One Page Summary

Contemporary literature in Italy and also in other countries reveals that a key issue in the standard of formal education and an abiding concern for every educator, is facilitating students’ deep engagement in the learning process. In order to create a pleasant school environment that will work according to the needs of students and society, current trends in educational research advocate the necessity of alternative educational strategies. 

Purpose
Our proposal concerns the integration of an innovative type of activities, called "arts flow activities", into the learning process of any subject matter.
We sought the theoretical basis of this endeavour in two approaches: The first is the ‘flow theory’ (Csikszentmihalyi 1991)- which describes the state when a person exhibits a high level of self-motivation and active concentration on a task- and the second theoretical approach comes from the field of ‘arts integration’, -in which arts are incorporated into the curriculum, influencing the teaching of the non-arts disciplines (Deasy, 2003). Based on these, we designed activities and integrated them in Greek schools that would increase students’ engagement in the learning process (Argyriadi, 2018; Argyriadi & Sotiropoulou – Zormpala, 2017).
Specific factors were measured as indicators of the level of students’ engagement. Από τα ευρήματα φάνηκε ότι τα παιδιά τα οποία εφάρμοσαν τις ‘arts-flow activities’ verbally participated more, engaged in the subjects in multiple modes, responded to the subjects in a creative way, were activated on multiple levels, developed richer relations with their classmates, felt that the teaching hour passed more quickly, experienced challenging situations, more frequently required feedback on their performance, received feedback from teachers more frequently, and had a positive affective experience.