Robin Pascoe

In my work in curriculum and teacher education, I have observed that the most powerful change agent for a teacher is another teacher (van der Heijden, Beijaard, Geldens, & Popeijus, 2018). Programmed professional learning and initial teacher education courses, as well-intentioned as they might be, cannot match the power of story of lived experience. Teachers listen to the stories of others even when they are sometimes shared incidentally and anecdotally. Stories are the lifeblood of building effective Communities of Practice. These stories produce purposeful benefits that contribute systematically understanding “quality education”.

This paper argues for using two story-based approaches to enliven and spark reflective change in teachers. Case Stories (Norris, McCammon, & Miller, 2000) vividly told, sitting alongside Critical Incidents (Tripp, 1993/2012) as powerful situated reflection, provide two lenses for teacher reflection and action. Used together they carry similar power and purpose when used with intentionality in changing future practice.

The School of Education at Murdoch University has been commissioned through funding from the Australia Council for the Arts (and the Western Australian Departments of Culture and the Arts and Education) to work with a team of Teaching Artists for two years. This commission involved identifying and developing skills and processes of five Teaching Artist – one for each of the five arts subjects in the Australian Curriculum: The Arts. These Teaching Artists co-teach with Murdoch University academic staff students in the Primary Teacher Education programs – Graduate Diploma of Education and Bachelor of Education. Each workshop begins with the Teaching Artists working with their artistic medium processes and principles; the second part of each workshop is led by the Murdoch staff member focusing on the specific pedagogy for the arts subject. The project has been funded for two years. An integral part of the project is development of Teaching Artist skills and processes through a Summer program designed to introduce them to the content and principles of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts. As a project running over two years, this presentation will report on impact at the conclusion of the first year.

The transition – transformation, perhaps – from drama student to drama teacher involves negotiating a different sense of performance. Drama teachers move from their roles as student actors, directors, dramaturges, scenographers and managers. They take on additional roles as curriculum designers, curriculum constructors and teaching and learning managers. They bring with them their deeply interpersonal capacities, creativity and innovation and re-shape themselves to the immediate task of creating spaces of interaction and learning in the context of drama. They draw together their drama content knowledge and their developing understanding of drama pedagogy. In that sense drama teaching is stepping into performance in a new space. They are playing in the space “betwixt and between”. In this paper I explore structuring learning experiences for drama teachers in the processes of becoming, as they step into these new spaces of interaction and learn to make the drama class room their own space. I share the drama education program developed at Murdoch University since it was established in 2002 (when I reported on its beginnings to the last national conference held in Perth). In sharing “our space” I seek to open the space between participants to share their stories about drama teacher education and to critique and progress future directions for the field.

This paper describes distinctive features of contemporary arts education in schools as markers of quality and tools for making judgments about teaching, learning and supporting this curriculum field. The paper has two sections. The first outlines markers of arts education in schools based on field work in two Australian sites of exemplary arts education and other research. It highlights the concept of arts education in schools as an ecosystem. The second part building on the first, looks forward to reflective and reflexive qualitative tools for making judgements using these dynamic markers for arts education in schools.

In this paper we are exploring the concept of drama teacher education as catalyst for creating communities of drama educators – drama education as an induction into a community of drama educators. In particular, I highlight two related concepts: creating a sense of a shared learning community within the group of students; and, teaching from community – being a member of the drama education community and bringing that community into focus through the design and implementation of the drama teacher education program. Throughout this paper I interweave narratives from my 2010 students and their experiences with reflections on the pedagogical choices made in shaping this course.

Mobile learning is not pervasive in higher education and yet its potential is enormous. This paper describes a project to instigate mobile learning in a School of Education using a whole-of-school approach to technological literacy and professional learning among academic staff. The project involves supporting every academic in the School to use an iPhone or iPodTouch in their professional lives, and to research their use of the device in pedagogical contexts. The paper describes the planning process together with the professional development initiatives to be implemented and issues associated with the acquisition and use of mobile phones in professional contexts.

Students entering primary teaching programs at Murdoch University have consistently shown anxiety about teaching the arts. They indicate a lack of content knowledge, artistic experiences and pedagogical understanding to effectively teach the arts in schools. The authors report on introducing students to active, hands-on, practical and embodied learning; model "studio thinking" (Hetland et al) and focus on arts practice and aesthetic understanding.

As part of a National Review of Visual Education, commissioned by the Australian Government, research in Australia, informed by international research and scholarship, revealed that education in the visual is transforming. This process of transformation is driven by changing contexts in technology, curriculum, social, economic and political forces and research itself. The process is changing what is happening in Australian classrooms. Analyses of the process reveal a number of principles for a re-designed Education in the Visual. The process also presents implications for Visual Educators, curriculum designers, schools and teacher education programs.