The purpose of this paper is to examine children's spirituality from the perspective of music learning, using arts based research as a mode of inquiry. Six interrelated themes are chosen to explore the landscape of music and children's spirituality and to evaluate the potential of arts based research to inform the intersections…

This international study investigated the experiences and attitudes of teaching artists whose work is rooted in theatre, dance, and closely-related disciplines. Based on survey data from teaching artists working in Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia, United Kingdom, and the United States (n = 172), the paper illuminates participants'…

This paper looks into the significance emotions and feelings can have in a collaborative dance-making process. This is done by introducing a narrative based on a dance pedagogy student's writings. They contain observations of her experiences on being the facilitating choreographer in a dance-making process involving a cross-artistic group…

Because students spontaneously exhibit aesthetic and rhythmic acts in the classroom and human beings across the world have engaged in the arts for thousands of years, this study argues that artful behavior represents an inherent and significant human proclivity. Exploring the tension between the human predisposition and the physical and mental…

This research analyzes the techniques, strategies, and philosophical foundations that contributed to the quality and maintenance of a strong theatre-in-education ensemble. This study details how the company selected ensemble members and describes the work environment the company developed to promote collaboration and encourage actor-teacher…

This essay explores silent conversations with the past, but also navigates through the labyrinth of artistic process, with its manifold passages of research, chance occurrence and aesthetic experimentation. The double metaphors of silent conversations and labyrinths apply to the essay and the artwork within it, to the research and to the practice.…

Out of the mouth of babes (and even more nonverbal) has come perhaps the wisest music teacher education I have ever received. In this narrative I share my foibles as a young, over-confident, and naive music instructor who, through a great amount of error, eventually learned the value of letting a child lead his own music learning. Throughout this…

Invoking the work of Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Liselott Mariett Olsson, the author of this short essay puts forth the concept of "becoming-unfaithful" as a way to rethink the relational and ethical complexities of being there with children through research. Re-encountering his own participatory movements while engaged in the…

This paper highlights "Wave-Makers (1910--2010)", a collaborative timeline redesign project, which involves interactive and advanced web-based technology to connect and complement arts curricula at two higher education institutions, one located in China and another in the United States. Through in-depth research, video-conferencing,…

My dissertation study seeks to understand how artist-teacher renewal may be nurtured through aesthetic experiential play in a Masters of Art Education degree program, and beyond, as my former students/participants and myself experience finding ourselves in its afterglow. "Aesthetic experiential play" could be described as a playful,…

The collaborative action research reported here strives to extend a prior study that dealt with the effects of integrating a general music course of study with the total curriculum of a first grade class. This second study used a similar plan in which a fifth grade teacher and a music teacher worked cooperatively to provide a curriculum that…

In this article, we discuss some issues raised by the increasing number of comprehensive national programs for visiting school concerts and art events in Norwegian schools. We ask what this increase in activity might mean for the nature of arts education subjects in schools, in particular music, what kind of rationale and philosophy the national…

Arts encounters in schools are often portrayed as encounters between art/artists and children. However, in such encounters, teachers are most often involved. The study presented discusses teachers' experiences with and space for action within The Cultural Rucksack; a national program for arts and culture in Norwegian schools. Observations and…

Utilizing a/r/tographic methodology to interrogate interpretive acts in museums, multiple areas of inquiry are raised in this paper, including: which knowledge is assigned the greatest value when preparing a gallery talk; what lies outside of disciplinary knowledge; how invitations to participate invite and disinvite in the same gesture; and what…

Ethnomusicology, the field in which the author has spent most of his life, is an unpronounceable interdisciplinary field whose denizens have trouble agreeing on its definition. He calls it the study of the world's musical cultures from a comparative perspective, and the study of all music from the perspective of anthropology. In this article,…