Search

This paper examines the interplay of creativity, education, and the expressive arts. We begin by presenting a narrative literature review focusing on the use of artistic tools to promote creativity, self-expressiveness, and meaningful aspects of emotional and social learning. This review reveals strong connections between the different components of this interplay, and a special attention is given to the use of arts to promoting creativity and meaningful learning. We then propose the Empowering Creative Education Model (ECEM), which aims to provide a practical framework for employing artistic tools in each of the model's four developmental circles: I, Us, Educational and Community. Each of the four circles includes unique aspects of personal development.

This paper explores children's understandings of Acknowledgement to Country practices and Aboriginal knowledges. Guided by the relational lenses of respect, responsibility and reciprocity, we conducted focus groups with children across five Australian early education centres. We found that Acknowledgement practices were evident through recitation of their Acknowledgement to Country, engaging with artefacts, and/or discussion of artworks. Secondly, children demonstrated emerging understandings about place names, the symbolic use of flags for places and people, and Australian plants and animals. Thirdly, Aboriginal cultures as living cultures were evident in temporal discussions about people and culture. Finally, imaginative play implied efforts to make sense of Aboriginal concepts and language. Across the study, children were active in experimenting with ideas in their own meaning making. Acknowledgement to Country was not a moment in the day; rather, it was embedded throughout the day through routines, storytelling, play and creative activities, all designed to foster learning.

Teacher educators face many challenges related to workload and government-mandated reforms in Initial Teacher Education programs. Evidence suggests that COVID-19 has exacerbated these challenges as universities must become more costeffective and improve research outcomes and impact, often resulting in heavier workloads. While these challenges may be faced in other disciplines, teacher educator wellbeing, stress and burnout is an under-researched field, and little is known about if and how teacher educators maintain their wellbeing during times of uncertainty. This collaborative autoethnographic study applied an arts-based research method to explore the wellbeing challenges faced by four Australian teacher educators through the lens of the PERMA wellbeing framework. Data was collected through conversations, written reflections and field texts. While tensions often emerged, opportunities for success and positive changes also became known. The importance of agency and self-determination of teacher educator wellbeing became an important foundation for continuation in teacher education.

Co-authorship between doctoral students and their supervisors is a mostly occluded practice, generalised according to the candidates' disciplines. There is limited understanding of the practice, particularly in humanities, arts, and social sciences (HASS) disciplines. This study explores HASS doctoral students' and supervisors' perceptions towards co-authorship during candidature. Focus is given to participants' motivations, perceived challenges, and reservations about engaging in supervisor-candidate co-authorship. Surveys of 121 doctoral students and 126 supervisors representing 12 HASS disciplines across 18 Australian universities revealed divergent interpretations of co-authorship: although many viewed it as a collaborative process, more than a third of supervisors approached it through the lens of 'divide and conquer'. Such findings raise important ethical and pedagogical concerns, highlighting the need for clearer terminology and guidelines. We respond to this ambiguity by proposing a new term, 'collaborative co-authorship', reconceptualising supervisor-candidate co-authorship in a way that clarifies perceptions towards the practice and presents it as a pedagogical approach to apprentice doctoral students to become fully-fledged academics. It is our hope that this reconceptualisation will equip stakeholders at individual, institutional, and national levels to engage more confidently and intentionally with collaborative co-authorship through PhD candidature.

Thermal cameras have shown to have utility in secondary school classrooms and undergraduate courses. In this paper, the author argues for their potential in the primary school classroom and presents a range of activities that can be undertaken with thermal cameras (or supplied images). With limited access in mind, the activities in this paper have been designed to be practiced in 'demonstration mode' with only one thermal camera or even by using a bank of existing photographs made available to teachers and students. Activities can be modified for individual use or for use in small groups if students have one-to-one access to the cameras.

'The Children's Sensorium -- art, play and mindfulness for post-pandemic recovery' was an exhibition that brought together sensory-based art installations featuring First Nations Connection to Country with mindfulness and embodiment strategies to enhance well-being for children (ages 4-11). As the COVID-19 pandemic slowly moves from the centre of public attention, we are starting to gauge the impact of the world's longest lockdown in Melbourne, Australia, on children's well-being and resilience. 'The Children's Sensorium' exhibition was created with children and their well-being in mind. In this article, we focus on insights from the exhibition evaluation and address the ways artistic and sensory-based mindful engagement can support children's well-being and resilience. Evaluation of The Sensorium exhibition provides a view into the potential of sensory-based artworks to create a stimulating environment, positive emotions, mindful awareness of their senses and the environment and a sense of playful agency for children. The Sensorium provoked a fresh way of thinking about art exhibitions for children: one that centred a child-friendly, strength-based artistic space where children felt agency to be creative and explore the complexity of their emotions, hopes and fears in the wake of the global pandemic.

In recent years, art museums have been putting more effort into creating e-learning resources (ELR) to encourage young children to learn about art off-site. However, research on art museum ELR from the perspective of educational content is scarce. Using the ELR offered to children by Queensland Art Gallery/ Gallery of Modern Art, Australia (QAGOMA KIDS), as an example for qualitative content analysis, this research interrogates the fundamental issues regarding the types of learning content provided and the learning experiences that the interactive e-games might offer to children. The findings show that the content of the ELR reflected a constructivist museum education approach and that the e-games may offer children empowering and motivating learning experiences. This research offers two suggestions for art museum educators and e-games designers: (1) use e-games to guide children through the creative explorative process that artists go through and (2) articulate learning objectives and scaffold with guided questions to support children's art learning via the e-games.

This paper reports on a transdisciplinary approach to science with a Year 4/5 class incorporating citizen science through the Birds in Backyards project. This transdisciplinary approach created opportunities for student engagement through science, mathematics, design and technology, humanities and social sciences (HASS), arts and English, while also creating meaningful connections to nature and the local environment.

Creativity is recognised as a key facet of the suite of 21st century skills driving education worldwide. Understanding its existence outside of The Arts is vital for recognising young children's creativity. However, what constitutes creativity and what it 'looks like' is not always clear. As a result, inconsistency and lack of efficacy when educators and parents attempt to encourage the development of young children's creativity is possible. To investigate implicit theories of creativity relating to what creativity is and who is considered creative, parents and educators of four to eight-year-old children in four early learning contexts in Perth, Western Australia, were invited to complete a questionnaire. Findings suggest there may not be a strong tendency towards recognising creativity in The Arts but there may be an inclination to recognise eminent men's creativity more than women's. Additionally, there appears to be a lack of recognition of 'daring' as a creative behaviour.

Partnerships between schools, universities, and community organizations have mutual benefits for all involved. These partnerships value the contributions of all participants and capitalize on the expertise and knowledge that each brings. This reflective paper details a collaborative third-space partnership between a university, a primary school, and a community organization. The partnership facilitated the design, development, and implementation of a unique program called Project DARE (Dementia knowledge, Art, Research, and Education). A research-based evaluation of the Project DARE feasibility study can be found elsewhere (Burns et al., 2020). The aim of this paper is to reflect upon the formation of the partnership and the roles that each party played. It also discusses implications for the future development of third-space partnerships.

This article presents an adaptation of an arts-based research method usually reserved for child-focused research to examine organizational processes. We developed Draw, Write, Reflect (DWR), advancing a known method, Draw and Write, for investigating phenomena relating to child participants, to explore a new context: adults engaging in academic careers. This article reports on the rationale behind the novel use of this research method, outlines a DWR procedure for future research, and contains reflections of both the researchers and the respondents regarding their experiences participating in DWR. Offering participants a combination of visual and oral methods allowed the researchers to obtain data in a more individualized approach steered by participants' preferences. The multidimensional insights obtained through DWR would not have been attainable through each method on its own. Furthermore, we argue arts-based research can serve as a vehicle for disseminating academic work beyond conventional academe to a growing, nonacademic audience.

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the evaluation of the arts within performance-based research funding systems (PRFSs). Previous literature on PRFSs has overlooked the arts and focussed primarily on outputs in relation to the sciences and humanities. We develop a typology of how artistic outputs are evaluated within 10 countries' PRFSs, operating in Australia, the Czech Republic, Italy, Lithuania, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, and the UK, and identify three different types of artistic evaluation systems. The study compares evaluation methods and provides a classification of quality criteria used by evaluation panels. We conclude with a discussion of the challenges specific to different types of systems.

The "Wandiny" creative gathering of Indigenous and non-Indigenous poets, artists, Elders, and participants across Australia actively sought to foreground First Nations voices, stories, poetry, art, and ontology. This paper presents the auto-ethnographic reflections from the event organisers, demonstrating that participation in a gathering that honours Eldership and Country is a profoundly personal and spiritual experience. Following a call-and-response format, the event promoted deep listening and responsive writing contributed to a cultural sense of being and understanding.

This article questions the use of the term 'siloed' to describe certain degrees or subjects in the Australian university curriculum. Education Minister Dan Tehan used the term as part of a justification of a re-set of funding priorities for university education from 2021 which he announced in June 2020. The Minister partly turned his argument on the floating of an impression that humanities degrees are 'siloed'. They or, more specifically, units within them, would become more expensive for students since 'job readiness' needs to be prioritised. The author analyses the term, its uses and applications to fields of knowledge, and concludes that such a term is neither accurate nor useful. He suggests that focusing on needs arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic might provide a less conflicted and future-oriented way of thinking about the problem rather than making superficial judgments of the merits of particular undergraduate degrees as a foundation for dictating education and education funding policy.

Initial teacher education programs regularly engage students in service-learning programs, providing an additional pathway to personal, professional and pedagogical transformation in their learning journey. One of those pathways is through service-learning placements in community arts projects. This paper reports on a study of arts-based service-learning programs at two universities. Eight initial teacher education (ITE) students were interviewed after their placements and a number of key themes emerged. These include the importance of productive discomfort as part of the service-learning experience and transformative pedagogy resulting from the art-based experience. This paper also explores some critiques of traditional service-learning models that have opened spaces for critical service-learning approaches. The analysis of ITE students' narratives led to findings about the path of transformation from traditional to critical service-learning approaches through arts-based projects, an area which has been largely unexplored in previous research. The paper concludes with discussion of future avenues for related research that orientate service-learning in the arts towards social and creative justice.

This paper reports on the first large-scale quantitative investigation into collaboration, demonstrated in co-authorship, by Australian humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS) researchers. Web of Science data were extracted for Australian HASS publications, with a focus on the softer social sciences, over the period 2004-2013. The findings show that collaboration has increased over the last ten years, with strong intra-region collaboration concentrated on the east coast of Australia. International collaboration occurred most frequently with English speaking countries at vast distances from Australia. On average, fields in the social sciences collaborated at higher rates and attracted higher citations than humanities fields, but co-authorship of any kind was likely to increase citation rates. The results provide a snapshot of collaboration by Australian HASS authors in this time period and can be used as a benchmark to explore collaboration patterns in the future.

2020 has been marked by disruption on a global scale due to a range of compounding crises including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Many community arts responses to the pandemic originated from individuals rather than by means of concerted or sustained sectoral responses. This paper uses reflections from Ireland, Australia, and Mexico to discuss the precariousness and vulnerability of the community arts sector and the artists and educators within it at this profoundly difficult time. We reflect upon some of the artistic and educational innovations and experimentations that have come about. We simultaneously examine the work of artists and arts organizations on a paradigmatic level by reflecting upon the role we play in perhaps involuntarily sustaining inequalities despite articulating a desire for change in the work that we do. We argue for the community arts sector to draw upon its imagination and bravery to reflect, assume responsibility, and recast the world into what we want it to be, rather than rebuilding the old, broken one in an attempt to return to what is perceived to be normal. Finally, in turning to arts education policy, we interrogate the barriers and enablers of change in the arts in a post-COVID world, discussing the influencing policy factors of sectoral weaknesses; individual resourcefulness and resilience; the desire for revolution; and the importance of love.

This article takes as its focus the doing of pedagogic affect. We are not so much concerned with what pedagogic affect "is" as what it "does" and how it might do more. We revisit Spinozist concepts of affect, as taken up by Deleuze and Braidotti, in the context of affirmative ethics. Bringing assemblage thinking together with empirical material generated through two qualitative research projects, we map affect-ethics relations within a classroom-citizenship-test assemblage and a kinetic-fungi-tower-sculpture assemblage. Pedagogic affect emerges as constitutive of ethical subjectivities in a nexus of affect, pedagogy and power. We argue that attending to affective and material-discursive relationality in all pedagogic processes affords a practice of response-able pedagogy and invites an ethics of affirmation that augments the affective capacities of learner- and teacher-bodies, enlarging their potential to engage in ethical action.

This paper reports on the experiences of creative practice graduate researchers and academic staff as they seek to comply with the requirements of the Australian "National Statement on the Ethical Conduct of Research Involving Humans." The research was conducted over a two-year period (2015 to 2017) as part of a wider project 'iDARE -- Developing New Approaches to Ethics and Research Integrity Training through Challenges Presented by Creative Practice Research'. The research identified the appreciation of ethics that the participants acquired through their experience of institutional research ethics procedures at their university. It also revealed a disjunction between the concepts of ethics acquired through meeting institutional research ethics requirements, the notion of ethics that many researchers adopt in their own professional creative practice and the contents of professional codes of conduct. A key finding of the research was that to prepare creative practice graduates for ethical decision-making in their professional lives, research ethics training in universities should be broadened to encompass a variety of contexts and enable researchers to develop skills in ethical know-how.

This paper outlines a journey of arts-based inquiry into teacher education and identity transformation in the transition to teaching, guided by Barone and Eisner's Seven Features of Arts-Based Educational Inquiry. Employing a theatre-based research approach the researcher investigated teachers' epiphanic or revelatory "first" moments of identity transformation, culminating in the creation of the play script and performance: "The First Time." The article discusses what Barone and Eisner's works offered this arts-based researcher on their journey. Outcomes of the research include the value of working backwards from this frame for further data elucidation and analysis and presenting research to relevant "expert" audiences.

The relationship between experience, emotions, cognition, and learning is of increasing interest to educators and researchers who recognise that efforts to promote student engagement and learning must take into account factors beyond the purely cognitive and instrumental. The significance of experience considered as a unity in regard to child development was discussed through the concept of "perezhivanie" decades ago in the work of Lev Vygotsky (1934). Contemporary explorations of "perezhivanie" as a concept and phenomenon may be further informed through drawing upon Dewey's work on "Art as Experience" (1934) and the concept of metaxis as understood in drama education literature. This paper will examine the special nature of arts and educational drama experiences for experiencing, realising, and expressing "perezhivanie." It also reflects upon the role of the teacher, their own experiences of arts-inspired "perezhivanie" and the potentially contagious impact of the teacher's experiences for their students.

Rising worldwide scrutiny of the PhD has focused on issues such as return on investment and career outcomes. This article investigates PhD graduate careers and knowledge transfer looking at the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS). Firstly, our extensive literature review of PhD graduate outcomes reveals limited knowledge of HASS careers and a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) bias. Secondly, our case study of graduates suggests HASS PhDs provide a vital conduit for end-user engagement and knowledge transfer. Our findings deepen knowledge about the careers of HASS PhDs by revealing pre-existing professional networks may be harnessed to inform end-user relationships throughout candidature and post-graduation. Contrary to dominant assumptions, these networks may endure even for graduates in the academy. This under-recognized phenomenon demonstrates the multi-sector knowledge transfer capacity of HASS researchers with implications for their research capability and career development needs and perceptions of the value of their research.

This article discusses how doctoral candidates identify and navigate personal learning challenges on their journey to becoming researchers. Our study asked creative arts and humanities candidates to think beyond the research project itself and reflect on emotional hurdles they were facing or had overcome. The findings point to a great deal of 'invisible' work that underpins doctoral study, and show that such hidden work can have a major influence not only on the research project, but also on progress and satisfaction with the learning journey. In this article, we outline the key themes that emerged from the study: on the emotional and transformational dimensions of the doctoral journey. Using these themes and the candidate stories surrounding them, we align the doctoral journey with Joseph Campbell's journeying 'hero' and Mezirow's concept of transformation, and suggest how making such invisible aspects of candidature more visible might enhance research training.

It is widely accepted that the academic job market is very limited and unlikely to expand any time soon, yet enrolments in PhDs continue to rise. If the PhD is no longer preparation for academia, where do these graduates go on completing their degrees? This study of Australian PhD graduates in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) explores motivations to undertake a research degree, their experiences of academia, and their current employment. These personalised narratives reveal the impact and value of doctoral education on the employment trajectories of HASS PhD graduates in non-academic careers. These stories uncover both the 'cruel optimism' and positive employment outcomes experienced by HASS doctorate holders. It is argued that commencing PhD candidates should be encouraged from the outset to seriously consider their doctorate as preparation for careers beyond academia; rather than being 'failed academics,' these graduates succeed as high-level knowledge workers.

The title question and two subsequent questions are considered in the context of rational creativity. A-rational creativity is not considered. Q. Can creativity be taught? A. It depends on what is meant by 'creativity' and 'taught' in what context. Q1. Is teaching either creativity or critical thinking inimical to the practice of the other? A1. Not necessarily, each is required for the success of the other and both are required for successful living. Q2. Are Australian schools and universities a good place to learn critical thinking and creativity? A2. Yes, when teachers teach with sensitivity to the actual needs of students; No, if accountability standards are applied narrowly through testing and ranking to inhibit the practice and reward of critical thinking and creativity in the classroom; and Perhaps Yes, if new creativity tests are devised to help teachers create classrooms that encourage and reward creativity across the curriculum.

This study explored student learning and engagement in a novel cross-disciplinary education program, in particular whether medical students learning experiences can be enhanced through interaction and exchange of knowledge with students of varying disciplines. The program, entitled AnaRtomy, studies the historical relationship between art and anatomy. A cohort of medical, physiotherapy and fine arts students from Monash University, Australia completed the three week AnaRtomy program in Italy. The benefits of cross-disciplinary learning were substantial as students from different courses learned from each other and gained new perspectives into art and anatomy. The AnaRtomy program supports cross-disciplinary learning and successfully enhances student engagement and learning experiences giving students the opportunity to study abroad and learn through experience.

This article reflects on ongoing research-led teaching in the area of creative industries in higher education. Specifically it reports on key work-integrated learning strategies designed to better prepare graduates for the employment sector. The creative industries sector is complex and competitive, characterized by non-linear career paths driven by the individual. Following contextualization of the key issues, a core creative industries subject and curriculum is described, which requires students to engage directly with industry practitioners via internships or case studies. In order to interrogate the impact of these activities, a sample of final reflections as well as formal student feedback on the subject were analyzed in order to draw out key themes in relation to student learning and understanding. Analysis of these data propose that direct engagement with practitioners assists students in developing new knowledge of the capacities they will require for a sustainable career. [Papers included in this "Asia-Pacific Journal of Cooperative Education" ("APJCE") Special Issue stem from selected manuscripts from the 2014 Australian Collaborative Education Network (ACEN) Conference Proceedings.]

The Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize is organised by the Museum of South Australia each year, with the winning works typically touring to other states. Named after the founder of the museum, it features art inspired by science. A recent visit to the finalist's exhibition of the Waterhouse prize had the author thinking about the narrowing of the professional practice of science teaching. In this article, the author reflects on his visit and the importance of the connection between science and art in science teaching.

This article discusses how a New South Wales (NSW), Australia, visual arts educator, Diane, and her 10th-grade students used art practice as research and visual process diaries to create mini bodies of work. According to Marshall and D'Adamo (2011), art practice as research stresses conceptual and technical skills, uses artwork for interdisciplinary inquiry, is student-driven yet educator guided, and employs concepts that connect to multiple academic fields. Art practice as research acknowledges the creative process as an integral part of artmaking practice; it invites art educators to consider providing students with an ability to articulate creative practice in explicit and knowledgeable ways (Marshall, 2015). It allows students to understand their artmaking processes, how they acquire knowledge, and how to articulate their own belief systems about artmaking, as derived from the synthesis of information (intellectual, emotional, and personal) from their world. The author found that visual process diaries, bodies of work, and art practice as research can serve as exciting and viable models for U.S. art education practice. By investigating and emulating artists' practices and ideas and by metacognitively reflecting on and communicating their own through process diaries and bodies of work, students can use art practice as research to interconnect ideas, link them to their own experiences and the world, and see artmaking as a way of thinking and knowing. Art practice as research helps students to understand their experiences in new ways as they investigate, creatively interpret, and become aware of their thinking.

Despite an historical recognition that research is lacking on the occurrence of school students' academic regression after a period of over-achievement, there continues to be little research conducted into the phenomenon. In particular, there is little research that examines the phenomenon from the perspective of students. The "Working Above Standard Project" (WASP) explored what was happening for students at a rural Victorian primary school who were, at the time of the study or at some stage in their primary schooling, identified as "working above standard" (WAS) in literacy and/or numeracy. This mixed method study was initiated by the school, and two staff members formed a research team with three university researchers for 12 months in 2017. Phase 1 involved the identification of students who had at some stage been identified as WAS in literacy or numeracy using analyses of data that the school had collected for student monitoring purposes. Analysis of student data led to the identification of twenty students in year 6 as meeting the WAS definition, and these students were invited to participate in a qualitative online survey. Three factors were found to be important to the students in the WASP: social interaction and friendships; teachers; and having a sense of belonging to the school through art, drama and sport.

The quote in the title of this paper is taken from the first line of Marc Depaepe's article "An Agenda for the History of Colonial Education", published in "The Colonial Experience in Education" (Ghent, 1995). This presentation takes as its focus the informal learning space of the museum and the art gallery, and the emergence in recent years of curatorial activism. It seeks to explore the changing discourse and politics around addressing through display the history of colonialism and its meaning in today's globalised world.

Researchers navigating the ontological turn in educational research have increasingly looked to art as an alternative to conventional modes of qualitative inquiry. However, the rapprochement between art and post-qualitative research remains problematic. While some see this turn coinciding with established genealogies in arts-based research, others suggest that existing models of arts-based inquiry are largely incompatible with the radical onto-epistemological orientations associated with post-qualitative research. This paper argues that the integration of art into the social sciences is far from settled, while also offering a series of speculative propositions for an inhuman aesthetics that is responsive to the ontological turn. This inhuman theory of art is elaborated through Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy, and extended through an analysis of collaborative artworks produced by undergraduate visual art students. This leads to a consideration of how post-qualitative approaches might enable mutual activations among art, philosophy, and social research.

Many Australian state primary schools have a policy to use generalist teachers to teach music as well as many other subjects, however research indicates that primary generalist teachers lack confidence and competence to teach music in their classrooms. Added to this, preservice teachers enter their initial teacher education course with little or no background in music education and low confidence to teach music. Skills, knowledge and attitudes that are learned in the preservice teacher education course are crucial to developing the students' confidence and competence to teach music. This paper presents one approach to addressing this situation, based on Kolb's Experiential Learning Model. A description of a primary creative arts teacher education unit is given, then results from a quantitative and qualitative student survey are triangulated with the students' online journals and are used to evaluate the unit in terms of the students' developing confidence and competence in music education, based on their learned skills and knowledge. Results indicated that the majority of the students (97%) developed their confidence and competence to teach music using this approach. Specific learning experiences that helped affect their sense of competence in teaching music included experiential, face-to-face and online training approaches to learning relevant skills and knowledge, which confirmed the importance of using Kolb's Experiential Leaning Theory as the basis for the unit.

The Arts are an important part of curriculum in Australia. While it is an important area of the curriculum, teachers may not share the same views of importance. Views and perceptions about the Arts are formed during the beginning phase of teaching which includes pre-service teacher education. This important period of belief development can provide insight into what future Arts practice will look like in schools. In 2013, a survey was administered at two universities in Australia to explore the beliefs and perceptions of pre-service teacher generalist teachers about the importance of Arts and the role of Arts in schools. Pre-service teachers were also asked to share information on their current levels of Arts engagement. A total of 206 participants returned the survey. Findings highlight the lack of understanding about the Arts and poor engagement with Arts activities outside of university as an adult. These findings highlight a concern about the place of Arts education and are troubling for the future of Arts education in the Australian context.

"They throw Spears" was written as part of the research for my PhD at the University of Sydney. The study was conducted in two primary schools: one in a remote area in the Northern Territory (NT) and one in an urban setting in Tasmania. It was conducted in 2009 and investigated Indigenous and non-Indigenous student, non-Indigenous teacher, non- Indigenous principal and Indigenous Teaching Assistant attitudes towards Reconciliation. The theories of Lev Vygotsky and Kieren Egan and the writing of Karen Martin informed the study. The article focuses on the importance of the contribution of the two Indigenous Teaching Assistants involved in the research and explores their role in its success. It concentrates on Marlene Primary School in Katherine in the Northern Territory. At the time that the research was conducted, the school population was over 90% students Indigenous. I used an arts-informed research methodology and the writing includes narratives written in the first person. I gathered the research data through semi-structured individual and group interviews, student definitions, song lyrics, t-shirt designs, digital recordings, video footage, sketches, collographs, photographs and researcher observations. This approach enabled my personal story to be told. The article also features an image I created to symbolise the spirit of the research. The image is a block printed collograph and depicts the spears that the Indigenous Teaching Assistant (Arthur) used in his classes with the students.

Arts education research over the years has highlighted the situation of non-specialist preservice primary arts teachers as having little confidence in their own artistic ability and their ability to teach the arts to children. Added to this, problems such a lack of resources, confidence, priority, time, knowledge and experience appear to inhibit the regular teaching of the arts by generalist classroom teachers while at the same time, face-to-face hours for preservice primary arts education have decreased significantly over the recent years. This paper describes how one subject within a Primary Teacher Education course responded to these challenges. This subject was based on Herrington, Oliver and Reeves' (2003) framework for creating authentic learning environments then triangulates this authentic learning framework with what students wanted to learn in the subject and how they perceived they had developed their confidence and competence in creative arts education. (Contains 2 tables.)

The need to articulate and validate creative practice has been made more urgent by the inclusion of the creative arts in the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) process. The proof of research quality is tied to government funding and universities have strategically sought to increase their share of funding by targeting their own research output. A variety of research fields have been working through their own unique methods and discussing the decisions of criteria, especially regarding the ranking of journals as a measure of quality. Traditional researchers are confronting problems within these new definitions and alignments. This author recently went through the ERA evidence gathering process. The measurement of creative work as research output as part of this process has raised a number of issues for him, as a creative scholar, which he feels will be useful to share. This paper is intended as a case study focusing on the author's experiences in being measured for the ERA. It is therefore, necessarily personal. He seeks to share the fruits of this encounter and subsequent analysis with creative and traditional researchers in the belief in common ground rather than difference.

The majority of tertiary practice-led creative arts disciplines became part of the Australian university system as a result of the creation of the Unified National System of tertiary education in 1988. Over the past two decades, research has grown as the yardstick by which academic performance in the Australian university sector is recognised and rewarded. Academics in artistic disciplines, who struggled to adapt to a culture and workload expectations different from their previous, predominantly teaching based, employment, continue to see their research under-valued within the established evaluation framework. Despite a late 1990s Australian government funded inquiry, many of the inequities remain. While the Excellence in Research in Australia (ERA) exercise has acknowledged the non-text outputs of artist-academics in its evaluation of "research outcomes", much of the process remains resolutely framed by measures that work against creative arts researchers. (Contains 2 tables.)

This paper examines a project that developed humorous, irreverent and subversive arts-based interventions into sexism in the academy. Two workshops were run with women currently working in teacher education in Australian universities. The researchers worked with the participants collaboratively and in line with feminist practices and methodologies to develop interventions that were performed at a large multidisciplinary educational research conference. The paper outlines the origins of the project, the feminist scholarship that inspired it, the methodological framework as well as a discussion about three of the interventions and demonstrates that sexism both (re)produces structural disadvantage for women in higher education as well as being characterised by a set of micro practices that shape the everyday experiences of women in the academy. Although this research is set within an Australian context, the paper acknowledges that sexism is systemic within higher education across contexts.

Four young Australian children participated in research in which they shared their photographs and narratives of art experiences in their homes, early childhood centre and school. Drawing on Dewey's theories on art as experience, this article analyses some of the ways these 4- and 5-year-old children enjoyed satisfying art experiences, primarily in their homes, that moved them beyond mere recognition of their physical and graphic worlds to deeper perceptions that connected ideas, emotions, art media and people. Acknowledging and responding to children's perspectives on art experiences prompts pedagogical recommendations including provision of art experiences around children's personally relevant inquiries; introducing new stimuli that build rather than disrupt their explorations; providing children with a sense of purpose and audience for their art and supporting children's agency with regards to accessing art materials and ongoing projects. How structured time promotes or constrains perceptive and satisfying art experiences warrants consideration, as does the promotion of supportive and responsive interpersonal relationships between children and adults.

Reported benefits of arts partnerships with schools range from improvements in students' motivation and engagement in learning to teachers' increased confidence in teaching the arts, and strengthened school and community relationships. Yet, in the scholarship on arts partnerships to date, limited critical attention has been given to the impact of programs primarily driven by government supported industry-based imperatives. There may be legitimate concerns that, in primarily servicing economic or employment needs, industry-school partnerships overlook social and interpersonal aspects of learning in favor of goal-orientated skills training to meet "the market." This article informs arts education policy and industry directions by acknowledging this concern and reporting on the outcomes of an industry-schools partnership where industry "training" appears to be leveraging a number of more holistic student learning outcomes. Jointly funded by industry and government, SongMakers is an Australian artist in residence program that aims to improve the export potential of Australia's contemporary music industry and contribute to the implementation of a contemporary music curriculum. It involves professional songwriters and producers with international recording experience working as mentors to students who create and produce new music in intensive two-day workshops. This article outlines how the program is demonstrating emergent positive impact not only on students' music knowledge and skill development, and understanding of the contemporary music industry, but on engagement, confidence in learning, and self-efficacy. It does not argue that all industry programs can or will achieve such impacts, but that diverse kinds of arts partnerships in schools can contribute to a viable ecology of quality educational practice in the arts.

In this paper we outline the review and iterative refinement of assessment procedures in a final year graphic design subject at the University of Wollongong. Our aim is to represent the main issues in assessing graphic design work, and informed by the literature, particularly "notions of creativity" (Cowdroy & de Graaff, 2005), to develop and incorporate assessment procedures that allow creative ability to be assessed with greater transparency and objectivity. In the first iteration we developed a structure to standardise and clarify the existing model for the subject. Once this structure was in place we identified issues that would benefit from a review of the literature on assessment in the creative disciplines and the broader field of pedagogy. We marked the shift from surface approaches to learning to deep approaches to learning (Moon, 1999) at the point where we identified gaps in the learning outcomes. Our response was to move the focus from the outcome to the process and to introduce a staged assessment procedure with a stronger emphasis on formalised reflection, cycling throughout the design process. We divided the learning process into two streams: thinking and making as a means to clarify facets of learning. As we continue to refine this model we note and respond to the relationship between assessment and learning. We propose ideas for future investigation, based on identifying levels of design thinking achieved by students in the most recent iteration of the program, and how these might be improved. A bibliography is included.