environments of the book’s character, utilizing multisensory and artistic methods, the reading experience is pervasive. When a child lives through a story on multiple levels, he or she can acquire a character’s way to describe emotions or bring problems to light.
Multi-art approach to literature connects books as a vital part of art education, so that books are not regarded as objects separate from other aesthetic realms of experience. In arts-based literature education, learning is integrative and extensive. It combines learning about different artforms as well as teaches social-emotional skills. (Aerila et al. 2021; Fettig, Cook, Morizio, Gould & Brodsky 2018; Sunday, McClure & Schulte 2014.) Literature also teaches about different subjects and phenomena based on the chosen literary content.
Arts-based literature education provides a firm base for creating a reading community in a classroom or a group of children (Kauppinen & Aerila 2020a). Combining different artforms creates a holistic story, or an interpretation of a story, that makes up the core for community reading. Each child from the group is needed to build up the story, because everyone’s effort is needed to give birth to the finished product. Interpretation that is based on different artforms is born from the individual interpretations of the group’s children, which means that the story will become a shared experience. A shared interpretation thus strengthens the group’s sense of unity and has a positive effect on the group’s atmosphere and the opportunity for community learning.
