International Journal of Education & the Arts

In his forward to Curriculum in Abundance (2006), curriculum theorist William Pinar suggests that education should offer opportunities for self-formation which include the cultivation of our capacity to surrender, begin again, and dwell in possibility. This paper examines the theory and art education practices of a forgotten and often undervalued art educator, Henry Schaefer-Simmern, whose methodology seems congruent with some of the goals of holistic education today. Substantial insights were gleaned through interviews with one of his former students, Professor Emeritus of Art Education, Roy Abrahamson. Dr. Abrahamson's collection of published and unpublished papers on Schaefer-Simmern, his art work done under Schaefer-Simmern's direction, and his collection of student work extended my understanding of an alternative, yet viable, holistic approach to teaching and learning. Another look at this kind of art instruction is valuable as a part of a contemporary holistic practice.

The purpose of this research was to understand how student art teachers perceive the contribution to their training of community service in various frameworks, such as a prison and a drug rehabilitation center. The research was conducted in 2006-2007 in the School of Art at Beit Berl College, Israel, in two stages. In the first stage, six open-ended interviews were held with students who had taken part in community service, transcriptions of which were subjected to content analysis, yielding four main themes, each comprised of several items. These items were later formulated into a questionnaire, which was administered in the second stage to 120 students of the college. The questionnaire results demonstrate that students felt that community service had contributed meaningfully to their training as art teachers and also helped them to define and develop their emotional world, but the respondents were divided regarding the contributions of community service to their creative work as artists.

This exploratory pilot study investigates the extent to which participating in a community cultural development (CCD) initiative builds social capital among children. An independent youth arts organisation implemented two cultural activities, developing a compact disc of original music and designing mosaic artworks for a library courtyard, in two schools located in a socio-economically disadvantaged area of South-East Queensland, Australia. After participation in the project, 39 primary school children aged 9 to 13 years completed a generic Social Capital in Children Questionnaire designed specifically for evaluating arts projects. Findings support the role of CCD within schools for enhancing social capital in young people, identifying a range of positive impacts regarding self-concept, reciprocity, feelings of obligation, extended networks and trust. The results suggest that program components, such as facilitating 'friendship' connections between children and designing activities that incorporate the sharing of materials, equipment and tools to facilitate reciprocity, should be an important focus for developing arts programs within a social capital framework.

Several governments throughout the world promote cultural partnership programs as a means of enriching the school curriculum. How do such programs affect teachers and artists? What meaning do they give to the presence of the cultural dimension in schools? To answer these questions, I examined the content of twelve semi-structured interviews (n=12) conducted with teachers and artists within a sociology of justification theoretical framework. The findings suggest that cultural partnerships between teachers and artists enabled them to experience happiness and satisfaction as well as to learn from each other. Cultural partnerships seem to produce these effects when they involve a dialogue between teachers and artists in order to reach mutual understanding and respect. I conclude this paper by addressing the factors to consider when implementing cultural partnerships and the limitations of my study.

This paper is intended as a broad, conceptual and theoretical treatise on the aims of teaching art in the age of global digital media. To contextualize a set of general recommendations for art education technology pedagogy, I first provide an overview of the meteoric rise of on-line social networks, and consider questions about the nature and status of these networks as virtual communities, looking at both recent studies of Internet users and at contemporary discussions about what actually constitutes a community. Ideas about community are then connected to a discussion of the public sphere, the commons, and participatory democracy as each of these lead to calls for global civil society in cyberspace. Drawing from this thinking, recommendations for art education technology pedagogy are offered, focusing on approaches that give prominence to making time for inquiry and discourse with students about things that matter, the development of a culture of caring in the art classroom, and public engagement. A recommendation for a partnership model between university and K-12 art educators concludes the paper.

This paper provides a description and critical analysis of student perceptions of a nationally funded university teaching development project that aimed to bridge gaps between research, teaching and academic development in music teacher education. Based on research recommendations the project utilised collaboration between schools and universities to develop and implement an innovative online curriculum model. Responses to student evaluation questionnaires and focus group discussions were analysed in order to establish the extent to which this project was contextualised and integrated within the university course. Findings show that students valued the experience of being engaged with authentic online case studies. Through this engagement, students were able to see the interrelationships between school experience and their university studies. The modelled collaboration between schools, universities and the community was perceived as effective by the majority of students and believed to be helpful in future field placements. Recommendations for further research and implications for music teacher education in Australia and beyond are discussed.

"I'm trying the least of anything to control this drawing ... in fact I want it to run away with me." says Billy, a fifth grader who reads at 13th grade level. He clears his throat and begins to sketch and his stories flood the page. This qualitative research paper looks at what free sketchbook drawing does for a group of boys ages 8-14 who participate in an after-school drawing club. The writing blends critical pedagogy with the influence of the adult media culture (e.g, war, television, movies, video games, and the internet) and my perceptions as researcher/teacher.

Through arts-informed research (Cole & Knowles, 2007) I explore visual identity and scholarship. I conversed with and photographed Lisette, Edward, Kris, Todd, William and Theresa, asking "How are your clothing choices determined by your work as a scholar?" The photographs and transcripts inspired drawings, paintings and poetry. The study confirms that clothes are negotiated expressions of self and visual identity with the body as mediator (Braziel & LeBesco, 2001; Butler, 1993; Davis, 1997; Holliday & Hassard 2001; Shilling, 1993); scholars' clothing choices are gendered (Butler, 1999; Kirkham, 1996; Sanders, 1996), and female scholars strategize through dress (Kaiser, Chandler & Hammidi, 2001; Green, 2001). The poems and artworks speak of triumph and pain. They provide opportunities to reflect on arts-informed research, the aesthetics of the clothed body, the body and social theory, and the semiotics of clothing.

This paper details aspects of a research project that explored nineteen Australian primary (elementary) schoolteachers' perspectives of Creative Arts education. The study investigated the participants' personal Arts experiences and training, as well as their views of Arts pedagogy. In depth interviews with the participants highlighted the important influence that participants' own interactions with the various Arts disciplines had upon their role as facilitators of Creative Arts education. The findings of this study also identify multiple ways of approaching and facilitating teaching and learning activities. The research not only revealed insights into the educational value each of the teachers ascribed to individual Arts disciplines, but also the level of confidence and preparedness they felt to teach these disciplines. The generalist primary teachers participating in this research study identified a number of issues that they believed compromised their ability to teach the Creative Arts effectively.

Business schools frequently emphasize the importance of thinking "outside-the-box," and yet very few business students are actually challenged to do so in practice. This paper presents a pedagogical technique designed to foster creativity and imagination, while providing a deeper understanding of the concepts taught in a capstone business management course. The technique requires students to create and interpret an original work of art (visual, musical, or poetry) that symbolizes an important course concept. The metaphors utilized by students are examined using Morgan's (1986) metaphors of organizations as a framework. At the end of the project, students involved provided feedback by completing a survey of student attitudes and responding to a questionnaire. We conclude that using art and metaphor enriched the educational experience by both challenging students and promoting a deeper understanding of course material.

An autobiographical portrait is an artistic representation that shows not only a person's physical characteristics, but also his or her personality, knowledge, history, and/or lived experiences. Understanding student autobiographical portraits not only helps art teachers gain insight into their students' prior knowledge of and experiences with art, but also allows them to use such insight for relevant instruction. Based on constructivist learning theory and with attention to the future implementation of visual culture art education, this study analyzes visual and verbal autobiographical artifacts produced by four adolescent female students to gain insight into their personal interests, knowledge and experiences with art, and artistic development. Conclusions address implications for teaching critical visual culture.

In an effort to push back against contextual factors that have constrained arts instruction and integration while recognizing that schools have limited resources, The Second City Training Center in Chicago has developed several educational programs that bring the art of improvisation to teachers and students. This article specifically focuses on the outreach program called The Second City Educational Program (TSCEP). Initial data analysis suggests that the strategies that The Second City artists-in-residence used with teachers and their students contributed to individual students' self-efficacy and strengthened classroom community, making possible the opportunity for students who had previously been marginalized to take on more positive roles in their classrooms and creating inclusive spaces for children with special needs. The young people's increased engagement led to confidence with expression, helping them to extend their authoring abilities in both spoken and written forms and to take on the identity of "author."

"What does it mean to 'find home'?" and "How might an experience and understanding of 'home' be represented and enhanced by the art form of collage?" These are the two questions that have been guiding my work and life for several years, in ways this article describes. I outline some basics of my initial formal engagement via my award-winning multi-modal PhD dissertation, Finding Home: Knowledge, Collage and the Local Environments, describing the theories and approaches I propose as a result of this work. I then discuss my first implementation of these ideas in Toronto high school art classes and conclude with an elaboration of the questions' continuing relevance and viability in my own life and for the young people in my community.

This study explores the relationship between flow, transcendent music making experiences, transcendent religious experiences, and music education. As a teacher-researcher, I studied my graduate students' autobiographical accounts of their experiences making music. Across these narrative writings produced over the past four years, a pattern emerged: many of the texts describe transcendent experiences. Transcendent music making experiences are distinguished by two main qualities: (a) that the performer is functioning at the height of his or her abilities; and (b) that the performer has a sense of being a part of something larger than him or herself in some way. The concept of transcendent music making experiences provides powerful insights into a unique feature of musical engagement. Music educators at all levels can relate to and learn from a more nuanced understanding of the unique qualities of musical engagement.

This paper re/considers empathy and its implications for learning in the art classroom, particularly in light of relevant neuroscientific investigations of the mirror neuron system recently discovered in the human brain. These investigations reinterpret the meaning of perception, resonance, and connection, and point to the fundamental importance of the resonant body in understanding the world of objects (including objects of art and material culture), and the world of others (including an intersubjectivity of interdependence). Presenting research results and classroom experiences, this paper ultimately advocates a move toward an art education of empathy that integrates caring, cognitive growth, and sociocultural awareness. This art education would strive to promote a connectedness in the classroom community--an authentic and resonant kind of harmony--between self, object, and other, through which the worlds of objects and others are experienced and made meaningful.

This paper explores the issue of motivation in music learning in higher education by contextualising data collected as part of the Investigating-Musical-Performance research project (Welch, et al., 2006-2008). The discussion begins with findings which suggest that popular, jazz and folk musicians experience more pleasure in musical activities than their classical counterparts. Also significant are results indicating that the latter are more influenced by parents and teachers, with the former primarily motivated by intrinsic factors. In examining these findings, three interrelated themes are considered: the quality of musicians' motivation, genre-specific learning practices, and the competencies demanded by particular music systems. Critiquing the sociocultural assumptions inherent in Western music pedagogy, and the role of external regulation in formal education systems, a case is made for the importance of autonomy. Questions are raised about the purpose of music education and consequences of formalising musics traditionally learnt through direct engagement with communities of practice.

Despite the recent focus on creativity and innovation as the backbone of Western knowledge economies, the presence of the creative arts within universities remains problematic. Australian artist academics who seek a balance between their artistic and academic lives work within a government-directed research environment that is unable to quantify; therefore, to recognize the value of creative research, yet which accepts the funded outcomes of post-graduate practice-based students. This study sought to unravel how artist academics from a variety of non-written creative disciplines perceive the relationships between their roles as artists, researchers and tertiary educators. Three themes were generated from interviews with the artist-academics: (a) creative research and the academy, (b) practice, research, and teaching nexus, and (c) identity. Central to the discussions was the question of whether and how creative work constitutes legitimate research.

The purpose of Picturing Peace, a digital photography program conducted in 4th and 5th grade classrooms in the U. S. and Northern Ireland, was to enhance students' photographic skills to create visual metaphors of the concept of peace. Two principal research questions were addressed: (a) Could 9-10 year-old students create apt and imaginative photographic metaphors of peace? (b) Would students in diverse cultures produce comparable photographs of peace? A model of peace, metaphoric imagination, and metaphoric interpretation was researched to test the effectiveness of metaphors in promoting visual understanding of peace. Barthes' (1981) critical framework of connotative procedures and linguistic metaphors were used to judge the aptness and imaginativeness of student photographs. Analysis of an archive of approximately 2500 photographs revealed several typical images of peace common to the following three settings: nature, sun/light, community, diversity, place, peace signs, children play, children care, spirituality, and body/hands as subjects. Implications were drawn for the status of the student photographs as metaphors, pictorial concepts, and/or allegories.

In a music education graduate class addressing teaching and learning strategies for learners with special needs, teachers were invited to consider the experience of the children in their music classrooms. Using narrative to enter into the learner's experience of school, teachers confronted their own perspectives and reconsidered those of their students. In this article, I seek to connect notions of wakefulness and empathy as I, too, make meaning of the story of one teacher and her encounter with Tyler, a learner with special needs in her classroom.

In this paper, we discuss our experience of facilitating the development, creation and execution of audio description for an elementary school production of Fiddler on the Roof by three grade eight students. The students were supervised by the production's director, their drama teacher, and assisted by the authors. An actor with experience describing a live theatre event provided some feedback for the students. Qualitative insight is gained through a thematic analysis of the describer's student learning journal and an interview with their drama teacher. The strengths and weaknesses of the project as perceived by the students and their drama teacher are discussed. Participant suggestions and solutions are also highlighted.

Images of extreme and ever more graphic violence are a part of contemporary culture. Since students cannot avoid them, such images should be addressed by aesthetic educators. But this will require a theory for the analysis and evaluation of the aesthetic properties of violent imagery. The main thesis of this essay is that depiction of violence in certain recent art works can be understood as aiming at aesthetic perception of the sublime. We develop a model for interpreting works in this way by first presenting and then drawing on Kant's analysis of aesthetic perception of the sublime. Our thesis is important for both aesthetic and moral education. According to Kant's remarkably sensitive analysis, aesthetic perception of the sublime plays a large role in developing moral and social awareness. Using Kant's theory as our main source, and drawing on some recent artworks for illustrative purposes, we offer an analysis of how artistic depiction of violence may promote moral and social awareness. We nevertheless consider images of extreme violence morally problematic, and outline a model for educating reflection on the morality of using them.

Our study critically examines social and environmental messages in a range of visual sites educating about rainforest environments. We focus primarily on the Rainforest Cafe, an international series of rainforest-themed edutainment restaurant/stores, whose inherent contradictions between consumption and conservation are quite disturbing when viewed as part of the null curriculum (Hollins, 1996). We then propose an alternate approach to teaching and learning about rainforest environments. This approach teaches students how to deconstruct visual culture environmental messages, such as those in the Rainforest Cafe, fine art, popular films, and children's picturebooks to learn from both accurate and inaccurate images while promoting environmental caring for the rainforest and students' own environments through art.

This qualitative case study examines the exemplary teaching approaches of an expert Korean dance educator who has been teaching beginning dance classes in higher education. The expert dance educator, possesses 28 years of teaching experience in higher education, is the recipient of a national award, is actively involved in professional activities, and facilitates outstanding student achievements. Data were collected using a variety of sources: interviews with the dance teacher and college students, class observations, videotaped lessons, stimulated recall techniques, and document analyses. Data analysis followed the conventions indicated by Glaser & Strauss (1967) and Glaser (1998). Four teaching characteristics of the expert dance educator were, through these means, discovered and emphasized: (1) reflecting and expressing students' lives through dance movements, (2) teaching beyond dance technique, (3) employing diverse teaching techniques in order to achieve diverse learning experiences, and (4) designing and implementing dance festivals and similar occasions for evaluating students' learning.

Pre-service teacher education is marked by linear and sequential programming which offers a plethora of strategies and methods (Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005; Darling Hammond & Bransford, 2005; Grant & Zeichner, 1997). This paper emerges from a three year study within a core education subject in preservice teacher education in Australia. This 'practitioner' research (Zeichner, 1999) engaged the problematics of authentic and meaningful learner-centred teaching and learning through an arts-based curriculum. Over the period of the study, two hundred and eighty pre-service teachers participated in a 'dialogical performance'(Conquergood, 2003) of pedagogy about curriculum and assessment through the construction of art about curriculum and assessment. The possibilities of an arts-based pedagogy in pre-service education were affirmed by the research. An enacted epistemological move by the teachereducators led to similar shifts by the students. This opened a space for the reappearance of learner through engagements with identities, positionings and agency. This was an act of 'putting theory to work' (Lather, 2006, 2007) and invoked transgressive practices of academic discourses.

Our personal and professional lives draw us to a shared interest in 'identity' and 'relationships', and our understanding is shaped by our lives as narrative inquirers. As we struggle to name this complexity we begin to play with metaphors; the metaphor of 'kites', and thus string, kite and kite flyer provide us with a way to think about imagining and playfulness in relationships and in narrative inquiry. As we play with these metaphors we see how much our understanding of relationships shape our being and engagement with others and that imagination is inextricably intertwined within our lives and our relationships. By attending to this playfulness, our spaces of knowing enlarge and spaces of possibility are never ending; yet embedded in these possibilities is also a recognition of how difficult it is to stay in relation, to remain wakeful to the tensions and boulders of the landscapes and stories we live within.

This study describes the experiences of nine school-based artists who took part in a six-day professional development course on ecology and the arts at an off-grid wilderness facility. The course was designed to increase artist-educators' awareness of issues surrounding energy use and consumption as well as to provide them with direction for approaching these topics through arts-based learning in schools. Analyzing participants' views regarding renewable and non-renewable energy use, as well as documenting anticipated changes in personal and professional practices, were two important aspects of the research. Data were collected through observations and field notes over the six-day period, and through semi-standardized interviews which were conducted at the end of the course. Participants also completed an on-line survey regarding various energy conservation and consumption issues before arriving for the course. In the interviews, the artist- educators detailed what they learned about thermal mass, solar power, and consumer purchasing patterns. Most participants anticipated making changes in their home lives, such as cooking with locally available produce. Participants also described anticipated interactions with teachers and students upon returning to their local schools, both in terms of content related to energy conservation and ways that they would approach this topic through their respective art forms. Some participants also indicated how they anticipated changing their own artistic practices in their studio settings, such as switching to less toxic materials and using fewer consumable items. Having the opportunity to live at an off-grid wilderness facility was a key feature of the course for all of the artist-educators who took part in the experience.

Until recently, qualitative research has made limited use of visual sources, particularly visual texts (drawing, painting or photographs), but also including multimodal data (video and web-based) and visual data (tables, graphs, charts, etc.). Thus, discussions of ethics and evidence in this area have lagged behind those related to textual data, such as written fieldnotes. This is particularly true for qualitative research dissertations, where graduate students are caught in the tension between established and emerging standards of ethics and evidence. This trend holds true across most institutions of higher education, but it is especially pronounced in those schools that are smaller and more regionally focused where innovations may take more time to become firmly established. This paper examines issues of ethics, evidence, and academic politics in the use of visual sources within the genre of the dissertation, with a special focus on the ways these innovative practices move into the higher education institutions that are at a distance from the center of change. We begin with the viewpoint of a dissertation advisor who has experience in the use of visual sources in the instruction of qualitative research at the doctoral level and its use in the conduct of qualitative research dissertations. Three case examples drawn from three doctoral students in a Graduate School of Education provide a view of the issues involved in researcher generated data, participant generated data, and the ways emerging technologies offer new visualizing possibilities. We conclude with a cross-cutting discussion of issues related to the functions visual sources serve in these dissertations, followed by recommendations for the future use of these materials in the qualitative research dissertation process. Study participants are located in a small, regional institution of higher education, a context that figures importantly in the story. Our goal is to promote discussion and advance understanding of the ways visual sources, and by extension, the ways other innovative research processes can be used by qualitative researchers (particularly doctoral students), despite academia's reluctance in the face of change.

In a time when schools are focussing on increasing their numeracy and literacy scores, teachers are often required to spend the majority of their time teaching Mathematics and English and have little time left for the arts and other subjects. This has led to some teachers developing integrated programs in order to cover all the required learning experiences. However, practitioners and researchers have found that in many cases, integration results in superficial learning with few subject-specific outcomes being achieved. This paper presents three models or levels of integration (service connections, symmetric correlations and syntegration) where curriculum subjects can work together to achieve subjectspecific as well as generic outcomes, then gives examples of how these models can be used within the primary school curriculum. It concludes with a real-life example of a syntegrated learning project.

Juxtaposing visual images with stories, this work addresses the formation of my transnational identity and my experience in the "betwixt-and-between," illustrating my struggles as artist, scholar, and international faculty member at an Anglo American university. I exacerbate tensions between my professional and attributed identities tocomplicate and problematize my other identity--neatly constructed as a faculty member of color by the corporate management of U.S. higher education. Recontextualizing within colonialized discourse as inquiry mode, my visual narrative conveyed as photocollage-cum-essay shows how I came to accept rootlessness as a form of empowerment. The substantive findings include strategies to maintain integrity in such an existence: cherishing the vitality of the senses, preserving the vernacular in the voice, and summoning volition from my Asianity. Drawn from the visual narrative that helped me come to terms with my "out-of-placeness," some suggestions to expand the scholarship of teaching learning by combining it with personal creative works and research interest are offered.