Enrolments in school arts subjects are falling in both England and Australia. There are various arguments made in an attempt to reverse the situation. The arts are said to be vital for the economy, linked to success in core school subjects, are educationally inclusive and important for their disciplinary knowledges. In this paper, based on my…

This paper introduces the life and work of art educator and designer Kurt Rowland (1920-1980) who authored the first set of textbooks on visual education and played a role in the shifting world of art and design education in post-war Britian. We detail the foundational experiences of his extraordinary life in the first half of the 20th century…

This article considers a pilot research project that examines the successes, failures, and best practice approaches for delivering online performing arts education experiences to young people around Australia. In conversation with 15 teaching artists and 18 youth-based arts organisations nationally, it evaluates the challenges and innovations in…

This paper provides a descriptive historical analysis of the planning and writing of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts which occurred from 2009 to 2013. This process involved extensive consultation across a range of stakeholders, including curriculum research, background reading and analysis that preceded the Australian Curriculum, Assessment…

This paper re-visits the Media Arts curriculum 10 years after initial discussions within the Australian Media Education community helped to shape the content and contexts for teaching about media in Australian schools. 10 years is a long time in media history, particularly with the rise of social media and digital platforms as major venues for…

The rise of online arts education content delivery has created challenges for arts educators in Initial Teacher Preparation (ITP). Consequently, educators in various arts disciplines across Australia have been regularly meeting online to share, explore and experiment with ITP arts learning practices with the aim of establishing authentic learning…

A significant contention underpinning the commentary around STEM/STEAM is the evidence of discipline hierarchies, and inherent binary perspectives and/or biases that lend themselves to privileging one or more disciplines over another in an interdisciplinary education context. The current focus on increasing engagement with STEM in Australian…

Purpose: This paper focuses on the donation in 1888 of a Sèvres Vase to the Education Department of Victoria after the International Exhibition in Melbourne. Using the vase as its focus the paper reflects on what this donation may be able to tell us about the impact, primarily on education, of a series of International Exhibitions held both in…

Over the past 20 years, the authors have designed an interdisciplinary approach that integrates Arts-based methods into STEM education. This integrated STEAM education perspective is particularly useful for enabling students to develop (i) not only their traditional scientific (and mathematical) understanding of the outer world but also (ii) their…

2020 has been marked by disruption on a global scale due to a range of compounding crises including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Many community arts responses to the pandemic originated from individuals rather than by means of concerted or sustained sectoral responses. This paper uses reflections from Ireland, Australia, and Mexico to discuss…

In an uncertain labour market, the questions around the employability of graduate students take on a new urgency. Fears about the graduate market in the coming years are acute and are compounded by a sense that there is a large disconnect between a university education and what is expected in the workplace. Australian labour market trends clearly…

Researchers navigating the ontological turn in educational research have increasingly looked to art as an alternative to conventional modes of qualitative inquiry. However, the rapprochement between art and post-qualitative research remains problematic. While some see this turn coinciding with established genealogies in arts-based research, others…

The image is the raw material of the twenty-first century. Images infiltrate all social and cultural spaces. Its digital-mediated realities drive communication, industry and knowledge. Images saturate life and adolescent learners are familiar with the participatory nature of image production and its social, educational and personal communicative…

With an interdisciplinary focus on creativity, inclusion and wellbeing, this paper provides a conceptual argument for additional and reimagined arts education programs in schools that incorporate creative arts therapies. Based on a review of literature in this field, it documents the practices and value of creative art therapies, for students…

Artistic practice has a well-established presence in graduate research training. Extant writing on creative arts doctorates considers various issues, ranging from policy and process requirements to programme design, and the nature of the text itself. In the disciplinary domain of music, narrative accounts are often employed to explore doctoral…