International Journal of Education & the Arts

This qualitative study presents a group of five diasporic Chinese xianshi musicians in Hong Kong as an example, illustrating how they learnt and value their music throughout their lives, and examines the possible link between learning-practices and values. It is hoped that the lesson learnt from these xianshi musicians may alert music educators to the possible far-reaching effects of enculturation and learning-practices on forming an individual's values relating to music and music-making. The data were drawn from semi-structured in-depth interviews, non-participant observations and a trip to the musicians' homeland. It revealed that they value music for aesthetic and personal enjoyment, and for the purposes of bonding and identity building, as well as for building an imagined community. It appears that their musical enculturation (from homeland) and informal learning-practices (from both homeland and Hong Kong) may have contributed to their lifelong devotion to making music and to how they value their music and music-making on both personal and collective levels.

The aim of the research reported in this article was to determine what music first year generalist primary teachers were teaching. In particular, the study sought to determine the impact of music education coursework undertaken in teacher training on these teachers' practice as beginning teachers. The self-reported data was generated through a written survey undertaken by 112 first year generalist teachers in their first year teaching, with 24 of these teachers agreeing to be interviewed after the survey was completed. Results revealed that only 37% of these beginning teachers are teaching music on a regular basis. Reasons impacting on their decision to teach (or not teach) music include the presence of a music specialist in the school, their current or recent learning of a musical instrument, amount of time dedicated to music education in their teacher training courses, lack of confidence about teaching music, availability of time to teach music when other curricular areas dominate, and access to resources, teaching spaces, and relevant professional development. Implications for teacher educators teaching music education for preservice generalist primary teachers are outlined.

In this reflective essay, five members of a research team involving graduate students and a faculty member offer individual "studies"\0x00 of specific moments in the field in which lessons about methodology, the research context, and the researcher herself/himself crystallized. The article highlights the pedagogical possibilities of portraiture for introducing graduate students to qualitative research methodology. Each "study" illuminates how different kinds of boundaries are negotiated: whether it is the boundaries of access to a research site; the boundaries of personal or professional recognition; the boundaries of the body and physical space; the boundaries of racial identification; or the boundaries of the interior and exterior selves. These are not lessons that can be taught/learned within the constraints of a classroom, whether a lecture hall or the most progressive seminar. It is in the actual experience of negotiating these boundaries that the intricacies of the research process manifest, and in the process, the inquiry itself grows and moves through the necessary explorations that are the heart of qualitative research.

The investigation presented in this article is focused on studies within a practice based MFA program in visual art in Sweden. The analysis presented is based on two interviews each with nine art students: One interview during their first and one during their fourth year of study. The analysis focuses on the relation between two aspects of their studies: The use of studio conversations and the relation to their own artwork. Data are analyzed and results are presented for each student as a case. The cases are compared and grouped based on similarities and differences. A close relationship between use of studio conversations and relation to own artwork is found, varying to its character from case to case. The results have implications for the understanding of the self-directed character of the studies and the very free form of curriculum typical of visual art practice education.

This case study about a teenage musician, Wade Johnston, suggests how YouTube has affected music consumption, creation, and sharing. A literature review connects education, technology, and media. Informal learning, digital literacy, and twenty-first century technology are also connected in the review. Data reveals how Wade started his channel, gained popularity, interacted with others, and promoted his musical career through YouTube. Original songs, covers, collaborations, documentaries, selfinterviews, video blogs (vlogs), and live performances are observed by the researcher. Interviews with the subject, key actors in his life, fans, and first time listeners were transcribed and results were used to triangulate. Previous musical media research is expanded upon to include YouTube and video sharing. The idea of amateur and professional musician, musical venue, and audience member are being changed through YouTube. Current practices of how YouTube is used in the classroom are discussed, and future research is suggested.

Teaching is vulnerable work where self and other enter into intimate encounters that can change one's sense of self and purpose within the world. Through this poetic rendering, I seek to piece together a story of communal becoming within the space of a student teaching seminar. The work was collaborative and ongoing as students engaged with one another's words and began to (re)write their relationships with themselves, the community, their peers, and practice. Boundaries were blurred, selves disrupted as student teachers began to engage with their own positions and perceptions of the world around them, (re)encountering pedagogy in a space of praxis.

While much has been written about arts integration theory, and the various benefits of visual art in the curriculum, the literature is sparse regarding arts integration implementation, and the personal, professional, and school culture barriers to the persistence and dissemination of such interventions. Successful educational interventions are purposefully designed, taking into consideration the culture of the stakeholders, a school's or district's larger contextual factors, and the sequence and timing of program phases. Bronfenbrenner's theory of cultural ecology is employed as a framework to examine the steps involved in the introduction, instantiation, and persistence of an art integration program in an urban school system.

The self-efficacy beliefs teachers hold about their ability to teach subjects shapes their competence in teaching. Teacher self-efficacy is defined as teacher beliefs in their ability to perform a teaching task. If teachers have strong teacher self-efficacy in the teaching of arts education, they are more likely to incorporate arts in the classroom. Alternatively, if teachers have weak teacher self-efficacy in the teaching of arts education they are less likely to include aspects of the arts in their curriculum. Little is known about teacher self-efficacy beliefs towards arts education in early childhood education. Since arts education is an important element in the curriculum of any classroom - including all early childhood classrooms - investigation of the beliefs that shape teacher practice is desirable.

In 2010, a survey was distributed using convenience sampling to early childhood teachers throughout Queensland. There were 21 respondents, representing a response rate of 27%. Each completed an adapted version of the Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale for Arts Education. Perceived competence towards each of the five arts strands (dance, drama, media, visual arts and music) were compared to perceived competence in maths and English. The number of hours taught in each of the arts strands was also investigated. Findings suggest all of the respondent early childhood teachers had greater perceived competence for teaching maths and English compared to any of the arts strands. Some early childhood teachers did not engage with some of the arts strands (particularly drama, dance, media) in their daily classrooms. These findings provide glimpses of the current day-to-day running of early childhood classrooms and the role of arts education in the current climate of policy reform and accountability.

Based on a series of videoconferences held between two universities, one located in China and another in the United States, this pilot curriculum study illustrates how successful interglobal communication via synchronized educational technology requires detailed planning and the use of a substantial number of pedagogical strategies. Achieving the goals of broadening participants' international experience and promoting intercultural understanding of the discussion topics requires the instructor's appreciation of the cultural identification process at the global level. The author shares and discusses personal experiences and challenges with organizing this kind of collaboration between two higher education institutions across national borders, and provides initial implementation and instructional guidelines.

This article documents the current classroom practice of creative arts education of respondent classroom teachers in the New South Wales Greater Western Region, Australia. The study provides a descriptive account of classroom practice in creative arts education through the employment of a quantitative methodology. A questionnaire was designed and distributed to teachers as the sole data collection instrument and analysed to identify innovative classroom practices that anticipate the needs and challenges of creative arts education and the young people it serves. A significant gap in the literature regarding the nature of creative arts education classroom practice was identified. The criticality that such a description of current practice be produced is asserted, with a view towards illuminating current classroom practices and working towards improved models and practices of creative arts education in K-6 classrooms.

The meaning of "progress" in U.S. educational institutions has undergone much debate (Tyack & Cuban, 1995). Standards-driven practices have often promoted a search for 'right' answers in place of critical and diverse thinking. Globalization and its impacts compel us to continue revising and articulating the meaning of progress for 21st century students, educators, and researchers (Ball & Tyson, 2011). This aesthetic empirical inquiry (Pinar, 2004; Ranciere, 2004) contributes to this process by creatively re-presenting teacher voice via bricolage (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003; Kincheloe, 2001), specifically poetic bricolage (Trueit, 2004). The pursuit of aesthetic approaches to research have the potential for re-shaping national notions of progress to emphasize the cultivation of creativity, understanding, and empathy across lines of difference, and thereby support 21st century global communities in collaborating to address inequity.

When teachers become more confident and competent in relation to singing, then they are more likely to use singing and to use it successfully. Teachers are expected to gain such skills in pre-service teacher education, to enhance their capability in teaching music, so that singing can be utilised and supported in schools. Confidence is definitely something that contributes to our performance in all aspects of our life. However, when we are not confident in those skills, we do not perform as well as we should, generally resulting in avoidance of that skill or activity.

When it became apparent, at the end of an Australian University Teacher Education music education elective, that some primary teacher education students could not hold a tune by themselves, or felt confident to sing on their own, a strategy was developed to raise the solo singing standards and perception of confidence level of the next cohort of students. This paper reports on a pilot program aimed at improving the in-tune singing skills and confidence of a class of teacher education students with the aim of increasing the likelihood they will later include singing in their future music programs.

This autoethnographic study seeks the value, position and possibilities of free improvisation in the musical field. It explores how embodied knowledge, dialectical exchanges, emotional and intellectual stimulation constructs and reconstructs experiences in various contexts for the free improviser, who is both researcher and actual piano performer. This is done by experiencing and reflecting on the connections and interactions between different aspects and events in free improvisation, seen here as a phenomenon for varied, multiple processes individualized by one's adopted style, culture and character. The research suggests a shift towards a more holistic and integral paradigm for experiencing and understanding music through free improvisation as a process in life.

Promoting creativity in schools involves the development of characteristics such as self-motivation, confidence, curiosity and flexibility. It can be argued that the development of the first three of these probably relies on the last, all of which need to be supported by a "flexible learning context." However, this cannot work without a structure which can be used as a scaffold (Vygotsky, 1978) either to go beyond and enhance learning, or to work within a framework, flexible enough to accommodate individual learning styles. Such pedagogy is intricately related to the curriculum. In the context of the newly introduced Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland, this paper discusses the experience of an interdisciplinary approach to pedagogy funded by the Scottish Arts Council. The approach was developed within the initial teacher education (ITE) programmes at the University of Aberdeen and elaborates on the relationship between curriculum, pedagogy and creativity.

Arts-based approaches to research have emerged as an integral component of current scholarship in the social sciences, education, health research, and humanities. Integrating arts-based methods and methodologies with research generates possibilities for fresh approaches for creating, translating, and exchanging knowledge (Barone & Eisner, 1997; Barone, 2000; 2008; 2008; Knowles & Cole, 2008). This article explores two such methodologies, a/r/tography and researchbased theatre, by closely examining the development of the theatre-based piece Drama as an Additional Language: Creating Community, Confidence, and Comfort (Beck, Belliveau, Lea, & Wager, 2009). Using the six a/r/tographic renderings (contiguity, living inquiry, metaphor and metonymy, openings, reverberations, and excess), the authors investigate the development of Drama as an Additional Language as an example of how research-based theatre and a/r/tography may be integrated.

Drama for Schools (DFS) is a professional development program in drama-based instruction shaped by theories of critical pedagogy and constructivism. In 2007, the Director of DFS invited an educational psychology faculty member to develop a research and evaluation component for the program. This article discusses and troubles this interdisciplinary partnership through the lens of praxis, the continual cycle of thought, action, reflection and response. In this article, we touch upon implications of activated praxis such as (a) how DFS has evolved in its identity as a research-based program model; (b) how outcome measurement was embedded into program implementation; (c) the experience of disseminating findings in both arts-based and educational research spaces; and (d) how long-range planning was guided both by research and program priorities. We conclude with identification of how this process has resulted in praxis for participants across all levels of the partnership.