35 research outputs found
International Society for Education through Art World Congress (InSEA 2019)
No full text“With Magpie clinging to his back, he races through the scrub, past stringybark, past clumps of yellow box trees and into blueness. He runs so swiftly. It is almost as if he were flying” (Wild & Brooks, 2000, p. 6). When reading this extract from “The Fox” by MargaretWild and Ron Brooks, our imagination can transport us into a different world. Assisting the reader in exploring this imaginary world is multimodal literacy (Cope and Kalantis, 2000; Kress, 2010) where images represent visual codes on pages to capture the essence of the story. It becomes a place where colour, line, shapes and spaces bring the ideological world of the artist/author to life. The multimodal approach also involves embodiment: Œæoral, gestural and spatial modes where opportunities exist to include physical interaction and foregrounding the role of the body to create communication, collaboration and learning. As a lecturer in early childhood and primary education, I am interested in the semiotics between the visual culture, dialectology and embodiment of multimodal texts, and how multimodality can signify the interrelationships between these modes to create meaning for the reader.Of particular interest to me are the stories of place and how we negotiate our sense of location in the 21st century though unlocking these modes to create storylines. The aim of the workshop is to consider a selection of multimodal texts to unearth stories of place in the 21st century where the elements of modality join forces to create and communicate meaning. The dialogue of the workshop invites the participants to be included in deconstructing and interrogating multimodal representations in a series of visual images from picture books. Through connecting and relating to the images, the participants are encouraged to draw on vocal sound, movement and gestures to tell stories and produce a composition to make meaning of the tex
A discussion on key issues in the implementation of the Arts and Culture Programme in schools in South Africa
No full textAustralian Association for Research in Education (AARE) 2022 Annual Conference
No full textThe arts are deeply suited to assisting young children in understanding their world, offering opportunities for creative ways to explore divergence and diversity. Greene (2001) posits that students in the arts should be exposed to hands-on learning, thereby opening spaces to create authentic conversations, dialogue, and critical thinking that provokes questioning. Moreover, shared memories and a place where students can speak in their "own idioms" (p. 274) should be part of the curriculum. However, the marginalisation of the arts and the increasing pressure to privilege the academic efforts of literacy and numeracy in schools consign students' arts experiences to the margins. The paper traces the investigation of how the Australian Curriculum: The Arts F - 10 is enacted in Prep, Year 1 and Year 2 classrooms in Queensland. Using the reflective arts-based lens of a/r/tography, the project involved 30 urban, rural and remote primary schools across Queensland. Classroom and specialist arts teachers were interviewed to look inward and reflect on their lived and not yet imagined experiences of the enactment of the arts curriculum in their classrooms. The collection of artefacts created by teachers and their students also gave insight into learning, teaching and the place of the arts in schools. The paper reports on the identification of a diverse range of responses that points to the complexity of integrating the arts strands to deliver an authentic curriculum. Issues such as the lack of curriculum support in schools and workforce retention in rural areas were cited as hindrances to the enactment of the curriculum. However, a collaboration between teachers led to contagious practice and was evident in student responses. The research adds to a greater understanding and appreciation of the application of the Australian Arts curriculum in schools. In particular, it adds to the identification of critical success factors for its implementation for teachers, schools and curriculum writers. The research findings enable teachers to identify, build on, and improve student outcomes and work towards a strengthened collective effort for improvements when practising the arts in schools
Arts-Based Reflection for Care of Self and Others in the Academy: A Collaged Rhizomatic Journey
No full textIt is important for academics to perform with a high degree of self-awareness to strive to achieve a state of balance between their work and personal lives (Rendón, 2009). Nevertheless, working in the academy can be both challenging and rewarding as change can occur daily (Englund, 2018). In this competitive and demanding culture, academics can be particularly vulnerable when subjected to critical feedback, scrutiny from many sources on their performance and pressure for greater accountability. In compounding factors such as a struggle to find ongoing employment, unsuccessful funding applications, rejection letters from journal articles, this can result in significant amounts of stress and uncertainty, regardless of where academics are in their career journeys (Berg, Huijbens & Larsen, 2016; Edwards & Askanasy, 2018). The stress and uncertainty can lead to a decrease in performance, and in some cases, reduced physical and emotional health and well-being (Poalses & Bezuidenhout, 2018). We acknowledge that not all experiences in the academy are negative and unpleasant. However, in this context, we seek to reflect on how we engaged creatively to support our health and well-being by using reflective practice. We understand that through collaboration, listening and understanding, we can share our lived experience and move closer towards a kinder academy. To achieve this, we drew on three arts-based practices: storying, poetry, and the making of a collaborative artwork called “otherness” to map our journey in academy. We argue that through collaborative reflective practice, we can enhance “mindfulness, contemplation and feelings of stability in work and personal lives” (Beer et al., 2015, p. 162)
Literacy teachers as researchers: Developing small inclusive projects in your classroom
No full textLiteracy teachers have a big job. They are largely responsible for teaching reading and writing not to mention keeping up to date with contemporary literate practices such as those that are multimodal (Barton, 2019). Ultimately, literacy teachers are teachers of effective communication or how we make and create meaning (Barton and Lennon, 2020; Vasquez et al., 2019). Literacy teachers are also responsible for ensuring all students achieve positive learning outcomes, including personal growth (Luke, 2018). How then can teachers of literacy in their everyday busy lives best plan for and address diverse student needs? As teacher educators, we are responsible for teaching Master's level students in a course called Literacies Learning in Diverse Contexts. Student feedback about this course is always very positive and we believe this is because the learning is personal, reflective and relevant. Students are required to identify an issue they are interested in, related to literacy learning and diverse students. They develop a research question, research the topic and plan for implementation in schooling contexts. This short paper will outline the approaches we take in supporting our preservice teachers to become teachers as researchers
An investigation of the use of arts-based embodied learning in Early Years classrooms
No full textThe arts are deeply suited to assisting young children in understanding their world. In this chapter, we draw on our observations and interviews with teachers from urban, regional and rural schools in Queensland to report on how embodiment is used in Early Years classrooms. Through vignettes, we highlight the diversity of ways that teachers incorporate and plan for movement and embodied learning in their classrooms. We reflect on how embodied learning through arts-based practices assists the learner in constructing knowledge and meaning from the learning experiences
The enactment of drama in the Arts F-10 curriculum: connections and controversies
No full textCurriculum enactment is considered a complicated process of mediating policy into practice, and is often viewed as an isolated, linear process controlled by human agency (Ball, 2016; Fullan, 2014; Reid, 2005). In this thesis, I argue that the space between policy and practice in the Australian Curriculum: The Arts Foundation – Year 10 is messy, multi-layered, entangled and complex. This study investigated the Australian Curriculum: The Arts Foundation – Year 10 curriculum and how the junior secondary drama curriculum was translated from national policy to enacted educational outcomes at state and classroom levels.
The Australian Curriculum: The Arts Foundation – Year 10 has been available for implementation in schools across Australia since the beginning of 2015. Despite the positive response to the arts curriculum at the time, it was noted that it was difficult to predict how the curriculum would be enacted to ensure that every child in Australia would have access to quality arts education (ACARA, 2012a). But what did this mean for the enactment of the drama curriculum in Australia? How did the stakeholders, in order to enact the curriculum, attend to practice and identify the tensions arising in this space? And what might a drama curriculum be, in that enactment, across the multiple educational sites in the Australian context? Would this enactment look, feel and seem the same in different sites? Such were the provocative questions motivating this study.
The study traced and mapped the trajectory of the enactment of drama within curriculum agencies, educational organisations and the middle years of schooling (Years 7 and 8) in Queensland schools. These sites included the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (QCAA), the Department of Education (DoE) in Queensland, Independent Schools Queensland (ISQ), the Queensland Catholic Education Commission (QCEC) and four secondary schools in Brisbane, Queensland, representing Catholic, Independent and State schools.
The study drew on the theoretical and methodological sensibilities of actor-network theory (Callon, 1986; Latour, 2005; Law, 2004) and case study (Stake, 1995) to investigate the entanglement of curriculum policy and curriculum enactment. The analytical approach of actor-network theory illuminated the associations between people (human) and material ii objects (non-human) (Latour, 2005) actors. The study followed the human and non-human actors during network tracing to reveal how associations were formed to make visible the effects and consequences of the enactment process. Whilst this distinction between the human and the non-human may seem inconsequential, it brought forward the critical roles played by all actors (Law, 2009).
Tracing the networks whereby the drama curriculum was enacted revealed slippage and spaces of struggle. As these stories in the network overlapped and appeared in different networks, the effects of how actors influenced one another in their entanglement to implement the drama curriculum became visible. Rhizomatic constructed maps were constructed for each chapter to reveal the ceaseless forming of connections between sites and entities. This allowed the reader to visualise curriculum enactment in a non-hierarchical way to observe “the fabric of the rhizome” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 25). Here connections between actors were observed to untangle the connections and controversies of the enactment of drama, and attended to the research question of how the drama curriculum was mediated and enacted in the different sites.
The study contributed to the educational field and, in particular, to analysing the curriculum enactment of drama, as it is the first study in Australia to follow the junior secondary drama curriculum from intended to enacted curriculum in different sites. The use of actor-network theory as theoretical and methodological sensibilities ruptured the traditional sociological assumptions about knowledge, subjectivity and the social. Lingering in this space and pondering the tangled practices yielded the appreciation for the precarious and uncertain nature of curriculum enactment. The findings provided openings for further conversations to explore the mediation of drama in educational sites
2023 Drama NZ National Conference
No full textThe arts can be a powerful tool for children to make sense of their world, offering unique opportunities for creative exploration and expression that can help to develop critical thinking skills and engage with diversity and difference. Our research project, conducted with primary school teachers and school leaders, highlighted the complexities of planning for drama experiences and engaging students in the curriculum. Teachers expressed a desire to plan for teaching in the arts in a different way, one which enabled student agency and connections between classroom activities and the wider world. Our research explores creative and collaborative ways to support teachers and student agency through co-construction in planning the teaching of the arts. This approach has four pillars - community, culture, collaboration and creativity - and guides planning for drama programs that enables connections through communities and culture, and supports collaboration, creativity and critical thinking in classrooms. We aim to address common challenges faced by educators across different settings and show how this approach can assist in breaking down traditional silos when planning for drama learning. This will help teachers create a more collaborative and inclusive space for learning in drama
Odyssey 2023
No full textThe workshop explores how an arts-rich Drama program for Primary classrooms can be created by engaging in creative responses to real-world issues.
Participants will be stepped through a unit of work, using the picture books Fire and Flood by Jackie French to explore climate change in Australia. Participants will harness their experience and creativity to articulate critical thinking that provokes questioning and a vision of change.
The workshop is suitable for Foundation – Year 6 teachers. Presenters will work with participants to embed the Drama curriculum in the early years and upper Primary. Teachers will leave with a unit of work on climate change to implement in their classrooms
Wondering and wandering: Changing perspectives about learning through art
No full textThis chapter advocates for more affective and performative ways of learning, seeking to cultivate new enriched learning experiences through art in primary school classrooms. Hence, learning needs to be unlearned to accomplish new rich learning experiences. This notion draws, firstly, upon the conceptualisation of the transformative potential inherent in humanistic contemplative exploration, akin to wondering and wandering facilitated by engagement with arts practices. Secondly, the wondering and wandering are mapped to show how the world can be viewed as performative, and how they are translated into visible representations of the students’ experiences of their world
