International Journal of Education & the Arts

Articles

• Volume 10 Number 1: Gradle, S. A. Another look at holistic art education: Exploring the legacy of Henry Schaefer-Simmern.

  In his forward to Curriculum in Abundance (2006), curriculum theorist William Pinar suggests that education should offer opportunities for self-formation which include the cultivation of our capacity to surrender, begin again, and dwell in possibility. This paper examines the theory and art education practices of a forgotten and often undervalued art educator, Henry Schaefer-Simmern, whose methodology seems congruent with some of the goals of holistic education today. Substantial insights were gleaned through interviews with one of his former students, Professor Emeritus of Art Education, Roy Abrahamson. Dr. Abrahamson's collection of published and unpublished papers on Schaefer-Simmern, his art work done under Schaefer-Simmern's direction, and his collection of student work extended my understanding of an alternative, yet viable, holistic approach to teaching and learning. Another look at this kind of art instruction is valuable as a part of a contemporary holistic practice.

• Volume 10 Number 2: Bachar, P., & Ofri, V. Art student perceptions of the role of community service in Israeli teacher education.

  The purpose of this research was to understand how student art teachers perceive the contribution to their training of community service in various frameworks, such as a prison and a drug rehabilitation center. The research was conducted in 2006-2007 in the School of Art at Beit Berl College, Israel, in two stages. In the first stage, six open-ended interviews were held with students who had taken part in community service, transcriptions of which were subjected to content analysis, yielding four main themes, each comprised of several items. These items were later formulated into a questionnaire, which was administered in the second stage to 120 students of the college. The questionnaire results demonstrate that students felt that community service had contributed meaningfully to their training as art teachers and also helped them to define and develop their emotional world, but the respondents were divided regarding the contributions of community service to their creative work as artists.

• Volume 10 Number 3: Buys, L., & Miller, E. Enhancing social capital in children via school-based community cultural development projects: A pilot study.

  This exploratory pilot study investigates the extent to which participating in a community cultural development (CCD) initiative builds social capital among children. An independent youth arts organisation implemented two cultural activities, developing a compact disc of original music and designing mosaic artworks for a library courtyard, in two schools located in a socio-economically disadvantaged area of South-East Queensland, Australia. After participation in the project, 39 primary school children aged 9 to 13 years completed a generic Social Capital in Children Questionnaire designed specifically for evaluating arts projects. Findings support the role of CCD within schools for enhancing social capital in young people, identifying a range of positive impacts regarding self-concept, reciprocity, feelings of obligation, extended networks and trust. The results suggest that program components, such as facilitating 'friendship' connections between children and designing activities that incorporate the sharing of materials, equipment and tools to facilitate reciprocity, should be an important focus for developing arts programs within a social capital framework.

• Volume 10 Number 4: Côté, H. The impacts of the presence of the cultural dimension in schools on teachers and artists.

  Several governments throughout the world promote cultural partnership programs as a means of enriching the school curriculum. How do such programs affect teachers and artists? What meaning do they give to the presence of the cultural dimension in schools? To answer these questions, I examined the content of twelve semi-structured interviews (n=12) conducted with teachers and artists within a sociology of justification theoretical framework. The findings suggest that cultural partnerships between teachers and artists enabled them to experience happiness and satisfaction as well as to learn from each other. Cultural partnerships seem to produce these effects when they involve a dialogue between teachers and artists in order to reach mutual understanding and respect. I conclude this paper by addressing the factors to consider when implementing cultural partnerships and the limitations of my study.

• Volume 10 Number 5: Delacruz, E.M. From bricks and mortar to the public sphere in cyberspace: Creating a culture of caring on the digital global commons.

  This paper is intended as a broad, conceptual and theoretical treatise on the aims of teaching art in the age of global digital media. To contextualize a set of general recommendations for art education technology pedagogy, I first provide an overview of the meteoric rise of on-line social networks, and consider questions about the nature and status of these networks as virtual communities, looking at both recent studies of Internet users and at contemporary discussions about what actually constitutes a community. Ideas about community are then connected to a discussion of the public sphere, the commons, and participatory democracy as each of these lead to calls for global civil society in cyberspace. Drawing from this thinking, recommendations for art education technology pedagogy are offered, focusing on approaches that give prominence to making time for inquiry and discourse with students about things that matter, the development of a culture of caring in the art classroom, and public engagement. A recommendation for a partnership model between university and K-12 art educators concludes the paper.

• Volume 10 Number 6: Ballantyne, J., Barrett, M., Temmerman, N., Harrison, S., & Meissner, E. Music Teachers Oz Online: A new approach to school-university collaboration in teacher education.

  This paper provides a description and critical analysis of student perceptions of a nationally funded university teaching development project that aimed to bridge gaps between research, teaching and academic development in music teacher education. Based on research recommendations the project utilised collaboration between schools and universities to develop and implement an innovative online curriculum model. Responses to student evaluation questionnaires and focus group discussions were analysed in order to establish the extent to which this project was contextualised and integrated within the university course. Findings show that students valued the experience of being engaged with authentic online case studies. Through this engagement, students were able to see the interrelationships between school experience and their university studies. The modelled collaboration between schools, universities and the community was perceived as effective by the majority of students and believed to be helpful in future field placements. Recommendations for further research and implications for music teacher education in Australia and beyond are discussed.

• Volume 10 Number 7: Grube, V. Admitting their worlds: Reflections of a teacher/researcher on the self-initiated art making of children.

  "I'm trying the least of anything to control this drawing ... in fact I want it to run away with me." says Billy, a fifth grader who reads at 13th grade level. He clears his throat and begins to sketch and his stories flood the page. This qualitative research paper looks at what free sketchbook drawing does for a group of boys ages 8-14 who participate in an after-school drawing club. The writing blends critical pedagogy with the influence of the adult media culture (e.g, war, television, movies, video games, and the internet) and my perceptions as researcher/teacher.

• Volume 10 Number 8: Blaikie, F. Knowing bodies: A visual and poetic inquiry into the professoriate.

  Through arts-informed research (Cole & Knowles, 2007) I explore visual identity and scholarship. I conversed with and photographed Lisette, Edward, Kris, Todd, William and Theresa, asking "How are your clothing choices determined by your work as a scholar?" The photographs and transcripts inspired drawings, paintings and poetry. The study confirms that clothes are negotiated expressions of self and visual identity with the body as mediator (Braziel & LeBesco, 2001; Butler, 1993; Davis, 1997; Holliday & Hassard 2001; Shilling, 1993); scholars' clothing choices are gendered (Butler, 1999; Kirkham, 1996; Sanders, 1996), and female scholars strategize through dress (Kaiser, Chandler & Hammidi, 2001; Green, 2001). The poems and artworks speak of triumph and pain. They provide opportunities to reflect on arts-informed research, the aesthetics of the clothed body, the body and social theory, and the semiotics of clothing.

• Volume 10 Number 9: Alter, F., Hays, T., & O'Hara, R. Creative arts teaching and practice: Critical reflections of primary school teachers in Australia.

  This paper details aspects of a research project that explored nineteen Australian primary (elementary) schoolteachers' perspectives of Creative Arts education. The study investigated the participants' personal Arts experiences and training, as well as their views of Arts pedagogy. In depth interviews with the participants highlighted the important influence that participants' own interactions with the various Arts disciplines had upon their role as facilitators of Creative Arts education. The findings of this study also identify multiple ways of approaching and facilitating teaching and learning activities. The research not only revealed insights into the educational value each of the teachers ascribed to individual Arts disciplines, but also the level of confidence and preparedness they felt to teach these disciplines. The generalist primary teachers participating in this research study identified a number of issues that they believed compromised their ability to teach the Creative Arts effectively.

• Volume 10 Number 10: Ryman, J., Porter, T., & Galbraith, C. Disciplined imagination: Art and metaphor in the business school classroom.

  Business schools frequently emphasize the importance of thinking "outside-the-box," and yet very few business students are actually challenged to do so in practice. This paper presents a pedagogical technique designed to foster creativity and imagination, while providing a deeper understanding of the concepts taught in a capstone business management course. The technique requires students to create and interpret an original work of art (visual, musical, or poetry) that symbolizes an important course concept. The metaphors utilized by students are examined using Morgan's (1986) metaphors of organizations as a framework. At the end of the project, students involved provided feedback by completing a survey of student attitudes and responding to a questionnaire. We conclude that using art and metaphor enriched the educational experience by both challenging students and promoting a deeper understanding of course material.

• Volume 10 Number 11: Chung, S. K. Autobiographical portraits of four female adolescents: Implications for teaching critical visual culture.

  An autobiographical portrait is an artistic representation that shows not only a person's physical characteristics, but also his or her personality, knowledge, history, and/or lived experiences. Understanding student autobiographical portraits not only helps art teachers gain insight into their students' prior knowledge of and experiences with art, but also allows them to use such insight for relevant instruction. Based on constructivist learning theory and with attention to the future implementation of visual culture art education, this study analyzes visual and verbal autobiographical artifacts produced by four adolescent female students to gain insight into their personal interests, knowledge and experiences with art, and artistic development. Conclusions address implications for teaching critical visual culture.

• Volume 10 Number 12: Smith, K. & McKnight, K. S. Remembering to laught and explore: Improvisational activities for literacy teaching in urban classrooms.

  In an effort to push back against contextual factors that have constrained arts instruction and integration while recognizing that schools have limited resources, The Second City Training Center in Chicago has developed several educational programs that bring the art of improvisation to teachers and students. This article specifically focuses on the outreach program called The Second City Educational Program (TSCEP). Initial data analysis suggests that the strategies that The Second City artists-in-residence used with teachers and their students contributed to individual students' self-efficacy and strengthened classroom community, making possible the opportunity for students who had previously been marginalized to take on more positive roles in their classrooms and creating inclusive spaces for children with special needs. The young people's increased engagement led to confidence with expression, helping them to extend their authoring abilities in both spoken and written forms and to take on the identity of "author."

• Volume 10 Number 13: Vaughan, K. A home in the arts: From research/creation to practice or The story of a dissertation in the making, in action - so far!

  "What does it mean to 'find home'?" and "How might an experience and understanding of 'home' be represented and enhanced by the art form of collage?" These are the two questions that have been guiding my work and life for several years, in ways this article describes. I outline some basics of my initial formal engagement via my award-winning multi-modal PhD dissertation, Finding Home: Knowledge, Collage and the Local Environments, describing the theories and approaches I propose as a result of this work. I then discuss my first implementation of these ideas in Toronto high school art classes and conclude with an elaboration of the questions' continuing relevance and viability in my own life and for the young people in my community.

• Volume 10 Number 14: Bernard, R. Music making, transcendence, flow, and music education.

  This study explores the relationship between flow, transcendent music making experiences, transcendent religious experiences, and music education. As a teacher-researcher, I studied my graduate students' autobiographical accounts of their experiences making music. Across these narrative writings produced over the past four years, a pattern emerged: many of the texts describe transcendent experiences. Transcendent music making experiences are distinguished by two main qualities: (a) that the performer is functioning at the height of his or her abilities; and (b) that the performer has a sense of being a part of something larger than him or herself in some way. The concept of transcendent music making experiences provides powerful insights into a unique feature of musical engagement. Music educators at all levels can relate to and learn from a more nuanced understanding of the unique qualities of musical engagement.

• Volume 10 Number 15: Jeffers, C. S. On empathy: The mirror neuron system and art education.

  This paper re/considers empathy and its implications for learning in the art classroom, particularly in light of relevant neuroscientific investigations of the mirror neuron system recently discovered in the human brain. These investigations reinterpret the meaning of perception, resonance, and connection, and point to the fundamental importance of the resonant body in understanding the world of objects (including objects of art and material culture), and the world of others (including an intersubjectivity of interdependence). Presenting research results and classroom experiences, this paper ultimately advocates a move toward an art education of empathy that integrates caring, cognitive growth, and sociocultural awareness. This art education would strive to promote a connectedness in the classroom community--an authentic and resonant kind of harmony--between self, object, and other, through which the worlds of objects and others are experienced and made meaningful.

• Volume 10 Number 16: de Bézenac, C. & Swindells, R. No pain, no gain? Motivation and self-regulation in music learning.

  This paper explores the issue of motivation in music learning in higher education by contextualising data collected as part of the Investigating-Musical-Performance research project (Welch, et al., 2006-2008). The discussion begins with findings which suggest that popular, jazz and folk musicians experience more pleasure in musical activities than their classical counterparts. Also significant are results indicating that the latter are more influenced by parents and teachers, with the former primarily motivated by intrinsic factors. In examining these findings, three interrelated themes are considered: the quality of musicians' motivation, genre-specific learning practices, and the competencies demanded by particular music systems. Critiquing the sociocultural assumptions inherent in Western music pedagogy, and the role of external regulation in formal education systems, a case is made for the importance of autonomy. Questions are raised about the purpose of music education and consequences of formalising musics traditionally learnt through direct engagement with communities of practice.

• Volume 10 Number 17: Bennett, D., Wrights, D., & Blom, D. Artist academics: Performing the Australian research agenda.

  Despite the recent focus on creativity and innovation as the backbone of Western knowledge economies, the presence of the creative arts within universities remains problematic. Australian artist academics who seek a balance between their artistic and academic lives work within a government-directed research environment that is unable to quantify; therefore, to recognize the value of creative research, yet which accepts the funded outcomes of post-graduate practice-based students. This study sought to unravel how artist academics from a variety of non-written creative disciplines perceive the relationships between their roles as artists, researchers and tertiary educators. Three themes were generated from interviews with the artist-academics: (a) creative research and the academy, (b) practice, research, and teaching nexus, and (c) identity. Central to the discussions was the question of whether and how creative work constitutes legitimate research.

• Volume 10 Number 18: Beck, R. J. The cultivation of students' metaphoric imagination of peace in a creative photography program.

  The purpose of Picturing Peace, a digital photography program conducted in 4th and 5th grade classrooms in the U. S. and Northern Ireland, was to enhance students' photographic skills to create visual metaphors of the concept of peace. Two principal research questions were addressed: (a) Could 9-10 year-old students create apt and imaginative photographic metaphors of peace? (b) Would students in diverse cultures produce comparable photographs of peace? A model of peace, metaphoric imagination, and metaphoric interpretation was researched to test the effectiveness of metaphors in promoting visual understanding of peace. Barthes' (1981) critical framework of connotative procedures and linguistic metaphors were used to judge the aptness and imaginativeness of student photographs. Analysis of an archive of approximately 2500 photographs revealed several typical images of peace common to the following three settings: nature, sun/light, community, diversity, place, peace signs, children play, children care, spirituality, and body/hands as subjects. Implications were drawn for the status of the student photographs as metaphors, pictorial concepts, and/or allegories.

• Volume 10 Number 19: Blair, D. V. Fostering wakefulness: Narrative as a curricular tool in teacher education.

  In a music education graduate class addressing teaching and learning strategies for learners with special needs, teachers were invited to consider the experience of the children in their music classrooms. Using narrative to enter into the learner's experience of school, teachers confronted their own perspectives and reconsidered those of their students. In this article, I seek to connect notions of wakefulness and empathy as I, too, make meaning of the story of one teacher and her encounter with Tyler, a learner with special needs in her classroom.

• Volume 10 Number 20: Udo, J. P, & Fels, D. The development of a new theatrical tradition: Sighted students audio describe school play for a blind and low-vision audience.

  In this paper, we discuss our experience of facilitating the development, creation and execution of audio description for an elementary school production of Fiddler on the Roof by three grade eight students. The students were supervised by the production's director, their drama teacher, and assisted by the authors. An actor with experience describing a live theatre event provided some feedback for the students. Qualitative insight is gained through a thematic analysis of the describer's student learning journal and an interview with their drama teacher. The strengths and weaknesses of the project as perceived by the students and their drama teacher are discussed. Participant suggestions and solutions are also highlighted.

• Volume 10 Number 21: Johnson, G., McKee, P., & Ragouzis, P. The sublime and depictions of violence in some contemporary artworks.

  Images of extreme and ever more graphic violence are a part of contemporary culture. Since students cannot avoid them, such images should be addressed by aesthetic educators. But this will require a theory for the analysis and evaluation of the aesthetic properties of violent imagery. The main thesis of this essay is that depiction of violence in certain recent art works can be understood as aiming at aesthetic perception of the sublime. We develop a model for interpreting works in this way by first presenting and then drawing on Kant's analysis of aesthetic perception of the sublime. Our thesis is important for both aesthetic and moral education. According to Kant's remarkably sensitive analysis, aesthetic perception of the sublime plays a large role in developing moral and social awareness. Using Kant's theory as our main source, and drawing on some recent artworks for illustrative purposes, we offer an analysis of how artistic depiction of violence may promote moral and social awareness. We nevertheless consider images of extreme violence morally problematic, and outline a model for educating reflection on the morality of using them.

• Volume 10 Number 22: Reisberg, M., & Han, S. (En)Countering social and environmental messages in The Rainforest Cafe [sic], children's picturebooks, and other visual culture sites.

  Our study critically examines social and environmental messages in a range of visual sites educating about rainforest environments. We focus primarily on the Rainforest Cafe, an international series of rainforest-themed edutainment restaurant/stores, whose inherent contradictions between consumption and conservation are quite disturbing when viewed as part of the null curriculum (Hollins, 1996). We then propose an alternate approach to teaching and learning about rainforest environments. This approach teaches students how to deconstruct visual culture environmental messages, such as those in the Rainforest Cafe, fine art, popular films, and children's picturebooks to learn from both accurate and inaccurate images while promoting environmental caring for the rainforest and students' own environments through art.

• Volume 10 Number 23: You, J. Teaching beginning dance classes in higher education: Learning to teach from an expert dance educator.

  This qualitative case study examines the exemplary teaching approaches of an expert Korean dance educator who has been teaching beginning dance classes in higher education. The expert dance educator, possesses 28 years of teaching experience in higher education, is the recipient of a national award, is actively involved in professional activities, and facilitates outstanding student achievements. Data were collected using a variety of sources: interviews with the dance teacher and college students, class observations, videotaped lessons, stimulated recall techniques, and document analyses. Data analysis followed the conventions indicated by Glaser & Strauss (1967) and Glaser (1998). Four teaching characteristics of the expert dance educator were, through these means, discovered and emphasized: (1) reflecting and expressing students' lives through dance movements, (2) teaching beyond dance technique, (3) employing diverse teaching techniques in order to achieve diverse learning experiences, and (4) designing and implementing dance festivals and similar occasions for evaluating students' learning.

• Volume 10 Number 24: Dixon, M. & Senior, K. Traversing theory and transgressing academic discourses: Arts-based research in teacher education.

  Pre-service teacher education is marked by linear and sequential programming which offers a plethora of strategies and methods (Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005; Darling Hammond & Bransford, 2005; Grant & Zeichner, 1997). This paper emerges from a three year study within a core education subject in preservice teacher education in Australia. This 'practitioner' research (Zeichner, 1999) engaged the problematics of authentic and meaningful learner-centred teaching and learning through an arts-based curriculum. Over the period of the study, two hundred and eighty pre-service teachers participated in a 'dialogical performance'(Conquergood, 2003) of pedagogy about curriculum and assessment through the construction of art about curriculum and assessment. The possibilities of an arts-based pedagogy in pre-service education were affirmed by the research. An enacted epistemological move by the teachereducators led to similar shifts by the students. This opened a space for the reappearance of learner through engagements with identities, positionings and agency. This was an act of 'putting theory to work' (Lather, 2006, 2007) and invoked transgressive practices of academic discourses.

• Volume 10 Number 25: Caine, V. & Steeves, P. Imagining and playfulness in narrative inquiry.

  Our personal and professional lives draw us to a shared interest in 'identity' and 'relationships', and our understanding is shaped by our lives as narrative inquirers. As we struggle to name this complexity we begin to play with metaphors; the metaphor of 'kites', and thus string, kite and kite flyer provide us with a way to think about imagining and playfulness in relationships and in narrative inquiry. As we play with these metaphors we see how much our understanding of relationships shape our being and engagement with others and that imagination is inextricably intertwined within our lives and our relationships. By attending to this playfulness, our spaces of knowing enlarge and spaces of possibility are never ending; yet embedded in these possibilities is also a recognition of how difficult it is to stay in relation, to remain wakeful to the tensions and boulders of the landscapes and stories we live within.

• Volume 10 Number 26: Upitis, R. Developing ecological habits of mind through the arts.

  This study describes the experiences of nine school-based artists who took part in a six-day professional development course on ecology and the arts at an off-grid wilderness facility. The course was designed to increase artist-educators' awareness of issues surrounding energy use and consumption as well as to provide them with direction for approaching these topics through arts-based learning in schools. Analyzing participants' views regarding renewable and non-renewable energy use, as well as documenting anticipated changes in personal and professional practices, were two important aspects of the research. Data were collected through observations and field notes over the six-day period, and through semi-standardized interviews which were conducted at the end of the course. Participants also completed an on-line survey regarding various energy conservation and consumption issues before arriving for the course. In the interviews, the artist- educators detailed what they learned about thermal mass, solar power, and consumer purchasing patterns. Most participants anticipated making changes in their home lives, such as cooking with locally available produce. Participants also described anticipated interactions with teachers and students upon returning to their local schools, both in terms of content related to energy conservation and ways that they would approach this topic through their respective art forms. Some participants also indicated how they anticipated changing their own artistic practices in their studio settings, such as switching to less toxic materials and using fewer consumable items. Having the opportunity to live at an off-grid wilderness facility was a key feature of the course for all of the artist-educators who took part in the experience.

• Volume 10 Number 27: Davidson, J., Dottin, J. W. Jr., Penna, S. L., & Robertson, S. P. Visual sources and the qualitative research dissertation: Ethics, evidence and the politics of academia--Moving innovation in higher education from the center to the margins.

  Until recently, qualitative research has made limited use of visual sources, particularly visual texts (drawing, painting or photographs), but also including multimodal data (video and web-based) and visual data (tables, graphs, charts, etc.). Thus, discussions of ethics and evidence in this area have lagged behind those related to textual data, such as written fieldnotes. This is particularly true for qualitative research dissertations, where graduate students are caught in the tension between established and emerging standards of ethics and evidence. This trend holds true across most institutions of higher education, but it is especially pronounced in those schools that are smaller and more regionally focused where innovations may take more time to become firmly established. This paper examines issues of ethics, evidence, and academic politics in the use of visual sources within the genre of the dissertation, with a special focus on the ways these innovative practices move into the higher education institutions that are at a distance from the center of change. We begin with the viewpoint of a dissertation advisor who has experience in the use of visual sources in the instruction of qualitative research at the doctoral level and its use in the conduct of qualitative research dissertations. Three case examples drawn from three doctoral students in a Graduate School of Education provide a view of the issues involved in researcher generated data, participant generated data, and the ways emerging technologies offer new visualizing possibilities. We conclude with a cross-cutting discussion of issues related to the functions visual sources serve in these dissertations, followed by recommendations for the future use of these materials in the qualitative research dissertation process. Study participants are located in a small, regional institution of higher education, a context that figures importantly in the story. Our goal is to promote discussion and advance understanding of the ways visual sources, and by extension, the ways other innovative research processes can be used by qualitative researchers (particularly doctoral students), despite academia's reluctance in the face of change.

Portrayals of Curriculum as Aesthetic Text

• Volume 10 Portrayal 1: Moser, J. Perspectives in time: Using the arts to teach Proust and his world.

  Arts resources available on the Internet and DVDs provide a flexible, richly resonant, student-friendly framework for a coordinated study of the connections between the style and structure of Proust's novel and the social and cultural worlds he depicts. In Search of Lost Time, a product of an artistic revolution as well as a critical and historical contemplation of the question of how this revolution came about, looks back towards the arts of previous generations, compelling its readers to adopt a multitude of approaches in order to move forward into the Proustian world. A deeper, more intimate understanding of the world of the Search can be achieved in any classroom anywhere by integrating carefully selected electronic resources for film, architecture, painting, music, costume, decor and dance with the teaching of the written text. In particular, perspective in contemporary painting as a model for Proust's innovations in narrative plays an important role in this study.

• Volume 10 Portrayal 2: Riddett-Moore, K. Encouraging empathy through aesthetic engagement: An art lesson in living compositions.

  This paper demonstrates how aesthetic engagement can encourage empathy and caring in the art classroom. As artful inquiry, this hybrid form of arts-based educational research and teacher research examines my own classroom practice and pedagogy exploring how aesthetics can become a philosophy of care. Part 1 outlines the Living Compositions Exercise, an introductory activity students play to introduce the concepts of space, relationship, and care, and a discussion on how this is an aesthetic experience that encourages empathy. Part 2, Inquiry into Piazza, addresses how student inquiry, artistic critique, and dialogue can lead to self-formation through art. The outcome of aesthetic engagement here is to promote empathetic response and action, which is manifested through the living inquiry of the students.

Book Reviews

• Volume 10 Review 1: Duncum, P. International dialogues about visual culture, education, and art: A review essay.

  Mason, R., & Eca, T. (Eds.). (2008). International dialogues about visual culture, education, and art. Bristol, UK. Intellect. ISBN: 978-1-84150-167-3.

  This anthology originated in an international congress for teachers, museum educators, curators and others involved in art education in March 2006. With 42 contributors from 16 countries offering 25 chapters organized in terms of five themes, it is a rich brew. My own thoughts are organized in terms of the keywords used in the book's title: International, dialogues, visual culture, education, and art.

• Volume 10 Review 2: Christiansen, A. The beauty and spirituality of mathematics: A review essay.

  Witz, K. (2007). Spiritual aspirations connected with mathematics: The experience of American mathematics students. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN: 978-0-7734-5210-7.

  "The intention of mathematics teaching is to promote the learning of mathematics" is a statement that will be challenged by few. This book gives portraits of students and focuses on consciousness and inspiration, values and experiences in mathematics - it tries to uncover why some students find inspiration in the subject of mathematics.

• Volume 10 Review 3: Baldacchino, J. Opening the picture: On the political responsibility of arts-based research: A review essay.

  Knowles, J.G., & Cole, A.L. (2008). Handbook of the arts in qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. ISBN: 978-1-4129-0531-2.

  This article reviews Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research, edited by J. Gary Knowles and Ardra L. Cole. Knowles and Cole effectively present a sound and solid approach to the field of arts-based research by putting together a wide horizon of practices and approaches through a comprehensive and effective discussion of the myriad diverse implications for all the arts. Furthermore, by inviting some of the best practitioners and researchers in the field to contribute to this project, Knowles and Coles optimize not only the innovative outcomes of arts- based research, but also open further possibilities within the discipline. Given this book's sheer volume and comprehensive nature, this review is selective and it elects to engage with the political responsibilities that emerge from the discourse and practices of arts-based research. While commending this volume, this review is critical over Knowles' and Cole's choice to frame arts research within social scientific research. In this respect, this review proposes to run in parallel with this book's well-argued treatment of arts-based research in order to effect and suggest a further layer of discussion. By valorizing the exciting avenues opened by arts-based research, here it is argued that while holding relevance to all disciplines, including the social and natural sciences, the arts must claim their own autonomous grounds of legitimacy as a distinct and specific research paradigmÑwhich is where the political pertinence of the arts must gain further attention and salience.

• Volume 10 Review 4: Warburton, E.C. The world is dancing: A review essay.

  Shapiro, S. (Ed.). (2008). Dance in a world of change: Reflections on globalization and cultural difference. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. ISBN: 978-1-7360-6943-4.

  The idea that a process of globalization is underway - bringing about basic changes in human arts and affairs - is not new. Marx and Engels recognized it in 1848, when they wrote in The Communist Manifesto about a "constantly expanding market ... [that] must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere." Marx and Engels knew that they were witnessing the emergence of a global marketplace: a worldwide system of production and consumption that disregarded national and cultural boundaries. Like Marx and Engels, the early 20th century Russian-born ballet impresario, Sergei Diaghilev, welcomed the move toward internationalism, not only for the increasing wealth it produced but also because he recognized it could offer artists unparalleled opportunities to create, collaborate, and gain worldwide acclaim and influence. For twenty years, his "Ballet Russes" toured the world, creating a sensation everywhere and invigorating the arts of dance, music and scenic design in its wake. Diaghilev brought his extravagant ballets to large and small venues: he did not try to understand the diverse audiences or simplify the productions for them. It was elitist education by elite example and, by all accounts, the local elites loved him for it.

• Volume 10 Review 5: White, J. H. Soft landings: A review essay.

  Sennett, R. (Ed.). (2008). The craftsman. New Haven: Yale University. 326 pages. ISBN: 978-0-300-11909-1.

  The incident depicted, US Air flight 1549, which was piloted to safety by Stephen Sullenberger on January 15, 2009, and that image, wings bobbing, floatation pontoons outstretched, and passengers walking on water seemed a prophetic apparition. The result was so un-Katrina, with its culture of meritocracy, so un-Wall Street, with its leveraging, and so unpost- structural, with its free-floating signifiers. Here community worked together to produce stunning results: not heroics; not criticality; and not creativity. This, rather, was a soft landing, enacted through craft.

• Volume 10 Review 6: Lum, C. H. Infant musicality: A review essay.

  Tafuri, J. (2008). Infant musicality: New research for educators and parents. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing. 212 pages. ISBN: 978-0-7546-6506-9.

  Johanella Tafuri's research study on infant musical development presents a series of findings that speak to the diversity and variation in infants' musical growth within a detailed context in which their musical skills (particularly the ability to sing in tune) develop. It points to the importance of providing parents with sustained opportunities for interactions in singing and subsequently sustained musical engagement between parents, particularly mothers, and their children throughout the early years. The research study is significant in that it is the first longitudinal study, after Moog's 1961 study, that gives focus to this very young age group (0 to 3 years), dealing with "the systematic study of the development of several musical abilities through observation of the skills gradually learned by the same group of children, stimulated by an appropriate programme of activities (inCanto project) and accompanied by the support of family members" (p. 3). The book should be of interest to parents, educators and researchers in providing a sound theoretical foundation for early childhood music education while providing useful practical music activities for parents and educators to consider in their interaction with children at home and in school.

• Volume 10 Review 7: Kim, J-H. The 'text as thou' in qualitative research: Carving the artist-self within the researcher-self: A review essay.

  Leavy, P. (2009). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. New York: The Guilford Press. ISBN 978-1-59385-259-7.

  This review essay is a personal reflection on Method Meets Art written by Patricia Leavy. It describes how the book helps the author come to terms with an artist/researcher identity and how it leads to the understanding of a text as Thou, expanding on Buber's "I-Thou" relationship.

• Volume 10 Review 8: Leggo, C. (2009). Poetry of place: A review essay.

  Hermsen, T. (2009). Poetry of place: Helping students write their worlds. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. 217 pages. ISBN 978-0-8141-3608-9.

  Our Terry Hermsen's Poetry of Place: Helping Students Write Their Worlds is a remarkable book--one of the most engaging and hopeful books about teaching poetry that I know. Hermsen offers: thoughtful discussions of practice informed by theory as well as theory informed by practice; a well-conceived and carefully conducted research project; creative lessons for enthusing lively encounters in classrooms; and, engaging poetry by both well-known writers and student writers. He offers an abundance of gifts, all in one book.

• Volume 10 Review 9: Lindström, L. (2009). Studio thinking: A review essay.

  Hetland, L., Winner, E., Veenema, S., & Sheridan, K. M. (2007). Studio thinking: The real benefits of visual arts education. New York: Teachers College Press.

  Studio Thinking addresses two issues of vital importance to the arts: a) students' ability to transfer knowledge and skills learned in one situation to other situations where they may be relevant, and b) the role of studio art as compared to other more academic approaches to the visual arts.

Articles

• Volume 9 Number 1: Cuero, K. Venturing into unknown territory: Using aesthetic representation to understand reading comprehension.

  Based on Elliot Eisner's notions of multiple forms of representation and Rosenblatt's aesthetic/efferent responses to reading, a teacher educator/researcher had her undergraduate students explore their connections, using aesthetic representations, to a course entitled Reading Comprehension. Each aesthetic representation revealed the complexities of Reading Comprehension in unique ways through a variety of media including: interior classroom design, culinary arts, quilting, music, and martial arts. The teacher educator invited five of the students from the course to participate in monthly collaborative inquiry sessions during the subsequent semester (lasting five months) where students articulated the aesthetic process they underwent. Benefits and applicability of using aesthetic representations in the university classroom are explored in the final section of the article.

• Volume 9 Number 2: Prendergast, M. Teacher as performer: Unpacking a metaphor in performance theory and critical performative pedagogy.

  This survey paper explores the interdisciplinary literature of performance theory and critical performative pedagogy in an attempt to consider metaphorical applications of performance to pedagogy. This exploration involves looking at teaching as performance in the broadest cultural sense of the word - interested more in efficacy of communication and mutual empathetic understanding - than in the more commonly-held economic, technological and political senses of performance which are more interested in setting, raising, and maintaining standards of efficiency and effectiveness (see McKenzie, 2001). In examining these issues in both performance studies and education, the conclusions are that educational researchers and teacher educators can benefit significantly from a critical awareness of the proliferation of metaphors for teaching as performance that highlight both aesthetic and socio-political challenges inherent in a life in the classroom.

• Volume 9 Number 3: Edström, A-M. To rest assured: A study of artistic development.

  This article concerns artistic development within the context of a Master of Fine Arts program in visual arts in Sweden, and presents an empirical study based on repeated interviews with a group of art students. The aim is to contribute to our present understanding of artistic development by focusing on changes in the relation between the student and his/her artistic work as part of their artistic development. The study describes and analyzes the character of these changes, within the theoretical frame of phenomenographic research on learning. The notion of 'resting assured' is used to describe the main characteristic of the qualitative change found in the relation between the student and his/her artistic work. To 'rest assured' refers to a state of trust in their own ability that the students develop. Findings are discussed from an educational theoretical perspective, emphasizing the connection between self-direction and resting assured.

• Volume 9 Number 4: Ogunduyile, S. R., Kayode, F, & Ojo, B. Art and design practices in Nigeria: The problem of dropping out.

  Despite interest in the arts, art and design practice in Nigeria continues to witness a downward trend. A new orientation and redirection of priorities, skills development, and patterns of practice that are not contradictory to the code of professional conduct and ethical procedures is contemplated. This paper groups the professionally trained artists and designers into two categories: the academic and the roadside artists. The various art and design schools are responsible for training of graduates in the various disciplines of Fine Art and Industrial Design such as in graphics, textiles and ceramics designs, interior decoration, printmaking, sculpture, painting, art history, and art education. It is expected that graduates in these options keep the professional banner flying and earn the profession very high societal repute through practice and ethics. It appears the reverse is presently the case, as most trained artists, designers, and craftsmen are jettisoning art practice for other jobs like banking, salesmanship, trading, general contractorship, or politics. Although factors impeding professional practices in Nigeria are intended to be highlighted, the paper also intends to promote the practice of Art and Design in Nigeria. Interactions between authors and dropout artists were analyzed in this paper. Craftsmen and industrial designers are encouraged to seek patronage in order to bring the profession to an enviable standard.

• Volume 9 Number 5: Quinn, R. D. & Calkin, J. A dialogue in words and images between two artists doing Arts-Based Educational Research.

  Over ten years ago, Tom Barone and Elliot Eisner (1997) described seven features of existing artistic approaches to educational inquiry. Their chapter dealt primarily with written, prosaic forms of Arts-Based Educational Research, or ABER, particularly educational criticism and narrative storytelling. In their concluding section, Barone and Eisner recognize the limitless possibilities of utilizing non-linguistic forms of representation to conduct ABER. It is the thesis of our paper that such forms might be considered Research-Based Art (RBA), given the shift in emphasis from linguistic to non-linguistic ways of representing what it is that we come to know about our world. While ABER is considerably broad, we seek to apply as specifically as possible Barone and Eisner's categorical structure to our own RBA. We do so by defining RBA, reconceptualizing Barone and Eisner's seven features as they pertain to RBA, and providing excerpts of our own dialog in applying the seven features to a specific aspect of Jamie's doctoral dissertation. Specifically, we discuss how our understanding and use of RBA compares and contrasts with Barone and Eisner's seven features of ABER.

• Volume 9 Number 6: Chen, Y-T. & Walsh, D. J. Understanding, experiencing, and appreciating the arts: Folk pedagogy in two elementary schools in Taiwan.

  Drawing on Bruner's notion of folk pedagogy, this research explores how Chinese aesthetic education is perceived and valued at two elementary schools in Taiwan. Using qualitative methods, the research explores how arts teachers guide children to experience arts through the arts curricula in school and the local culture. The study reveals that the two schools share a respect for nature and a concern for local culture. The seven arts teachers' folk pedagogy includes the desire to connect beauty and arts learning, develop children's aesthetic feelings, cultivate children's character, and integrate arts into everyday life. The teachers' shared views provide a broad picture of these folk beliefs in Taiwan as well as a cultural lens for examining aesthetic education in Taiwan and the larger Asian culture.

• Volume 9 Number 7: Rolling, Jr., J. H. Sites of contention and critical thinking in the elementary art classroom: A political cartooning project.

  In this paper, the author explores the concept of childhood as a social category that impedes the perception of youngsters as critical thinkers in a visual culture. The author interrogates regularities within contemporary public schooling that work to represent the intellectual and cultural development of youngsters as the project of adult industry. Contrary to this representation, the author recounts the critical awareness and personal agency exercised by a group of 4th graders who engaged in a political cartooning exercise while examining the theme of social justice. The article includes an examination of the social construction of the concept of childhood as it intersects the discourse of Western socio-cultural superiority and the opening of sites of contention as a pedagogical strategy.

• Volume 9 Number 8: Upitis, R., Smithrim, K., Garbati, J., & Ogden, H. The impact of art-making in the university workplace.

  Beginning in the summer of 2002, a Queen's University arts education research team has met weekly for art-making sessions. This research paper describes how this long-term art-making practice has influenced the personal and professional lives of the team, based on semi-standardized interviews with six participants and one observer of the art-making group. Several key themes arose from the analysis, including the growth and deepening of relationships amongst participants, the sense of losing track of time while engaged in art-making, and the importance of art-making sessions bringing a temporary reprive from work-related demands. These themes resonate strongly with the scholarly literature and empirical work on embodied knowing, creativity, and non-formal adult learning.

• Volume 9 Number 9: Bell, A. P. The heart of the matter: Composing music with an adolescent with special needs.

  As a support worker for adolescents with special needs, I have found that they have few opportunities to play music. While previous research emphasizes that students with special needs can enjoy music in multiple capacities, little has been written about their ability to play, improvise, or compose. I employed a qualitative approach for this case study in which a 17-year-old male with Down syndrome attended two 40-minute music sessions a week over the course of three months with me as the researcher and musical accompanist. Video was used to document the teacher-learner experience as the participant explored collaborative improvising and computer-based recording. General suggestions are made for supporting adolescents with special needs in music.

• Volume 9 Number 10: Pitts, S. Extra-curricular music in UK schools: Investigating the aims, experiences and impact of adolescent musical participation.

  This article uses contemporary and retrospective accounts of extra-curricular music-making in schools to evaluate the extent to which performance opportunities in the teenage years can shape lifelong engagement in music. Empirical evidence is presented from a two phase study: the first looking at a high school musical production through questionnaires and audio diaries; the second using written life history accounts to gather memories of school music and its lasting impact. The experiences of participants and non-participants are considered, and the benefits and costs of the large-scale performance events which characterise British secondary school music are evaluated in a discussion of the future of extra-curricular music in changing musical and educational times.

• Volume 9 Number 11: Andrews, B. W. The odyssey project: Fostering teacher learning in the arts.

  Canada's national cultural institutions and its largest bilingual university entered into a partnership to offer an integrated arts summer program for classroom teachers which featured artists collaborating with teachers to enhance their arts learning and improve their instructional expertise. This inquiry focused on a description of those dimensions of an arts partnership which foster teachers' personal arts learning. Findings indicate that an emerging group culture within the class, characterized by a sense of community, comfort and mutual support, fosters trust, emotional openness and personal risk-taking. These dimensions of the program enabled teachers to explore their own creativity, examine their thoughts and feelings, acknowledge each other's views, understand different perspectives, and engage successfully in artistic activities.

• Volume 9 Number 12: Wiggins, R. A. & Wiggins, J. Primary music education in the absence of specialists.

  Many schools worldwide rely exclusively on generalist teachers for music instruction at the primary level yet we know little about these teachers, their preparation for the task, and what they actually do in the classroom when teaching music. The extant literature in this area has focused primarily on boosting generalist teachers' confidence to teach music. Little attention has been given to their musical knowledge base and thus their competence for teaching music. This paper reports the results of an investigation of music teaching in one national school system that has almost no specialist teachers at the primary level. Drawing from questionnaire data augmented by classroom observations and interviews, the authors describe the nature and quality of music teaching in this system highlighting the issues that arose for these teachers.

Interludes

• Volume 9 Interlude 1: Rolling, Jr., J. H. Rethinking relevance in art education: Paradigm shifts and policy problematics in the wake of the Information Age.
  This article addresses the advocacy of organizations like the National Art Education Association who seek greater legislative support, funding and time allocations to be devoted to arts instruction and the development of arts practices in the arena of public education. The author argues the timeliness of a reconceived paradigm for understanding and advocating the relevancy of arts practices in the wake of the Information Age. This article seeks to rethink the semiotics defining art in an era of shifting paradigms and as contextualized in contemporary educational policy.
• Volume 9 Interlude 2: Kindler, A. M. Art, creativity, art education and civil society.
  The terms embedded in the title of my paper: Art, Creativity, Art Education and Civil Society seem intrinsically linked. In art history, theory and education literature there are abundant references describing art as a powerful manifestation of the human creative potential. The role and value of art in a society have traditionally been emphasized with the power of art to both cater to as well as nurture desires and aspirations relevant to the wellbeing of a collective and promoting civility and peace in human interactions. The field of Art Education has long argued the merits of its existence using the rationale of both the intrinsic value of art as well as the extrinsic benefits to a broader realm of human condition through its contribution to quality of life of individuals and societies. Claims that art has the capacity to uplift the spirit, support civility, and provide impetus for moral conduct through its probing appeal to the human psyche have become commonplace.

Book Reviews

• Volume 9 Review 1: Barber, D. Somaesthetic awareness and artistic practice: A review essay.

  Shusterman, Richard. (2008). Body consciousness: A philosophy of mindfulness and somaesthetics. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.

• Volume 9 Review 2: Beudert, L. Spectacle pedagogy: Art, politics, and visual culture: A review essay.

  Garoian, C. R. & Gaudelius, Y. M. (2008). Spectacle pedagogy: Art, politics, and visual culture. New York: State University of New York Press.

Articles

• Volume 8 Number 1: Costantino, Tracie. Articulating aesthetic understanding through art making.

  In this article I will present case study research of an elementary school art teacher who provided both verbal and visual means for students to respond to art while on a museum field trip. I will focus on how the students’ drawings from memory and artwork in their sketchbooks present compelling articulations of their understandings of certain artworks. I will also discuss how their reflective writing about the field trip supports and elaborates on their visual articulation, and how the students’ works are manifestations of qualitative reasoning, visual thinking, and imaginative cognition (Efland, 2004) in addition to linguistic thinking. Through this discussion, I hope to illustrate the essential role of imagebased, nonlinguistic thinking (as in visual thinking, qualitative reasoning, and imagination) in interpreting and expressing understanding of works of art.

• Volume 8 Number 2: Lind, Vicki. High quality professional development: An investigation of the supports for and barriers to professional development in arts education.

  This study focused on a model of professional development designed to support and encourage arts educators to increase their understanding of student learning in the arts, broaden their knowledge of the Visual and Performing Arts Standards, build upon their repertoire of teaching methods and assessment strategies, and improve leadership skills. Data included 300 hours of observation, focus group and individual interviews, written responses to reflective prompts, unit plans, video and audio tapes, and samples of student work collected over a two year period. Findings indicated that working collaboratively, focusing on student learning, and identifying and planning curriculum around issues central to the discipline positively impacted teachers work. The issue of time constraints was consistently identified as a barrier to professional growth.

• Volume 8 Number 3: Wallin, Jason. Between Public and Private: Negotiating the Location of Art Education

  This article seeks to articulate developing trends in art education and practice, locating such movements within the broader cultural contexts of globalization, neoliberal capitalism, and postmodernity. Against this more general synopsis, the autobiographical position of the author as a student and teacher of art will be elucidated as inextricably entwined with such cultural movements. This entwinement will be understood both in terms of its capacity to "position" the subject, and yet concomitantly as a site of disavowal, refusal, and subjective agency. In this manner, the personal commitment of the author to art education will be developed in a way to implicate early school and familial experiences with art. Such early autobiographical experiences arguably form the coordinates of our identities as art educators, and similarly, constitute the key issues with which we must necessarily grapple in pedagogical practice. It is in negotiation with such issues and early enculturation that this article argues our relationship to art curriculum and practice is located.

• Volume 8 Number 4: Macintyre Latta, M.; Buck, G. & Beckenhauer, A. Formative assessment requires artistic vision

  This two-year study focused on the lived terms of inquiry in middle-school science classrooms. The conditions that enable teachers to see and act on science learning as ongoing inquiry were deliberately sought in Year 2. Nine science teachers participated in search of capacities connecting curriculum, teaching, and assessment for greater student and teacher inquiry. An online logbook chronicled this search, serving as a dialogic medium revealing a movement of teachers seeking out and seizing back possibilities for teaching and learning in relation to the given realities of classrooms. The nature and role of formative assessments in support of learning were encountered as the obstacle to be worked out in teachers’ practical action. The necessary interpretive eye and capacity to act in accordance with the dynamic character of formative assessments became the task at hand for teachers and researchers. This task demanded artistic teaching visions, attending to the creation of student meaning on an individual and collective basis. The difficulty, alongside the necessity, of educating artistic teaching visions offered glimpses into how formative assessment use holds potential to restore the participatory dynamic integral to learning. The philosophical/theoretical ground of arts based educational research was found to offer much potential to science inquiry, linking processproduct- learner in support of formative assessment use and offering implications for a participatory mode of professional development.

• Volume 8 Number 5: Hudson, P., & Hudson, S. Examining preservice teachers' preparedness for teaching art.

  The Australian Federal Government's call for another teacher education inquiry aims to investigate preservice teacher preparedness for teaching. Art education was selected for this study as the teaching of art education in primary schools occurs in less than ideal conditions and may often be avoided by generalist primary teachers (Russell-Bowie, 2002). Eightyseven final-year preservice teachers were surveyed on their perceptions of their preparedness for teaching primary art education at the conclusion of their Bachelor of Education program. The 39 survey items were derived from the New South Wales Creative Arts K-6 State Syllabus (Board of Studies, 2000) across four stage levels (i.e., early stage 1, stage 1, stage 2, and stage 3). Percentages and mean scale scores suggested that these final-year preservice teachers believed they were generally prepared to teach art education in primary schools as a result of a preservice teacher education visual arts unit. Nevertheless, more than 10% of preservice teachers indicated they could not agree or strongly agree that they could provide 20 of the 39 teaching practices advocated by the syllabus and 20% indicated this for 7 of the 39 teaching practices. Tertiary education institutions need to be proactive in responding to the challenge of determining preservice teachers' preparedness for teaching. Surveys linked to a state syllabus may assist in assessing preservice teachers' perceptions of their preparedness for teaching and may provide valuable information for further development of tertiary education coursework.

• Volume 8 Number 6: Brown, Andrew R. Software development as music education research.

  This paper discusses how software development can be used as a method for music education research. It explains how software development can externalize ideas, stimulate action and reflection, and provide evidence to support the educative value of new software-based experiences. Parallels between the interactive software development process and established research methods are drawn, with particular focus on action research, case study, and activity theory. A new approach to arts educational research called Software Development as Research (SoDaR) is proposed. The paper includes examples from the author's use of this approach when developing the jam2jam software to facilitate networked music improvisation experiences for young children.

• Volume 8 Number 7: Taylor, P. G., Wilder, S. O., & Helms, K. R. Walking with a Ghost: Arts-based research, music videos, and the re-performing body.

  In folk-rock duo Tegan and Sara's 2004 music video Walking with a Ghost, two women face one another, mirrored images in black and white. One is dressed in black - grunge shirt, pants and boots, while the other stands barefoot in a simple white dress. The black-clad figure removes three red paper hearts from her twin's chest, leaving crimson gashes in her clothing as the white-clad twin morphs into three mutilated figures. The wounded trio sings to their other self, "no matter which way you go, no matter which way you stay, you're out of my mind, out of my mind . . ." In this article, we respond to the ways that Tegan and Sara's music video relies on their twin bodies as visual and metaphorical narrative devices as well as sites for re-inscribing cultural memory. We do this by presenting and analyzing our personal audiovisual responses (hypertextual video shorts) to Walking with a Ghost. Employing an autoethnographic arts-based research approach, we visually and metaphorically inscribe our own video bodies with text and images to explore personal and cultural reactions. Further, using the experiences of a graduate art education technology class' work with the video, we share the curricular implications for understanding how memory and the body affect, inform, and alter human perception.

• Volume 8 Number 8: Wright, S. . Graphic-narrative play: Young children's authoring through drawing and telling.

  This arts-based research illustrates how young children engage in 'graphic-narrative play' - a personal fantasy-based experience depicted on paper - while representing imaginary worlds centered on the topic, what the future will be like. The descriptions show how the children not only made representations, but also manipulated these in abstract ways as they created and recreated images, ideas and feelings. The findings illustrate how the child becomes a cast of one, taking on multiple roles (i.e., artist, author, director, scripter, performer and narrator) and selecting when and how to play with all the available voices offered through the multimodal media - drawing, 'telling', dramatization, expressive sound effects, gesture and movement. These multiple texts involved embodied authoring - layers of visual and physical action, character development, plot scheme, scenery and running narrative working in harmony, simultaneously. Children's open-ended construction of meaning surfaced content that reflected universal story themes such as good-evil and capturing-defending, and their voices often were powerful, humorous, philosophical and reflective. Yet the sequencing of events did not necessarily follow linear structures - instead, the children worked within fluid structures.

• Volume 8 Number 9: Albertson, C., & Davidson, M. Drawing with Light and Clay: Teaching and Learning in the Art Studio as Pathways to Engagement.

  In this essay, Albertson and Davidson explore the attributes of photography and ceramic arts education to identify eight key elements integral to engagement in these art studios for under-served and disenchanted learners. They suggest that these key elements can provide numerous clues as to how teachers and school communities might reimagine both their mission and approach to classroom practice. Through this exploration, they relate literature on apprentice models of teaching and learning, relational education, resiliency theory, and care in the context of classroom practice to their experience and research into teaching and learning in photography and ceramic arts. Albertson and Davidson believe that what is good for the most vulnerable learners, is good for others too, and by bringing these attributes to light, it is their goal to illustrate some of the ways that all teachers might build pathways to engagement for their own "tough audiences" in all subject areas.

• Volume 8 Number 10: Zoss, M., Smagorinsky, P., & O'Donnell-Allen, C. Mask-Making as Representational Process: Situated Composition of an Identity Project in a Senior English Class.

  Eisner, Gardner, and others have argued that the arts should be better integrated into the K-12 curriculum. In this study we examine three high school senior boys who, as part of a unit of instruction on identity, each produced a mask through which he artistically expressed his sense of self. Using a sociocultural framework based in the work of Vygotsky, we analyzed the boys' composition of their masks in terms of their goals for working on the project, the material and psychological tools they employed to produce the masks, and the settings in which they learned how to use their compositional tools for such purposes. Based on both concurrent and retrospective protocols that the boys produced in conjunction with composing their masks, we investigated their processes of composition as what Gee terms identity projects; i.e., as efforts to project themselves into their mask texts and as part of their long-term projects to explore and develop their personal and socially-situated identities. Each participant used the mask-making composition as an occasion for inscribing his experiences, beliefs, and emotions into the text, albeit in different ways and toward different ends. The study concludes with a consideration of the use of arts in literacy education, a reconsideration of the limitations of language-based-only conceptions of literacy, and the possibilities for expanded learning opportunities when English/Language Arts classes open up students' textual tool kits to allow for broader opportunities to engage with the curriculum.

• Volume 8 Number 11: Davenport, M. G. Between Tradition and Tourism: Educational Strategies of a Zapotec Artisan.

  This case study examines the teaching and learning strategies employed by a Zapotec weaver in Oaxaca, Mexico, to draw attention to the personal agency of indigenous artisans participating in the tourist economy, and to examine ways in which non-formal and informal education in skills and understandings related to art can function in the lives of real people, especially members of less privileged cultural groups. Among the strategies employed by this artisan are intergenerational transfer, self-directed research, experimentation, and workshops. Implications for art education include consideration of economic incentives and other motivations for art-related learning in this and other settings.

• Volume 8 Number 12: Lynch, H., & Allan, J. Target Practice? Using the Arts for Social Inclusion.

  Use of creative processes as a tool for social inclusion has gathered momentum in recent years. This article reports the views of education professionals based in Scotland on the use and effects of targeting. While this strategy aims to improve access to those communities considered marginal, it is apparent that some of the effects are detrimental to the development of an equitable approach. Using the framework of social capital we gain insight into strategies which enable difference to become positive and where the top down mechanism of targeting is replaced by a dialogical exchange.

• Volume 8 Number 13: Beattie, M. Creating a Self: A Narrative and Holistic Perspective.

  The paper presents insights into the creation and re-creation of a narrative from the perspective of two female students, Phillipa and Eva, at Corktown Community High School. Corktown is an alternative high school which focuses on the development of the whole person-creative, intellectual, social, emotional, aesthetic and physical. The school is connected to the external community in significant ways, and there is an emphasis on freedom of expression, self-government, and autonomy within a collaborative work culture. Their narrative excerpts show the interconnectedness of the intellectual, imaginative, emotional, and social dimensions of their lives, and the ways in which they bring all these to bear on the creation of an identity that is true to the persons they are and to the persons they want to become. Phillipa and Eva provide insights into the realities and complexities of adolescents' lives, and the ways in which these two young women learned to refigure the past and to engage in the ongoing process of creating new narratives for their lives in which they could be successful both personally and academically.

• Volume 8 Number 14: Aitken, V., Fraser, D., & Price, G. Negotiating the Spaces: Relational Pedagogy and Power in Drama Education.

  While there is a growing body of literature on relational pedagogy as a concept, less attention is given to the details of just how relational pedagogy manifests in classroom practice. Similarly, while issues of power, democracy and co-constructed learning feature in contemporary research, the details of how power relationships can be effectively altered between teachers and children warrants closer scrutiny. This paper explores how pedagogy is enhanced when spaces are negotiated between teachers and children in the real and fictional worlds of drama. The findings emerge from a two year collaborative research project between generalist elementary teachers and university researchers. Salient issues of trust, power sharing, and metaxis, which are part of relational pedagogy in the drama classroom, are explored. In particular, the paper discusses how traditional power and knowledge positions are 'disrupted' through the drama strategy of 'teacher-in-role' - a strategy with both political significance and pedagogical force.

• Volume 8 Number 15: Blair, D. V. Musical Maps as Narrative Inquiry

  This study explores the metaphorical relationship between the process of narrative inquiry and the process of "musical mapping." The creation of musical maps was used as a classroom tool for enabling students' musical understanding while listening to music. As teacher-researcher, I studied my fifth-grade music students as they interacted with music and one another during the creation of the maps. Their conversation with the materials of music and map, with each other as collaborators, and later with the class as audience parallels the process of narrative inquiry as the students experienced the music, constructed their story, and shared their story of the musical experience. Like narrative, the process of creating a musical map serves as a form of inquiry, enabling understanding of an experience and affecting change in self through the living and constructing of the story and affecting change in others through the sharing and telling of the story.

• Volume 8 Number 16: Bhroin, M. N. "A Slice of Life": The Interrelationships among Art, Play and the "Real" Life of the Young Child

  This study examines the interrelationships among art, play and "real" life, as perceived by young children. Twenty-one children aged four and five in their first year of formal schooling in Ireland, were observed during art-related play activities and classes over a period of four months in 2004. Research data consisted of art works (both original and photographed), field notes, video recordings of children's behaviours and mini-interviews with the children. Data analysis revealed the multifaceted interrelationships between art, play and real life among the children. All children showed evidence of intertwining art, play and "real" life experiences in all strands of the visual arts curriculum. Individual differences in "cognitive style" unrelated to gender also emerged. Some worked quietly concentrating completely on the process and product in hand while others verbalised what was going on as they worked. Just over half of the children extended their actual experiences into the realm of fantasy in their art and play while the remainder tended to be factual, depicting and re-enacting "real" life events as they experienced them. These findings have educational implications as young children's artistic play activities are an important element in pre-service teacher education and in the teaching of Visual Arts at the Primary school level.

• Volume 8 Number 17: White, B. Aesthetic Encounters: Contributions to Generalist Teacher Education

  This article describes the learning experiences of three pre-service teachers within a university-level course entitled "Aesthetics and Art Criticism for the Classroom." Discussion is focused on the nature of the meaning-making that emerges from aesthetic encounters and its educational value. Specifically, what can pre-service generalist teachers learn from aesthetic encounters that they may ultimately apply in their own classrooms? For evidence of emergent meaning-making I rely on examination of what I call aesthetigrams. These are essentially maps of one's encounter with an artwork. They provide a basis for reflection on the encounter, for the student and for myself as the instructor, as well as insights into the nature of aesthetic learning.

• Volume 8 Number 18: Hewson, A. Emotions as Data in the Act of Jokering Forum Theatre

  For three years the author has been using Forum Theatre strategies as a means of experientially exploring classroom management with preservice teachers in a post- degree BEd program. During the third year, the author undertook an arts-based action research project to examine her actions as facilitator, or Joker, and to explore Forum Theatre's potential for redressing oppressions in a school setting. In the analysis of one challenging session, she suggests that emotions are important data to consider when deciding how best to respond in the moment, as Joker or as classroom teacher. Noticing responses of fear, anger or shame in oneself and others may help identify oppressive practices or tacit assumptions that deserve critical attention. The sociological concept of saving face has relevance for classroom management and is recommended as an area for further study.

Interludes

• Volume 8 Interlude 1: Upitis, Rena. Four strong schools: Developing a sense of place through school architecture.
  The driving premise of this paper is that students should be schooled in built and natural environments that afford them ways of understanding of how their daily physical actions and social choices affect the earth. Views of prominent philosophers and scholars in support of this premise are described. Next, four cases illustrate how schools can provide students with opportunities to develop ecological mindfulness through practical activities that are enhanced by natural and built environments. The examples-from Canada, the United States, and Australia-span the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of education. It is concluded that schools and curricula that focus on a sense of place are able to support the practical activities that lead to meaningful relationships between members of the community, and between people and the land.

Articles

• Volume 7 Number 1: Rodríguez: Experiences with poetry, pedagogy and participant observation: Writing with students in a study abroad program.

  Many anthropologists have turned to creative writing as they struggle to represent experiences/encounters with other cultures. Study abroad students, while not necessarily anthropologists-in-the-making, are also representers (and representees) of exotic cultures while abroad. This paper explores creative writing as a strategy to help study abroad students engage questions about cultural representation, reflexivity and identity while immersed in the other culture. It examines a semester-long pilot project in which both students and the author explored poetry as a means to reflect upon and represent experiences with the Other in Central Mexico. It suggests that creative writing as an arts-based method of qualitative inquiry, while not a panacea for the representation crisis, provides students and researchers a powerful way to reflect upon cross-cultural experiences and offers many directions for further research.

• Volume 7 Number 2: Gervais: Exploring moral values with young adolescents through process drama

  The connection between drama and moral education in young adolescence has not been widely researched. This study examines the role of process drama. In this study process drama is defined as educational drama for awareness and conflict resolution through the creation of a dramatic collective exploring the moral values of junior high school age students. Students examined their values through themes of family, friendship, and other issues of personal importance. When dramatic cognitive dissonance was followed by group discussion and reflection, students’ awareness of their values articulation processes was heightened and their interpersonal problem solving skills improved. The ensuing group ethos that developed was characterized by caring, respect, and mutual commitment. This study suggests that dramatic engagement focusing on personal story can be a significant moral education tool for junior high students.

• Volume 7 Number 3: Trotman: Evaluating the Imaginative: Situated Practice and the Conditions for Professional Judgement in Imaginative Education

  It is now a matter of routine that schools in England are able to demonstrate the value of their work in terms of "impact" and "outcomes." In the province of imaginative education this is problematic. While Government has sought to create a new relationship between inspection and school selfevaluation, this in effect has amounted to little more than a bureaucratic and performative form of "self-inspection." At the same time the teaching profession is reminded that it lacks a shared language to enable clarity and precision about its judgements (Hargreaves, 2004). Acknowledging the necessity for imaginative educators to make their work publicly demonstrable, and recognising the private imaginative lifeworld as a sacred space, this paper calls for a (re)focusing of educational evaluation in imaginative education. Drawing on phenomenological research approaches and ideas of connoisseurship and pupil voice, six "situated" imaginative practices, spanning the solitary and the collective, are proposed in an attempt to consider ways in which the imagination might be made amenable to communal educational evaluation. Before the development of a shared evaluative language can be entertained, the necessary conditions for educational evaluation must first be created, and these conditions involve educators in the cultivation of their own imaginative lifeworlds as a professional practice. Ultimately, through processes of interpretation and communalisation, educational evaluation of the imagination becomes an intrinsically transformative practice.

• Volume 7 Number 4: Nielsen: Apprenticeship at the Academy of Music

  Inspired by studies of apprenticeship and theories of situated learning, this study argues that learning should be understood in relation to ongoing social practice. Using interview material and participant observation studying piano students’ learning at the Academy of Music in Aarhus, it describes how transparency and access to the music culture at the Academy are important for the piano students’ learning processes. In particular, two ways of learning are described: learning by imitation and learning by performance. In both these ways the learning process involves and is organised around becoming a member of the musical culture and developing an identity as a musician.

• Volume 7 Number 5: Belliveau: Engaging in drama: Using arts-based research to explore a social justice project in teacher education

  This arts-based research invites the reader to consider the complex learning that emerged when a group of pre-service teachers collectively developed a play about anti-bullying as part of a teaching practicum. To capture the learning that emerged during the collective writing and rehearsing, the author engages in an artistic process by writing the key findings in the form of a drama. By using drama as a method of inquiry, as well as a way of documenting the learning, the author attempts to capture the multiple voices within the collective pre-service teacher process.

• Volume 7 Numer 6: Kim: For whom the school bell tolls: Conflicting voices inside an alternative high school.

  This article is a study of conflicting voices inside an alternative high school in Arizona. Voices of alternative schools are, quite often, not included in the discourse of curriculum reform even though the number of alternative schools is growing every year. Bakhtinian novelness of polyphony, chronotope, and carnival are incorporated into an arts-based, storied form of representation to provoke empathic understanding among readers. Multiple voices (polyphony) of the school are juxtaposed within a certain time and space (chronotope) while all the different voices are valued equally (carnival) to represent conflicting views on public alternative school experiences. The purpose of the article is to provide readers with vicarious access to tensions that exist in an alternative school, so that they may engage in questioning the nature and purpose of these spaces. In so doing, the study aims to promote dialogic conversations about “best practice” for disenfranchised students who are subject to experiencing educational inequalities in the current era of accountability and standardization.

• Volume 7 Number 7: Betts: Multimedia arts learning in an activity system: New literacies for at-risk children.

  This study concerns a multi-year after school arts technology program, the Multimedia Arts Education Program (MAEP). The Tucson Pima Arts Council (TPAC) sponsored MAEP in downtown Tucson for low-income youth. A five-semester curriculum was developed to introduce multimedia literacies in the electronic arts workplace and provide tools for students to become creators as well as consumers of new literacies. In this six-year study, formative data on an early cohort of participants was collected over an eighteen-month period using participant observation in the labs and interviews with students and their parents or guardians. A pre- and posttest questionnaire measured changes in perceived self-efficacy and attitudes about art, technology and learning. This study also looked at long-term effects of participation in MAEP. Program graduates were contacted four years later and asked about their high school success (defined as graduation) and career directions. The study findings are reviewed and analyzed using Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) for retrospective analysis. The paper includes a description of the MAEP activity system and the interrelationships within the system. Survey instruments and a sample lesson outline are included in the appendix. The program was successful for many of the participants who completed the five semesters and earned a computer to go with the new skills to use it.

• Volume 7 Number 8: Oreck: Artistic choices: A study of teachers who use the arts in the classroom

  In recent years the arts have been introduced into many pre-service and in-service professional development programs for general education teachers. At the same time, pressure for immediate test-score improvement and standardization of curriculum has limited the creativity and autonomy of teachers. This study, the qualitative part of a mixed-methods investigation of teachers across the U.S., involved six New York City elementary school teachers who found ways to use the arts in their classrooms on a regular basis despite the pressures they faced. The study investigated the personal characteristics and the factors that supported or constrained arts use in teaching. The results suggest that general creative and artistic attitudes rather than specific skills as a maker of art are key to arts use. A willingness to push boundaries and take risks defined this group of teachers. They recognized obstacles and challenges to arts use, but made choices that helped them maintain a sense of independence and creativity in teaching. The strongest motivation to use the arts use was their awareness of the diversity of learning styles and needs among their students. The teachers articulated a variety of ways in which arts-based professional development experiences encouraged them to bring their creativity into the classroom, expand their teaching repertoire, and find effective ways to incorporate the arts in the academic curriculum.

• Volume 7 Number 9: Roulston: Qualitative investigation of young children's music preferences.

  This qualitative study examined young children’s music preferences through group conversations with children, interviews with parents, and nonparticipant observation of classroom settings in daycare and elementary classrooms. Data were analyzed inductively to generate themes, and revealed that (1) children expressed distinct preferences for an eclectic range of music from very early ages; (2) rock and popular music were frequently mentioned as preferred styles by parents and children, with movie and television soundtracks high in popularity; (3) music listening was characterized by a reliance on diverse technologies, with listening inextricably interwoven with viewing; and (4) music listening and experiences in the home described by children and parents varied considerably from what was offered in the school and daycare settings. Findings from this study contribute to an understanding of young children’s music preferences and listening habits in contemporary Western society.

Book Reviews

• Volume 7 Review 1: Hebert, D. G. Teaching music and dance of Namibia: A review essay.

• Volume 7 Review 2: Costantino, T. E. The rewards of art criticism in art education: A review essay.

• Volume 7 Review 3: Thompson, C. Art practice as research: A review essay.

• Volume 7 Review 4: Stokrocki, M. A Nordic model of technology education: An essay review.

• Volume 7 Review 5: Barrett, J. R. Culture and the arts in education: A review essay.

• Volume 6 Number 1: Samuel Leong: Integrating Ancient Nanyin Music within an Interdisciplinary and National Education School-wide Curriculum: An Australian-Singaporean Collaborative Arts Education Project

  This article describes a school-wide arts education project that incorporates an interdisciplinary approach involving an Australian university, the Singapore Ministry of Education, the Singapore National Arts Council, a community music association, and a local primary school. The Project engages young school children with Nanyin music, an ancient musical art form from China, and works with practicing Nanyin musicians and their musical practices. The Project integrates music into the regular music curriculum for an entire ten-week term, and incorporates a National Education focus with an interdisciplinary approach, encouraging students to make connections with subjects such as language, mathematics and social studies. The Project culminates with a public performance of Nanyin music by the participating students and an exhibition of their project work. This article will also present the viability and usefulness of the Project from the perspectives of Nanyin musicians and school participants.

• Volume 6 Number 2: Jonathan Savage: Information Communication Technologies as a Tool for Re-imagining Music Education in the 21st Century

  This article investigates a potential way ahead for music education in the 21st century. Drawing on material from the case study of a Manchester-based composer in northern England, it argues that those within formal education should examine more carefully the musical values and practices of artists and composers working with “technologically-enriched” contexts. It describes the need for the reconsideration of the role of technology in music education along with expanding the aims of music curricula and the possibilities for cross-disciplinary practice. Finally, the author urges all music educators to consider the wider artistic opportunities that new information communication technologies (ICT) can offer pupils.

• Volume 6 Number 3: Patricia E. Calderwood: Risking Aesthetic Reading

  This reflective article explores a tension between private and public expression of deep aesthetic response to reading, with specific reference to the play of this tension in the public space of the classroom. Implications for teaching are included, most specifically the need to understand the sensitivities and emotional vulnerability of students, the teacher’s challenge of modeling open and deep responses to texts, and the creation of a supportive environment in which it is safe to take the risks needed for including deep aesthetic response in the classroom.

• Volume 6 Number 4: Peter Gouzouasis & Anne-Marie LaMonde: The Use of Tetrads in the Analysis of Arts-Based Media

  In this article, we chose the musical form of a sonata to examine tetrads, a simple four-fold structure that Marshall McLuhan coined and employed to describe various technologies. Tetrads, as cognitive models, are used to refine, focus, or discover entities in cultures and technologies, which are hidden from view in the psyche. Tetradic logic frames human artifacts and the means of doing things. The ideas that McLuhan eloquently brought to consciousness, long before technologies became the sophisticated communication tools they have become today, may be reinterpreted in a far more timely fashion. The poignancy of his views invite our immediate attention in light of the limitless extensions humans are being afforded with new technologies. McLuhan has always remained a significant and powerful voice among artists—his ideas, in effect, resonate with our artistic sensibilities.

• Volume 6 Number 5: Carol A. Mullen, Margie Buttignol & C. T. Patrick Diamond: Flyboy: Using the arts and theater to assist suicidal adolescents.

  This article integrates story and the form of qualitative methodology known as arts-based inquiry. The authors use this approach to provide a case study of Kal, a 15-year-old boy who had unsuccessfully attempted to end his life by “flying” off his apartment balcony. The paper begins with orientation to the background of this case and to arts-based inquiry and case history and then proceeds with an imaginative re-creation of the involvement of Margie, Kal’s caregiver, in this case in the form of a letter written in role by her as Kal to his mother. Finally, the authors discuss how arts-based representations can be used to positively affect mental health and to generate creative healing energy. In this presentation Kal is the leading character, and Margie, Kal’s real-life teacher in a hospital-based mental health unit in Ontario, Canada, is the supporting actress. Through dramatic fictionalization of her work with Kal, Margie found that “human learning can be renewed when teacher researchers use arts-based textual strategies to reflect on experience and invite others to respond to these inquiries” (Diamond & Mullen, 1999, p. 18).

• Volume 6 Number 6: Burke, J. M.; Cuilla, K. A.; Winfield, A. G.; Eaton, L. E.; & Wilson, A. V. Epiphamania.

  This article is a narrative exposition of collaborative research performed at Bergamo in October 2001. As a performance of research, we hoped to extend the involvement of audience/participants and to problematize both method and articulation of lives lived (Knowles & Cole, 2001) by using art forms in (re)searching the nature and possibilities of socially constructed and experienced boundaries. The primary foci of our work are (1) the relationship of research and/to/with art, (2) the nature and effects of socially constructed boundaries in research/life/curriculum, and (3) the nature of collaboration. We used the media of dance, poetry and readers’ theater to both theorize and present data about socially defined roles and identities and our responses them.

• Volume 6 Number 7: Gosse, D. My arts-informed narrative inquiry into homophobia in elementary schools as a supply teacher.

  Using fiction writing techniques, such as the creation of composite characters and scenarios gathered from data collection and the author’s tacit knowledge, this narrative teacher inquiry illustrates how anti-homophobia education might unfold in an elementary school. The art of yarning or storytelling is explored as an effective tool to confront homophobia with elementary school students and teachers. The author manipulates tone and style to create a bridge between the academy and the public, especially reaching out to teacher candidates and practicing teachers to share his insights and imagined possibilities. This research draws from poststructural sensibilities, challenging binary systems of gay-straight and male-female, exploring how accepted heterosexist and misandrous knowledge and social beliefs are constructed and upheld, and ultimately soliciting questionings so that status quo assumptions may be ruptured. In this supply teacher’s fictional narrative, the imagination is celebrated as a provocative mode of artful educational inquiry.

• Volume 6 Number 8: Upitis, R. Experiences of artists and artist-teachers involved in teacher professional development programs.

  This research explores the experiences of artists and artist-teachers involved in two professional development programs for arts education: a national Canadian program and a state-wide American program. Both programs aim to help classroom teachers develop ways of teaching in and through the arts by interacting with partnering artists and/or arts organizations. Based on survey data and interviews with artists, artistteachers, teachers, and administrators, the paper outlines the experiences of artists and artist-teachers who had been involved in the programs for at least two years. The main themes developed through this research were: (1) how artists’ views of their art forms were altered, (2) what the artists viewed as challenges of contemporary public education, (3) how artists’ views of the teaching profession were altered, and (4) how artists articulated the benefits of the arts in young people’s lives. The paper closes with a discussion of issues to consider when designing professional development programs involving artists and teachers.

• Volume 6 Number 9: Cosenza, G. Implications for music educators of an interdisciplinary curriculum.

  This article makes the case that authentic music learning need not be sacrificed nor compromised in any way when the music teacher designs and teaches curricula and units of study that integrate music learning with learning in other academic subjects, including other fine and performing arts subjects. The author argues that music teachers may think they are losing instructional time in the service of other subjects when, in fact, if music teachers understand the cognitive connections and shared information among subjects, they have opportunities to enhance music learning in substantive and authentic ways. Some sample curricular designs are outlined in the article as examples of how learning among subjects can serve multiple subject areas, including music.

• Volume 6 Number 10: McMillan, C.: "Musical ways of knowing: A personal approach to qualitative inquiry in education."

  In this comparative essay, I examine how musical ways of knowing inform my educational research. To understand this question, I employ dual perspectives as a musician and qualitative researcher. I use Eisner’s concept of the art of educational evaluation (1985a, 1985b, 1997)—particularly as educational evaluation relates to connoisseurship and criticism—to explore how my aesthetic understanding of musical performance, with its descriptive, thematic, interpretive and evaluative aspects, illuminates the process of qualitative inquiry. I also evaluate an earlier quantitative study of sight-singing achievement among young students by viewing it through a more aesthetic, affective lens. In sharing how I have learned to trust musical ways of knowing to inform my educational research, I suggest ways that other music educators can focus their aesthetic lenses on research questions of interest to us all.

• Volume 6 Number 11: Pitts, S.: Twenty-nine world premiers in two hours: The story of Powerplus.

  This article considers the effectiveness and implications of the Powerplus composing project, in which teenage students were asked to write for a chamber ensemble in preparation for a public concert of their work. The perspectives of all participants are considered, with a view to understanding i) the developing identities of young composers, ii) the effects of combining the musical expertise of players, teachers and students in the project, and iii) the expectations and attitudes of audience members attending the final concert. Empirical data from questionnaires, interviews and observations are used to analyse the attitudes and experiences of participants, revealing a high level of support for the project and for the value of composing in music education. The implications of the project for future research and practice are considered, and suggestions are made for strengthening the professional networks which could better contribute to young peoples’ development as composers.

• Volume 6 Number 12: Andrzejczak, N., Trainin, G., & Poldberg, M. From image to text: Using images in the writing process.

  This study looks at the benefits of integrating visual art creation and the writing process. The qualitative inquiry uses student, parent, and teacher interviews coupled with field observation, and artifact analysis. Emergent coding based on grounded theory clearly shows that visual art creation enhances the writing process. Students used more time for thought elaboration, generated strong descriptions, and developed concrete vocabulary. The advantages of using production of art and artwork in the pre-writing process provided a motivational entry point, a way to develop and elaborate on a scene or a narrative. This study shows that the benefits of a rich visual art experience can enhance thought and writing in response to the finished artwork.

• Volume 6 Number 13: Savva, A. & Trimis, E.: Responses of young children to contemporary art exhibits: The role of artistic experiences.

  This study explores pre-primary children’s responses to contemporary art exhibits in a museum setting, the role of previous artistic experiences, and the impact of the art museum visit on children’s responses to artworks and making art during classroom practice. The sample included 32 children (16 boys and 16 girls) randomly selected from two classrooms in two nursery public schools in Nicosia, Cyprus. In addition to open-ended interviews, classroom observation notes, and videotape analysis procedures, the artworks of children were used to find out the influences of the visit to the art museum. The findings suggest that children’s contact with a range of art forms including contemporary art exhibits in a museum setting is an important part of their educational experiences if appropriate approaches and methods are used.

• Volume 6 Number 14: Veblen, K., Beynon, C. & Odom, S. Drawing on diversity in the arts education classroom: Educating our new teachers.

  In this article, the authors discuss their attempts to make antiracist multiculturalism a reality in their students’ future classrooms. They note that the literature is replete with examples of what not to do in trivializing curriculum, and they attempt here to take theory into praxis/practice by exposing and describing their strategies for engaging their students in antiracist multicultural understandings and activities.

• Volume 6 Number 15: Custodero, L. Making sense of "Making Special": Art and Intimacy in musical lives and educational practice.

  An Essay Review of Dissanayake, E. (2000). Art and intimacy: How the arts began. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.

• Volume 6 Number 16: Davis, S. G. "That thing you do!" Compositional processes of a rock band.

  Understanding how students make music in non-school settings can inform teaching practice in schools, making teaching more relevant to students’ musical perspectives. This research study examined the musical processes of a three-member rock band, their roles within the group, and considered how they constructed musical meaning. The most salient findings that emerged from this study lie at the intersection of musical growth, musical enculturation, and musical meaning. Collaborative composing was facilitated by shared musical tastes and grounded in friendship and commitment to music making. Engagement and investment in the music prompted meaningful musical experiences for group members. Ownership, agency, relevance, and personal expression fuse at the core of the value they place on this musical and social experience. Implications for the instrumental music classroom are also shared.

• Volume 6 Number 17: Paley, N., Crawford, J., Kinney, K., Koons, D., & Seo, J. Remaking The Educational Imagination.

  We document a set of artistic reconstructions of Elliot Eisner's The Educational Imagination which took place during a graduate seminar in contemporary curriculum discourses. In this project, students and their instructor collaboratively explored The Educational Imagination as a site for an arts-based examination of knowing, identity, and textual authority. Participants created sculptural representations of the text. The sculptures functioned alternately as artworks and experimental places of learning, thus suggesting alternative practices by which the educational experience might be reimagined. In producing these textual/artistic reconstructions, participants created an intersubjective/interpersonal dialogue as they analyzed the educational, aesthetic, and ideological factors which shaped their thinking about curriculum as remade from Eisner's text.

Book Reviews

• Volume 6 Review 1: Sheelagh Chadwick. Review of Herbst, Anri; Nzewi, Meki; and Agawu, Kofi (Eds.). ( 2003). Musical arts in Africa: Theory, practice and education. Pretoria, South Africa: University of South Africa Press.

• Volume 6 Review 2: Eisner, E. W. & Day, M. D. (Eds.). (2004). Handbook of Research and Policy in Art Education: A Project of the National Art Education Association. Mahwah, N. J.:Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Reviewed by Teresa Cotner, California State University, San Bernardino

• Volume 6 Review 3: Davis, Jessica Hoffman. (2005). Framing education as art: The octopus has a good day. N.Y.: Teachers College Press. Reviewed by Richard Siegesmund, University of Georgia.

• Volume 5 Number 1: Laura A. McCammon & Heather Smigiel: Whose Narrative is it?: Ethical Issues when Using Drama with Teacher Narratives

  The authors describe ethical issues they have encountered when teachers develop narratives about their own practice and then again when these narratives are later explored using drama techniques. Specifically, they look at the developmental process itself, both in the creation of the original narrative and the subsequent creation of a dramatic text. They also examine the climate of trust and respect that needs to be in place when teachers share narratives especially when the author of the narrative is not known. Issues of power relationships also arise especially when soliciting narratives from pre-service teachers and sharing them with wider audiences.

• Volume 5 Number 2: Elkoshi, Rivka: Is Music “Colorful”? A Study of the Effects of Age and Musical Literacy on Children’s Notational Color Expressions
  This eight-year study represents a pioneering effort to investigate color expression in children’s graphic notations at two stages of development: “Pre-literate” (age: 7.0-8.5), before students received school music instruction, and “Post-literate” (age: 14.0-15.5), three years after students acquired Standard Notation in school, and to consider the effects of age and musical literacy on notational color expressions. Two meetings with Israeli/Jewish schoolchildren were held along a course of eight years: The first meeting with 46 second-graders (1995); the second meeting with 33 ninth-graders (2003). Of these, 17 students participated in two meetings. All participants acquired Standard Notation in their sixth-grade. In each meeting, subjects performed a musical phrase called “Timbre”, represented it graphically and explained their notations. Seventy-nine notations were collected and analyzed by MSC (Morphological, Structural, Conceptual) method of interpretation (Elkoshi, 2000, 2002, 2004). Based on MSC, notations were classified under four categories: A (Association), P (Pictogram), F (Formal response), and G(Gestalt expression). Results show that the conceptual sub-division of the musical phrase into fragments (G) is color related, whereas the conceptual perception of the chronological sequence (F) is shape rather than color related. Associations (including Synesthesia) is probably age related. Post-literate notational color expressions were not affected by musical literacy.

• Volume 5 Number 3: Becky Wai-Ling Packard, Katherine L. Ellison & Maria R. Sequenzia: Show and Tell—Photo-Interviews with Urban Adolescent Girls

  In this project, we used photo-interviews as a method to investigate the hopes and fears of urban adolescent girls who actively participated in their community organization. The photo-interviews were featured in a collaborative, creative arts program involving urban adolescent girls from a community organization and college students enrolled in a research methods course. Case studies of four adolescent participants are presented, illustrating the role of neighborhood context and past experiences in shaping hopes and fears. The potential synergy between image-based research and arts-based education is discussed.

• Volume 5 Number 4: Elliot W. Eisner: What Can Education Learn from the Arts about the Practice of Education?

  My subject is what the practice of education can learn from the arts. I describe the forms of thinking the arts evoke and their relevance for re-framing conceptions of what education can accomplish.

Book Reviews

• Volume 5 Review 1: Magne Espeland. Review of Sullivan, Timothy & Willingham, Lee. (Eds.) (2002). Creativity and Music Education. Toronto: Canadian Music Educators Association.

• Volume 5 Review 2: Sally Armstrong Gradle. Review of Abbs, Peter. (2003). Against the flow: Education, the arts, and postmodern culture. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

• Volume 5 Review 3: Joan Russell. Review of Leong, Sam. (Ed.). (2003). Musicianship in the 21st century: Issues, trends & possibilities. Sydney: Australian Music Centre.

• Volume 5 Review 4: Richard Colwell. Review of Aróstegui, José Luis. (Ed.). (2004). The Social Context of Music Education. Champaign, IL: Center for Instructional Research and Curriculum Evaluation.

• Volume 4 Number 1: Monica Prendergast: "I, Me, Mine: Soliloquizing as Reflective Practice"

  Arts-based qualitative researchers are expanding the borders of what constitutes educational research through work that recognizes and elevates the creative/imaginative elements at play, within a social science frame, in the researcher's interaction with his or her subject of inquiry. This paper examines the construction/creation of soliloquies as forms of reflective practice through an understanding of this dramatic voice applied to qualitative research writing. A recent research study in theatre audience education at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, presented soliloquies expressed as personal and data poems, dialogues of symbolic interactions (between "I" in practice and "Me" in reflection), as autobiography (talking to myself about myself), and autoethnography (talking to the group within which I place myself). Soliloquy writing offers myriad ways to engage in reflective practice and qualitative interpretive inquiry.

• Volume 4 Number 2: Gary Peters "The Aestheticization of Research in the Thought of Maurice Blanchot"

  Increasingly familiar within the State University system, the thought of Maurice Blanchot is in danger of settling all-too-comfortably into a research culture that in fundamental ways is radically at odds with the peculiar trajectory of his singular writing. In the light of this, the current essay is intent on returning Blanchot to the “outside,” to an “exteriority” that is not critical of the hegemonic research culture, but Other—an Other mode of research. Trying to think of research affirmatively, in the absence of the negative dialectics more typical of the academic communicative community, both throws new light on Blanchot’s own aesthetic method while, importantly, offering a great deal to those intent on imagining models that better “fit” the experience of art practitioners engaged, whether formally or informally, in practice-based research. Driven by the interminable waywardness of “fascination” rather than the teleologies of knowledge and understanding, Blanchot proposes (albeit fleetingly) a non-methodological method of progressing that speaks from the experience of the artist and an aesthetic that is not only unengaged with the will-to-knowledge but, in fact renders such knowledge “truly impracticable.” Perverse as this may sound, the very thought of such an Other mode of research may yet prove to mark an important and necessary shift in what “counts” as research within an academic culture that must increasingly familiarize itself with the alterity of art…and then take it seriously (as research).

• Volume 4 Number 3: Margaret Macintyre Latta & Karl D. Hostetler "The Call to Play"

  This article explores the nature of play and its presence and potential in teaching and learning encounters. Play is portrayed as a movement that can characterize the process of learning and teachers’ reflections on their practice. The exercise of techne and phronesis are found to be key but problematic elements in this movement. The paper is in the form of a conversation, a medium calling the authors themselves to play with the play that might occur in classrooms. Thus, the authors’ play is itself a subject for inquiry. Their interplay warrants considering play to be an elemental activity for reconceptualizing teaching/learning practices.

• Volume 4 Number 4: Margaret S. Barrett & Heather Smigiel "Awakening the 'Sleeping Giant'?: The arts in the lives of Australian families"

  In 2001 a nation wide study (Costantoura, 2001) raised a number of questions in relation to the arts and Australian families. This study used group interviews and surveys to question people aged between 18 and 60 about their participation in the arts. Results from this study suggested that the arts add an important dimension to family life; however, the ways this occurs and the nature of family participation in the arts were not made clear. Significantly, this study did not include the perceptions of young people under the age of 18. Here we report on one aspect of a complementary research project that sought to provide more information concerning the ways in which Australian families participate in the arts and to identify the meaning, purpose, and value of the arts for children (ages five to fifteen) in Australian school and community settings. Specifically, we focus on the ways in which children describe their engagement with the arts in family settings using the voices of young people as the primary source of data.

• Volume 4 Number 5: Stephanie Springgay "Cloth as Intercorporeality: Touch, Fantasy, and Performance and the Construction of Body Knowledge"

  The monstrous body (Shildrick, 2002), the altered body (Featherstone, 2000) and the masquerade (Tseëlon, 2001) have been subjects of recent theoretical analysis through scholarly writing and the works of contemporary visual artists (Wilson, Dyck, Orlan). Each term while slightly different, marks a theoretical concern with bodies that are conditioned as the abnormal other. Theories that engage with the monstrous, altered, and masquerading body do not position these terms as static binaries in opposition to the ideal or normal body, but rather their arguments are located within the body itself such that encounters with the strange are constant conditions of becoming (Shildrick, 2002). The latent body is always in process, open, pliable, and protruding. Opposed to the classical body, which is monumental, static, and standard, the monstrous, altered, and masquerading bodies resist, exaggerate, and destabilize distinctions and boundaries that mark and maintain bodies, signifying pleasure and desire as sites of insurgency. Bodies have been accorded a place of central importance in recent scholarship as researchers attempt to construct the meanings of the lived body, the social body, and body image (Grosz, 1994). Each discipline whether science, technology, sociology, sport, and/or art has de-constructed and challenged western philosophy which is rooted in a mind/body split (Price & Shildrick, 1999). What is evidently missing from this cogent literature is a re-representation of the body as tactile and felt. In this paper I analyze the monstrous, altered, and masquerading body not to further dichotomous thinking and systems of regulation and control, but as sites of excess where the pleasures of the body are central aspects of body knowledge. Interrogating the boundaries of the body, I offer a model of intercorporeality (Weiss, 1999) that examines the body in relation to other bodies and the ways in which knowing and being are informed through generative understandings of touch, fantasy, and performance. The arguments call for educational practices that are open to desire, allowing for tactile and felt knowledges.

• Volume 4 Number 6: John Finney "From Resentment to Enchantment: What a Class of Thirteen Year Olds and Their Music Teacher Tell Us About a Musical Education"

  The study set out to uncover pupils’ experience of learning music and their teacher’s experience of teaching music in their weekly class music lesson in a secondary school for 11-19 year olds in the east of England. A class of twenty-four pupils, aged 12-13 years, in their second year of secondary schooling, and their music teacher, were observed and interviewed over a two-term period, creating an ethnography of their classroom musical lives. The unfolding story showed pupils giving meaning to their music lesson in terms of having a "teacher who understands things" and of a teacher "making connections" with them. The relationship between learner, what is to be learnt and teacher proved to be critical. The account will enable music teachers to reflect upon the ways in which they engage with their pupils as they seek to create a positive climate for learning. It may further assist in arriving at common understandings about the character and purpose of a musical education.

• Volume 4 Number 7: Elizabeth de Freitas "Contested Positions: How Fiction Informs Empathic Research"

  This article uses fiction and critical theory to explore the concept of empathy. Empathy has become one of the most contested concepts in the postmodern revisioning of the social sciences (Simon, 2000). Empathy assumes that we can profoundly understand the experiences of the Other, despite the radical cultural differences that divide us. I present two fictional narratives in which an educational researcher named Martha West examines both the promise and peril of research informed by empathy.

• Volume 4 Number 8: Marybeth Gasman & Edward Epstein "Doorways to the Academy: Visual Self-Expression among Faculty Members in Academic Departments"

  In this article, we seek to understand how faculty door displays can evolve into an elevated form of self expression rather than mundane decoration. Other research on this topic has linked the decoration of faculty doors to theories of personalization: the need to mark the territory as belonging to the owner and as a symbol of commitment to an institution. Our discussion, however, focuses less on the personal and more on the use of the door as a means of positioning oneself within the department, institution, and discipline. We find that faculty door displays encompass more than just matters of personal style but also touch on the larger concerns that the professor wishes to communicate to the academic public.

Book Reviews

• Volume 4 Review 1: Warren Sellers. Review of Doll, W. E. Jr. & Gough, N. (2002). Curriculum Visions. Counterpoints: Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education, Vol. 151; General Editors Joe L. Kincheloe and Shirley R. Steinberg. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

• Volume 4 Review 2: James G. Henderson. Review of Eisner, E. W. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

• Volume 4 Review 3: Pamela Burnard. Review of Cox, Gordon. (2002). Living music in schools 1923-1999: Studies in the history of music education in England. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

• Volume 3 Number 1: Margaret Meban: "The Postmodern Artist in the School: Implications for Arts Partnership Programs"

  In this article, I reflect on my experience as a visual artist working in an elementary school as part of an arts partnership program. Specifically, I discuss how in making art in the public space of a school institution I found myself censoring the content of my work, which resulted in a shift of the style and purpose of my art-making, and ultimately, altered the nature of the educational experience for students. Working from a reconstructive postmodern perspective of artistic practice within the context of a public school which enacted a conservative curriculum orientation I found myself engaging in a process of self-censorship by selecting themes and issues that would not be considered controversial within the context of this elementary school. Perplexed by the direction my work and educational role should take I began to accommodate the immediate interests of the students which resulted in a studio program that emphasized the basic skills of drawing and painting with little attention paid to the social function of art. By considering curriculum orientations that a school may enact and the values and philosophical assumptions that underpin them, along with the positions of the current postmodern art world, I discuss the complex position that the artist may occupy in the school while participating in an arts partnership program.

• Volume 3 Number 2: Christine Marme´ Thompson "Celebrating complexity: Children's talk about the media."

  Essay Review of Joseph Tobin's Good guys don't wear hats: Children's talk about the media.

• Volume 3 Number 3: Michalinos Zembylas "Of Troubadours, Angels, and Parasites: Reevaluating the Educational Territory in the Arts and Sciences Through the Work of Michel Serres."

  This article examines Michel Serres' philosophy of the "educated third" and considers his views on a philosophy of communication. Serres' interdisciplinary writing constructs themes that can be traced across literature, philosophy, science, mythology and art, borrowing ideas and approaches from them and transforming those into original, provocative and synthetic voices that cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries. Serres' views provide a refreshing perspective to educators, especially, those in art education and science education and advocate a reevaluation of some contemporary educational ideals to emphasize invention and imagination.

• Volume 3 Number 4: Cheryl J. Craig: "The Shadows of New York: A Continuing Inquiry into the School as Parkland Metaphor."

  Drawing on a theoretical framework centered on Clandinin and Connelly's (1995) metaphor of a school as a "professional knowledge landscape" and Diamond's (2000) idea of schools and inquiry being thought of as "parkland," I employ the "story constellations" (Craig, 2001) approach to excavate narratives of community, school and reform, both given and lived at Cochrane Academy, a Grade 4-5 magnet school located in a historic African American neighborhood in the mid-southern US. These stories set the stage for an art-making experience that occurred in a 5th grade art class in the heels of the events of September 11th. I show that metaphoric parkland connections existed between scenes of New York City and Cochrane's storied landscape prior to the tragedy. These illusionary commonplaces gave rise to the Shadows of New York healing mural that became a mobile parkland space which, in turn, was gifted to the people of New York. Throughout the inquiry, I emphasize the critical relationships between and among art, education and social justice and signal how vitally important these connections are in enabling constrained situations to be lived, and responded to, in educative, as opposed to miseducative, ways (Dewey, 1938).

• Volume 3 Number 5: Nancy Dibble & Jerry Rosiek "White Out: A Case Study Introducing a New Citational Format for Teacher Practical Knowledge Research."

  This case study describes a biology teacher who comes to see her European-American racial identity as mediating her attempts to counsel Mexican-American students to pursue further science education. The teacher's journey to this understanding involves reflection on the structure of the science curriculum, on her personal history, and dwelling on uncomfortable feelings that contain kernels of insight that eventually grow into deeper understanding. The authors consider the whole of this process, and not just some specific conclusion that can be represented in form of summary propositions, to be the content of the practical knowledge the case study conveys. To represent this kind of knowledge adequately, this case study uses a "sonata-form" that has been introduced and explained in other articles. To this it adds the innovation of side notes, a system of notation designed to connect teachers' narratives with research from outside their experience without suggesting that teachers' experience is derivative of that research.

• Volume 3 Number 6: Stokrocki & Samoraj "An Ethnographic Exploration of Childrens Drawings of Their First Communion in Poland."

  This ethnographic study explores what some children in Poland represented in drawings of their first Holy Communion, how they developed them, and the significance of the drawings. We describe, analyze, and compare drawings as a whole and with findings from other studies on child artmaking. Description includes the Holy Communion experience in general, the ritual in Poland, the Corpus Christi procession, the school context and related lesson. Analysis focuses on theme, schema, color, and space usage. Drawings do not express content--deep religious feelings but reveal other aesthetic interests in massive churches and decorative details. Conclusions include summary of elements of the event¹s uniqueness, discussion of what was left out of the drawings, and alternative explanations which include limited drawing abilities, gender differences, outside influences, power relations, ritualistic role of the ceremony, and the essence of holy communion and the children's drawings.

• Volume 3 Number 7: Dzansi "Some Manifestations of Ghanaian Indigenous Culture in Children’s Singing Games"

  This article discusses some Ghanaian cultural values and expressions that are embedded in children’s playground repertoire. The discussion is based on the description and interpretation of some of the songs children performed for me during my fieldwork in Ghana in 2001. Ghana has embarked on school reforms and policies to make school music reflect the culture of the local communities. As I analyzed some children’s repertoire within the cultural contexts in the Ghanaian indigenous communities, it is evident that the playgrounds and homes are fertile grounds for tapping and honing their artistic potentials to enhance and transform music performance in the classroom and beyond.

Book Reviews

• Volume 3 Review 1: Peter R. Webster. "Review of Parncutt, R. & McPherson, G. (Eds.) (2002). The science and psychology of music performance: Creative strategies for teaching and learning, N. Y.: Oxford University Press"

• Volume 3 Review 2: Kenneth Marantz "Review of Duncum, Paul & Bracey, Ted. (Eds). (2001). On Knowing: Art and Visual Culture. Christchurch, New Zealand: Canterbury University Press"

• Volume 3 Review 3: Nick Rabkin "Review of Deasy, Richard J. (Ed.). (2002). Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development. Washington, D.C.: Council of Chief State School Officers"

• Volume 3 Review 4: Sally Gradle "Review of Kellman, Julia. (2001). Autism, Art, and Children: The Stories We Draw. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey"

• Volume 2 Number 1: Robin Mello "The Power of Storytelling: How Oral Narrative Influences Children's Relationships in Classrooms"

  This article presents findings from an arts-based research projcet that took place in a fourth-grade classroom over the period of one school year. It examines the impact of storytelling on children's self-concept. In addition, it discusses how storytelling helped children process their social experiences in school.

• Volume 2 Number 2: Bjorn Rassmussen & Peter Wright "The Theatre Workshop as Educational Space: How Imagined Reality is Voiced and Conceived"

  In this article, we claim a concept of education that allows a space for dealing with sensuous impressions, examining knowledge, experiencing disconnections, re-experiencing meaningful connections and learning "how to know." This is a different form of education than where the emphasis is merely on the "flow of information." Arts education, we argue, should not be a practice that is pre-designed, and hence textually ordered and contextually controlled, in order to better serve the expectations of any societal or cultural institution. In claiming this space, we need to deconstruct both the concept of "Aesthetic" and "Education" in order to find new ways of organising an education that is both aesthetic and playful. What we argue is that Dramatic Knowing is a form within the broader concept of a "cultural aesthetic," and highlight cultural production as distinct from merely socialising young people to arts canons or using theatre as an under-developed curriculum tool. Recent studies of youth culture (as referred) show that young people make the most of the inter-textual play between fine art, popular art and everyday life, and it is in this area of "play" that we are able to uncover new models of drama education. In linguistic terms, dramatic knowing highlights a certain intentional, interactive, creative, and context-situated production of meaning. This production takes place in theatre workshops, and two forms of workshops are described that reflect arguments made about education, partnership and the potential for youth culture research.

• Volume 2 Number 3: Paul Duncum "Theoretical Foundations for an Art Education of Global Culture and Principles for Classroom Practice"

  The article begins with an outline of the theoretical foundations for an art education that addresses global culture. It reviews and critiques the widely held, popular theory of cultural imperialism that sees, typically, U.S. culture overshadowing and destroying national and local cultures. By contrast, the author argues that by employing reading reception theory and theories of indigenization and cultural translation, it is possible to see a vastly more complex set of cultural issues through which we need to navigate. The article concludes with principles for dealing with global culture in the classroom, as well as some examples of exemplary classroom practice.

• Volume 2 Number 4: Susan W. Mills "The Role of Musical Intelligence in a Multiple Intelligences Focused Elementary School"

  The role of musical intelligence was investigated at a Central Florida elementary school. Four participating teachers implemented the Theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI) by Howard Gardner in their classroom curricula. Extent and quality of musical experiences, corresponding assessments, and comparison with representative schools from MI literature were examined through case study data collection methods. Only one assessment for musical growth and one assessment for musical ability were found in the MI literature. No such assessments were present in the school setting. Influences on the role of musical intelligence included perceptions about: MI, music integration, musical growth, assessment of musical growth and assessment in general. Political climate at the school and district were also cited as highly influential in determining the role of musical intelligence in the school's MI curriculum. Recommendations to correlate MI learning strategies and music activities with Sunshine State Standards benchmarks learning, and to allow time and resources for such training, were suggested by participating teachers. Other recommendations include greater contributions to MI literature from the arts education community, music specialist involvement in curriculum planning, and support from school and district administration.

• Volume 2 Number 5: Colin Durrant "The Genesis of Musical Behaviour: Implications for Adolescent Music Education"

  This article addresses some of the concerns regarding music education for the secondary school/adolescent age range. Many tensions are highlighted--the apparent lack of success and engagement by students, yet at the same time, their almost universal need to identify with music within particular sub-cultures. Reference is made specifically to the curriculum in schools for England and Wales and the reports which suggest that all is not well. Inasmuch as it is a complex issue, some illustrations and solutions are outlined, though only as suggestions for exploring a way forward.

• Volume 2 Number 6: Nitzan Ben-Shaul "Outline of a Developmental-Cognitive Approach for Comprehending the Art of Cinema"

• Volume 2 Number 7: Angela Elster: "Learning Through the Arts: Program Goals, Features, and Pilot Results"

  This article describes an artist-teacher-institutional collaboration that began in Toronto, Canada, in the mid-1990s, and that has grown to become national initiative. "Learning Through the Arts" (LTTA) was established in 1995 by The Royal Conservatory of Music, a national leader in preschool and music education programs, and was soon to change the ways in which 60 artists, 200 teachers and 4,000 students in Toronto approached and experienced public education. The initiative grew out of a response to the need to expand learning opportunities for young people in schools. The project involves an approach to learning through the arts, where the arts are used to access concepts and make meaning. The structure of the program is outlined in the paper, as well as some initial research findings. The five year pilot project, which developed and tested the model that is now being implemented with over 20,000 students in six additional cities across Canada, involved Toronto artists in partnership with the former North York Board of Education (now the Toronto District School Board). After a short period, LTTA garnered the support of artists, teachers, principals, and upper administration. Research on the Toronto pilot has indicated that students' attitudes towards school curricula have improved, that teachers have gained confidence and skills related to teaching from an arts-infused perspective, and that administrative practices were changed to increase support for arts curricula after involvement with LTTA.

• Volume 2 Number 8: Rena Upitis, Katharine Smithrim, Ann Patteson & Margaret Meban: "The Effects of an Enriched Elementary Arts Education Program on Teacher Development, Artist Practices, and Student Achievement"

  "Learning Through the Arts" (LTTA) is a school transformation project developed by The Royal Conservatory of Music (Canada). The first elementary schools were founded in Toronto, Ontario, in 1995, and LTTA is currently operating in elementary schools in 7 urban and rural sites across Canada. LTTA is designed with the goal of engaging students deeply in learning, through carefully designed math, science, history, geography, and language units that incorporate performing and visual arts into the learning process. This goal is achieved through a structured program of teacher development which includes the involvement of artists who work along with teachers to develop curricula. LTTA offers effective and sustainable professional development programs, based on the sharing of knowledge and skills between teachers, artists, and students, through multi-year partnerships. Artists model techniques and activities for teachers to implement in their classrooms and also work directly with students in schools.This articledescribes the baseline data gathered as the first part of the evaluation of the national LTTA program, for the students, teachers, parents, and administrators involved in the six sites that were established in 1999. Preliminary data were gathered over the 1999-2000 year. Canadian Achievement Tests (CAT/3) were used to assess students' performance in vocabulary, reading comprehension, and mathematics. In addition, writing samples were taken and scored holistically. Students also completed a survey indicating their interests in schooling in general and in the arts in particular, as well as in the activities they engaged in outside of school. Parents were asked to report on language(s) spoken at home, leisure activities, household income level, and the mother's education level. Teachers were surveyed regarding a variety of teaching beliefs and practices. Administrators were surveyed regarding their support for arts activities, both in terms of human and financial resources. Baseline data indicate that there are clear correlations between achievement in mathematics and language and engagement in arts activities, particularly with respect to music lessons (outside of school). That is, students who take music lessons outside of school perform significantly better on all language and mathematics measures than their peers who do not take music lessons. Not surprisingly, socio-economic status is also clearly related to arts activities and achievement, and strategies for tracking changes within socio-economic groups over the next two years of the study are planned. It was also found that attitudes towards various art forms are established in students as early as the first grade, with boys being less interested and perceiving themselves as less skilled, for example, in singing and dancing than their female peers. Hypotheses and general issues for consideration for the next two years of work are described, and methods for exploring those issues and hypotheses are also discussed.

• Volume 2 Number 9: Kit Grauer, Rita Irwin, Alex de Cosson & Sylvia Wilson: "Images for Understanding: Snapshots of 'Learning through the Arts'"

  In this article, we examine, in images and text, a case study of two artists and the teachers at an action research school involved in the "Learning through the Arts" program. We are guided by the following research question: What changes occur in the artists' and teachers' beliefs about learning and teaching as a result of this program? Emerging from the research are several themes under the umbrella of beliefs about teaching and learning: the role of the researchers and image based methodology in affecting beliefs; the role of the children's response in shaping beliefs; and integration in an arts infused curriculum. Given the rising interest in artist-in- residence programs across North America, and particularly the Learning through the Arts programs across Canada and internationally, this image based educational research contributes valuable insights into the beliefs, practices, and issues surrounding such programs.

• Volume 2 Number 10: Donald Blumenfeld-Jones: "Partial Stories: An Hermeneutic Account of Practicing History"

  An essay review of Janice Ross's (2000) Moving Lessons: Margaret H'Doubler and the Rise of Dance in American Education (University of Wisconsin Press).

• Volume 1 Number 1: Margery D. Osborne & David J. Brady, "Joy and the Paradox of Control"

  In this essay we write about joy and about magic. The stories we recount of our work in art, science and teaching are examples of magic: all are mysterious, transformative. We focus on magic because the word is provocative and we wish to provoke an exploration of a much neglected facet of teaching and of education, the uncontrolled and out-of-control, the qualities of teaching that cause joy.

• Volume 1 Number 2: Francois Victor Tochon, "Action Poetry as an Empowering Art"

  Through several narratives of experience, and under the theme of "The Arts and Learning", the article presents lived processes of poetic emergence in French-speaking Switzerland and Francophone Northern Ontario. These processes suggest that it would be beneficial to transcend the usual structural options in instruction on the literary art object, given the integrative possibilities of action and of poetic action in particular. In order to integrate the dynamics of creation, instruction in schools could work from active, poststructuralist principles and become "didactive", that is pedagogically active along a trend that defines learning as the creation of entirely new knowledge, concepts and artefacts. Didactics, along the line of the European educational research, has long been neglected in the American literature. This is time to see its possibilities.

• Volume 1 Number 3: Minette Mans, "Using Namibian Music/Dance Traditions as a Basis for Reforming Arts Education"

  The incredible diversity of music in southern Africa causes many teachers to doubt their ability to teach in cultures other than their own. Those teachers who have formal music training often don't have a working knowledge of the local peoples' music and dances. In addition, there are very few published materials available, so where to begin? Because they feel uncertain about the music of another culture, teachers may turn towards "formula" lessons. There is, however, a danger of tokenism in such formulas. This can be avoided by learning more about the culture.
          In this article I identify some of the questions that can lead to a better understanding of music and dance in cultures other than one's own. Video and audio examples are provided that illustrate answers in Namibia. By asking the right questions, the characteristics of a particular musical culture can be exposed. However, understanding something about a culture does not necessarily equip one to teach it. Therefore the development of teaching-learning materials for schools is necessary. These normally include transcriptions of songs and dances. Based on my research on Namibian music and dance a possible transcription of both sound and movement is described.

• Volume 1 Number 4: C. T. Patrick Diamond & Carol A. Mullen, "Rescripting the Script and Rewriting the Paper: Taking Research to the 'Edge of the Exploratory'"

  This paper is a sequel to our playlet ("Performance as Rehearsal") that was performed as part of a larger presentation called "Passion Play" at a national-level educational research conference in 2000. We reflect here on our experience of scripting and performing our "two hander" and on the audience's reactions to it documented by means of a response/evaluation sheet. We begin with a dramatic dialogue to evoke our initial (even self-defeating) reactions to our playlet as script and as performance. We then feature the audience's reactions to the playlet. Finally, in a reflective narrative, we affirm our need as teacher educator researchers to perform our academic texts by using aesthetic techniques such as literary allusion and allegory, postmodern interruptive modes, and invitational prompts. We end with the script that we originally (first) created for the playlet.

• Volume 1 Number 5: Barbara Poston-Anderson & Peter de Vries, "'The Peter Piper Pickled Pepper Mystery': Arts Educators Collaborate to Create a Musical Play for Pre-schoolers"

  This article outlines how an arts-based collaboration unfolded between a music educator and a drama educator in a tertiary institution. The particular context was their creation of a musical play for pre-school children entitled, "The Peter Piper Pickled Pepper Mystery." Written from both educators' perspectives, this commentary provides insights into their collaborative process from the scripting and composition through to the rehearsal and performance stages. Reflecting on their journey together, the researchers identify the main characteristics which they believe contributed to their perceptions of a successful collaboration.