Processes of curriculum reform are often a period of upheaval for teachers and schools. As values and priorities change and new knowledge and skills are required, teachers find themselves occupying new positions upon the school landscape. In the case of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts, some of the concerns emerging from recent reforms include…

This article is a discussion about music education for preservice generalist teachers. Three central themes are explored with a focus on music; arts education as praxis, creative process engagement, and teaching and learning in the performing arts. In writing about these themes, questions arose about the essence of learning in the arts. The…

Background: Mental health concerns prevent positive well-being and are key challenges for Australian children and young people. Arts organisations play a role in enhancing the positive mental health of children and young people. This paper describes the involvement of young people and their parents in the development of a resource for arts…

This paper explores the role of the Senior Project Officer: The Arts for the Australian Curriculum Assessment Reporting Authority (ACARA) in facilitating the writing of the foundation "Shape of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts" (2011) paper for the national curriculum, with a particular focus on the discipline area of music. The…

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…

An important element of STEAM education that teachers struggle with is the adoption and application of digital technologies. Digital technologies have the potential to enhance social inclusion and student-centred learning, and for this reason it is important for teachers across all levels of schooling to develop skills and confidence in this area…

Reported benefits of arts partnerships with schools range from improvements in students' motivation and engagement in learning to teachers' increased confidence in teaching the arts, and strengthened school and community relationships. Yet, in the scholarship on arts partnerships to date, limited critical attention has been given to the impact of…

This article compares and evaluates the music components of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme (PYP) and the NSW Creative Arts K-6 Syllabus. To guide the analysis, this article employs Bernstein's (1971) concepts of classification and frame, and the two levels of 'best practice' in primary music education proposed by…

As school education systems worldwide adopt standardized performance measures, teacher effectiveness frameworks have become more influential. This article draws on Australian mixed methods research that aimed to understand the processes behind quality arts pedagogy. Following an in-depth quantitative study, nine high-performing case study arts…

This is a co-constructed narrative between both Marie, an early career teacher, Stephen an artist and colleague in the school's creative arts faculty and Colin, an Aboriginal teacher and researcher. They met throughout 2012 and discussed issues that related to their discursive interactions that occurred in this small rural school between its…

This paper reports the findings of a project that investigated uses of electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) in the creative and performing arts at four Australian universities and raises four significant areas for discussion: engaging technologies as an ongoing requirement of planning, delivery and evaluation of teaching and learning in higher…

Music and arts programs have increasingly been utilized to promote school engagement. Despite the fact that school engagement and music programs can be understood in myriad ways, little attention has been paid to potential distinctions between the types of music programs that underpin engagement. This article describes an investigation of how and…

Charles Darwin University (CDU) offers education courses for students who want to teach in Australian schools. The university is unique due to its geographic location, proximity to Asia and its high Indigenous population compared to the rest of the country. Many courses are offered fully online including music education for pre-service teachers.…

Continual changes to Victorian secondary education since the 1990s have severely effected the teaching of classroom music in many schools. Similar to the 1970s-1980s, there is a need for music educators and teachers to develop innovative concepts and insights into teaching school music. From 1975 to 1984, a group of determined women…

Contemporary early childhood teacher education is situated in a knowledge and policy environment where on the one hand preservice educators have the opportunity to connect with unlimited knowledge sources and, on the other, are expected to conform to standardized outcomes. This situation is compounded by increasingly inequitable learning outcomes…