Arts Education, Being alive in the world

ARTS AND SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL PROSPERITY How might learning in the arts support young New Zealanders to contribute to New Zealand’s future social, economic and cultural prosperity? INTRODUCTION KEY FINDINGS This was the question Manatū Taonga/the Ministry for Culture and Heritage asked the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) to explore. NZCER did a literature review of national and international research in arts education, and synthesised key ideas from the literature review with relevant high-level policy statements. The review and synthesis looked at New Zealand’s goals for the educational, social, economic and cultural futures of our young people and our nation. •฀฀Arts฀learning฀can฀contribute฀ to high-level goals: preparing New Zealanders to help create a฀prosperous฀and฀sustainable฀ knowledge economy; fostering creativity and innovation; and preparing฀New฀Zealanders฀to฀be฀ national฀and฀global฀citizens.฀ http://www.mch.govt.nz/researchpublications/policy-perspectives-papers /contributions-learning-arts-educational-social •฀฀Most฀research฀focuses฀on฀the฀ short-term,฀individual฀beneits฀of฀ arts learning and participation. Increasingly, researchers are interested฀in฀how฀these฀beneits฀ accumulate and spill over into the public฀sphere. •฀฀Studies indicate positive effects from arts learning and participation. Some studies suggest particular outcomes for speciic฀kinds฀of฀arts฀learning฀and฀ participation (e.g., music learning and spatial thinking), while a few large studies suggest that students in “arts-rich” learning environments฀do฀better฀overall฀ than students whose schooling environments are “arts-poor”. •฀฀Each arts discipline has its own history, culture and practices. For school students, arts learning occurs in several ways: in the curriculum as a stand-alone subject฀or฀integrated฀across฀ curriculum areas; as a cocurricular or leisure activity; and as฀an฀individual฀or฀collaborative฀ pursuit. Research on the impacts of the arts for communities is growing, but given the long–term processes involved in building a sense of community or effecting community change, the scarcity of longterm studies is a problem. WHY IS IT A HOT TOPIC? Several large international research syntheses have investigated the impacts and outcomes of arts learning฀and฀participation฀for฀both฀ young people and adults. Many authors suggest political imperatives are driving demand for arts education research to contribute฀to฀debates฀about฀how฀ student academic achievement can be฀lifted.฀ Arts฀educators฀often฀express฀ concerns that the arts may be฀marginalised฀when฀certain฀ educational goals, such as raising achievement in literacy or numeracy, or reforming standards, are prioritised ahead of other goals. As฀a฀result,฀there฀is฀a฀trend฀towards looking at how arts learning affects non-arts outcomes. However some authors argue this “instrumentalist” approach treats arts learning as a means to an end and downplays the intrinsic฀beneits฀of฀arts฀learning. Human societies have long valued and recognised arts learning as contributing฀a฀range฀of฀cognitive฀ and฀affective฀beneits.฀฀Some฀ authors฀argue฀for฀a฀broad฀view฀ that฀looks฀at฀both฀intrinsic฀and฀ instrumental฀beneits.฀฀ Many฀of฀the฀intrinsic฀beneits฀ of learning in the arts (such as expanded capacity for empathy, cognitive growth, creation of social bonds฀and฀expression฀of฀communal฀ meaning) have spill-over effects, because฀the฀development฀of฀these฀ individual capacities has wider beneits฀for฀society,฀or฀what฀the฀ author of the diagram on the left calls฀public฀beneits฀(see฀Figure฀1).฀ WHAT DO WE WANT FOR YOUNG NEW ZEALANDERS? The research drew on the vision for young people expressed in The New Zealand Curriculum, and on high-level policy statements from some government departments (economic, health, social development, culture and heritage, etc.). These documents highlight the฀qualities฀and฀attributes฀we฀need฀ to achieve our aspirations for New Zealand’s social, cultural, economic and environmental future. Recurring themes include: •฀฀preparing฀New฀Zealanders฀ to create a prosperous and sustainable฀knowledge฀economy฀ •฀฀fostering฀creativity฀and฀innovation฀ •฀฀developing฀strong฀identities฀and฀ cultural value •฀฀supporting฀wellbeing฀of฀ individuals and communities •฀฀ensuring฀equity฀of฀positive฀ outcomes for all New Zealanders •฀฀preparing฀New฀Zealanders฀to฀be฀ national฀and฀global฀citizens฀who฀ can play a role on the world stage. FIGURE 1: Framework for understanding the benefits of the arts (reproduced from McCarthy et al., 2004, p. xiii) New Zealand studies in Ngā Toi suggest research approaches should align with Māori knowledge-building frameworks and current thinking about Māori education and health promotion. These themes are consistent with฀international฀thinking฀about฀ the purpose of education in the 21st฀century.฀There฀is฀a฀growing฀ consensus฀that฀21st฀century฀ education needs to prepare young฀people฀to฀conidently฀ navigate their way through a world that is increasingly complex, interconnected and dynamic, with a range of new challenges. It฀has฀been฀widely฀argued฀that฀ school systems of the past were not designed to educate for such a world, and that we need to rethink not only what people need to know,฀but฀also฀what฀kind฀of฀people฀ they need to be in order to have meaningful, productive, healthy and fulilling฀lives. WHAT CONTRIBUTION CAN LEARNING IN THE ARTS MAKE TO THIS VISION? The฀four฀pink฀boxes฀to฀the฀right฀and overleaf, drawn from the literature review, suggest conditions and mechanisms฀by฀which฀arts฀learning฀ and participation are likely to contribute฀to฀six฀aspirational฀themes฀ for NZ and New Zealanders. THEME 1: CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION •฀Arts฀learning฀can฀be฀linked฀with฀the฀development฀of฀creative฀capabilities.฀ Particular approaches to arts teaching support students to engage in creatively producing, appraising and responding to the arts. •฀The฀arts฀can฀be฀partnered฀with฀other฀curriculum฀areas,฀and฀with฀ intentional฀teaching฀approaches,฀creativity฀and฀creative฀thinking฀can฀be฀ developed in other curriculum contexts. THEME 2: STRONG IDENTITIES AND CULTURAL VALUES •฀“Identity”฀and฀“culture”฀are฀frequently฀linked฀with฀the฀arts,฀but฀(like฀ creativity฀and฀innovation)฀can฀be฀deined฀in฀different฀ways. •฀Students’฀engagement,฀enjoyment฀and฀accomplishments฀in฀the฀arts฀can฀ support the development of positive views of themselves. •฀Whose฀culture(s)฀are฀or฀are฀not฀explored฀or฀valued฀through฀the฀arts?฀ Some New Zealand researchers suggest arts education should go further in adopting a multicultural approach, which may help to address general฀concerns฀about฀educational฀experience฀and฀outcomes฀for฀Māori and฀Pasiika฀students. •฀The฀arts฀provide฀clear฀opportunities฀for฀exploration฀of฀identities,฀but฀ research suggests this is more likely to occur when this is an explicit intention for arts teaching. One US study of arts–based youth organisations noted that, in these environments, students had more opportunities to ask (and respond to) ‘what if?’ questions, and to express ideas and engage with other people’s ideas, than in other settings. THEMES 3 AND 4: WELLBEING OF INDIVIDUALS AND COMMUNITIES, AND EQUITY OF POSITIVE OUTCOMES FOR ALL NEW ZEALANDERS •฀New฀Zealanders’฀wellbeing฀is฀a฀priority฀for฀central฀and฀local฀government.฀ Wellbeing฀is฀deined฀in฀terms฀of฀physical,฀social/emotional,฀cultural,฀ economic and environmental dimensions. •฀There is evidence for positive social, emotional, cultural and health outcomes for individuals engaged with the arts. •฀There฀is฀also฀an฀emerging฀body฀of฀research฀that฀looks฀at฀the฀impacts฀ of the arts at the community/collective level. This research suggests the฀arts฀(particularly฀community฀arts)฀can฀contribute฀to฀building฀and฀ strengthening฀social฀bonds,฀building฀cultural฀and฀social฀capital,฀and฀ various฀low-on฀beneits฀to฀community฀members.฀ THEMES 5 AND 6: A PROSPEROUS AND SUSTAINABLE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY, AND NEW ZEALANDERS AS INTERNATIONAL CITIZENS AND CONTRIBUTORS ON A WORLD STAGE •฀Economic, social, cultural and environmental prosperity is of paramount importance for governments all over the world. •฀Contemporary฀thinking฀about฀life฀in฀the฀21st฀century฀emphasises฀the฀ need฀for฀citizens฀to฀engage฀collaboratively฀with฀complex฀challenges,฀ make฀wise฀decisions฀and฀be฀proactive฀in฀shaping฀local,฀national฀and฀ international situations. •฀Research linking “creative capital” with social and economic outcomes suggests฀that฀the฀choices฀people฀make฀about฀work,฀leisure฀and฀where฀ to฀live฀may฀be฀linked฀with฀actual฀and฀perceived฀opportunities฀to฀engage฀ creatively฀with฀the฀people฀and฀ideas฀in฀different฀jobs,฀communities฀and฀ cities. JULY 2011 CONCLUSION Existing research can only tell us so much฀about฀the฀long-term฀impacts฀ and outcomes of arts learning and participation. Further research is necessary to provide meaningful answers to the questions this project฀aimed฀to฀address.฀ Further research could focus on: •฀฀the development of a coherent strategy within the arts education community. This would mean individual studies do not stand alone,฀but฀contribute฀to฀a฀wider฀ platform of understanding in key areas. •฀฀which kinds of arts learning experiences lead to positive outcomes (including cognitive, social, emotional and health) for a wide range of New Zealand learners. •฀฀the impact of arts learning on a wider scale, focusing on larger groups rather than small studies of students, classes or schools. •฀฀the impact of the many artsrelated฀initiatives฀supported฀by฀ outside agencies, which have a wide uptake across schools, such as Stage Challenge and Play It Strange. 

Arts Education: Being Awake in the World Peter O’Connor and Viv Aitken From Facing the big questions in teaching: Purpose, power and learning Melbourne, Cengage Learning, 2014 Introduction Before children begin school, the Arts are a central means for exploring and coming to know the world. Young children spontaneously dance, build imagined worlds, take delight in colour, shape and texture, and play with sound and rhythm. Young children’s play in the Arts is always improvisatory and intuitive, always integrative, and always intrinsically motivated (Craft, 2000). Such play is also the precursor to abstract thought as the young child learns to create and manipulate symbolic forms of expression, and to read meaning into the work of others (Smith, 1998). This is not something children have to be taught to do but is rather something which children feel driven to do. The Arts permit children to make sense of their world whilst, paradoxically, providing an escape from it. The centrality of the Arts in early childhood learning is often severely disrupted by schooling’s focus on the testing of literacy and numeracy. All too often the joy of discovery and the chaos of embodied playfulness is replaced with intention, order, and linear progression (Robinson, 2012). The big questions addressed by this chapter then are:   Why might the Arts be important?  What might good Arts teaching look like? and  What might the Arts teach? What might the role and place of the Arts in New Zealand schools tell us about our society? Why might the Arts be important? There is certainly plenty of evidence that the Arts ‘add value’ to our lives, in multiple ways. In bald economic terms, the Arts are an important income earner in New Zealand. In a 2009 study of the economic value of the Arts in the city of Wellington, the direct value added to the Wellington city economy was estimated at between $284 million and $292 million. With indirect “upstream and down-stream flow-on effects”, the total estimated value rises to between $495 and 583 million (Coulon, McGough, & Harding, 2011, p. 2). However, we suggest the real importance of the Arts lies beyond this kind of market language. What we cherish about the Arts, what we love so unashamedly about poets and artists, is their ability to capture in words, in image, or in sound, those things we feel and know, yet find so difficult to express. The Arts are the space where we wonder about the most difficult questions in life, and where we awaken consciousness about things of importance. The Arts are important because they allow us to explore the big questions of what it means to be human: questions of love, of loss, of pain, and of exaltation. Wherever the Arts are experienced, including in schools, there is the potential to move beyond the purely functional and instrumental aspects of life, to move beyond those things that are merely counted, to engage with things that matter. Not only do the Arts allow us to explore content that matters, they enable us to explore it in ways that matter. It is perhaps stating the obvious, but each of the Arts offers an opportunity to focus on a particular sensory experience. Music honours the tactile and kinaesthetic, oral and aural modes; Visual Arts prioritises the visual; Dance foregrounds bodily movement; and Drama (which incorporates all of the above) is also often the most verbal of the Arts. With these differences in sensory modality, it could be said that each of the Arts offers a particular kind of experience, offering unique cognitive and emotional understandings to be reached, through the different human senses. These sensory experiences will be appreciated in different ways, depending on whether one joins in as participant or audience to the Artwork. What might the Arts teach? Children learn in, and through, the Arts in a number of ways. There are many studies showing that a child who enjoys an Arts-rich education will learn better in other areas of school (Cornett, 2011). A recent study of Arts-based integration showed improvements in student’s engagement and understanding within all areas of the curriculum, particularly social sciences and writing (Fraser, Aitken, Price, & Whyte, 2012). This is not to say, of course, that the only value of the Arts is in service of learning within other areas. There is much within Arts learning that is valuable in its own right. Indeed, too often, justifications for the Arts in schools are framed in utilitarian terms or are co-opted into the discourse of skills acquisition, knowledge accretion, and competencies for the twenty first century workplace. Even considering the Arts in their own right is a difficult challenge for educators and writers of curriculum documents when trying to capture the true potential of the Arts within educational contexts. In the New Zealand Curriculum document (Ministry of Education, 2007), the Arts is listed as one of eight ‘essential learning areas’, within which the four distinct disciplines are identified: Dance, Drama, Music-Sound Arts, and Visual Art. Whilst the presence of the Arts is to be celebrated, particularly the specific inclusion of Dance and Drama (which joined the curriculum in 2000), the way learning in the Arts is characterised within our curriculum is seen by some as problematic (O’Connor, 2009). The Arts might be listed as ‘essential’, but any teacher in New Zealand will tell you that in reality, some learning areas are more ‘essential’ than others. Although mandated within the New Zealand curriculum, too often the Arts languish as frills, as encumbrances to the ordered school business of testing national standards (Hong, 2001). A number of theorists have attempted to identify the truly valuable learning that Arts education can offer, the essence of its transformational potential. For her part, Maxine Greene (1977) suggests: Regardless of the different forms each discipline takes, Arts education involves an emphasis on selecting, shaping, and interpreting, the ordering of raw materials according to distinctive norms … the historian is in quest of truth, in some degree verifiable; while the artist strives for coherence, clarity, enlargement, intensity. (p. 201) In similar vein, Elliot Eisner (2002) proposes a list of “ten lessons the Arts teach”, within which he celebrates and advocates for the less tangible, more humanistic qualities of Arts learning. 1. The Arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. 2. The Arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution. 3. The Arts celebrate multiple perspectives. 4. The Arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. 5. The Arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. 6. The Arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. 7. The Arts teach students to think through and within a material. 8. The Arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. 9. The Arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source. 10. The Arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important. (pp. 72-92) Both Greene (1977) and Eisner (1994, 2002) present a view of Arts education as a place where children learn, not only to express themselves, but also how to think and act on the world in particular kinds of ways. This way of thinking about the Arts offers an important challenge to teachers to move beyond simple skill teaching, within the Arts. The following example, drawn from O’Connor (2013), illustrates the ways in which the Arts can be used to help children make sense of big events. Following the February 22nd earthquakes in Canterbury, the Arts were used to help make sense of the new normal of life in Christchurch. Using the story of a little girl who has had her dream cloth torn, Year 2 and 3 children worked as dream cloth makers, loaning the little girl their own dreams, which they draw on to large sheets of calico. Then, making the thread that is strong enough to fix the torn cloth, the children add the ingredients for the thread into an imaginary cloud bowl. They add three bales of belief, hugs from their parents, and finally a teaspoon of light from the darkest tunnel. The children and the teacher watch the light go through everything. Later, the children embody the dreams on the cloth and help bring them to life through movement. Aesthetics and beauty The Arts and beauty are inextricably linked. Within Arts education, “when the term aesthetics is found in the Arts curriculum it more often than not is used as a synonym for artistic or for beauty” (Smith, 1998, cited in Grierson & Gibbs, 2008, p. 18). Smith (1998) suggests that those who argue for aesthetics education are often advocating for an education in taste. However, we advocate for the place of beauty in Arts education in a somewhat different way. Schools are highly functional, ordered, and institutionalised spaces. The Arts in all their forms disrupt this order, with colour, pattern, noise, and vibrancy. And the beauty created by children in schools, whether through dance or movement or images displayed on the walls, reminds children of the possibility for beauty in their lives and worlds. For children, as for adults, the pursuit of beauty through Arts making and appreciation has an important purpose. It reminds us that life is not purely functional and utilitarian, but that finding pleasure in the making and appreciating of beauty is an important and distinguishing feature of all humanity. In this sense, the Arts in education act as an antidote to the widely held image of schools being places where children are simply prepared for adult work. Building democracy: Empathetic and critical citizenship Many consider a key value of Arts education lies in the sustaining and building of democratic citizenship. For John Dewey (1934), who wrote extensively on the cultivation of the imagination through music and drama, education in the Arts is not about training children simply in aesthetic appreciation or understanding, but requires an active, Arts making approach. Dewey saw that this would lead to citizens who hold a belief in the potential of the imagination. Arts education then is not about training children to become artists; rather it is about realising the artists who reside within us all. Dewey’s vision of the Arts was democratic too. He believed all humans are capable of producing art, and therefore, Arts education was not about the development of artistic skills but about providing rich experiences in the Arts so that children could connect to more of the world that exists beyond the merely physical. Paolo Freire shared Dewey’s conviction that education provides an opportunity to remake one’s world, and Arts education has a key place within that. For Freire, agency was to be achieved through a process of conscientisation, a process of critically reading the world and then transforming or re-writing the world “by means of conscious practical work” (Freire & Macedo, 1987, p. 35). Following in Freire’s model, Peter McLaren (2000) argues that increasingly schools are reduced to preparing students as part of the capitalist machine that dehumanises and disempowers young people across the world. Like Freire, McLaren offers critical pedagogy as an antidote to an education system that “replicates social inequity and creates an unthinking consumer class” (2000, p. 123). For those who view the Arts as a critical pedagogy, the desire is to replace the rehearsal room with an active engaged curriculum enabling children to question, challenge, and remake their reality. Though we have explored them under separated headings in this chapter, we suggest that the critical, democratic aspects of Arts Education are inherently and inevitably bound up with the aesthetic. Maxine Greene (1977) suggests a truly democratic society requires people who are fully conscious, or fully awake in the world, and she argues it is Arts making which brings the individual into awaken-ness; “aesthetic experiences provide a ground for the questioning that launches sense making and the understanding of what it is to exist in a world” (p. 120). Wide-awake citizens are critically informed and they see their roles as actors on, and with, the world rather than as spectators. Similarly, Nussbaum (2010) argues the moral imperatives sitting beneath a democratic society are based on the creation of empathetic citizens. She attests this role for education – perhaps one of its most and important roles – has been systematically ignored, and severely repressed, by standard models of education. “The Arts promote both inner self-cultivation and responsiveness to others. The two typically develop in tandem, since one can hardly cherish in another what one has not explored in oneself” (p. 104). Power sharing For many, it is the possibilities for power sharing and reciprocal teaching and learning (Ako) that is one of the greatest values of Arts education. Teachers in the Arts may discover possibilities for shifting the traditional paradigms of teacher-learner/expertapprentice, and can become engaged instead as co-participants and reciprocal learners, alongside the students. Cecily O’Neill (1995) argues the finest Arts educators move beyond co-construction, to co-artistry. By this she means both teacher and student are engaged in genuine exploration and discovery together. The reciprocity embedded within the work, or ako (which is a Māori word that translates as simultaneously to learn and to teach), can be realised in Arts pedagogy, where teachers and students move beyond the constraints of the roles of teacher and student, and work as co-artists. This is when, according to Bishop and Glynn (1999, p. 8), a “relationship can emerge in which both stories are heard or where a new story is created by all the participants”. Though reciprocal power sharing and agentic positioning can occur in any Arts learning situation, we suggest it becomes particularly visible within forms of drama in education, where teachers can consciously experiment with shifts in power and positioning. Teachers using drama in the classroom will often take on low status roles themselves and encourage students to explore roles as experts and high status figures. As Brian Edmiston (2003) puts it, One of the core reasons why as a teacher I use drama is because when we create an imagined world, we can imagine that we frame events differently so that our power and authority relationships are changed. A long-term aim of mine as a teacher is as much as possible to share power and authority with students. I want students to have more opportunities to use words and deeds to act appropriately but in ways that are often not sanctioned in classrooms. (p. 225) For drama teachers like Edmiston (2003), the aim is not only to create spaces for power sharing during the drama, but to set up patterns of power sharing that might be carried over into the socially real classroom culture. Edmiston goes on to say, Additionally I hope that students’ sense of their personal and shared authority will become more secure and more extended while at the same time more aware of others’ authority. I want a culture to develop that is more egalitarian than most students expect walking into the room. (p. 225) Once again, the discussion of what is really important in the Arts brings us back to a meditation on its potential as critical pedagogy. The sharing of power is a political act, which, we would argue, fosters and rehearses the empowered stances required for engaged, democratic citizenship in the real world. Setting up opportunities for experimentation and mistake making Another key benefit of Arts education is the way creative exploration can allow children to experiment and make mistakes, without serious consequences. O’Toole (2006) argues that children in the Arts learn “through play … experimenting with constructing order and meaning in consequence-free settings” (p. 2). All too often in school environments, particularly those where the emphasis is on adult-defined criteria for success and the teaching of predetermined outcomes, mistake-making is portrayed as a negative thing, akin to failure. In contrast, a strong Arts education programme can offer a place to celebrate false starts, changes of direction, surprise outcomes, and ambiguity. Moments of messiness, incoherence, and even chaos are not only acceptable in the Arts, they are a common, or even necessary, part of creative endeavour (Fraser, Price, & Henderson, 2008, p. 21). Eisner (2002) reminds us that the Arts ‘traffic in subtleties’. Where ambiguity and non-linear notions of learning are celebrated, this encourages the child to re-envisage the world as a place that can be actively worked on and engaged with in a respectful way, rather than a place to passively receive knowledge. It encourages the learner to see the learning process as one in which surprises and unpredictable outcomes are both possible and desirable. The mistake-making and experimentation that takes place within Arts education is both risky and safe. To succeed in the Arts, the learner must push physical limits and explore new movement possibilities (in dance), take risks with sounds and images (in music and visual Arts), or explore personas and perspectives beyond their previous experience of real life (in drama). All forms of art offer the challenge of how to explore and convey ideas, cultural stories, or human experiences, in new ways. However, the nature of this risk taking is complex. There is no doubt Arts education carries some tangible risks. For example, the student dancer must warm up and must take care with carrying a partner’s weight; the learner in the visual Arts studio must be aware of sharp blades in print-making; the teacher in role must be cautious not to alarm or trick children. Such ‘real world’ perils are present, and should always be taken account of by the teacher. However, in other very important ways, Arts making allows risk taking to be completely safe. Within the students’ own creative journey in the Arts, there is often a feeling of liberation from rules and consequences. The creative experience is one of risk taking within safe bounds, and students will often talk about being pushed to step outside their comfort zone when using the Arts. Such risk taking has lasting implications on a learner’s sense of self-efficacy, confidence and identity, particularly where they are encouraged to reflect on the consequences of their choices and actions (Cornett, 2011). Embodied experiential learning and affective-to-cognitive understanding In the Arts, children move, talk, and manipulate media. They shape, reshape and manipulate form and space using their bodies. They learn in, through and about their bodies through their senses. Learning in the Arts almost inevitably involves embodied and experiential learning. This form of learning is distinct from the learning dominating New Zealand schools, a form of learning where the body is seen as simply a clumsy container for the brain. Of course even in the Arts, learning experiences can be disembodied; for example, where the teacher is overly focused on end results and the cognitive or abstract part of the learning process. To fully learn in the Arts takes the body, including the activity, movement and emotions associated with it, out of the mind (Webb, Metha, & Jordan, 2007). However, in the Arts learning grows out of, and is shaped by, sensory perception; the manipulation of the body and objects to create aesthetic statements. The mind is in the body. In the talk Educating the Heart and Mind, Robinson (2012) argues that education has for too long separated the descriptive (knowledge – the outer world) from the personal (the felt – the inner world). He states, “Feelings are forms of perception – part of the mind. Education’s job is to connect our selves with ourselves. The other great task is to connect us with each other”. Robinson advocates for Arts education as being the prime way to bridge the inner and the outer worlds of the mind, to provide not simply knowledge about the world, but rather, intensely felt and necessarily personal ‘explanations’ of it. What does good Arts teaching look like? In order to begin considering what kind of teaching supports learning in the Arts, it is perhaps useful to gauge what teachers are currently doing. A recent study conducted within a small number of primary generalist classrooms in New Zealand (Art of the Matter, 2008, see Fraser et al., 2008), found the majority of teachers within the study were focusing on the teaching of practical skills, and struggled to give the time and scaffolding required to support creative process and idea development within the Arts. The danger is that for teachers inexperienced in Arts education, constrained by the curriculum, and further restricted by standards-based assessment at senior secondary school, teaching in the Arts may be approached as if it were just like teaching and learning in other curriculum areas. So what might good Arts teaching look like? On one level, it can be argued effective pedagogy in the Arts classroom will have the same features as effective pedagogy everywhere else. Many would agree that John O’Toole’s (2006) description of ‘productive pedagogy’ would apply to any learning context, not only an Arts classroom: The classroom should involve student direction, where students influence the specific activities or tasks they will do in a lesson, or how they will undertake them. There should be social support, an atmosphere of mutual respect and support between teacher and students, and among students, to make them feel free to take risks and try hard challenges, and that all students can succeed. There must be academic engagement where they are attentive and on task, showing enthusiasm for their work by raising questions, contributing to group activities and helping peers. There should be evidence of self-regulation – where the direction of student behaviour is implicit and self-regulatory – and there should be explicit quality performance criteria: frequent, detailed and specific statements about what the students are to do and to achieve. (p. 4) Whilst this is a description of good teaching in any context, one could argue that in an Arts context, it is even more necessary for the teacher to strive for these ideals as the creative process itself depends on these factors being present. Without student ownership of the ideas, safety, high levels of engagement, a clear sense of a search for quality, and without a common striving for excellence, the quality of Arts making will be poor. So, we would claim, true learning in the Arts depends on good quality teaching. Flexible purposing Another suggestion about effective pedagogy in the Arts comes from John Dewey (1934) who recognised that the Arts do not move in a linear fashion to fixed ends, but instead emerge in a way that is often surprising and catches one off guard. In response to this, Dewey advocated what he described as ‘flexible purposing’ in which the teacher and the learner in Arts education seek to capitalise on the emergent features appearing within the creative process, and within their teacher-learner relationship. Flexible purposing is about refusing to be rigidly attached to predefined aims when the possibilities of better ones emerge. The adopting of ‘flexible purposing’ in the Arts classrooms allows the teacher to work in the ‘pursuit of surprise’ rather than the pursuit of predetermined learning intentions, in order to create experiences that are highly structured yet also leave openings for the freedom of genuine discovery. To successfully teach in this way, teachers need to give considerable time to the Arts in their classrooms to engender a sense that learning is open-ended and involves risktaking and exploration, in a culture of trust and safety. A recent two-year study of Arts-based integration in New Zealand (Connecting Curriculum Connecting Learning, see Fraser et al., 2012) concluded that an important feature of Arts teaching, in any discipline, was for teachers to set up opportunities for students to ‘grapple’ at the edge of their understanding. The study concluded that good Arts teaching involves challenges and problem solving, and argued that teachers need to understand how to walk a line where they provoke, problematise, and deepen the learning, without making students feel success is too difficult, or letting them become overwhelmed by the challenges. What the Arts contribute to good teaching At the same time as asking what good teaching in the Arts looks like, we can ask what the Arts can contribute to good teaching. As O’Toole (2006) argues, for a teacher to be effective (or in his word, productive) in any curriculum learning area, he or she needs to embrace playfulness and artfulness. Arguably, any innovative pedagogical approach will include use of visual material, sound, movement or role taking and these are, of course, the province of the Arts. The Arts are naturally experiential and sensory – the very aspects that are needed to enhance teaching and learning experiences. It is also important to note that the Arts are naturally integrative. By definition, any Arts exploration must be an expression of, or an exploration of, ‘something that matters’ from human experience of the world. Perhaps a cultural story, an exploration of relationship, a moment from history, or a response to some kind of theme. As such, the Art making always alludes to some other curriculum learning area, whether we choose to call that social science, health, mathematics, or whatever. Drama in particular is a naturally integrative tool. Whereas in visual art or dance, it may be possible to simply explore colour for its own sake, or to take a movement phrase and explore it for its internal meanings or structures, drama always engages with human stories and experience. Drama depends on students taking roles, engaging with issues that matter, and exploring multiple perspectives. The content of this exploration will inevitably result in synergies with other curriculum learning areas. What might the place of the Arts in education tell us about New Zealand society? In the 1940s, the Minister of Education, Peter Fraser, and his Secretary of Education, Clarence Beeby, understood the importance of the Arts and playfulness in education as an important safeguard for democracy. They built a progressive education system, the bedrock of New Zealand schooling for generations, on the pioneering work of Dewey (1934). It has gradually been eroded over decades with the more recent neoliberal assaults, including national standards and the literacy and numeracy strategies. If, as Nussbaum (2010) argues, any narrowing of curriculum or reduction of Arts in schools is a direct threat to democracy, then we must be alarmed at the current global education reform movement which is increasingly constraining the Arts, creativity, and critical thinking in schools. Elliot Eisner (1994) refers to the nil curriculum. By this he means that although we choose what to have in our curriculum, the things we don’t have in our curriculum are therefore not simply missing, but effectively excluded. Their exclusion is a political act, which teaches children a great deal about the world they live in. The great drama teacher Dorothy Heathcote once asked “Do children in New Zealand learn things that matter? And when they do, do the children learn that they matter?” (O’Connor, 2009). She might also have asked, ‘Do the teachers use the Arts so that the ways of learning matter?’ It would be hard to know how to answer this question in the current climate of regulation and standardisation. The idea that the Arts exist as an essential learning area within our curriculum, yet continue to be marginalised in schools, cannot be simply dismissed as an accident nor an oversight. If we don’t use the Arts as a way of learning it is because we choose to ignore them. Ironically, in a period where there is such a clear focus on literacy and language skills, by neglecting the Arts we turn our backs on the most powerful of language and literacy tools we have. The choice for the use of the Arts for learning is not made at the individual teaching level of course. Nor is it a local problem. Throughout the world, as people consider new ways to approach language and numeracy teaching, the Arts as pedagogy gets insufficient attention within curriculum documents, teacher training programmes, government-funded support systems and strategies, and therefore is rarely seen within classrooms. As children are forced to put away childish things upon entering school, one of the great tragedies is they put away their childlike desire to play inside imagined worlds, to play through movement, in image and sound. As they put away the playfulness of being other than themselves, they put away part of what makes them human. When we lose the Arts in education, or when they are relegated to the edge where they have no meaningful role to play, we risk the possibility of a society being not wide awake to what is happening to it. We risk creating young people without a sense of agency, of not believing they can act on the world. Tagore (2009, p. 142, cited in Nussbaum, 2010, p. 142) suggests without the Arts we end up with “nations of technically trained people who do not know how to criticise authority, useful profit makers with obtuse imaginations … a suicide of the soul”. REFERENCES Bishop, R., & Glynn, T. (1999). Culture counts: Changing power relations in education. Palmerston North, NZ: Dunmore Press. Cornett, C. E. (2011). Creating meaning through literature and the arts (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education. Coulon, A., McGough, S., & Harding, B. (2011). Economy of the arts in Wellington. Final report for the Wellington City Council. Wellington, NZ: Martin, Jenkins and Associates. Craft, A. (2000). Creativity across the primary curriculum: Framing and developing practice. London: Routledge. Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. New York: Putnam. Edmiston, B. (2003). What’s my position? Role, frame and positioning when using process drama. 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