Although some learning outcomes or subject area knowledge may be better achieved through discipline-specific instruction, deeper understanding may be attained through the integration of the disciplines. Some outcomes for each area of study complement each other and offer opportunities for interdisciplinary teaching and learning. Making connections among the arts strands, and with other areas of study, can help students increase the breadth and depth of their learning.

By using a particular conceptual focus or context as an organizer, outcomes from more than one subject area can be achieved. Interdisciplinary learning can increase students' understanding of the related disciplines and conceptual connections. Interdisciplinary instruction, however, must be more that just a series of activities. Each individual subject area's outcomes must be achieved to ensure that in-depth learning occurs. If deep understanding is to occur, a unit or sequence of lessons cannot be based on superficial or arbitrarily connected activities (Brophy and Aleeman, 1991). The outcomes and activities of one area of study must not be obscured by the outcomes or activities of another area of study (Education Review Office, 1996, p.13).

As students research the arts and explore contemporary art practice, they will encounter terminology such as interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary, intermedia and multimedia. Much contemporary art blurs the boundaries among art forms and other disciplines and definitions for these terms are constantly evolving.

In this curriculum, the term interdisciplinary refers to interactions of two or more disciplines in response to a contemporary artistic challenge (e.g., explorations of relationships between dance and photography), or to art practice that employs new technologies in a manner that challenges traditional definitions of arts disciplines.