2020 Volume 21

Articles and Abstracts

Articles

Volume 21 Number 1: Linds, W., Sjollema, S., Victor, J., Eninew, L., & Goulet, L. (2020). Widening the angle: Film as alternative pedagogy for wellness in Indigenous youth.

Indigenous youth face numerous challenges in terms of their well-being. Colonization enforced land and cultural loss, fractured relationships, and restricted the use of the imagination and agentic capacity (Colonial policies, structures, and approaches in education have been detrimental to Indigenous youth (Nardozi, 2013). Many First Nations leaders, community members, and youth have expressed a need for a wider range of activities that move beyond Western models of knowledge and learning (Goulet & Goulet, 2015). School curricula in Indigenous communities are incorporating alternative pedagogical tools, such as the arts, that not only allow youth to explore and express their realities and interests but that also offer them holistic ways of learning and knowing (Yuen et al., 2013). This article describes a participatory arts research project which featured film production and was delivered in the context of a grade 10 Communications Media course. The research took place at a First Nations high school in a Neehithuw (Woodland Cree) community in northern Saskatchewan. This article highlights the content of the films produced, the benefits of the filmmaking experience, and the challenges faced by the teacher and students during the process.

Volume 21 Number 2: Svendler Nielsen, C, Samuel, G.M., Wilson, L., & Vedel. K.A. (2020). ‘Seeing’ and ‘being seen’: An embodied and culturally sensitive arts-integrated pedagogy creating enriched conditions for learning in multi-cultural schools.

This article explores the pedagogy developed for enriching conditions for learning among 10-11 year-old children in culturally diverse schools in Cape Town and Copenhagen in an artistic-educational project led by an intercultural group of artist-educators, teachers and researchers from Denmark and South Africa. The group created a workshop format in the cross-over between dance and visual arts focused on the theme of climate change, the elements of nature (water, air, earth and fire) and their importance in the southern and the northern hemispheres. Based on a hermeneutic phenomenological analysis (van Manen, 1990) that connects the children’s experiences and the artist-educators’ experiences of how learning became possible in different ways, it is argued that enriched conditions for learning can be fostered through integrating art forms (here dance and visual arts) and by tools that constitute an embodied and culturally sensitive pedagogy.

Volume 21 Number 3: Kenny, A. (2020). The ‘back and forth’ of musician-teacher partnership in a New York City school.

Teaching artists are often a central feature of arts-in-education work in North American schools. This article examines a teaching artist’s engagement in one New York City school, with three classroom teachers, as part of the Philharmonic Schools program. Through a qualitative case study approach, musician-teacher partnership within one public school is problematized. Data was collected over seven months through in-class observations, classroom teacher and teaching artist interviews, and a teaching artist reflective log. Findings reveal how the classroom teachers and teaching artist journeyed together to deliver music in their classrooms, projected musician/teacher identities, negotiated roles within the partnership, created reflective spaces and mutually informed each other’s practice. Thus, the complexity of, but also the possibilities and pathways for, dialogic music-in-education partnerships are revealed.

Volume 21 Number 4: Andersen, J., Watkins, M., Brown, R., & Quay, J. (2020). Narrative inquiry, pedagogical tact and the gallery educator.

This paper responds to the need for a deeper understanding of gallery educator practice. Focusing on a significant encounter in a major city public gallery, it describes how narrative inquiry offers new insights into how experienced gallery educators shape school education sessions based on prior knowledge and experience, and in-the-moment observations and judgements. Responding to artworks, artists, gallery spaces, and students’ needs and interests, gallery educator practice is infused with ‘pedagogical tact’. Narrative inquiry makes this complex teaching visible and, in doing so, affords a valuable approach to professional learning.

Volume 21 Number 5: Bellugi, D. (2020). “It’s Just Such a Strange Tension”: Discourses of Authenticity in the Creative Arts in Higher Education.

This paper explores the conflicts engendered during the artist’s formation due to repeated submission to assessment in formal creative arts education. In a comparative qualitative study of two visuals arts practice undergraduate curricula, the underlying interpretative approaches to intentionality were uncovered to comprehend the impact of the hidden curriculum at those higher education institutions. Across both sites, nominal authenticity emerged consistently as the most valued criterion which artist-students referenced in their self-assessments of the success and quality of their artworks, and of their identities as members of the professional community of practice. This criterion for self-assessment ran parallel to, and at times against, the persistent disregard of the artist-students’ actual intentionality as a valid referent within the summative assessment practices of both the academic institutions studied. Within this paper, constructions of creativity, authorship and the relationship of these to interpretation, set the scene for exploring the traces, slippages and nuances between the discourses of authenticity which emerged. Drawing from empirical qualitative data generated from artist-students, artist-academics, curriculum documentation and observations of assessment, the contexts around these emerging discourses are discussed, and their significance for the novice artist’s experience, and the agency of artist-teachers, explored.

Volume 21 Number 6: Mesías-Lema, J. M., López-Ganet, T., Calviño-Santos, G. (2020). Atmospheres: Shattering the architecture to generate another educational discourse in art education.

This article seeks to share the experience gained in the expository project Atmospheres for Educational Change, a curatorial proposal focused on education that took place at Normal, the cultural intervention space at the University of A Coruña, aimed at criticizing the position of contemporary art in education and society. Atmospheres reflected on the life and routines of individuals in collectivity. It invited the spectator to an interaction between the aesthetic artificiality of the created environment and the naturalness of the sensations generated within. These were environments that invited discomfort, with artistic installations that functioned as social agitators—politically incorrect and educationally transformative.

Volume 21 Number 7: Kvammen, A.C., Hagen, J.K., Parker, S. (2020). Exploring new methodical options: Collaborative teaching involving song, dance and the Alexander Technique.

In an attempt to bridge the gap between the distinct pedagogical strategies often employed in the respective fields of song and dance, this study investigates how collaborative teaching and dialogue can serve as a starting point in finding new teaching and learning methods. This pilot study involving three teacher-researchers and three students aims to show how the practical work of Alexander Technique (AT) applies the theory of embodied cognition and embodied learning in a practical context. Findings suggest that education and learning processes in the field of musical theatre need to have their foundation in the domain of embodied learning. We argue that the dichotomies between mind and body influence methodology and the way we use language; we propose AT as a method to guide collaborative teaching in order to discover how the student learns in an embodied way, implementing principles from AT in the teaching of musical theatre students.

Volume 21 Number 8: Sivenius, A., & Friman, I. (2020). Can I? Dare I?

This article describes the role of an arts-based research project in the lives of young people participating in a youth workshop. The participants shared stories about their past, present and future with words and pictures. We sought to answer the question: What is the meaning of looking at one’s own life story in the context of a communal art project? We familiarized ourselves with a youth workshop via staff interviews, observation and through documents. The goal of the project was to produce a work of art in eight weeks. During the two months, the young people in the project described their lives in written assignments, made paintings of their lives so far, wrote working diaries and were interviewed. The paintings together formed a larger whole, which was on display at a shopping mall. The study opens new points of view by analyzing the meanings produced by those who participated in the project.

Volume 21 Number 9: Bremmer, M. & van Hoek, E. (2020). Teamplayers: 4CO-teaching in arts education in primary education.

This article describes the qualitative study of the redesigning of a course based on the Canadian “4CO-teaching method” for student teachers. This method consists of four different phases of co-teaching: co-design, co-execution, co-debriefing, and co-reflection. Through this way of co-teaching, student teachers in both primary education and in arts education (theatre, dance, and visual arts) were taught how to design arts lessons for primary education together, how to carry them out as a couple, and how to jointly reflect on their lessons. The course, called “Teamplayers”, aimed to teach these student teachers how to complement their knowledge and skills during the designing and teaching of arts lessons and, thus, enhance the quality of arts education. This research study evaluated the design of Teamplayers and the students’ experience with the method of 4CO-teaching with the aim of improving the course.

Volume 21 Number 10: Toscher, B. (2020). The Skills and Knowledge Gap in Higher Music Education: An Exploratory Empirical Study.

Research claims that entrepreneurial skills and knowledge are important for the careers of musicians (Bennett, 2016; Breivik, Selvik, Bakke, Welde & Jermstad, 2015; Coulson, 2012). Alumni of higher music education (HME) report “a gap between the perceived importance of such [entrepreneurial] skills and their acquisition” (Miller, Dumford & Johnson 2017, p. 11). As a response, institutes of HME have integrated arts entrepreneurship education to help music students acquire these skills and knowledge to a greater extent (Beckman, 2005, 2007). Yet, specifically which entrepreneurial skills and knowledge (Lackeus, 2015) arts entrepreneurship education helps students acquire lacks empirical support and articulation. In this exploratory pilot study, I create, disseminate and use exploratory data analysis (Tukey, 1977) to understand the descriptive statistics of survey responses from teachers and students of HME in Norway. Respondents rated the perceived importance and acquisition of a variety of skills and knowledge while considering students’ future careers. Students also reported to what extent they felt they learned entrepreneurship through their current study program. Consistent with previous research, the findings show a “gap between the perceived acquisition of skills and the importance of such skills” (Miller et al., 2017, p. 11) in HME. The largest gaps in this study are for the following specific skills and knowledge: sales/marketing, market/industry, financial, social media, and business planning. Additionally, as students report they felt they learned entrepreneurship to increasingly larger extents, this gap is closed and narrowed. This shared tendency between the increased extent of entrepreneurship learned by music students and the perceived increase in the acquisition of various skills and knowledge is new insight for the field. Implications for arts entrepreneurship practitioners are discussed in addition to some ideas for future in-depth research.

Volume 21 Number 11: Rockell, K. (2020). Knowing Noh and ‘Nō-ing’ English through Intercultural Performing Arts.

This paper takes the form of a detailed report discussing the development, rehearsal and presentation of a short English language Noh-style play performed by Japanese university students in 2018–2019. It shares students’ perceptions in response to the flow of rehearsals and performances, which were documented with ethnomusicological fieldwork methods. Music and drama are increasingly recognized internationally as effective vehicles for language education and in this case the aspiration to master ‘a tool of global communication’ is coupled with local sensibility and an important Japanese heritage tradition. Contemporary cyber-culture immersed Japanese youth sometimes express little interest in traditions such as Noh. This project prompted a greater appreciation of traditional Japanese culture amongst such students. The benefits of regular practice of the declamatory speech that is basic to Noh chanting was also found to be particularly beneficial to students’ confidence with spoken English.

Volume 21 Number 12: Moilanen, J. H. & Mertala, P-O. (2020). The meaningful memories of visual arts education for preservice generalist teachers: What is remembered, why, and from where?

Research that examines generalist preservice teachers’ memories from the viewpoint of a specific subject is scarce. As generalist teachers’ self-efficacy varies between subjects, subject-oriented research is needed. This qualitative study explores the meaningful memories of visual arts education for twenty-one preservice generalist teachers in Finland. The data, analyzed via an abductive approach and a constant comparison method, consists of participants’ written memories. According to the findings, the nature of preservice generalist teachers’ memories of visual arts education is a result of negotiation between personal (i.e., their personal relationship with visual arts) and structural (i.e., changes in curricula) aspects. Teachers were presented as playing important mediatory roles between these two domains, as both the positive and negative memories of the participants often included personified descriptions of their teachers. The implications for both visual arts and teacher education are also provided.

Volume 21 Number 13: Walton, C. W. (2020). “It just made me want to do better for myself”: Performing arts education and academic performance for African American male high school students.

A wide body of research has been conducted which examines the relationship between arts engagement and academic performance for the general population of students in U.S. schools. To date, few studies have been conducted that examine the effects of arts-based learning experiences on African American males’ academic performance. To address this gap in the literature, this case study uses interviews and post-graduation outcomes to explore the effects of school-based performing arts engagement on academic performance among African American male high school students. Findings from this project indicate that immersion in school-based performing arts learning experiences strengthens academic skills development, improves overall school performance, and enhances post-school outcomes for African American male high school students. These findings suggest that bolstering arts-based school curricula and increasing access to performing arts learning experiences may improve school outcomes for African American males who attend U.S. public schools.

Volume 21 Number 14: Johnson-Green, E., Lee, C., & Flannery, M. (2020). A Musical Perspective on STEM: Evaluating the EcoSonic Playground Project From a Co-equal STEAM Integration Standpoint.

Research on teaching and learning in integrated education has focused on connections between arts and non-arts domains to provide a comprehensive experience for K-12 learners. Recently, STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) education has explored arts integration for more effective STEM learning. However, effective integration is often elusive; the arts are sometimes diluted as a consequence of well-intentioned integration within STEM subjects, with STEM learning risking similar superficial treatment within arts curricula. This qualitative pilot study focuses on The EcoSonic Playground Project (ESPP) – an integrated STEAM project for students of all ages – and evaluates its effectiveness from a co-equal integration standpoint, where participants use skills across STEM and arts areas equally in service of a common, musical goal. Findings suggested that this project supported, the application of existing cognitive and social-emotional skills and STEAM practices within an arts framework while fostering in participants the synthesis of new connections among skill areas. While recognizing findings are context specific, conclusions and recommendations may be of particular interest to educators and researchers exploring STEAM or other arts integration initiatives in the classroom.

Volume 21 Number 15: Hogle, L. A., & Bramble, C. (2020). Teacher agency through duoethnography: Pedagogical DNA in a community of learner-teachers.

Through a duoethnographic study (Norris, 2008), Caitlyn, a newly graduated music educator and now masters student, and I, a seasoned music educator and new music teacher educator at Caitlyn’s alma mater, collaboratively explored the experience of preservice teaching from our divergent roles and generational perspectives. Seeking to understand development of music teacher agency, we entered into a process of duoethnographic dialogue journaling as a primary data source. Ascribing to the tenets of this innovative qualitative methodology, we created and interrogated interwoven dialogic narratives as we mutually investigated curricular approaches to and practices of the last year of preservice music education. The co-constructed process of duoethnography (a) enabled us to synthesize theory and research method with practice; (b) fostered development of professional identities through reflection within equitable and collegial relationships; (c) and potentially mitigated fears as each participant experienced emancipatory dialogue toward positive change, heightening music teacher agency.

Volume 21 Number 16: Robin, A. (2020). Colores de Latinoamérica: Teaching Latin American art in London (Ontario, Canada).

This article is a reflection as a teaching scholar of Latin American art in London, Ontario, a city, as many others in Canada, where there is no major Latin American collectionfor students to visit. The experiences narrated are related to a specific course taught in the Fall of 2016 at Western University and to two exhibitions that took place during that time in London, TransAMERICAS: A Sign, a Situation, a Concept at Museum London and Mountains & Rivers Without End at the Artlab Gallery of the John Labatt Visual Arts Centre at Western University. It is furthermore informed by the experience of teaching Latin American visual culture to non-art history students in Spanish for many years. This essay dialogues with practices of active and experiential learning, specifically for language learners. It offers the voices and insights of the students, detailing how the exhibitions were perceived and experienced by them, through their written essays and in-class discussions.

Volume 21 Number 17: Rufo, D. (2020). Tagging tabletops: How children’s drawings on school furniture offer insight into their learning.

In the spring of 2011, a teacher allowed his fourth and fifth grade students to draw and write on their classroom tables. What began as a few names eventually turned into a series of frenetic marks that completely covered the tabletops. Over the course of two years, new groups of students brought with them another cycle of marking that evolved in the form of notations, designs, and even carvings. The teacher documented this process over the years collecting data in the form of digital photographs, video clips, email communiqués, and teacher journal entries. This paper presents an analysis of the data, a discussion on the effects of allowing general elementary classroom students a significant degree of creative agency, and the pedagogical impacts of that agency.

Volume 21 Number 18: Aspán, M. (2020). The tale of Red Riding Hood and the Wolf as a multi-literacy tool for reflection and embodied learning.

This article concerns how teaching artists, associated with the Swedish Royal Opera, provided aesthetic opportunities to students during a three-year school project. One intervention is scrutinized in which the storybook of Red Riding Hood was used as a starting point for further aesthetic learning, culminating in a shadow theatre performance. With an ethnographic approach, the study identifies how a folk story can act as a multi-literacy tool for learning. The children’s working processes and performance are interpreted under the inspiration of the Performance Cycle (Landay & Wootton, 2012) focusing on the reflective process.

Via a pragmatic discourse analysis, interview data from focus groups with children show that the interventions offer varied learning opportunities. Three themes emerge from the analysis of the children’s perspectives on the arts project, as learning opportunities linked to; (i) the material and the construction assignment; (ii) embodiment and emotionality; and (iii) social aspects and the importance of social interaction and friendship.

Volume 21 Number 19: Lehtonen, A., Österlind, E., & Viirret, T.L. (2020). Drama in education for sustainability: Becoming connected through embodiment.

In this article, we argue that drama can serve as an interconnecting method for climate change education. In this study, we elaborate the practice of drama and participation experiences through three drama workshops: 1) process drama work on the global, social, and individual aspects of climate change, 2) outdoor drama practice on relations to nature, and 3) reflections through drama practice. The human dimension of the sustainability issues, conditions of interdependence, and collaboration were explored and manifested through the drama practices, which created frames for embodied, creative and cognitive dialogues between people with different perspectives. Being differently—as experienced through the embodied, collective, and creative practices of drama—seemed to promote experiences of interconnectedness, widen perspectives of sustainability, and motivate acting differently.

Volume 21 Number 20: Dwyer, R. (2020). “Music is special”: Music teachers navigating professional identity within a process of arts curriculum reform.

Processes of curriculum reform are often a period of upheaval for teachers and schools. As values and priorities change and new knowledge and skills are required, teachers find themselves occupying new positions upon the school landscape. In the case of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts, some of the concerns emerging from recent reforms include insufficient class time to cover the new content, inadequate support and resources for planning, and challenges stemming from five distinct arts subjects being grouped into a single curriculum, without a shared experience as “the arts”. This paper explores the impacts of this particular curriculum reform on three music teachers’ work, specifically the ways in which they position themselves and their work as music teachers in relation to the arts curriculum. Their stories highlight the importance of professional networks and relationships in developing new curriculum knowledge, and point to possibilities for developing shared understandings as teachers of the arts.

Volume 21 Number 21: Chung S. K., & Li, D. (2020). Socially engaged art education: Exploring issues of homelessness in an elementary art classroom.

Over the past two decades, the field of art education has emphasized visual culture art education for developing visual literacy. More recently, social justice art education has come into focus since there have been many unresolved social justice issues in American society. Underprivileged groups such as persons experiencing homelessness have not yet gained public attention, nor have they evoked from the government a true sense of urgency. Homelessness often occurs at the intersection of unemployment, poverty, domestic violence, substance abuse, and mental health disorders. The impact on families, especially young children, can be profound. The essential part of social justice art education is to provide a safe learning place for students to voice unjust social conditions through art. A case study was conducted in a large urban city in the southwestern United States to explore elementary students’ perceptions about homelessness and how contemporary activist art inspires students to envision a more just society. The article begins with a literature review of socially-engaged art education and discusses homelessness issues in art education, first by describing several art examples by a contemporary mural artist, Skid Robot, who has addressed homelessness in his art. Inspired by Robot’s art, elementary students in a relevant art lesson expressed their views on various issues regarding homelessness and “drew” a home for homeless persons through a printmaking exercise. Students' artwork and their implications for social justice art education were provided.

Volume 21 Number 22: Bird, J. (2020). More than words: Performance ethnography as a research method that values sustained ethnographic orientation and imaginative theatre-making.

Performance ethnography is a form of performed research that creates a theatrical representation of ethnographic inquiry. Walford (2009) proposes that frequently performance ethnographers neglect traditional ethnographic practices such as participant observation and substantial time in the field. This paper draws on research which investigated the practices of a performance ethnographer who adopted a sustained ethnographic orientation throughout the interconnecting phases of fieldwork, analysis, interpretation and representation (Wolcott, 1995). The paper considers how these practices influenced, shaped and enhanced the researcher’s theatre making practices. The research revealed that the embodied and tacit knowledge generated through a performative approach to ethnographic inquiry lends itself to a layered and rich style of theatre making that involves more than a transference of verbatim text into a script. This paper documents the performance ethnographer’s commitment to sustained ethnographic processes as she synthesizes detailed and complex insights into an action-based, artistic theatrical representation.

Volume 21 Number 23: Athanases, S. Z., & Sanchez, S. L. (2020). Seeding Shakespeare and drama in diverse 21st-century classrooms through a cross-national partnership: New teachers’ challenges and early practices.

Classroom drama holds promise for student learning across disciplines. When Shakespeare’s works are included in diverse classrooms, supported by drama activities, students can embody, voice, and explore themes and societal issues, bringing such themes alive. This study documents challenges and opportunities reported by teachers in their first-year teaching as they participated in an innovative cross-national partnership between Globe Education, Shakespeare’s Globe, London and the School of Education, University of California, Davis. Survey results found new teachers’ value exceeded their self-confidence in implementing Shakespeare and drama-based practices in their teaching. Teachers managed to infuse drama activities in classrooms, conducted inquiry into students’ responses, and reported the need for further preparation to enact program practices. Two vignettes of classroom work further illustrate challenges and possibilities of partnership practices, and highlight needed adaptive work for successfully incorporating drama and Shakespeare in classrooms to explore social, cultural, and historical conflicts, themes, and dilemmas.

Volume 21 Number 24: McManimon, S. K. (2020). Fracturing and re-membering: Exploring educational crisis through performative mapping.

“Fracturing and Re-Membering” is a performative mapping combining critical autoethnography and verbatim theatre that re-presents the entanglement of the fragmented and fractured work of teaching, professional development, and research. It draws on data from professional development sessions of a critical literacy and creative drama program that partners U.S. elementary school classrooms with Teaching Artists from a nonprofit theatre company. While the performative mapping can stand alone, I first explain professional development experiences I facilitated for these Teaching Artists on Kumashiro’s (2009) conception of crisis in relation to learning; I then outline the research process that led to the performative mapping. Following the performative mapping, I reflect on how using creative drama as pedagogy in professional development and as research facilitated re-membering ourselves both individually and collectively as we worked through crises forcing us to confront troubling knowledge. The performative mapping invites audiences/participants to do so as well.

Volume 21 Number 25: Sesigür, A., Edeer, S. (2020). Place-based critical art education: An action research.

Place-based critical art education (PBCAE) blends an emphasis on place-based education and ecology with the cultural focus of critical pedagogy, the intention being to provide education that takes the ecological, cultural, social and political issues of a place into account. With this goal in mind, visual arts teachers are expected to utilize places as resources. It is thus important for visual arts teacher candidates to experience PBCAE, as this will allow them to discover and interpret the role of their place of residence in the creation of art, and to learn how to integrate place into the teaching process. This study shows how PBCAE can help candidate teachers to develop their artistic expression skills and to connect their experiences in this process with art education. The study adopts a qualitative research approach and an action research design, and was conducted with the participation of candidate teachers in six focus groups as part of the Main Art Workshop-III course in the 2015–2016 academic year. Data for the study was collected through observations, semi-structured interviews, participant and researcher diaries, and the participants’ art works. This data was analyzed using an inductive analysis technique. It was found that the individual and collective relationships formed with a place were experienced in an integrated manner in natural, cultural, aesthetic and critical terms, and that these experiences were associated with daily life and subsequently reflected in the art making practices. In conclusion, dialogue-based communication involving discussions, interactions and cooperative efforts was found to contribute to the development of the critical thinking skills and place awareness of candidate teachers, and encouraged the making of associations between place, art and education.

Volume 21 Number 26: Jusslin, S. & Østern, T. P. (2020). Entanglements of teachers, artists, and researchers in Pedagogical environments: A new materialist and arts-based approach to an educational design research team.

This study investigates the collaboration between two teachers, a dance teaching artist, and a researcher within an educational design research project, that integrated creative dance into fifth-graders’ reading and writing processes. To study this design team, we draw on the theoretical field of new materialism and the methodological field of arts-based research. Performing a diffractive analysis, we identify five entanglements in the design team and discuss how they affect the pedagogical realities and knowledge generation. Considerations on how to create a safe environment, relate to data equipment, build trust, and reserve enough time for lessons and design meetings can act as guidelines when collaborating in design teams. (Re)considering and (re)thinking who the team members are, how they work together, and why they enter a design research project can provide deeper understanding of and respect for the important what aspect in EDR—developing valuable knowledge for educational practices.

Volume 21 Number 27: Mamur, N. (2020). A critical analysis of aesthetics and cultural texture of shopping malls in teacher education: The ideology of space.

This case study addresses an activity called "Ideology of Space" in the context of a visual culture-based in-service teacher education program. In the study, teachers applied a multidimensional analysis to mall spaces, which serve as a good example of everyday aesthetics. The activity consisted of a series of implementations aimed at examining how ideology is experienced through spaces in daily life. It included pedagogical approaches that encouraged teachers to critically evaluate the shopping malls they visited by using their knowledge and aesthetic value judgments to examine elaborately the shopping malls, not only in the context of the economy but also within the cultural, political, and environmental contexts. The implementation process focused on visual culture and sustainable learning. The participants of the research were primary classroom teachers and secondary school visual arts teachers. In the study, the analysis unit encompassed the experiences of the teachers who attended the activity.
While tracing the aesthetics that leak into every area of life with different functions through space, teachers examined the social, environmental and economic dimensions of such leakage and were encouraged to question their own teaching processes. The results denoted that the activity enhanced teachers’ learning experiences and, by this means, promoted their professional and personal development. Teachers’ expressions revealed that the visual art teachers rarely use learning approaches that nurture the intellectual process before implementing lessons in their classes. Furthermore, the educational process enabled teachers to critique themselves with regard to the use of cognitive and interactive pedagogies in their classes. Teachers developed ideas to improve their own art lesson activities through the experiences they gained during the activity.

Volume 21 Number 28: Hall, E. H. (2020). My rocket: Young children’s identity construction through drawing.

The communicative potential of young children’s drawings was explored through case studies of 14 children aged four - six (eight girls, six boys) at a rural English school. Informed by socio-cultural theories, the research queried what and how the children communicated through drawing, as well as influences on their choices. Nearly 800 spontaneous drawings were collected, along with interview and observation data. Identity was the main theme communicated, with evident gender differences. However, the discussion of data goes beyond the reductivism of a sole focus on stereotypical gender differences. This paper compares nine rocket drawings, produced by seven children (five boys, two girls) and contextualises some crucial findings from the wider study. The drawings reflect the children’s unique, powerful and playful identities and their desire to communicate these with others in creative ways. Importantly, individual discussions with the children about their drawings were essential to gain valuable insights into their worlds.

Volume 21 Number 29: Juntunen, M.-L. (2020). Embodied learning through and for collaborative multimodal composing: A case in a Finnish lower secondary music classroom.

This article analyzes how embodied learning was enhanced in a project in which students made a music video with a tablet, combining music and movement compositions, in a Finnish seventh-grade music classroom. Student interviews and reflections, as well as researcher’s field notes were used as material for the analysis. In the project, embodied learning took place through active participation and multi-sensory perception and experiences. Learning was enhanced by focusing students’ attention to and awareness of each activity and their kinesthetic experiences, then by reflective assignments. Preparations for the music and movement compositions included explorative and improvisational Dalcroze-, Orff-, and Laban-based music-and-movement exercises, the rehearsal of movement material for composition, and the creation of a safe and comfortable social space. Making the video fostered embodied learning since it required students to remember, re-experience, and apply previous activities, and incorporated multimodal expression. Tablets served as easy and manageable digital tools for meaning-making and multimodal expression in addition to making achievements both explicit and shareable.

Volume 21 Number 30: Lee, B. K., Enciso, P., & Brown, M. R. (2020). The effect of drama-based pedagogies on K-12 literacy-related outcomes: A meta-analysis of 30 years of research.

A recent national report heartily supported arts integration as an effective, innovative, and cost-efficient way to address teachers’ and students’ needs; however, the report called for a better understanding of when, for whom, and what content areas are best served by arts integration methods. The effectiveness of drama-based pedagogy (DBP), a type of arts integration, has been assessed in previous meta-analyses; however, an updated meta-analysis is warranted. In the present report, we review and meta-analyze thirty years of accumulated research of the effects of drama-based pedagogies on literacy related student outcomes. The findings show a significant positive effect of DBP on achievement, attitudes, 21st century skills, drama skills, and motivation. In particular, effects are more positive when DBP is led by a classroom teacher over multiple hours of instruction. Limitations and implications are discussed.

Volume 21 Number 31: Wienk, J. (2020). In conversation with four handbooks: On the current state of arts education in the 21st century.

Entering the new millennium, the field of arts education asserted to have undergone some substantial changes. I explore these assertions by analysing the discourse in four recent international handbooks on arts education, focusing on the perspectives of the editors, specifically the lens they use to frame, organise, thematise and shape the field of arts education. Based on the key concepts, recurring themes and grand narratives that the editors’ lenses collect and show, I firstly describe the historical timeline formed by the four handbooks published from 2004 to 2017. Given the constraints set, my research does not include the 3-volume International Encyclopedia of Art and Design Education has been published in 2019. Secondly, I search for dimensions that are overlooked or underexposed, due to these lenses. To conclude I connect these findings to my experience as an art teacher leading to the observation that art in education bears a particular potential for education. To address this however, research and education that relates more closely to the nature of the arts is needed.

Volume 21 Number 32: Sefton, T. G. & Sirek, D. (2020). Musical self-portraits and representations of non/conformity: In the music classroom with preservice generalist teachers.

Self-portraits are a genre of art, but also constitute artefacts of identity. This research explores student-created musical self-portraits produced by more than 150 generalist teacher education students (preservice teachers) in Ontario, Canada over a period of three years. The self-portraits were completed and submitted as an assignment at the beginning of the term in a compulsory music education class. This paper examines the material practice, influences, and symbols that students used. Most of the self-portraits conformed to the idea of ‘the good teacher’, while only a few represented identities that lay outside social norms. The findings contribute to an understanding of how students may groom their self-image and construct a public identity to fit the institutional and cultural ethos of preservice teacher education programs.

Volume 21 Number 33: Kouhia, A. & Rönkkö, M. (2020). Crafting the city: Promoting heritage awareness through craft making in a historical town.

This paper reports on a project designed to promote the understanding of the World Heritage site of Old Rauma, Finland, with the help of craft activities. Through fieldwork and an analysis of the data collected from two craft interventions, the paper examines how craft making can serve as a medium to celebrate a sense of place and inspire people to deliberate the role that heritage occupies in their everyday lives. Based on the study, it can be concluded that attention needs to be placed on the teaching and learning of creative practices in order to contribute to the makers’ perceptions of placeness and to sustain local development as well as to promote heritage in a historical town.

Volume 21 Number 34: Dryburgh, J. (2020). Vital entanglements: An exploration of collective effort in the dance technique class.

Peers influence each other and learning can be shaped by shared processes. The purpose of this article is to pedagogically explore collective effort in the dance technique studio in a conservatoire setting. This practice-based research flows from the studio and has relevance for all higher arts education contexts. It is developed from the experiences of students and a teacher/researcher in the process of prioritising attentive peer observation as a strategy for shared learning. Qualitative data has been thematically analysed, through a feminist interpretive ethnographic approach, in order to bring insight to the complexity and interdependency of learning. Pedagogical roles have been reconceptualised and the influence of peers is discussed as embodied acts of recognition. Furthermore, the experience of disengagement among peers is reframed as agential dissent and the dance technique class is articulated as a potential model of understanding what it can mean to live well among others.



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