Creativity and design thinking skills are considered pillars in arts practice in general. Traditional arts education, in particular, involves a tension between pure technical skill and the ability to design creatively regardless of craft limitations. The present study focuses on eliminating the boundaries between craft and art and bridging the gap…

Capacity to teach the arts is a problem reported by many teachers in primary (elementary) school settings in Australia. This paper reports on research which explored how to build primary school teachers' capacity in arts-based pedagogy. It outlines the design and development of a co-mentoring program between arts mentor practitioners and…

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 practitioner research study examined the potential of arts education to support students' growth towards global citizenship including awareness, care, and understanding of--as well as active and responsible engagement in--current global challenges and social issues. We utilized research material generated during an interdisciplinary arts…

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…

This article adds to the discussion of arts-based approaches to teaching poetry by exploring an example of Poetry on the Wall and its potential for poetry education. Poetry on the Wall intertwines literary and visual elements by materializing and visualizing poetry in a physical environment. The study centers on the poem Reading List created 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…

Inspired by the affective and sensory turns in the paradigm of art history, this article discusses making pictures as a method of teaching art history in Finnish Upper Secondary Vocational Education and Training (Qualification in Visual Expression, Study Programmes in Visual and Media Arts and Photography). A total of 25 students majoring in…

Maxine Greene championed that teachers and students can discover openings providing space for the development of wide-awakeness through art and aesthetic education. Wide-awakeness is a heightened sense of consciousness encouraging critical awareness and deep engagement with one's world. As individuals come alive in this way, their open-minded…

Drawing on theories and practices in literacy education and in particular, the concepts of semiotics and transmediation, we explored the possibility of arts-based experiences such as Augusto Boal's Image Theatre in facilitating transformation of thinking in the context of global citizenship education. The objectives of this research were twofold.…

During this inquiry, I describe my journey as a beginning arts-based researcher, using this methodological approach to explore the "peak experiences" of five, second-grade gifted students in a general classroom. Concerned with collecting valid data from young children through traditional interviewing techniques, I turned to Arts-Based…

This study investigates young children's responses to viewing artworks in a preschool setting. Based on the responses of 15 children aged five to six years during five art viewing sessions in a preschool in Singapore, the study examines features of what young children see, think and feel when they view artworks. These sessions were facilitated by…

This paper examines Karagiozis--Greek shadow puppet theatre for children--as a way to explore how the Arts might support socially just education in the early years. As authors from diverse cultural backgrounds with different experiences of arriving and residing in Australia, we consider themes of social justice identified in a Karagiozis play and…

The basis for my article is how, and if, a collaborative land art project can provide opportunities for such co-creating as suggested in the national framework plan for preschools, which explicitly states the child as a co-creator of a shared expressive culture. I further wish to propose land art as a meaningful cultural practice, closely…