Anne Power

Moments of becoming: experiences of embodied connection to place in arts-based service learning in Australia

The experience of place in arts-based service learning (ABSL) is personal. It can be difficult to define and challenging to share and build upon. This paper, reporting from a national ABSL project involving three Australian universities, is concerned with experiences of place in forming professional teacher identity. Using a narrative methodology in presenting the stories of six people, pre-service teachers and Indigenous community members, the paper draws on a number of different theoretical frameworks to explore each participant’s experience and its longer-term impact on their thinking. The participant stories revealed the value of spaces between art-making, teaching, and research. The learning experiences led pre-service teachers to reflect deeply in relation to self and to consider the impact of their experiences on both current and future professional interactions. As anticipated, participants found it difficult to communicate these elemental experiences in the written word. The findings have implications for the value of flexible and critical service-learning approaches, particularly in diverse cultural contexts.

Implementing and Sustaining Higher Education Service-Learning Initiatives: Revisiting Young et al.'s Organizational Tactics.

Although the value of service-learning opportunities has long been aligned to student engagement, global citizenship, and employability, the rhetoric can be far removed from the reality of coordinating such activities within higher education. This article stems from arts-based service-learning initiatives with Indigenous communities in Australia. It highlights challenges encountered by the projects and the tactics used to overcome them. These are considered in relation to Young, Shinnar, Ackerman, Carruthers, and Young’s four tactics for starting and sustaining service-learning initiatives. The article explores the realities of service-learning initiatives that exist at the edge of institutional funding and rely on the commitment of key individuals. The research revises Young et al.’s four tactics and adds the fifth tactic of organizational commitment, which emerged as a distinct strategy used to prompt new commitment, enact existing commitment, and extend limited commitment at the organizational level.

Pathways from global education understandings to teaching music

Research has shown that undergraduate disciplinary study provides new teachers with knowledge schemas derived from their discipline. The key question considered in this article is: what existing disciplinary knowledge do pre-service music teachers call upon to construct their schemas of global education? This is a critical question as global education is introduced to a range of national curriculums. Further, this article investigates ways music disciplinary schemas connect with knowledge, skills and values for pre-service teachers of high school music, and how this influences their approach, understanding and future teaching of global education. The conclusion is that global education, with its knowledge, skills and attitudes, pervades all school subjects and that teaching music incorporates global knowledge, skills and attitudes in quite specific ways.

Arts-based service learning with Australian first peoples : concepts and considerations

In this introductory chapter we define some of the key concepts and considerations when engaging First Peoples in arts-based service learning. To do this we draw on a wide range of international literature. We then introduce the nation-wide Australian project that provided the groundwork, framework and inspiration for this edited volume. Lastly, we introduce the content and structure of the volume and outline each of the chapters’ key themes.

Reconceptualizing Sustainable Intercultural Partnerships in Arts-Based Service Learning

In this concluding chapter we argue that deep concepts of sustainability have the potential to reconceptualize service learning in higher education. These deep concepts include establishing relationships, sustaining those relationships, sustaining workers outside the university and sustaining transformation and radical hope within students and community members. In this chapter we suggest their successful adoption, however, requires a reconceptualization of sustainability in service learning.

From One Songline to Another: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Students’ Study Tour Journey of Indigenous Connection and Solidarity

This chapter examines the experiences of eight Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander preservice teachers on a study tour with a focus on Indigenous Studies to a Canadian university. Educational activities included: cultural exchange with First Nations Elders, academics, and students; introduction to Canadian Indigenous Studies; and field trips to significant cultural sites. Through semistructured interviews and photo elicitation the participants in this case study reflected upon their experiences of personal and professional development. The analysis of the students’ retrospective accounts reveals emergent themes of connection, identity, language, healing, and action. The students’ interpretations indicate the transformative potential of overseas educational experiences to inform their future teaching practices and foster connections to Indigenous identities and cultures locally and abroad. The sense of shared historical experiences made the inter-cultural connection not just one of solidarity, but also a validation of students’ own experiences of marginalization. The findings speak to the importance of these types of inter-Indigenous exchange as well as a design of outward mobility experiences that recognize the potential for solidarity and healing. The students’ experiences of connection and identity generate the sorts of reflection that are part of a broader global movement amongst Indigenous groups towards cultural renewal.

Generating and Deepening Reflection Whilst Studying Abroad: Incorporating Photo Elicitation in Transformative Travel

Most study abroad programmes conclude with debriefing activities emphasizing verbal and written reflection, with the visual image used merely as a supplementary aid. Photographs are used to promote programmes with little integration into tertiary pedagogical strategies. This chapter argues that photo elicitation can be an evocative tool within diverse experiential learning settings. Based on this premise, the visual image can trigger students’ introspection and personal growth when sojourning overseas. Photo elicitation has a twofold benefit. First, photos augment the scope of empirical research, and second, images intensify the reflective learning process. Results indicate that the visual image amplifies the transformative power of study abroad and concretizes deeper learning. Greater focus on visual literacy is recommended for future programmes as a qualitative data technique.

The Epitome of Transformation: Enhancing Outbound Mobility Experiences in the Twenty-First Century

As Australia ventures deeper into the Asian Century, the need for outward-looking, global-minded graduates has never been greater. The outbound mobility experience (OME is recognized as one of the most effective tools to facilitate personal transformation and improve cross-cultural competencies. Funded by the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching, the project Enhancing Programmes to Integrate Tertiary Outbound Mobility Experiences (EPITOME), launched in 2015, conducted student-focused research into OMEs to provide a comprehensive and usable best-practice guide for tour operators and academic staff and to investigate key challenges to participation in OMEs, as well as lessons learned by experienced facilitators and OME designers. This chapter outlines EPITOME’s research programme and key findings.

Engaging young string players in metacognition

This article is about one focus of a two-year project researching the Penrith (NSW Australia) Youth Music Program offered at the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre. The Penrith Youth Music Program has been designed to encourage young string players through a program of guided rehearsals and tutorials with mentoring by performers from the Australian Chamber Orchestra. This article focuses on a part of the research that has engaged the young string players in reflection on their own progress. Eight young string players are the focus here, drawn from the whole study that encompasses 27 instrumentalists. In focus groups they were asked at intervals (at the end of each session of three ensemble rehearsals, spaced approximately 6 weeks apart) about their learning and about their practice strategies. This article presents the voices of the eight instrumentalists as they talk about technical issues, ensemble cuing, issues of balance and dynamic control. It also provides data that benefits in performance were achieved without an increase in the reported time given to practice but rather through thoughtful attention by the instrumentalists to their practice and to the proximity of the expert mentors as role models.

Transformations in Arts-Based Service Learning: The Impact of Cultural Immersion on Pre-service Teachers’ Attitudes to Australian Aboriginal Creative Music-Making

Since 2009, pre-service teachers from the University of Western Sydney have been visiting Tennant Creek in Central Australia, teaching in the High School and interacting with the community in their projects. This service learning experience, partnering with the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation (ALNF) and the Papulu Aparr-Kari (PAK) Indigenous Language Centre, focuses attention on educational outcomes for Aboriginal students in remote Australia. While the arts-based service learning projects have respected the identity and decision-making of the young musicians, they have been life changing for the pre-service teachers. This chapter demonstrates how service-learning projects have forged a different kind of teacher identity that is based on mutual relationships.