International Journal of Education & the Arts

The use of psychodramatic action methods in academic supervision is examined through the detailed description of a session between a supervisor and a supervisee working on a PhD in the field of Information Systems. The psychodramatic emphasis on spontaneity, reciprocity, and the use of dramatic production have various advantages for post-graduate supervision, namely: the involvement of affect, action and cognition in meaning making; the generation of self-authority in the supervisee; and the building of a cooperative working relationship between supervisor and supervisee. Action methods do not need to be seen as the sole domain of the action method expert. Supervisors will be able to take up individual techniques and approaches outlined here and integrate them into their own practice.

This article places youth spoken word (YSW) poetry programming within the larger framework of arts education. Drawing primarily on transcripts of interviews with teen poets and adult teaching artists and program administrators, the article identifies specific benefits that participants ascribe to youth spoken word, including the development of literate identities, therapeutic experiences, overcoming of shyness, and increased self-confidence and self-esteem. The author describes the writing workshop format common to many YSW programs and analyzes the specific contribution of performance to the benefits that participants identify from YSW. This article draws on James Gee's (1991) concept of discourses to explain the strong identification that many YSW poets feel toward their chosen genre.

To help underscore the importance of giving the arts an integral place in the literacy continuum of secondary school language arts, I immersed myself in a careful reading of twenty teacher candidates' transactions in the art of body biography for novel study for intermediate students (grades 7-10). Coming together in groups of five, the teacher candidates used life-size body outlines drawn on oversized paper, along with a myriad of found and stocked materials, such as fabric, pens, and paint, to experience and express the transformation of the main character in the young adult novel, True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. Informed by their transactions in the body biography compositions, the teacher candidates reported that they were able to reach a more holistic portrait of Charlotte, while enriching their own instructional repertoires.

Conducted collaboratively by an art educator and a literacy educator, this qualitative study focused on pre-service art educators' perspectives on integrating literacy in their teaching of art as they took a required course on literacy across the curriculum. Data included interviews, questionnaires, course assignments, and field notes from class sessions. Our analysis identified three patterns related to participants' perspectives while taking the course: their conceptions of literacy expanded, they reconceptualized familiar art education practices with a literacy-focused lens, and they considered new practices. Findings suggest that literacy courses are valuable for art educators but that they must be designed to maximize disciplinespecific concerns and literacies. Implications for further research and practice are outlined.

This study aims to examine how and why students transform in terms of learning motivation in learning the Cantonese opera with a teacher-artist partnership approach in Hong Kong schools. An artist and seven teachers from four schools collaborated to teach the genre for eight weeks. Students' learning motivation changes in Cantonese opera was measured by a set of pre- and post-learning questionnaires. Qualitative data were drawn from class observations and focus group interviews with teachers and students. Results indicate that students' motivation in learning the genre has been changed. The statistical analysis suggests that, while primary students had significantly increased their motivation in learning Cantonese opera, the secondary students' motivation had not increased. Attributions include age differences, self-consciousness, intrinsic value and socio-cultural impact. However, the partnership was found to be an appropriate and effective approach in teaching the ethnic genre for its "role supplementation" between the teacher and the artist.

This essay explores social justice commitments in dance pedagogy and dance education teacher preparation in the USA as developed through a series of conversations between two dance educators and former administrators in higher education. The authors examine the history of multiculturalism, multicultural practices in postsecondary dance, their influences on dance teacher education, and the limitations of the multiculturalism movement that emerge from misperceptions about, or disregard for differences in culture, gender, ability, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background. Dominant arguments for maintaining status quo perspectives such as scarcity of resources, accreditation standards, and tenured faculty compositions are examined in conversation with a number of prophetic voices for social justice teaching and learning. Examples of pedagogical approaches and project assignments that aim to bring social justice learning to the dance education classroom in concrete ways are presented.

In this paper we suggest that narrative representations that seemingly fail to reach an audience as intended may engage the audience in more meaningful ways. We use reader response theory to explore how an audience's responses to a conference narrative presentation made available a multiplicity of interpretive frameworks and narratives to the readers/listeners. We assert that when various interpretive frameworks are made visible across the context of a narrative text by the readers' or listeners' responses to it, they can be examined for how they collude, collide, exclude, and compete for meaning. At the same time, conversations evoked by narrative texts and through other arts can generate greater understanding across and through cultural differences. This offers dynamic pedagogical possibilities through appealing to our horticultural approach of seeking out knowledge gained from conversations across divergent interpretive communities. Our point here is that the intentional creation of instances where students are challenged to recognize the taken for granted notions that ground their worldviews through the arts in education and education in the arts affords indispensable opportunities to engage students in a richer type of teaching and learning.

This paper examines and reports on beginning generalist teacher self-efficacy, which Bandura (1997) suggests plays an important part in student outcomes. In 2008, 201 beginning generalist teachers throughout the state of Queensland, Australia, participated in a study that aimed to provide a snapshot of current perceptions towards support in schools for the arts. Beginning teachers were asked to rank their school support for a number of different subjects in the school curriculum and provide written justification for these rankings. Results suggest that beginning teachers perceived a general lack of support for the teaching of the arts in their classroom, compared to English and maths. They reported that schools provided greater financial support, assistance and professional development for the teaching of literacy and numeracy with a view to increase school performance in national testing. Findings provide key insights for school administrators and policy makers for the adequate delivery of arts education in Queensland schools, particularly when this task falls to generalist teachers with little or no subject expertise in the arts.

Service provision for adolescents and young adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is lacking, particularly post high school. We report on a music intervention program, outline our program model, and report some initial pilot data evaluating the program outcomes. We also discuss implications for undergraduate and graduate students who were involved in the project. Overall, outcomes were positive and highlighted the need for such interventions among the ASD community. We hope our observations focused on the strengths and weaknesses of the program will be helpful to others who may be considering implementing a similar intervention.

This study deals with adolescents' experiences and perceptions of physical actor training practice in the context of theatre education. The study took place in Kallio Upper Secondary School of Performing Arts in Helsinki, Finland, where I work as a drama teacher. As a researcher, I carried out an authorized inquiry with two groups of 16-year old students who took part in acting classes as an optional subject in their curriculum. This qualitative phenomenological research followed the basic principles of an embodied narrative inquiry, presented by Liora Bresler (2006). Regarding the developmental process the psychodynamic approach is being used along with the phenomenological. Overall the students' response was positive: they found it easier to dive in when there was an emphasis on the physical in the course work. Also the fact that the work was collective was considered helpful. Physical work seems to provide possibilities for an adolescent to take steps in personal growth. We can call these break-through experiences. However, when the work is both physical and collective it can also create unnecessary emotional distress. Therefore, special attention should be paid to dialogical encounter in pedagogical situations.