In a challenging world, the spotlight on children's wellbeing has strengthened. There is extensive research about the ways in which well-designed arts education programs positively impact children's wellbeing. Despite this, arts education continues to be marginalised in schools. When researchers with arts education and leadership experience teamed…

This paper examines the interplay of creativity, education, and the expressive arts. We begin by presenting a narrative literature review focusing on the use of artistic tools to promote creativity, self-expressiveness, and meaningful aspects of emotional and social learning. This review reveals strong connections between the different components…

This article evaluates Make it Happen Summer School according to Bernstein's writing on classification, framing, and recontextualisation. The project was a collaboration between a university and an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) that aimed to develop a curriculum for creative practitioners so they could learn to propose…

Playing video games is one of the most popular leisure activities across the world. Video game music (VGM) is a musical art form prevalent in popular culture, and there is potential to use it for the music education of students. Using informal music learning (Green, 2002) and online participatory culture (Jenkins, 1992/2013) theories as grounds…

Effective arts learning requires the development of important literacies. While investigation of discipline-specific literacies has filtered the literature, it is unclear if these literacies are acknowledged, understood, and/or taught. In this paper, we share the classroom discourse of two arts teachers in early and middle years across visual art…

In 1887, the British colonial masters in the Gold Coast implemented an Arts education reform that prioritized the faithful representation of everyday objects in still-life artistic works. This was known as the Hand and Eye curriculum, an Arts education which was geared towards industrialization and functionality rather than innovation and…

This article addresses issues connected with project-based integrative teaching of visual arts to primary school students attending after-school activities. It explores the pedagogical outcomes of using contemporary art forms and materials for the promotion of collaborative knowledge construction and researches these processes in the classroom…

How do high school students experience art, school, self and others after graduating from an arts integrated elementary school? This exploratory case study employs elements of narrative inquiry to detail the experiences of six students who graduated from one arts integrated elementary school. Participants expand and revise their perceptions of…

This paper outlines an ongoing qualitative review of themes that have emerged across the various session of the "Paint Your Life" program which was developed over the last 15 years. The author discusses the potential for "Paint Your Life" to disrupt hegemonic discourse about art, artists, and community development. Based on the…

Globally, teachers are trained to educate and assess children through matrices based on comparative competition, a practice that thrives on ranking. In an era of glocalization, how might educational systems cultivate classroom connections embracing diverse student gifts? This arts-based narrative inquiry explores fatherly life lessons of 17…

These two pieces represent a new approach to the presentation of ABER [arts-based educational research] inquiry projects. They are part ABER writing and presentation mixed with more conventionally scholarly voiced writing. "Trois Chaises" is all at once a theoretical examination of ABER practice, a presentation of one ABER practitioner's…

As art teacher educators, we want our students to be passionate, informed advocates for art education and capable of conducting action research as artist/teacher/researchers. Students are constantly in the process of understanding what it means to teach with and through the arts. In our art education program, we work to exemplify this complex…

Informed by the results of a collaborative project carried out with six secondary school students, this paper reflects on the methodological and epistemological issues related to the representation of informal learning practices. Borrowing a concept from the arts, I suggest that a representationalist logic in both schooling and educational…

This paper takes the position that drama education falls within the field of aesthetic education, and involves learners in both creating and responding to the art of drama through a blending of thoughts, senses and emotions. The paper looks at aspects key to the experience of teaching and learning in drama within the aesthetic framework, and…

This paper outlines a journey of arts-based inquiry into teacher education and identity transformation in the transition to teaching, guided by Barone and Eisner's Seven Features of Arts-Based Educational Inquiry. Employing a theatre-based research approach the researcher investigated teachers' epiphanic or revelatory "first" moments of…