Preparing pre-service primary
school teachers to
teach Cross Curricular Priorities
The Arts
and
through ‘big ideas’ and the Zoo
Amy Hamilton
Flinders University SA
The Arts
The Australian Curriculum
• 5 distinct but related art subjects:
• dance, drama, media arts, music and visual arts
unique forms of creative expression
utilising traditional and contemporary
methods,
styles,
techniques.
Making and responding
Teaching the arts
encouraging and
motivating primary
students to develop to
their full potential in and
through the arts
Pre-service teachers
• very little arts background
• their own beliefs about the arts, based on
their past experiences
• attitudes are formed and shaped by
experience and these attitudes provide
motivation for behaviour
• Self-efficacy plays a strong part in teacher
confidence or disposition to teach a particular
subject
Worrying trends
• Time for the arts diminished
• lack confidence and motivation
• Generalist teachers will be
expected to teach all five arts
subjects until year 6
• Anxiety due to lack of experience
• on-going professional development
in the arts has been almost nonexistant
Australian Curriculum: the arts
• Written with generalists in
mind
• Provides a framework for
learning in the arts
• Tools
• beliefs
The Arts
How?
• The key, according to Eisner (1994) is to create
a stimulating environment in which learners
can become ‘immersed’.
Cross Curriculum Priorities
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and
cultures,
• Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia,
• Sustainability
• The arts provide a particularly rich way to
promote understanding and sensitivity to cultural
and social diversity
• promote inclusivity for students who are
marginalized or have special needs
Through the arts
• we can explore ways to respond to local and
global problems and issues of human rights
and sustainability.
• considering arts of a much broader range of
cultures helps students to understand the
histories and values of these cultures and to
reflect on their own.
• Recent past-focus on European exemplars in
arts
Traditional focus in schools on European masters
Australian Indigenous artists
Traditional and
contemporary
Arts of Asia
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
histories and cultures
• Generalist teachers
– Lack confidence
– Little knowledge
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
histories and cultures
Asia and Australia’s engagement
with Asia
Asia and Australia’s engagement
with Asia
Asia and Australia’s engagement
with Asia
•
•
•
•
a variety of art forms,
media,
instruments
technologies
Sustainability
• enables the exploration of the role of arts in
maintaining and transforming cultural
practices, social systems and the relationship
of people to their environment
• As catalyst for change
– Individual
– Collectively
– Locally
– globally
The zoo
Pilot study 2013:
Partnership with Flinders University
Aim: to prepare pre-service teachers to teach the arts
and Cross Curriculum Priorities
to raise awareness and promote critical thinking about
the role of the zoo and the ways that ‘big ideas’ can be
used as a starting point in the integration of the arts
with other curriculum priorities.
The Expressive Arts
• a compulsory topic undertaken by 3rd year preservice primary school teachers and 1st year Master
of Teaching students
• taught by experienced arts educators and
supported by three practicing
• ‘artists in residence’
• concept of authentic arts education
–
–
–
–
student creativity,
expressive capacities
aesthetic sensibilities
through experiences that involve
arts knowledge and skills
The Expressive Arts: 2013
182 pre-service teachers
Lecture series 10 weeks
Workshops 14 weeks
Assessment
Concepts
Australian Curriculum
Children’s development
Big Ideas-the zoo
Integration
Assessment
Cross Curriculum priorities
Visiting artists (x2)
Planning for authentic arts
education
5 x 2 hour hand’s on
workshops for each arts
subject
Participation:
all workshops
On-line reflections
Specific content, skills and
knowledge
Performance and
workshop with children
time to plan and rehearse
Unit and lesson plan
Unit and lesson
• Plan an integrated unit of work for a specific
age group over 10 weeks
– Authentic arts skills and knowledge
– Integration with a CCP
• A detailed lesson from the unit
• Formative: resubmission
performance
• Groups of 10-12
• 10 minute performance at the zoo for a
particular age group (primary school children)
• Include all arts forms
• ‘big idea’ from the zoo and integrating 1 or
more CCPs
• Followed by a 50 min workshop (in pairs)
teaching art skills or knowledge from one of
the 5 artforms
Movies removed
Movie removed
Integration
• Educators have understood the importance of
making meaningful links between subject areas
and with a learner’s real life
• It is understood that simply taking in facts or data
is not as effective for learners as applying
knowledge in a meaningful way
• Done well an integrated curriculum dissolves
boundaries between subjects and enables
students to make connections between disciplines
Integration and the arts
• Effective integration ensures that meaningful
learning occurs in all of the integrated subject
areas connectedness to real world experiences
can engage students more deeply in their
learning (Beane 1997).
• The arts provide opportunities to learn through
multiple forms of literacies such as aural,
kinesthetic, and visual and this opens up diverse
ways of meaningful learning across subject areas
Learning by doing
• Participants rather than spectators
• Modeling integrated curriculum by doing
• Learn about the arts and CCPs as they prepare
their performance
Learning Design
• The Department for Education and Child
Development’s (DECD) in South Australia
introduced Learning Design as an approach to
the Australian Curriculum.
• Goal is student understanding and the ability
to transfer their learning and make
connections between discrete knowledge and
skills to make deep meaning
The Expressive Arts
• aims to model this approach by introducing
the ‘big idea’ of The Zoo and Cross Curricular
Priorities.
• Pre-service teachers demonstrate their
understanding of the knowledge and skills
that can be learnt in and through all 5 arts
subjects and transfer that knowledge through
a performance that conveys a strong message
about the big ideas
Performance as learning
• student learning should be a process of
forming dispositions, intellectual and
emotional and that students as participants
are inclined to act to assure best possible
outcomes (rather than just good enough).
(Dewey 1916/1980)
• “only one subject matter for education and
that is life” (Whitehead 1929)
students
Governing bodies
teachers
parents
Pre service teachers
institutions
education
employers
‘habitus’
It leads to patterns that are transferrable
from one context to another
Pre-service teachers in the role of artist
Consciously considering audience
‘experiential learning’ Boud (1993)
• Experience Based Learning
EBL
– Personal engagement with an
idea becomes a focus
– Makes what is studied a
reality
– Involves the whole personfeelings, senses and cognition
– Evokes awareness and
perception and values
Reflective practice
• Boud (1994) suggest three stages of reflective
practice that are essential to EBL the
preparation (before) reflection during the
process and reflection after the experience.
• potential of critical reflection to enhance
organizational knowledge
• Deep structural shift in basic premises of
thoughts, feelings and actions
The performances
workshops
• After the performance
• Pre-service teachers in
pairs
• Small groups in different
areas of the zoo
All 5 arts subjects-following on from
the theme in the performance
Data collection
• Permission was sought to access pre-service
teachers on-line responses to questions and
reflections pre and post topic.
• Feedback from arts teachers, artists and visiting
teachers as well as zoo staff
findings
•
•
•
•
Integration
Cross Curriculum priorities
The zoo
The arts
Misconceptions-not known
Understanding-learning by doing
Performance and workshops
•
•
•
•
•
Positive responses
Surprise
Pushing limits
Gaining confidence
Understanding more about what they need to
know (workshops)
Response to topic overall
•
•
•
•
Positive
Hands-on
Value the arts
Better understandingintegration, EBL, CCP
• Changed attitudes
• Role as teacher
•
As much as I loved the topic I feel with placement coming up Maths and
English (instead of the arts) would have been more useful
•
No performances-it should focus on lesson planning
•
Hands on stuff won’t help us be better teachers being taught will
•
(the performance) not sure how worthwhile it was
•
no real cohesiveness-only need one workshop for general ‘artyness’ (this
person admitted to not attending any lectures)
•
it was fun but too liberal
The future
• More students
• The Zoo and
– The Art Gallery of SA
– The Museum
– Botanic gardens
• More arts of Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander
content
• More arts of Asia content