A Community’s Response to the Role of Arts Learning Experiences Implemented across the Artistic, Cultural and Social Canvas of a School Setting: An Intertextual Image

Abstract

Extant literature related to the provision of effective arts learning experiences indicates a gap between policy rhetoric and the reality of practices undertaken particularly in primary school settings. Over recent decades a plethora of large scale reports and reviews carry recommendations and policy support for the introduction of professional artists into primary school settings. This concept is proposed as a cost effective and beneficial response to overcome reported obstacles in the delivery of authentic and meaningful arts learning experiences for primary school students and ongoing professional development for teachers. Although such reviews and articles examine the overarching impact of the arts in educational settings noting the benefits primarily to participating students, few focus on the interactions of the artist and members of the school community and the resulting influence on the implementation of the program. This thesis presents a narrative of one such arts and educational intersection in an Australian primary school. Within an interpretivist paradigm, an autoethnographic research approach was taken employing narrative inquiry to distil the data supported by an a/r/tographic stance to accommodate the intersecting and overlapping roles of artist/teacher/researcher. The Four Lenses framework defined by Seidel, Tishman, Winner, Hetland and Palmer (2009) was utilised to organise the multi-dimensional sources of data and to subsequently analyse, distil and make meaning of the emergent data.