Search

This article explores how artist-researchers navigate the "uncertain" space between theory and practice in a new Doctor of Creative Arts (DCA) program in an Australian regional university. The trickster is deployed as a metaphorical device to provide insights into how the first DCA's candidates, their supervisors, and the university's leadership make sense of their own experiences "within" and "about" the practice-led research program under a neoliberal climate. Tricksters' cross boundaries between critical and imaginary spaces; yet they also "create" boundaries, by extending collective knowledge into the unknown. This process is entirely consistent with the critical and creative work required by doctoral candidates to produce innovative research. Narrative inquiry is applied in accordance with the artist-trickster's subjective agency within practice-led doctoral study. The article charts the DCA's emerging identity as a doctoral qualification equal to the traditional PhD but different from it, during its implementation in 2016 to the first successful completion in 2019. The findings reveal the benefits of the program's innovative design, grounded in the creation of its distinctive community of practice that supports practice-led research, local and international connections, and regional resilience.

In the years either side of Federation in 1901, Australia's Irish Catholics balanced two often contradictory impulses: their determination to retain their cultural and religious links with Ireland in the face of an often unsympathetic Protestant majority, and the desire to become 'good' Australians in order to make 'a go' of their lives in the new land. This paper explores how this process played out at St Joseph's Nudgee College, a Christian Brothers' day and boarding school in Brisbane, the capital of the Australian state of Queensland, and how sport played a central role in satisfying both imperatives. This discussion will be framed by the intersection of the social/political/economic context of Queensland during the period 1891-1914. It will focus on the educational context in which the Irish Christian Brothers operated as they struggled to make the College a bastion of Irish Catholicism and a vehicle for the socio-economic advancement of their community.

Young children often look to their teachers for affection and acceptance, particularly if they are injured or upset. Yet, many male primary teachers experience substantial fear and uncertainty about making physical contact with their students. This study used 53 open ended survey responses and semi-structured interviews with five experienced male primary teachers in Tasmania, Australia to investigate the coping strategies and supports these men use to deal with this challenge. Findings revealed a variety of coping strategies and supports, and that the fear and uncertainty surrounding physical contact and false accusations needs to be reduced if more male primary teachers are to feel confident interacting with their students in the same ways their female colleagues do.

This paper explores the role of the Senior Project Officer: The Arts for the Australian Curriculum Assessment Reporting Authority (ACARA) in facilitating the writing of the foundation "Shape of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts" (2011) paper for the national curriculum, with a particular focus on the discipline area of music. The collaboration between the five arts specialists was underpinned by an acknowledgement that each Australian student was entitled to a high-quality arts education involving each of the five arts forms of Dance, Drama, Media Arts, Music and Visual Arts. As it was for the other arts forms, the music curriculum needed to cater simultaneously for music specialists, primary generalist teachers and secondary teachers across a variety of school contexts. This balancing act was further problematised by that fact that each of the States and Territories adhered to particular approaches to music education that were often incompatible. The researchers have used a Collaborative Autoethnography approach (CAE) to explore the Senior Project Officer's experiences with the arts, particularly music at school, and her later involvement in the arts through her professional career with a focus on the role of the Senior Project Officer: The Arts. Two major themes emerged from the CAE: the impact of schooling experiences and diversity in pedagogical approaches. These themes highlighted the social justice principles of equity and accessibility which underpin the "Australian Curriculum: The Arts."

This paper examines the personal and professional experiences of the five arts leaders who co-wrote the foundation document for Australia's first national curriculum in the Arts. Their personal and professional backgrounds, which were explored during in depth interviews, drove the complex collaborative process that informed the first iteration of the "Australian Curriculum: The Arts." Though each couched their responses in the context of their background and arts discipline, they shared an awareness of the important role of the Arts in providing the analytical tools for children and young people to identify and subsequently challenge social injustice. The findings, which are presented as a group narrative using a Narrative Inquiry approach, reveal how the five arts leaders' individual lived experience, disciplinary experience and expertise, and commitment to collaborative leadership informed their approach. It was one driven by their shared belief that all Australian students, regardless of their background, are entitled to a quality arts education.

This paper will explore the key findings identified in the five arts discipline-specific papers which comprise this special theme issue. Each of the participant researchers have situated Dance, Drama, Media Arts, Music and Visual Arts within the context of the "Australian Curriculum: The Arts" and what they characterise as its social justice imperatives. A narrative phenomenological approach has been adopted to enable the participant researchers to socially co-construct an analysis of their experiences working with the "Australian Curriculum: The Arts" including challenges, implications and the future for their respective discipline areas and the Arts overall. The three key themes from these collective voices revealed a quality arts education is an entitlement for every child and young person; the Arts provide important opportunities for children and young people from diverse backgrounds and cultures to demonstrate their learning, express themselves and participate; and arts educators and the Arts industry need to work together to strengthen community understanding about the value of the Arts in education. This process provided important insights into how exposure and engagement with the Arts shape the ways in which children and young people make meaning in their lives, enhance their overall wellbeing, increase their sense of social responsibility and contribute to a socially-just society.

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 up to consider the intransient nature of the resistance to arts education in primary/elementary schools, they conducted a collaborative autoethnography (CAE) to see if this offered new insights. The iterative process of sharing and interrogating personal stories to distil collective meanings (themes) highlighted four features of education programs that provide sustained support for children's wellbeing: centering in a discordant world; effective leadership; experiential processes, engagement, and trust; and harnessing the transformative potential of the arts. The CAE also pointed the team towards conducting future inquiries about the currently under-researched role of the school principal in instigating cultural change that sustains meaningful arts education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the catastrophic 2019 and 2020 bushfire season and the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020, Queensland's Courier Mail regularly celebrated firefighters and health workers as national archetypes. By positioning them as the 'new Anzacs', the Courier Mail was able to communicate an understanding of the crises using a rhetoric that was familiar, unthreatening and reassuring. The firefighters, both professional and volunteer, were easily subsumed into the mythology's celebration of national identity. As Queensland's health workers were predominantly female, urban-based and educated, the article used a more modern iteration of the Anzac mythology better suited to this different context. The emergence of a 'kinder, gentler Anzac' in the 1970s and its focus on trauma, suffering and empathy proved equally useful as a rhetorical tool. Both approaches were underpinned by a move away from a narrow military context to the Anzac mythology's standing as a civic religion that celebrates more universal values such as courage, endurance, sacrifice and comradeship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For over half a century, the 'imagining' of the Great War in the UK has been framed by the existence of two Western Fronts, one literary and the other historical. The authors and illustrators of children's picture books, whose work has traditionally reflected a society's values and pre-occupations, have remained remarkably faithful to the literary construct of the war as a futile and meaningless conflict that destroyed a generation. This article analyses four children's picture books dealing with the Christmas Truce of 1914, which has become an historical touchstone for adherents of the literary imagining. Using methods grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), visual grammar and art theory, the authors explore how text and image combine to create moving and insightful morality tales that use the particularities of an historical event to communicate a vision of humanity rather than a work of historical scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]