Formal ceramics art education is becoming a fundamental requirement for professional practice in ceramics in Nigeria. Considering the ample resources available for ceramic practices in the country with a teeming population of over 140 million people, there is a promising future for the art, in spite of the effects of globalization and…

This article reflects my journey as a performing arts student and intern both in Portugal and abroad. It is not intended as a personal journal, but rather a reflection and an aftermath comment on my experiences and learning processes. First it provides a context regarding my university education in a Southern European country, against a previous…

Exploring the manner in which professional identity formation in emerging conductors is entangled with the cultural context of orchestras, I focus on the amorphous evolution from a student identity to that of a professional, illuminating some underlying social conditions of the ever-elusive profession of conducting. Prevailing assumptions about…

This article outlines the activities of the research network "Festival Performance as a State of Encounter", which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of the Beyond Text strategic programme. The network was formulated in 2008, and a range of different events were organized over the course of two years to explore the…

This article provides a reflective perspective on the role that research-led teaching plays in the development of future arts workers in higher education. It explores the challenges faced by lecturers developing curricula in the performing and creative arts and argues that the increasing focus on employability can conflict with universities'…

Despite reading being recognized as a core academic skill, surprisingly little research has been undertaken into university lecture reading requirements. This article reports on the trial and evaluation of a minimalist reading model developed for students in arts and education subjects. Comprising annotated extracts from full texts…

The inclusion of cultural and contextual approaches in the study of literature has long been accepted as imperative in the literature classroom, fostering, as it does, the sensitization of students to diverse worldviews. This article aims to explore the way in which literature could affect students' preconceived notions of communities and…

This article discusses the effectiveness of using an approach based on a virtual learning environment (VLE) to enhance the close-reading skills of first-year English undergraduates. The first two sections explore the practical and theoretical issues involved in adopting such an approach; the third describes the design and functions of a VLE…

This paper presents an examination of the learning of pre-service Visual Arts teachers through dialogic pedagogy. Dialogic education gives students the power to speak in their own voices, and through the interactions which take place between them, relationships, identities and ideologies are constructed. The dialogic process examined in this paper…

Lee Shulman's concept of signature pedagogies in the professions has captured the imagination of many researchers and educators. In higher education, the concept has been extended to teaching in particular disciplines, and it is here argued that the concept of signature pedagogy can be usefully extended to an influential teaching system in…

The research assessment framework is an unstable reality in many countries. While few would disagree that there is a need to measure and reward research excellence, there has been little investigation of how assessment mechanisms relate to knowledge itself. With a focus on the arts and humanities and writing from an Australian perspective, this…

This article reports on the results of a project which used a social network site to support students on a year abroad and foster informal learning, particularly in the area of intercultural communication. The project employed a peer-mentoring structure to solve the problem of role conflict, in which users of these sites may feel some tension as…

This article explores the role of the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC) in facilitating and encouraging a collaborative community of junior and senior scholars on issues of technology and humanistic learning. As a result of its emphasis on collaboration and discussion, HASTAC encourages a form of collective…

This study reports on the pedagogic rationale, didactic design and implications of an AHRC-funded doctoral training scheme in collaborative and digital multimedia in the humanities. In the second part of this article we discuss three areas of provision that were identified as particularly significant and/or controversial. These include (1) desktop…

This project explored the experiences of a small sample (N = 6) of Australian academics with the use of digital storytelling as a pedagogical tool in higher education contexts. This article describes two case studies of academic uses of digital storytelling, along with interpretive analysis of six semi-structured interviews of academics working…