Arts-based Education Research Articles

Depictions of the human person: a multidisciplinary approach to teaching ethics for advanced practice nursing

Advanced practice nursing (APN) is an expanding field within many healthcare environments around the world. The scope and particular focus of an advanced practice nurse’s role is highly variable and thus the ethical challenges they face are equally diverse. Yet, the dominant existing ethics pedagogies used in the nursing context have been described as not fit-for-purpose. Existing pedagogies do not adequately prepare APN candidates to meet the ethical challenges they will encounter in practice. Applying an arts-based pedagogy (ABP) in ethics education for advanced practice nurses has the capacity to provide effective ethics learning. This article reports on the value of a multidisciplinary pedagogy used in a graduate course in nursing leadership, law and ethics for advanced practice at an Australian university. Written in a multidisciplinary mode that allies with the pedagogy it presents, it addresses the key pedagogical challenges and opportunities of teaching ethics through an innovative arts-based pedagogy centred upon the changing depictions of the human person in works of art housed in a major state-funded art gallery.

Exploring students’ learning efficacy

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to show the relevance of teachers’ extra role behaviour towards improving students’ learning efficacy status. This study examines the intervening role of art-based teaching pedagogies, i.e. involvement of different forms of art during the traditional teaching session between extra role behaviour and students’ learning efficacy.Design/methodology/approachThe statistical test results showed that teachers’ extra role behaviour is significant for improving and strengthening students’ learning efficacy. Further, the moderation analysis showed that if art is integrated with teachers’ extra role behaviour, the effect on learning efficacy of students will increase. Art-based teaching pedagogies suggest involvement of art in teaching practices. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to evaluate the direct effect of extra role behaviour on students’ learning efficacy with the intervening role of art-based teaching pedagogies.FindingsResults indicated a linear effect of teachers’ extra role behaviour on students’ learning efficacy and that art-based teaching pedagogies had an indirect effect (mediation) on students’ learning efficacy.Originality/valueThe study will bridge the gap between academic initiatives taken and its overall implementation in primary and secondary schools.

Pre-service Art Education: Examining Constructions of Whiteness in/through Visual Culture

In this paper, I describe an arts-based curricular project taught to ten White-identifying and two non-White-identifying pre-service art teachers in Fall of 2018. The curriculum used a cultural studies framework to examine Whiteness as both a hegemonic cultural construction and identity construct. As a means to expand an arts-based pedagogy and curriculum, I utilize film as a pedagogical tool, and the circuit of culture, as a framework to reveal the power inherent within various “moments” or processes of visualization culture. By using this framework, students analyzed, exposed and challenged White supremacist ideologies and were given a contemporary way to examine Whiteness and the power invested in its creation and how this investment impacts every part of their personal and professional lives. Three key cultural analyses of Whiteness are offered in this paper. In sum, I propose the necessity of development of Whiteness art education curricula in support of critical multicultural methods and give suggestions of next steps for art education.

Picture This! Teaching Critical-Thinking, Social Awareness, and Community Nutrition through Photography in a Dietetics Classroom

After attending this innovations poster/presentation session, participants will be able to describe one idea for utilizing arts-based pedagogy as a mechanism for sparking conversation about contemporary nutrition problems

Effectiveness of Integrating Simulation with Art-Based Teaching on Attitudes of Oncology Fellows for Learning Communication Skills: a Pilot Study.

Integration of simulated practice with art-based teaching strategy can be effective for learning communication skills. This pilot study outlines the effect of integrating simulation with art-based teaching strategies on the attitudes of oncology fellows toward learning communication skills. The study was conducted in Iran using a quasi-experimental method. The participants were the oncology fellows of Tehran University of Medical Sciences (n = 19). The intervention was 1-day workshop, followed by integrating simulation with different types of art-based teaching methods. The Communication Skills Attitude Scale (CSAS) was used to assess the effectiveness of the developed model. Our finding indicated that the mean values of oncology fellows' attitude scores in all domains of CSAS including importance in medical context (53.26 ± 2.13vs 41.00 ± 5.01, p = 0.001), excuse (25.84 ± 3.01vs14.36 ± 2.62, p = 0.001), learning (23.26 ± 1.40vs8.89 ± 2.25, p = 0.001), overconfidence (13.10 ± 1.44 vs 5.57 ± 1.38, p = 0.001), and overall (115.47 (5.51) vs 69.84(6.51) p = 0.001) increased significantly after the intervention as compared with before it. Findings support the hypothesis that using integrated training methods may help oncology fellows to appreciate the importance of communication skills learning. The implications of this hypothesis are that the inclusion of integrating simulation with art-based teaching strategies in the medical curriculum can improve the attitude of oncology fellows during their education.

Art and Mindfulness Behind Bars: Examples From Wyoming Prison-Based Courses on Memoir and Stoic Philosophy

In this self-reflective piece, the coauthors critically engage with their experiences using arts-based and mindfulness practices with incarcerated women and men and university students. We offer insights derived from teaching two separate arts-based courses in prison. The first focused on memoir-writing, a unique storytelling form in which a writer’s experiences take center stage. The second involved engaging with philosophy to discover more effective ways of living. The experiences of all concerned in these two classes emphasized the power of arts-based and mindfulness education to transform lives, both within and outside prison walls.

Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy Through Arts-Based Learning: Preservice Teachers Engage Emergent Bilinguals

Rooted in arts-based learning, funds of knowledge, and culturally sustaining pedagogies, this paper describes the experiences of a cohort of preservice teachers who co-created arts integration units with emergent bilingual students, engaging them in the creation of plays based on culturally relevant children’s literature. This cohort was designed by eight professors to prepare professionals to serve the needs of culturally diverse and economically vulnerable communities through arts-based teaching and assessment modalities. We share three telling cases about these preservice teachers’ reflections on their pedagogy and their students’ engagement illustrating how the arts can foster inclusive ways of knowing and communicating.

The arts as a catalyst for learning with undergraduate nursing students: findings from a constructivist grounded theory study

ABSTRACT Background: There is a growing interest in arts-based pedagogy (ABP) to promote the wide range of competencies needed for professional nursing. The aim of this study was to develop a theoretical understanding of how students learn through ABP in undergraduate nursing education. Methodology and Methods: We used a constructivist grounded theory methodology which incorporated art-elicitation interviews. Thirty nursing students and eight nurse educators shared about their ABP experiences. Data were analyzed with grounded theory procedures. Results: The arts as a catalyst for learning emerged as the core category and elucidates how the unique quality of the arts created powerful pedagogical processes for many students. When students engaged with these processes, they resulted in surprising and transformative learning outcomes for professional nursing. Conclusions: These findings provide insight into why and how students learned through ABP, and can inform the effective implementation of ABP into healthcare education.

A Study on the Theoretical Foundation of Arts-Based Teaching and Learning Method for School Education

A Study on the Theoretical Foundation of Arts-Based Teaching and Learning Method for School Education

Poetry across the Curriculum: New Methods of Writing Intensive Pedagogy for U.S. Community College and Undergraduate Education: A Book Review

This book review presents the basic premise of the book, which is use of poetry to teach undergraduate courses. The author of the review shares her own experiences with using poetry to teach college courses and highlights the beginning chapters. The editors of the book, Frank Jacobs, Shannon Kincaid and Amy. E. Traver, and other authors share their experiences from a workshop on the use of poetry in college. Empirical and anecdotal examples do well to underscore the need for more arts-based education and particularly poetry in teaching college courses.

Interdisciplinary Team Training at the Art Museum: Breaking Down Hierarchy and Building Resilience (TH314)

•Describe the evidence supporting the use of museum-based education (MBE) to develop core clinician competencies of perception, empathy, reflective practice, and resilience.•Recognize how MBE can improve interprofessional practice by decreasing perceived hierarchy and promoting team building.•Experience an MBE session. Burnout among palliative care practitioners can lead to poor performance and attrition. Museum-based education (MBE) is an innovative strategy that aims to reduce burnout by enhancing perception and empathy, flattening perceived hierarchy, and strengthening interprofessional teams. The goal of this session is to provide palliative care educators with evidence and approaches to use art as a strategy to promote team building and enhance clinically relevant observation and reflective competencies. MBE employs specific pedagogical strategies to train participants to intentionally, thoughtfully, and reflectively perceive patients and their unique situations. It is also a strategy to lessen a sense of hierarchy among teams by connecting participants to others’ personal perceptions and histories, irrespective of professional role. MBE participants have improved perception, comfort with ambiguity, and empathy, making this an important tool for palliative care teams and training programs as they seek to foster effective interprofessional teams and professional resilience. This session will highlight current evidence supporting MBE in healthcare, as well as ongoing work by palliative care programs with trainees and interprofessional teams. Finally, we will demonstrate examples of art-based teaching strategies with audience participation such that participants may begin to design MBE programs tailored to their home institution.

Exploring an urban teacher’s use of performance in fostering middle school students’ moral awareness

This study reports on how an urban teacher relied on herself and harnessed performance-based pedagogy in developing her students’ moral awareness over one academic year. Drawing on qualitative analyses of the teacher and students’ reflections, interviews, as well as students’ performance, the study shows that the teacher’s reliance on her own agency in designing a performance-based curriculum counteracted teaching constraints in her workplace. In addition, performance, enacted through engaging students in performing exaggerated bodily activities enabled them to critically reflect upon existing or potential moral issues in their lives and guided their follow-up behaviours. The study concludes the importance of synergising teachers’ self-agency with arts-based education in raising students’ moral awareness, especially in similarly constrained contexts. Keywords: constrained contexts; moral education; performance; pre-tertiary level; teachers’ self-agency

Intersections: Art and Narrative in Intercultural and Educational Research

ABSTRACTThe experience of art, artistry and narrative in research is a key methodological concern of both the artist and the researcher, whose work together occurs in and beyond an intersection of educational, intercultural and cultural narratives. Arts-based research and educational pedagogy intersect with the multimodal expression of a sophisticated Eastern Arrernte homelands knowledge system, prompting rich learning and teaching outcomes. Considered as one body of work and of Eastern Arrernte homelands knowledge, Wallace uses her paintings and stories to engage intercultural and cultural intersections in research and in education. The proposition for research based on the multimodal work of one artist challenged Lovell’s audacity and the academy’s conceptualisation of intercultural and arts-based research and data. This paper examines how interrelationships within Wallace’s contemporary artworks (2003-2010) intersected with the researcher’s developing insight of the Eastern Arrernte homelands, and the relationship of the homelands as a system of knowledge which Wallace seeks to communicate. This process led to a formative research framework that was informed by literature, the researcher’s experience of the homelands knowledge system, and the characteristics of Wallace’s multimodal expressions of her knowledge and culture.

A Qualitative Inquiry in to the Impact of an Arts-Based, Self-Portrait Assignment on Third Year Child and Youth Care Students

A growing body of research shows that arts-based teaching and learning has the power to energize and promote student engagement by increasing opportunities for students to articulate their learning in many different ways. It is particularly effective for students who tend to struggle with the fast-paced and highly structured nature of mainstream education, which favours primarily cognitive and verbal forms of teaching and assessment. This study contributes to the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) by reporting on the learning experiences of third-year child and youth care (CYC) students involved in an arts-based self-portrait assignment.

Pursuing Freedom, Making Strange: Pedagogical Considerations for Art as an Other

This analysis addresses the ethical and epistemological considerations for using an arts-based pedagogy in the classroom as a means of disrupting dominant hegemonies and as a foundation for a more inclusive, robust democracy. The work advances two arguments. First, education must seek recourse for a renewed democracy by focussing on our ethical and political responsibilities in relation to the other. Second, art can serve to act as that other in unique and powerful ways in the classroom. I begin by proposing that an intersubjective relation is at the heart of both ethics and politics. I then consider how art can serve as an other in that relation. To conclude, I discuss the pedagogical implications for art as an other in pursuing freedom and advancing toward democracy.

An expressive-arts-based life-death education program for the elderly: A qualitative study

This study endeavors to investigate how healthcare workers, equipped with expressive arts methods, could foster life-death education for the elderly. Forty-nine older adults aged 60 or above joined a 10-session expressive arts-based life-death education program that was led by social workers equipped with expressive arts methods. An ethnographic research approach, with a post-treatment focus group (n = 17), was conducted with the participants. The results showed that expressive arts methods could enhance reorganization of life experiences, promote dealing with ambivalent emotion regarding life-death issues, improve communicating life-death issues with family members, and induce ideas to prepare for death.

Exploring the material mediation of dialogic space—A qualitative analysis of professional learning in initial teacher education based on reflective sketchbooks

This study addresses the crucial relationship between theory and practice as a key feature of professional learning in initial teacher education. The context for the study is an EU-funded intensive programme drawing on different dimensions of insideness and outsideness and arts-based pedagogies in response to the diversity of education today. The data for the study comes from self-selected pages from preservice teacher participants’ reflective sketchbooks. As a methodological approach that unifies the sensuous and cognitive this study suggests that reflective sketchbooks document the dialogic encounters of students whilst also providing a material space that can itself become a form of dialogic space for critical reflection. The main findings of the study outline critical ways in which preservice teachers transform theoretical inputs into individual expressions as well as conceptualise theory in relation to lived experience.

Look Who’s Talking: Using creative, playful arts-based methods in research with young children

Young children are often ignored or marginalised in the drive to address children’s participation and their wider set of rights. This is the case generally in social research, as well as within the field of Arts-Based Education Research. This article contributes to the growing literature on young children’s involvement in arts-based research, by providing a reflective account of our learning and playful engagement with children using creative methods. This small pilot project forms part of a larger international project titled Look Who’s Talking: Eliciting the Voices of Children from Birth to Seven, led by Professor Kate Wall at the University of Strathclyde. Visiting one nursery in Scotland, we worked with approximately 30 children from 3 to 5 years old. Seeking to connect with their play-based nursery experiences, we invited children to participate in a range of arts-based activities including drawing, craft-making, sculpting, a themed ‘play basket’ with various props, puppetry and videography. In this article, we develop reflective, analytical stories of our successes and dilemmas in the project. We were keen to establish ways of working with children that centred their own creativity and play, shaped by the materials we provided but not directed by us. However, we struggled to balance our own agenda with the more open-ended methods we had used. We argue that an intergenerational approach to eliciting voice with young children – in which adults are not afraid to shape the agenda, but do so in responsive, gradual and sensitive ways – creates the potential for a more inclusive experience for children that also meets researcher needs.

Applied Theater and Mixed-Status Families: A Collaborative Self-Study with Teacher Education Candidates

ABSTRACTIn this article, we narrate a self-study that emerged through a collaborative, arts-based inquiry around Latinx diversity, especially those arising from citizenship status at the individual and family level. Coming from distinct professional educational landscapes (theatre/drama education, middle/secondary education, and elementary education), we worked inter-disciplinarily to orchestrate a series of workshops for a cohort of elementary teacher education candidates. Our specific focus was rooted in the meanings that applied theatre teaching strategies suggested for us as teacher educators and for the teacher candidates we prepare to teach in schools. We also sought implications that might cultivate broader critical discourses within and across teacher education about diversity. Our blending of self-study with arts-based pedagogies was a purposeful effort to expand our students’ and our own professional subjectivities by disrupting xenophobic and racialized public discourse about national borders using play-based strategies to foster risk and generativity.

Bringing the Arts to the Everyday Lived Experiences of Young Children

The purpose of this arts-based education research was to explore the complex art forms in Bali, Indonesia, for a cross-cultural understanding of the everyday importance of the arts in the teaching and learning of young children. Five Balinese artists and one Javanese artist were interviewed to discuss their journeys as artists from a young age, their practicing art forms, and perceptions of the importance of the arts in their communities, cultural identity, and in the everyday lived experiences of children. While there is literature on the historical and complex art forms of Bali, giving context to the importance of time and place and hierarchies of the culture, little is documented on the interconnection between the arts as a paradigm that shapes culture and informs an understanding of the arts as important to teaching and learning. This research experience aimed to deepen the researcher’s understanding of how the arts are embodied and woven together in Balinese culture, and how this knowledge can be connected to the teaching and learning of children in the Canadian context.