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…

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…

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…

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;…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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 pre-service teacher education in Australia. This…

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…

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…

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…

In a time when schools are focussing on increasing their numeracy and literacy scores, teachers are often required to spend the majority of their time teaching Mathematics and English and have little time left for the arts and other subjects. This has led to some teachers developing integrated programs in order to cover all the required learning…