International Journal of Education & the Arts

This article describes a relationship-based dance program, Moving Parents and Children Together, and summarizes a 3-year study of teacher practice and parent-child interactions. Our work focuses on "relational engagement" in dance, which entails a person's basic motivation to connect plus a psychological investment in building interpersonal skills. We adopt an action research perspective, take a mix-methodological approach, and report on the design and use of a new measurement tool. We find evidence that using an "engagement lens" to assess behavior influences positively dance instruction and personal teaching practice. We also find general positive change in parent and child average engagement scores in two areas, activity and interest. Case studies of immigrant and multi-generational families show positive growth in, and increasing selfawareness of, interpersonal attitudes and behaviors. Taken together, participants view MPACT as a powerful vehicle for growing and nurturing relationships.

Sometimes the small initiatives that school boards undertake can create a major and lasting difference in the learning opportunities offered in the classroom. Almost always these initiatives are championed by an individual or team whose efforts determine their success or failure. The following historical account will highlight one successful initiative by a school board and the champion who maintains its success. The Artsjunktion is a space allocated by the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) for businesses, organizations and individuals to donate their 'stuff' to be used in all areas of the arts curriculum. This paper will touch on budgetary concerns, arts leadership and environmental impacts, but most importantly this history will be a multi-layered reconstruction of archival research, oral history, and material culture.

School associates (SAs), or cooperating teachers (CTs), have arguably been one of the most powerful influences on the teacher candidates (TC) pre-service experience. For this reason, most studies about the practicum have focused on this relationship. However, while observing one visual art students practicum as her Faculty Advisor (FA) for the University of British Columbia (UBC), the significance and impact of art making on the SA and TCs relationship was observed. Creating art was what emerged as the pivot that the practicum was focused on, rather than the traditional Apprenticeship or Mentor formula (Graham, 2006). This hybrid relationship underscored how a/r/tographic inquiry provided the opportunity for the SA and TC to create art, to discuss teaching philosophies and pedagogical practices, and to change the practicum performance into an extra-out-of the-ordinary event. This paper explores how art making, living inquiry and the condition of relationality affected the relationship between a teacher candidate and her cooperating teacher on practicum. Systematic questioning, observation and the collection of data through interviews, reflective narrative writing and art making were methods used for understanding the a/r/tographical relationship that developed between the two participants. An analysis of the critical incidents that depicted how inquiry in the form of art making and collegial conversations strengthened this particular relationship and created reciprocity was then considered. In this way, we acknowledge how the practicum is an a/r/tographical event in which pedagogical and aesthetic relationality and inquiry initiate a long-term commitment to becoming as artists, teachers and researchers. Theoretically, this sense of becoming is understood and discussed through Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattaris (2007) interpretations and extensions of Antonin Artauds (1975) Body without Organs (BwO) conceptualization into what they call poles that swing between moments of immanence and signification. What is argued in this paper is that becoming an arts-teacher is a complex process that requires a continual shift and acceptance of multiple identities that may move between moments of signification and illumination. In this study, the shift from discussing the movement between signification and immanence (in Deleuze and Guattari) to signification and illumination is made because the authors felt that a greater understanding of ones teaching practice, art making and collegiality was understood during this research project but they did not feel as though it was possible to measure the participants metaphysical and immanent experiences. Rather, it is the movement between being and becoming an artist and an educator that brings deeper satisfaction to the TCs understandings of becoming pedagogical that is being explored.

This paper presents an analysis of how guided engagement with the arts can provide leadership lessons for school leaders and administrators. The study was conducted as part of two projects funded by the School Leadership Program (SLP) grants from the U.S. Department of Education. The principal interns and practicing school leaders participated in arts engagement activities (jazz ensemble, chamber orchestra, and tango dance) facilitated by teaching artists from the Maxine Green Center for Aesthetic Education and Social Imagination. Participants attended experiential workshops with teaching artists, observed the art form and then listened to the process and techniques used by the artists. Data sources for the study included observations, reflective narratives and interviews with participants. These were analyzed using grounded theory methods. The findings indicate that guided engagement with the arts provide lessons to school leaders in the form of interdisciplinary analogies and metaphors. The narratives generated by artists and participants served as a bridge: building connections between leadership and artistic practice. The experience encouraged participants to: gain new perspectives on optimal contexts for learning, develop a nuanced understanding of leadership, move from abstract to concrete understanding of relational constructs, and feel empowered through trying new experiences. Implications of the findings, including translating the lessons into actual practice and the addressing the needs of participants who did not connect with the sessions, are also discussed.

For three decades, research on training in music education for pre-service primary (elementary) generalist teachers has consistently highlighted four main issues that limit its effectiveness: 1) the influence of past experiences; 2) a lack of confidence 3) a lack of musical competence and 4) limited time to address these issues in teacher education courses. These issues have been addressed through different pedagogical approaches that have been largely based on the aesthetic (intrinsic) value of music education. The study reported in this paper aimed to advance this field of research through a pedagogical approach that combined both aesthetic (intrinsic) and utilitarian (instrumental) values of music education. Pre-service generalist primary teachers were exposed to the neuroscientific research findings during a teaching intervention to explore if a combination of aesthetic and scientific justifications affected the value they placed on music education and their confidence and competence in teaching music. The study found that exposure to the broader benefits of music education to brain development heightened levels of confidence, commitment and responsibility for the delivery of effective music education.

As a result of cheaper, accessible, and user-friendly technologies, there is an increasing volume of videos created by children, yet these works often lack excellence. Strong pedagogical practice is important to nurture excellence in video production, but there is scant literature in this area. In this paper, I examine best practices through a case study of three outstanding, diverse Canadian new media/video art programs at the middle and secondary levels in which students consistently gained recognition. I specifically looked at background information on each school, the structure and pedagogical approaches of the programs, and the strengths of each program. Although I found that the three programs had different focuses, curricula, and teaching styles, the programs shared a project/content driven, student-centered curricula, combined with collaboration, and community outreach. The most significant of my findings was a focus on artistic and creative practices as opposed to technological ones to foster outstanding school video programs.

This qualitative study examines student musicians' perceptions of their performance and development resulting from Body Mapping (BMG) technique. BMG is a somatic (mind-body) education technique designed to teach musicians skills in self-evaluation and change for performing with sensory-motor integrity. A qualitative study guided by an interpretive framework was used to collect data from undergraduate students and faculty at an American university. Data involved indepth interviews, self-reflective journals, and course materials. The findings show BMG played a multi-faceted role. The majority of the students reported a positive experience, stating that BMG enhanced their ability for musical expression (e.g. dynamics, phrasing, conveying emotional information), the ability to focus more easily on elements contributing to expressive outcomes, and facilitated greater personal confidence in being more musically expressive. The study discusses how BMG instruction can be used for enhanced technical and performance outcomes. The research findings are relevant for musicians, educators, and health practitioners in the field of music medicine.

Service learning is described as a socially just educational process that develops two-way learning and social outcomes for community and student participants. Despite the focus on mutuality in service learning, very little of this literature specifically deals with the intense importance of mutuality and reciprocity when working with Indigenous community partners and participants. This is problematic for Indigenous service learning projects that seek to partner respectfully with Indigenous communities in Australia and elsewhere. To address this issue, the paper draws on existing international literature and data from an Indigenous arts based service learning project conducted in the Northern Territory of Australia to propose a framework centred on relationships, reciprocity, reflexivity and representation that can be adapted for future Indigenous service learning partnerships and research.

This paper considers the photographic act as an affective and affirmative encounter - a reflexive, embodied, and relational community engagement that may produce a rupture in our habitual modes of thinking. The author uses the Deleuzo-Guattarian concept of the nomadic weapon to consider how the camera may become an affective trigger for self-reflexivity, catalyzing the potential of nomadic thinking in a participatory frame. By transposing uses of photography as visual research method across cultural geography, visual anthropology, sociology, and arts-based educational research, the author discusses shifts in the function of photography from a practice emphasizing image production to an embodied and performative approach to community engagement. Using a photographic encounter with a local taco stand as an example, the piece considers the pedagogical potential of engaging with unfamiliar spaces as a participatory and reflexive photographic process.

General education programs, in postsecondary institutions, provide a broad base of learning in the liberal arts and sciences with common goals that prepare undergraduate students for living informed and satisfying lives. In the United States, dance units in public institutions, offering general education coursework for non-majors (dance appreciation and history, dance studies, world dance), generate 50 percent of their total credit hours per year from these courses (HEADS 2012). Rooted in the body, culture, society, and performance, dance provides ample opportunities for investigating gender. The purpose of this study was to develop an accessible, research-based essay written specifically for and directed toward students enrolled in general education courses in postsecondary dance by drawing upon qualitative data gathered from five years of discussion board postings on the topic of gender compiled from the author's courses. Student (n=312) narratives illuminate the complex relationships between dance and gender, socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity, and sexual orientation. The essay, intended for student readers, concludes with additional discussion questions and prompts.

In a world that is becoming increasingly more visual, there is a greater need to educate children to better understand images. A school subject that deals directly with image understanding is visual arts. This article discusses an interdisciplinary approach to promote art understanding, within a multimodal environment that combines art and music. The approach was tested with pre-service elementary school teachers (experimental and control group). The target group is of special interest because, in many countries, generalist-teachers and not art-specialists teach art in elementary schools. The findings indicated that when art viewing was accompanied by musical stimulus (experimental group), viewers/listeners were able to exhibit a variety of art-appreciation skills and to move to elaborated responses to the artworks. The findings have implications for teacher-training courses as they suggest ways of enhancing future teachers' art-appreciation skills and set a framework for developing multimodal educational material for art viewing activities.

This paper is based on an inquiry carried out among a small group of children between the ages of 10 and 12 years, who, in the framework of an art-workshop, attended two theatrical performances of the same subject, Homer's Odyssey, but of quite different directorial approaches: the first performance had a narrative character following the basic principles of the dramatic model, while the second one belonged to the postdramatic paradigm that tends to subvert all traditional concepts about the structure and the content of a theatrical act. The conversation that followed showed that children have only to gain by their approach to unconventional artworks, as they get stimulated to think in new and diverse directions. As an informed instructor on philosophical and theoretical art-matters is a prerequisite, this paper aims at the construction of a fundamental theoretical framework for the postdramatic model and at the examination of the possibilities of postdramatic performances to function both as carriers of information and as stimulators of new kinds of aesthetic experiences, in an educative manner.

Interested in learning about current perceptions of success held by high school students, we carried out a qualitative research study in order to examine what adolescents identify as success in different contexts. Through discourse analysis, we found that the students' artworks served as a means to communicate their current challenges, values, and goals. We also learned that the students often reflected the messages about success that they received from society. Though they valued personal expression in their artwork, students struggled in identifying art education as important.

We consider the phenomenon of social interactions within the art museum, arguing that even the bare possibility of meeting others or intruding into their gaze can have a profoundly detrimental effect on art experience. This is done by tracing a finding from our previous studies in which we considered three museum galleries--each with the same artist's paintings and basic layout; the only major difference being design elements within one space encouraging social interaction and in turn causing repressed enjoyment, negative emotional experience and negative art evaluation. We use this example as a frame for introducing a model of the psychological impact of social interaction on the behavioral and cognitive experience of art, considering its implications for education--which often focuses on the social--as well as implications for personal or introspective art engagement. We also consider a number of measures and aspects that relate to this model and which might be considered by educators in their planning and art study. We conclude with a followup study of the same gallery, after its physical renovation to minimize social interactions within the space, and showing significant increases in pleasurable or rewarding outcomes as well as increased positive evaluations of the same art.

We offer a multi-voiced performance autoethnography where contemporary music education practices are informed and imbued with the voices of teachers and learners. By dialogically and musically engaging with the very people who live, make music, and engage with learners in music classrooms, we promote contemporary qualitative forms of research and the (re)conception of a sociology of music education as a political and an ethical construction that needs to be grounded in serving communities of music practitioners. Through a pedagogical story, told from the perspectives of music teachers using their own voices, we begin an open conversation about the nature of power structures and struggles in music education research. We invite new possibilities in developing understandings of the complex socio-cultural dynamic of music making, music learning, music teaching, and music researching in all facets of contemporary society. By embracing a broader set of traditions--Arts-Based Educational Research and Creative Analytical Practices--that enable us to go beyond socio-cultural frameworks and orthodox beliefs that currently exist in the music education profession, we seek to (re)form a culturally contextualized, ethos-rooted, sociology of music education.

This qualitative case study examines the affordances and constraints of an intergenerational multimodal arts curriculum that was designed to expand communication and identity options for children and elder participants. The authors drew on actor-network theory to conceptualize curriculum as a network effect and refer to literature on multimodal literacy to discuss how interests, knowledge, and the modes themselves (e.g., art and singing) influenced communication and identity options in the curriculum. Focusing on singing, the findings indicate that the affordances and constraints of the curriculum were created through a network that included the participants and the materials of communication (e.g., musical instruments). Art and talking supported singing as did the emergent curricular model. The elders had mixed prior experiences and facility with singing, however, their desire to support the children engaged them in the practice. The curriculum supported symmetrical relationships between participants, and the case adds to the literatures on intergenerational programs, multimodal literacy, arts education, and curriculum.

In this paper, I consider "the encounter" (O'Sullivan, 2006) and conceptualizations of subjectivity and identity proposed by post qualitative scholars (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012; Lather & St. Pierre, 2013; Lenz Taguchi, 2012; MacLure, 2013; St. Pierre, 2010) and contemporary art theory (O'Sullivan, 2006; 2012) to attend to the potentialities for visual arts-based research to provoke rather than represent thought. Traditional narrative inquiry is critiqued as affirming representational thought while the methodological implications of duration will be explored as a psychical site for new thought creation. I draw on my encounter with Canadian artist, Yam Lau's film/CG animation, Room (2004) and the works of Deleuze and Guattari to critique the narrative form and persistent humanist notions of subjectivity in qualitative research. I argue for the potentiality of the encounter in creating conditions for an affective disruption to perceptions and suggest future implications for arts-based educational research and pedagogy with secondary teacher candidates.

Pertinent research literature recognizes the importance of using multimodalities to enhance and extend ways of learning across the curriculum in such subject areas as literacy, geology, media studies, physical education, social studies and disabilities studies. As an action researcher who constantly seeks ways to improve my own classroom practice, I offered multimodal opportunities to the students in my graduate class on learning differences to enhance their capacity to participate in both in-class and out-of-class assignments. Five students representing the areas of nursing, counseling, arts education, and classroom teaching, accepted my invitation to express a major assignment--a personal narrative on learning differences in multimodal forms. With feelings and thoughts ranging from skepticism to inspiration, these five students placed themselves in the vulnerable and risky space of the unknown and represented the theoretical and practical aspects of their narratives via sculptures, beaded canvases, a book of collage art and an assemblage of popular culture. Each student created a unique work woven together from prior experiences, significant readings, and specific theoretical underpinnings. They all agreed that the use of multimodalities encouraged them to draw on various elements of personal resources, such as emotion and imagination, to reconsider learning difference as a multidimensional and fluid concept. The possibilities for multimodal learning in a graduate class allowed students to hear, see, and feel each of their positions on difference while also examining collectively their individual expressions of learning differences in education.

Drawing from their respective work at the intersection of music and science, the coauthors argue that engaging in processes of making music can help students more deeply engage in the kinds of creativity associated with inquiry based science education (IBSE) and scientists better convey their ideas to others. Of equal importance, the processes of music making can provide students a means to experience another central aspect of IBSE, the liminal ontological experience of being utterly lost in the inquiry process. This piece is also part of burgeoning studies documenting the use of the arts in STEM education (STEAM).

In 2012, the Austin Independent School District reported that over 60 percent of its students identified as Hispanic. However, the number of theatrical offerings for children including Latino stories or Latino/a characters on Austin stages is staggeringly disproportionate to the number of Latino children living in the community. Mariachi Girl is a new bilingual Spanish/English musical for child audiences. This paper articulates and analyzes research findings from surveys collected from children, teachers, and care givers who saw the production. The paper introduces the term culturally responsive artistry and offers new perspectives and suggestions on how arts institutions and theater educators can form lasting relationships with minority communities.