Enhancing Indigenous content in arts curricula through service learning with Indigenous communities

Executive summary At the heart of this project has been the desire to enhance the way in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural content is embedded in higher education arts curricula. It comes at a time when higher education institutions are facing growing pressure to make curriculum content more representative of and responsive to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture. In response, many Australian universities have established formal initiatives to embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and intercultural competency across the curriculum. This has taken the form of policies and reconciliation action plans, community engagement initiatives, networks and councils of Elders. Despite the proliferation of such initiatives, the incorporation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives into higher education curricula and cultures remains a challenging political, social and practical task. This project has sought to address this challenging task by positioning arts based service learning (ABSL) as a strategy through which Australian higher education institutions can promote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural content for students in ways that also directly support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities

The Unconventional Strength Towards STEM Cohort

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) play a critically important role in Australia’s ability to innovate, expand and remain a competitive force globally. Indeed, ensuring that the workforce has the relevant skills in sufficient quantities through a reliable educational pipeline is quite challenging and requires an understanding of how these skills are and will be used within the Australian economy. Moreover, successfully delivering these skills for a knowledge economy will depend not only on producing the correct number of graduates but also on the education system supplying graduates from under-utilised groups (i.e. women & indigenous people) and diverse backgrounds. Currently, millions of children and young people are not developing the required skills to participate effectively in STEM environments. Young indigenous and female groups, in particular, are deprived of the opportunities to build their skills, including STEM literacy that is valued towards career progression in traditionally male-dominated fields (i.e. engineering and construction). As this white paper outlines, the challenges are drawn from recent literature, and a comprehensive review of existing initiatives is presented based on the observations of key partners, including Western Sydney University, the Australian government, research sector, industry, policymakers and communities. However, to build the STEM capacity of graduates with the right knowledge, competencies and qualities, two-way collaboration between the communities, educational institutions (from an early age), Australian workplaces and the government is essential, as no single sector can entirely solve the current STEM skills shortage. Western Sydney University is well-positioned within the high-density indigenous areas to respond to these issues, particularly by monitoring, engaging and promoting all graduates with STEM qualifications to meet the demand from the economy. In fact, by supporting equity and diversity throughout the STEM cohorts, educational institutions not only drive innovation but also establish a thriving STEM-skilled workforce that is fit for the future

The female singing voice : gospel, blues, epic stories and animation

This chapter seeks to critically evaluate ways in which the female voice contributes to animated films. Vocal ornaments are used to emphasise humorous and dramatic moments and the chapter evaluates elements that produce emotion in music. The chapter concludes with a discussion of what can make music memorable, with particular reference to the films analysed throughout

Overcoming disadvantage for low socio-economic-status students through Orff-style approach to meeting challenges of music in senior years of high school

In this article, part of a wider study, the focus is on the exploration of music in senior years of high school. In 2009, the research project, Teachers for a Fair Go, in a NSW Department of Education and Training Priority School included investigation into whether students involved in music learning experiences would become more competent and empowered learners. It found that the teacher’s support for students preparing for their performance and viva voce examinations was critical. Students aged between 17 and 18 years of age were interviewed to elicit responses about their learning. Observations and interviews showed that, in a school within a low socioeconomic community, the teacher’s role was important in raising standards of student musical achievement and creating an energised classroom environment, consistently focused on excellence in musical performance

In action : future educators in a New South Wales project

ABSTRACTIt is widely acknowledged that there is a need to develop and increase student teachers' sense of responsibility towards developing social justice and environmental concerns (Mandolini, 2007; Jamsa, 2006; Bulajeva, Duobliene & Targamadze, 2004). The expression of such responsibility is ideally achieved in teaching practice through experience (Salita & Pipere, 2006, cited in Mandolini, 2007). Such developments will require changes in thinking about education. For example, education for sustainable futures is arguably the most pressing contemporary change issue, whether there is a focus on environmental crises such as climate change and water supplies, or on increased poverty and social justice (Hegarty, 2008). This paper suggests that a way forward is through mentoring that engages with global education principles. Global education principles incorporate understandings of: multiple perspectives peoples and nations hold about the world; prevailing issues confronting the world community; ideas and practices of other cultures; the effects of technologies at local and global levels; and the problems posed by different life-choices that confront individuals and nations (Bleicher & Kirkwood-Tucker, 2004, elaborating on Hanvey, 1976). The article demonstrates how pre-service teachers used their ideals in their practice. In this paper, global education principles are seen as a component of the Teacher Education for the Future research being conducted simultaneously in countries from the Pacific Circle Consortium. In the pilot project, 'Global Ripples,' the concept of respect for the beliefs and values of others is discussed with pre-service teachers, high school and primary students, so that the principles are demonstrated in action by future educators. This paper reports on the perspectives of some Australian pre-service teachers as part of the Teacher Education for the Future project

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 forced a different kind of teacher identity that is based on mutual relationships

Shaping professional teacher identities through service-learning in Australia

University students engaged in Service-Learning have been found to demonstrate greater complexities of understanding than a non-Service-Learning comparison group; and when this was combined with reflection they were able to effectively analyze more complex problems related to teaching (Eyler and Giles, 1999). The programme Professional Experience 3 (known as PE3 in the Master of Teaching Secondary Course) at the University of Western Sydney requires pre-service teachers to complete 60 hours work in a Service-Learning context that directly addresses social disadvantage. Partners include state government departments, non-governmental organizations and an array of educational and community sites. Each year, up to 500 students complete a PE3 placement before beginning work as teachers, many of them in disadvantaged schools or settings. Geographically, the scope of PE3 incorporates rural and remote placements and urban placements in Greater Western Sydney. Pre-service teachers work with indigenous students, with refugees and with newly arrived migrants in areas where educational disadvantage is identified. Consequently their pre-service experiences contribute to the shaping of professional teacher identities that are responsive to local needs of communities and individuals

Against short term professional learning

A three-year study was conducted involving teacher interviews and observation in one high school in NSW. Initially the contact between teacher and researcher came from an Australian Government Quality Teaching Program that provided 12-month funding to support teachers in professional learning. The role of the academic partner was to facilitate teachers in development of individual learning plans. Such learning plans are designed to return control of the professional learning experience to teachers. This narrative critically explores how allowing individual learning plans to develop freely produced successful outcomes that changed a teacher's pedagogy over a period of three years. However, it also shows that the time frame required to create perceptible improvement is often unrelated to the time frame of the funding available to support professional learning. The evidence is a case study of a teacher's journey - from her initial plan to increase her use of technology in her teaching to its ultimate evolution as a commitment to project-based learning -that benefited not only her own students but also her colleagues. Designing their own research projects led students, to a much greater degree than previously, to actively use the library, search the internet and write to stakeholders in order to solve problems to the questions they themselves created. Teacher colleagues observed the focus teacher's classes, asked for her assistance in their own, and collaboratively planned a showcase for student projects. This case study shows that the time for her pedagogic innovations to evolve to fruition resulted in benefits to the wider school learning community. This finding has implications for policy, as funding provisions that operate in short-term allocations give little encouragement for teachers to persist

Childhood to teacher : pre-service educators' formative musical learning through choral music

This paper explores different kinds of performance found in community singing. A difference exists between presentational performance where the roles of audience and artist are clearly defined and participatory performance where there is no audience-artist distinction (Turino, 2008). Turino, in fact, considers these two kinds of music making as different fields of artistic practice. Through data consisting of reflections from members of choirs and choral directors, a number of features are examined that relate to the lens of participatory performance (Turino, 2008). The research design gives rise to some findings about the participants’ and choir directors’ views about learning involved in choral music. Some learning is individual and includes learning how to rehearse, to develop vocal technique, to care for the voice and to expand their repertoire. Some learning is collective and encompasses the experience of joining together in music-making

Introducing positive behavior for learning produces an environment with real advantages for music teaching and learning

Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) is an initiative of the NSW Department of Education and Training Western Sydney Region that has been progressively introduced into schools across the region from 2005. It has its origins in a United States system, with the transfer taking place following visits of George Sugai in 2004 and Tim Lewis in 2005 from the United States of America (US). At the end of March 2008, researchers from the University of Western Sydney delivered an evaluation report on the transfer of this US System into the Department of Education Western Sydney Region Schools (Mooney, et al., 2008). This paper is an extension of work conducted in that evaluation, outlining the preliminary effects of this system on students in a music classroom of one of the schools in the region. The school is referred to here as Tiber High School