Drama Tuesday - Australian Curriculum: The Arts Plus ça change? Oui ou non!

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  Australia has two versions of The Australian Curriculum. 

Curriculum is contested space. There are too many political fingers in the pie - particularly in the so-called culture wars. The suspicious caste who see a shadow conspiracy lurking in every word have focused mostly on their versions of history and English and largely ignore the Arts. Indifference can be a blessing – particularly in expecting an arts curriculum to be implemented. 

Does this revision of the Arts curriculum make a difference?

At one level, there is consistency. At another level there is significant change that should be noted.

What stays the same?

The Curriculum provides a fundamental commitment to an arts education for all young Australians: “The Arts curriculum is written on the basis that all students will study The Arts from Foundation to the end of Year 8”.

But there is the weasel qualification: “State and territory school authorities or individual schools will determine how the curriculum is implemented”.

There is still a commitment to

Getting action beyond pleasant platitudes and meaningful arts education is always a challenge. 

Where should we be awake to changes?

The V.9 Arts Curriculum must not be understood as “business as usual”.

  • The Strands of the curriculum have changed.

  • There are implicit shifts in what is highlighted and valued throughout the whole document.

Consider the Strands of the two versions:

The naming of parts is more than “silent, eloquent gestures” (as the Henry Reed poem reminds us). What we call things matters. How we organise our thoughts matter. 

Teachers work from familiar patterns – habits of thinking or mind, if you will. For the past few years we have trained ourselves to plan and teach using one paradigm (for better or worse) and now the world of thought is changed. 

This is more than semantics. Nor is it just a re-visiting of the many arguments amongst the advisory community – for those with long memories the responses to Shape of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts (ACARA 2010) included different structuring organisation. For example, 

“Queensland supports the proposition that there are three processes — generating, realizing and responding — that can organise art form learning and the recursive nature of arts learning and arts processes. This reflects existing practice in Queensland”.  

That three part structure has resonances in Version 9 strands. The Western Australian Curriculum Framework (1998) identified four learning outcomes (which have some overlap with Version 9 strands):

  1. Arts Ideas: “Students generate arts works that communicate ideas.” (p. 53)

  2. Arts Skills and Processes: “Students use the skills, techniques, processes, conventions and technologies of the arts.” (p. 54)

  3. Arts Responses: “Students use their aesthetic understanding to respond to reflect on and evaluate the arts.” (p. 56)

  4. Arts in Society: “Students understand the role of the arts in society.” (p. 57)

Version 9 is more than just re-working of the previous version. It is a radical conceptual re-think. More than that, there is the shift in focus on making the arts – exploring/practices and skills/creating and making/presenting and performing – and a downplaying of responding.

In writing this, I am not defending the simplistic making/responding model. For all its catchy two part structure, it was flawed.  But what I am trying to highlight is that when you change the ways that we think about a curriculum structure, we change the curriculum. 

Perhaps, the only saving grace is that the actual implementation of the previous versions of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts have had such limited success that these changes will slip by unnoticed. 

No curriculum is worth anything unless it is implemented. 

What we have had in successive versions of Arts Curriculum in Australia has not been a failure to write good curriculum, but a failure to implement what is developed. 

I urge everyone to read the new version of the Arts Curriculum, with an eye looking back to what was valuable in the past (not forgetting what’s in state/territory documents as well). But also reading Version 9 with criticality and connoisseurship (to invoke Eisner). 

We need to ask ourselves two questions:

  1. What changes and what stays the same?

  2. Do the changes matter to a successful arts education for every young Australian?

Bibliography

Costa, A. L., & Kallic, B. (2000-2001). Habits of Mind. Retrieved from http://www.habits-of-mind.net/

Eisner, E. W. (2002). What can eduction learn from the arts about the practice of education? John Dewey Lecture for 2002, Stanford University. Retrieved from www.infed.org/biblio/eisner_arts_and_the_practice_or_education.htm . Last updated: April 17, 2005.

Drama Tuesday - Drama teaches life. Drama teaches employability skills.

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 Professional Associations are wonderful advocates for drama education. Drama Victoria, a member of Drama Australia, has just published a notable series of videos and posters that promote reasons for studying drama.  

It is therefore a pleasure to share the link and recommend this work.

There is a series of short videos covering each of these topics. 

These resources are for use by careers guidance counsellors, teachers, parents, guardians and students. The resources consist of a Careers Night compilation video, A3 downloadable posters, core competency case study videos and Drama Teaches Employability Skills Booklet & Course Guide, These resources were produced by Drama Victoria in association with the Australian Centre for Career Education and with funding provided by the Victorian Government Department of Education and Training.

Although pitched for Victorian contexts, this resources is highly recommended for all drama educators. 

It is important to acknowledge that the skills noted for drama are also applicable beyond employment fields. They are important for life. It is perhaps a comment on the functionally-focused approach to education taken by some governments. Drama is important because it connects us with our social aesthetic our  sensitivity to the nuances in human relationships and adds greatly to the richness of social experience.

Drama Tuesday - This is my IDEA DREAM from the IDEA 2022 Congress.

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With 30 years of IDEA there is still one unresolved issue of drama/theatre education… (well, to be honest, probably more than one, but let’s focus on just one!)

The issue is captured in the awkward English naming of IDEA – the International Drama/Theatre and Education Association. It’s a mouthful in English. And it is avoided in other versions of the association name.

What is the name of the field?

Is the term “drama”?

Or, is it “theatre”?

Does it matter!

Is it just an issue of language and terminology? Or are there underlying cultural, social, pedagogical and even political issues and tensions that are fundamentally significant.

IDEA seeks always to be inclusive. And strives to be careful in the use of language. Hence the difficult wording in the English naming of IDEA. But my tongue stumbles over it every time. It has been a long discussed project but now, I suggest, a necessary one.

IDEA could be the point where there is a bringing together a commonly shared and understood language about our field. One starting point, I suggest, is to collect from all places and points of view the ways that drama education is named and explained. Putting it all in one place would be a starting point.

What sorts of questions would be the starting point?

  • What do you call your work: drama education? Or theatre education? Or, something else?

  • List (and briefly explain) 5 key terms that you use that are central to your practice.

  • Identify (and briefly say why) up to 5 significant practitioners in your field that shape your work.

What other questions would we ask ourselves as a community?

This is above all not about trying to homogenise the language. Not to normalise or make practice common. It is rather, the need to recognise and celebrate our differences and recognise our shared connections while making our dialogues even easier and creating community.

Drama Tuesday - Are We There Yet?

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 Research is a journey and it is useful to reflect on our journey’s into drama education research. Like the restless child in the back seat of the car on the road trip, we ask again and again the question: Are we there yet!

I came to academic research as a classroom-based researcher. The confluence of the stars meant that I began teaching at a time that gave attention to research in place. The mantra of the times was that every teacher was necessarily a researcher in their own classroom. I initiated action research projects in the spirit of But My Biro Won’t Work (Coggan and Foster undated)  that supported school-based curriculum. When I moved to curriculum leadership positions within the Department of Education, this approach led the development of progression maps in Drama and Arts (1998) that drew on the lived experiences of drama teachers in their classrooms. I reported this work in progress at the 1997 International Drama in Education Institute, IDEIRI, conference convened by Juliana Saxton and Carole Miller at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. 

Yet, even amongst a sympathetic clan I always had the feeling that I was not seen as a “real researcher”.

This was annoyingly and frustratingly confirmed when in 2002 I started working at Murdoch University. The sniffs of “academic dismissal” might be disguised until certain rites of passage took place, but this “blooding” only strengthened a commitment to valuing portraits of authentic experience qualitatively told. Built into the assessment design of my drama teacher education courses was a focus on reflective and reflexive practice. Building on models such as those provided by Norris, McCammon and Miller (2000), I asked students to build and share case stories of their drama teaching learning. Every teacher must be a researcher about their own practice.

This is not to downplay the case for academic rigour in research nor undervalue the quest for trustworthiness. Nor should we ignore necessary training in the protocols and rituals of apprenticeships in research. We need to reassure the wider community – and ourselves – that we have a legitimate place in the research arc. But we also have to find the courage to affirm our own research confidence. I hasten to assure you that I did serve my time and built an academic research profile (for example, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robin-Pascoe). But I have to add that I learn so much from working with research students as their research lives unfolded and this reinforces the idea that research is a journey .

You ask two questions:

  1. What is ONE important development in Drama/Theatre and Education research in the last 30 years?

  2. What is IDEA's role in furthering Drama/Theatre and Education research in the future?

In answer:

  1. One important development in Drama/Theatre and Education research has been a recognition of seeing ourselves as teacher researchers.

  2. IDEA’s role is to create communities where we empower and share the voices of teachers as researchers.

There is a third question:

Are we there yet?

Of course, we are not there yet. 

It’s the journey that matters.

Taking a moment to reflect on IDEA and Research as a quest

The role of IDEA in supporting research since its founding in 1992 has been significant. Not only is this a reflection of the role of drama educators in the Academy, it is an endorsement of the founding principles of IDEA. As noted in Article 3 of the IDEA Constitution, the aims of IDEA are: 

  • to provide an international forum for communicating about, promoting and advocating for drama/theatre and education in schools, communities and all fields of endeavour;

  • to support development of drama/theatre practice and theory as part of a full human education.

Research lies at the heart of the IDEA mission. 

As a community, IDEA must recognise and celebrate the role of Research in its ongoing story.

It is interesting to read overviews of drama education research (see, for example, Jones 2021, reviewing Drama research methods: provocations of practice: edited by Peter Duffy, Christine Hatton and Richard Sallis, all IDEA figures). In acknowledging the rich inheritances of research in the field, it is important to recognise that participants in IDEA have been drawn together into a shared international space. Belonging to community has contributed to and fired debates and differences, resonances and refractions. IDEA is not about creating an homogenised view about research in drama/theatre and education. It is about creating a space for sharing. 

Research is ultimately about questioning practice and IDEA’s role is to help us ask better questions. Morgan and Saxton (1994) reminded us there is a compelling role for questions in creating powerful learning environments. Active learners ask and answer questions. In a different religious context, George Herbert, poet coined the phrase repining restlessness, to describe a state of always, ever striving forward. Research should always leave us asking the next question, not merely giving us a warm afterglow of satisfaction. 

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

TS Eliot, Little Gidding.

Bibliography

Coggan, J. and V. Foster (undated). "But My Biro Won't Work" Literacy and learning in the secondary classroom - an action research study. Camden Park, South Australia, Australian Association for the Teaching of English AATE: 96.

Curriculum Council of Western Australia (1998). Curriculum Framework, Curriculum Council of Western Australia.

Eliot, T. S. (1969). Complete poems and plays of T.S. Eliot. London, Faber and Faber.

Jones, J. P. (2021). "Drama research methods: provocations of practice." Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance 26(2): 379-384.

Morgan, N. and J. Saxton (1994). Asking Better Questions Models, techniques and classroom activities for engaging students in learning. Markham, Ontario, Pembroke Publishers Limited.

Norris, J., L. A. McCammon and C. S. Miller (2000). Learning To Teach Drama: A Case Narrative Approach. Portsmouth, Heinemann Drama.


Arts Education – is it being lost in the thunder of the current election

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 Arts and drama educators mostly get on with their day to day teaching. This week ACARA, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority launched The Australian Curriculum Version 9. On the whole, the focus of this major revision, politically driven, has been on strengthening Phonics in English and on headline grabbing issues amongst some such as “strengthening and making explicit teaching about the origins and Christian and Western heritage of Australia's democracy” (once again reinforcing the deep seated suspicion of dark motives in curriculum writers, sensed by some conservative Australians.

There are changes for the Australian Curriculum: The Arts – I will write about them in a later post. 

For now I focus on the relative quiet amongst the media and public about the changes in Version 9. Where is the uproar. Where is even the ripple of recognition that a change has been made that has consequences to teaching and learning?

Put simply, there is nothing showing on the Richter Scales of Education. 

The new version, despite the consultation that happened in 2021, is sinking like a stone unnoticed. 

In fact, Arts Education is not on many people’s radar this election. 

Not surprising given the focus on cost of living (petrol prices rising; inflation figures burgeoning) and the bickering and scrapping tone of the election and going for the jugular gotcha moments that dominate the media feeds.

But is anyone noticing that Arts Education is floundering in the quicksand of Australian education. Passionate few struggle to lift it up. But generally, as an education community, our focus is elsewhere. Not waving, but drowning.  

I share the media release from the National Advocates for Arts Education NAAE in full. 

Is anyone listening?

Certainly, this call falls on deaf ears of my rusted-on local representative.

ACARa advises. Version 9 will be implemented by states and territories according to their own timelines. ACARA will maintain the current Australian Curriculum website with Version 8.4 curriculum and both websites will remain live until such time as there is no need for schools to access Version 8.4 of the Australian Curriculum.NAAE statement about the 2022 federal election

Who we are

The National Advocates for Arts Education (NAAE) is a coalition of peak arts and arts education associations representing approximately 10,000 arts educators across Australia. NAAE members are Art Education Australia (AEA), Australian Dance Council – Ausdance, Australian Society for Music Education (ASME), Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM), Drama Australia and the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA). 

NAAE advocates for every Australian student in primary and secondary schools to have access to quality Arts Education across the five arts subjects: Dance, Drama, Media Arts, Music and Visual Arts.  We ask all political parties to endorse this principle.

Why arts education?

Australian and international research has continued to show the multitude of benefits that The Arts can have on student academic and non-academic outcomes. Arts Education not only fosters the development of artistic skills for art making, but it also teaches skills in collaboration, innovation, experimentation, resilience, confidence, problem-solving and communication.   Research finds that students who engage in The Arts do better academically in their non-Arts subjects than those students who do not participate in The Arts (Martin et al., 2013).

 There is ample global evidence (including Australia) that speaks to the explicit value and benefits of an Arts rich society. This enrichment begins and is contingent upon access to quality Arts Education. Arts Education plays an essential role in preparing young people and industry professionals to respond holistically, meaningfully, and purposefully to the impacts of global events. The long tail of COVID, coupled with catastrophic climate events and significant global conflict all point to the necessity of and need for Arts education in Australia. 

 It is now time to halt the erosion of support for arts and arts education that has occurred over the past decade. We ask for meaningful investment in quality Arts Education across all levels of Australian society. This means making a tangible commitment to providing increased support for rigorous and sophisticated opportunities for teaching, learning, making, producing, and creating into the future.

 What we are calling for

The National Advocates for Arts Education are calling for all political parties to consider and endorse the following policy imperatives.

  1. NAAE urges all political parties to commit to the development of a National Cultural Policy that includes Arts Education and is developed in consultation with artists, arts educators, the community, and peak arts bodies to ensure a well-supported arts and cultural sector that is serving the Australian community.

  2. NAAE calls for support for implementation of arts curriculums across the five Arts subjects in each state and territory in Australia from Foundation to Year 12 with targeted professional development, training, and education programs.

  3. Halt the erosion of arts specific education training in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) to increase curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment course allocation time for The Arts. This extends to specialisations and time for arts learning in early childhood and primary education courses to ensure teachers are well equipped to teach at least one Arts subject in depth. See NAAE’s submission to the Quality Initial Teacher Education Review here.

  4. Undo the current government’s university fee increase to Creative Arts courses. We call for an equitable tertiary education system that does not target Creative Arts degrees with increased fees on the false basis that this area of study does not lead to employment. See our August 2020 statement and September 2020 statements for more details.

  5. Increase funding to the Australia Council for The Arts to specifically include funding for teaching artists in schools for existing and future programs, as well as support for arts engagement programs with students and for teacher professional learning.

  6. The National Music Teacher Mentoring Program (established by Richard Gill and implemented through the Australian Youth Orchestra) be expanded with additional funding to ensure early childhood and primary school teachers also have professional learning support across the other four Arts subjects: Dance, Drama, Media Arts, and Visual Arts.

  7. NAAE calls for the removal of political interference in Australian Research Council (ARC) directions for Australian research. Earlier this year we raised concerns about the increased level of government interference in independent peer-review processes, and major implications for the type of research that will occur in years to come.

  8. Given the concerns raised above, NAAE calls for a federally funded Review of The Arts in Australian Schools. Within the past 15 years, two federally funded reviews have been conducted into two arts subjects; National Review of School Music Education: Augmenting the diminished (Pascoe, Leong, MacCallum, Mackinlay, Marsh, Smith, Church, and Winterton (2005) and First We See: The National Review of Visual Education (Davis, 2008). These have been significant, important, and valuable reviews that were completed before the Australian Curriculum: The Arts was endorsed in 2013.

It is now timely to recommend another review that will include the five arts subjects (Dance, Drama, Media Arts, Music, and Visual Arts) included in the Australian Curriculum and how various national, state, and territory arts curriculum is being implemented and taught in Australian schools.  NAAE has proposed a draft terms of reference for the review which include:

  • Relevant Australian and international research published in the last ten years, on national arts curricula in schools focusing on best practice delivery and resourcing models.

  • Map current curriculum provision (intended curriculum) and implementation of curriculum (enacted curriculum) across the five Arts subjects in each state and territory in Australia from Foundation to Year 12 to ascertain: which Arts subjects are implemented in primary and secondary schools; which teachers implement the five arts subjects; how schools manage the time required to provide quality Arts learning experiences for students; and, what is the ‘actual’ time provided for each Arts subject. An analysis of the differences between the intended curriculum and enacted curriculum is required to investigate the elements that nurture and hinder implementation.

  • Map current Initial Teacher Education (ITE) and Early Career Teacher support offerings nationally in education courses (across early childhood, primary education, and secondary education) and identify lecturer expertise, assessment types, number of units, and hours allocated to Arts education.

  • Examples of effective primary school programs that provide sequential foundational learning in the five arts subjects.

  • Provide recommendations for:

    • future iterations of arts curriculum and implementation at a national and state/territory level.

    • provision of Initial Teacher Education for The Arts (and any implications for AITSL to consider).

    • improving Initial Teacher Education programs in Arts curriculum and pedagogy, across early years, primary and secondary pre-service teachers. o

    • ongoing professional learning for primary generalist, primary specialist, and secondary specialist teachers. Recommendations for the Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments, Teacher Accreditation Boards and Universities to consider.

    • a range of best practice delivery models of The Arts in Australian schools.

NAAE acknowledges the extensive research and industry evidence pointing to how and why Australian society looks to Arts Education to foster individual and collective resilience in crises. We ask our policymakers to do the same.

Meaningful investment, proper resourcing, and support in the form of sustained professional learning and adequate initial teacher education for Arts teachers are essential for how we leverage the unique skills and understandings obtained by the field in recent years. This is going to be essential for how we work together to understand how change is experienced on the ground, and deliver on the ambitions of version 9.0 of the Australian Curriculum. 

For further comment contact: 

John Nicholas Saunders, Chair, NAAE at contact@naae.org.au 

Drama Tuesday - How to Make a Drama Teacher

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 How to Make a Drama teacher

I return to a favourite topic: I am preparing a proposal to present at the next IDEA Congress in Reykjavik Iceland in July 2022 (More information available at: https://ideaiceland.com). 

Again, I propose talking about Drama Teacher Education. I wanted to include a fun way of thinking through this issue and share with you the latest tongue in cheek recipe for making a drama teacher. 

Happy to let the images speak the words:

Drama Tuesday - First Voice

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How do you teach Theatre History?

One of the perennial problems about fully developed drama education courses is finding ways of engaging students with the drama and theatre of other times and places.  We became frustrated with the usual approaches – finding a television documentary and slapping students down in front of 60 minutes. All that sort of teaching encourages is passive engagement. The students who are interested focus; the rest get bored quickly.

Of course, you can ask students to take notes – or fill in a work sheet – but it is still deadly theatre (to steal a term from Peter Brook). The other approach is to send students off to the Library or to do Google searches. The result is always skewed or idiosyncratic viewpoints of a particular author and the perennial problem of “cut and paste”. Where is the development of critical thinking  that promotes questioning and, above all, linking to the student’s own practice.

Of all the reasons that we ask students to consider drama of other times and places, is the hope that they will take ideas from the long trajectory of drama and theatre over time and place and apply ideas to their own drama making. It must not be drama knowledge for drama knowledge’s sake.  

In my drama teacher education classes at Murdoch University, the concept of these introductions in First Voice were developed into workshops where students took on the roles of, for example, making the journey to Epidaurus for the Festival of Asclipios.

The aim – as always in my drama teaching – is to embody knowledge and learning.