2008 Events

In 2008 Artistic and Creative Education will present a themed semester long series which will focus on two main areas:

• Image, identity and voice in education research
• Thinking alike and collaborative research: Across discipline, across faculty, across institution

Our program of events draws from current ACE and MGSE staff members, PhD students and invited international and national researchers. Unless otherwise specified, all events will be held in the Frank Tate Room, Ground Floor, Alice Hoy Building at the University of Melbourne. For further information about any of these events, please contact Marie-Claire Moloney

• 10 March: ACE and CPE Book Launch, Researching Education: Visually, Digitally, Spatially (Dr Julianne Moss) and Teaching Qualitative Research Cases and Issues (Assoc Prof Rosalind Hurworth)
• 14 March: Colloquium, “I would have died if I had stayed”…Narrative identity as means of better understanding ontological mobility with rural women at an elite university, Dr Brenda Holt
• 17 March: PhD Completion Seminar, Learning Partnerships: the use of poststructuralist drama techniques to improve communication between teachers, doctors and adolescents, Ms Helen Cahill
• 4 April: Colloquium, Auto-ethnography and other drawings of identity and voice: learning with and from Muslims in preschooling, Professor Jeanette Rhedding (University of Oslo)
• 14 April: PhD Completion Seminar, Looking through the lens of a camera in the early childhood classroom, Narelle Lemon
• 14 April: Colloquium, Researching Education: Visually, digitally, spatially, Dr Julianne Moss and Gerald Bain King
• 17 April: PhD Confirmation Seminar, A critical ethnographic study of how Australian schools reproduce the means to production, Matthew K E Thomas
• 28 April: PhD Completion Seminar, Indelible stains: researching pedagogy with/in spaces and tensions of an ethnographic study of learning to teach, Kim Ann Senior
• 28 April: Colloquium, Signs of China, Dr Trevor Hay and Wang Yong Yang
• 2 May: PhD Confirmation Seminar, Nourishing the seed: a case study of an inner city Uniting Church of Australia arts/spirituality mission, Wendy Hopkinson
• 12 May: Colloquium, Artistic partnerships in the music classroom: What is sustainable?, Dr Neryl Jeanneret and Mr Andrew Swainston
• 23 May: Colloquium, Assessment feedback: What do pre-service education students at the University of Melbourne prefer?, Dr Peter Ferguson
• 12 June: PhD Confirmation Seminar, Let’s Act Now – Identifying strategies for helping Indigenous students engage and succeed in further education and training, Ms Rosemary Blight
• 12 June: PhD Confirmation Seminar, Kwathi ke kaloku ngantsomi: Developing academic writing through accessing oral art forms, Carol Carter
• 24 July: Colloquium, Made for Each Other: Creative Arts and Sciences, Professor Shirley Brice Heath
• 4 August: Book Launch, Music Time! Discover Things!, Dr Ros McMillan

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10 March: ACE and CPE Book Launch, Researching Education: Visually, Digitally, Spatially (Dr Julianne Moss) and Teaching Qualitative Research Cases and Issues (Assoc Prof Rosalind Hurworth)

Artistic and Creative Education and the Centre for Program Evaluation join together for our first colloquia through a book launch.

About the publications:
Researching Education: Visually, Digitally, Spatially (Dr Julianne Moss)

This book is aimed at researchers in education who are looking for the take up of bold visions in educational research through visual, digital and spatial knowing. Drawing from research conducted by experienced researchers and graduate students in Australia, through visual methods the book presents work that is at the forefront of working with innovative qualitative research methodologies theoretically and practically. The book shows the possibilities, problems and researcher responses to working with image through complex theoretical territory such as Actor network theory, Deleuzian theory, feminist and poststructuralist methods, positioning theory and narrative theory. All chapters have in common, a response to issues that broadly can be defined as the issues of education that prove to be deep seated and troubling and show a concern for critically orientated scholarship. The book moves across the stages of education from early childhood, middle years, secondary schooling to higher education. A provocative and lively introduction frames the field of visual methods for education researchers. With visuality in mind, issues such as researcher and participant identity, what is contributed or lost when we democratise the research process and ethical issues of working globally are discussed. By getting underneath the cover story of educational research, the contribution is an accessible and concise account of educational research that confronts current issues of curriculum and pedagogy and is useful for those new to qualitative research and visual methods.

Teaching Qualitative Research Cases and Issues (Assoc Prof Rosalind Hurworth)

Over the past two decades there has been a plethora of book for students about how to tackle Qualitative Research (QR), but absolutely nothing on how to teach it! This book attempts to redress the imbalance by presenting a history of what is known about QR teaching, as well as to bring alive current QR teaching and learning through a set of Australian and British case studies. Courses visited were located within a variety of disciplines (including Education, Sociology, Anthropology, Nursing, Psychology, Communications and Evaluation), were taught by both experienced and inexperienced lecturers, were either presented alone or in pairs, took place in a range of institutions. lasted from seven weeks to a year and involved from 15 to over 100 students. It emerged, however that, no matter what the context, several common issues were raised such as: Should you teach theory, practice or both? How do you determine a curriculum for a QR course? What is the best way to manage student projects? How should students of QR be assessed? In what ways can the constraints of University structures be confronted? and How can lecturer deficiencies in training and experience be overcome? To answer such questions, Professor Hurworth draws deftly from personal observations and rich conversations with both lecturers and students from all the courses described. As a result many practical ideas for moving the teaching and learning of QR forward, are suggested.

Event Details:
The book launch will be held in the Frank Tate Room and will commence at 5pm. Please register your attendance with Marie-Claire Moloney.

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14 March: Colloquium, “I would have died if I had stayed”…Narrative identity as means of better understanding ontological mobility with rural women at an elite university, Dr Brenda Holt

Abstract:
This paper draws on a four-year study of young rural women from small towns in Victoria who have left home to attend a large city-based university. Emerging from the research are the ‘ontological narratives’ (Somers, 1994) the women use to describe their mobility out of their small towns as inevitable. In all cases, the women in the study reach back into their pasts to describe themselves as one who was ‘always’ leaving. Higher education policy makers concerned with issues of equity and access must understand how enmeshed mobility, identity and agency are to rural young people. Somers’ work has much to offer educational research, particularly her insistence that narrative joined with identity provides an ontological dimension to studies of social agency. Somers theorises that at any given time, we narrate ourselves as identities (however multiple and changing) by locating ourselves in relation to available social, public and cultural narratives. A narrative identity approach assumes the constitutive effects of networks and relationships over time and space. Rather than theorise why the study’s participants tell the narratives they do, I demonstrate how they put these narratives to work as they reshape and retell their narratives throughout their university years, particularly in relation to their rural mothers and other rural females peers who stayed at home. This paper will demonstrate how this theoretical approach offers a metaphorical prism to study the complexities of social agency and the importance of narrative identity to our mobility towards higher education and the opportunities it offers.

About the presenter:
Brenda Southerland Holt is a happy migrant to Australia from a small town in central Texas. She has lived and worked in the educational field in and around Melbourne for almost twenty years as a teacher, an educational counsellor, a pastoral care worker and in educational leadership roles with university students. Her most recent roles have been as Head, Whitley College, University of Melbourne from 2001-2005; various strategic positions within the University around the implementation of the Melbourne Model; and now as Chief of Staff, Trinity College, University of Melbourne. Brenda lives in the CBD with her partner, Simon, and two emerging teenagers, Ali and Nathaniel.

Event details:
This event will be held in the Frank Tate Room and will commence at 1pm. Please register your attendance with Marie-Claire Moloney.

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17 March: PhD Completion Seminar, Learning Partnerships: the use of poststructuralist drama techniques to improve communication between teachers, doctors and adolescents, Ms Helen Cahill

Abstract:
Drama is often used as a pedagogical tool to assist people to develop their communication skills and capacity to empathise with others. Dramatic portrayals however, can reinforce rather than challenge limiting stereotypes, and there is the potential for learning through drama to contribute to a patronising world-view and lead to the assumption that a set of formulaic approaches can bridge the communication divide. There is thus a need for research that engages both theoretically and technically with the use of drama as a tool for applied learning.

In this thesis a reflective practitioner methodology is used to explore the use of drama as a method in participatory enquiry and as a tool in the professional education of teachers and doctors. The Learning Partnerships project provides the context within which to conduct this enquiry. In this project the researcher leads drama workshops that bring together classes of school students and tertiary students completing their studies in medicine or education.

Poststructuralist theory is used to refine the drama techniques used as tools for enquiry into the discourses that shape behaviour in schools and clinics. Theory is developed which addresses the way in which the selection of the dramatic form influences the knowledge that can be represented in the drama. This innovative approach to deconstruction through the drama contributes new methods to utilise in professional training and participatory enquiry. Recommendations are made about the use of drama to investigate complex social and professional situations. The research demonstrates the benefits of incorporating the client as coach when developing the skills of those entering the human services professions; the need to engage with investigation of discourses as well as development of skills when learning how to manage complex professional interactions; and the potential of drama as a tool for applied learning.

Event details:
This event will be held in the Frank Tate Room and will commence at 5pm. Please register your attendance with Marie-Claire Moloney.

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4 April: Colloquium, Auto-ethnography and other drawings of identity and voice: learning with and from Muslims in preschooling, Professor Jeanette Rhedding (University of Oslo)

Abstract:
The paper is a cobbling together of autobiographical material combined with what Jeanette is currently writing about matters related to identities (see bionote that follows). In particular she focuses on what she heard Homi Bhabha say at Melbourne University this January, using his words to frame her writing. As identity is a contested term and as positionings constantly change, both discursively and politically, the quest for fixing is not what matters. Instead the voicing of self and having your voice heard becomes a practical politics. When the language you speak is not your first or even your second this is difficult. Combining this difficulty with being a religious minority is how many Muslims in the Islamic diaspora are located in educational communities. 

The project from which the paper draws has not been labeled ‘research’. There are various reasons for this: a development project that is unfunded can be more   controlled by its participants; epistemologically there is more freedom in a development project, especially when the development might also be the researcher’s; not ‘doing research on others’ can hopefully be avoided; the Norwegian term FoU forskning og utvikling avoids the binary split between research (desired by Universities) and development (seen as lower in status). Not wanting to publish from this two and a half year project in any international refereed journals means a freedom to work more as a journalist, travel writer or novelist who draws from life experiences and theories she currently encounters. More importantly not wanting such publications allows people without higher education, or with no more than a Bachelor’s degree, to be co-authors. These co-authors and tellers of narratives are writing in Arabic, Urdu, Somali, Bosnian, Turkish, French and Norwegian. In positivist research they would be informants: there is a qualitative difference here that relates to being and becoming. The critical issues for epistemology underlying this paper are whether a research/development split can be resolved, and what the futures of  postpositivist research might be.

About the presenter:
Jeanette Rhedding-Jones is an Australian who migrated to Norway in 1997, where she has permanent residency. Her 1994 PhD from La Trobe University and her subsequent publications in international refereed journals such as Qualitative Studies in Education; Journal of Curriculum Studies; and British Journal of Sociology of Education, allowed her to obtain a tenured position in Norway, as she had passed all the University exams in Norwegian language whilst on sabbatical or on conference leave 1995-1996. She was appointed as Associate Professor in Oslo in 1997 and as full Professor in 2000. She is now also Adjunct Professor in Bergen.

Her approaches to social science inquiry include the critical and the postmodern, with a current focus on issues regarding cultures, languages and Muslims. Two currently contracted books are for Fagbokforlaget and for Springer. Her 2005 book What is Research? Methodological practices and new approaches is published by Universitetsforlaget, Oslo and can be found on Amazon Books.

Jeanette won the 2003 prize for research and development across the six Faculties at Oslo University College; led a research project with a large research grant from the Norwegian Research Council 2002-2004; and led an international conference 2004 with participants from 19 nations and a theme of Troubling Identities. She has guest edited the international refereed journals Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood and Nora, Nordic Journal of Women’s Studies; also Australian Research in Early Childhood Education, with an all-Norwegian set of authors publishing in English. She currently leads a Masters degree, supervises Norwegian Doctorates, and examines Doctoral dissertations written in English, Norwegian, and once (reading with great difficulty) in Swedish.

Event details:
This event will be held in the Frank Tate Room and will commence at 1pm. Please register your attendance with Marie-Claire Moloney.

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14 April: PhD Completion Seminar, Looking through the lens of a camera in the early childhood classroom, Narelle Lemon

Abstract:
Type ‘digital photography in the classroom’ into the search menu of the Internet and numerous sites are available with suggestions of making books, creating stories using photos, making labels, using photos to show instructions visually, and so on. Using digital cameras in the classroom is not new, we have seen initiatives with girl’s education (Bach, 1998), inclusive curriculum practice (Carrington et al, 2007; Moss et al, 2007) and have heard of numerous suggestions for how to use a digital camera to photograph children on excursions, record special theme days, produce displays for the classroom, and to provide images for school promotion boards or school magazine. What is missing is the use of digital photography in the classroom as a reflective tool for the learner as a means to share their learning stories (Carr, 2001) in the form of visual narratives (Bach, 1998; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Moss, 2003). Linking with narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Daiute & Lightfoot, 2004; Kramp, 2004), images can take on a role, where stories provide a means by which an understanding, that sometimes cannot otherwise be told or uncovered (Bach, 2001; Clough, 2002), provides insights into subsequent relationship(s) to learning (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000).

This paper examines the development of an innovative curriculum initiative that considers benefits of interdisciplinary understandings in curriculum and assessment practices. Set in the context of an early childhood program, the benefits for the learner through the use of visual narrative are discussed. The photographs presented and discussed in this paper are student taken. The paper presents some of the findings that came out of a doctoral level study with particular focus on students’ using digital cameras to capture the learning environment. Reflective skills are discussed as too the development of a learning community and interdisciplinary skills.

Event details:
This event will be held in the Frank Tate Room and will commence at 5pm. Please register your attendance with Marie-Claire Moloney.

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14 April: Colloquium, Researching Education: Visually, digitally, spatially, Dr Julianne Moss and Gerald Bain King

Abstract:
This paper considers how themes from postmodern philosophy of Deleuze & Guattari, 1987 and Grosz, 2004, can be rendered by visual technologies of video and serialised stills and woven into a study of boys’ behaviours in a coeducational classroom to depict diversities and assemblages of learning cultures. This ethnographic study is drawn from an engagement from one site, a Year 8 coeducational classroom, in a Catholic secondary college of Melbourne, Australia. Video and serial still images in this study assisted the researcher to see beyond metanarratives, to smaller discursive fields, where rhizomatic and zeugmatic exchanges between individuals and assembled cultures take place, as shifting, becoming, transiting bodies (Grosz, 2004).

The research rejected deceptive simplifications and totalising perspectives that can be drawn from narrative linearities of traditional video preferring stances that recognise multiple, unstable representations (Connell, 2002, p. 89). This assisted the study to contest objective epistemological models and reject compounding accounts of reality to instead view cultures as ‘happenings’ and multitudes of differential relations (Edgar & Sedgwick, 1999, Semetsky, 2003). Assemblages and representations observed in this study may not be reproduced in other settings, but lessons can be drawn from an understanding of representations, relationships and interplays between boys, their teachers and their peers.

Event details:
This event will be held in the Frank Tate Room and will commence at 5pm. Please register your attendance with Marie-Claire Moloney.

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17 April: PhD Confirmation Seminar, A critical ethnographic study of how Australian schools reproduce the means to production, Matthew K E Thomas

Abstract:
This research aims to consider and enact how ideological constructions are lived, internalized and expressed through contemporary education. Drawing from the lives of four Australian teachers and four young people, the research concerns itself with the relationships between cultural hegemony, schooling and the reproduction of ideological constructs. How do the schools we attend alter our perceptions of who we are? This research project will provide, within the limitations of a PhD study, a critical analysis of the internalization of the ideologies that underpin the education system. By first establishing the presence of global homogenization (Kenway, Kraack & Hickey-Moody, 2006) and exploring what, if any, impact cultural hegemony has on the ideology of schooling, the outcome of the research is the examination of the capacity of teachers to teach for resistance. In essence, can educators develop these counter hegemonic understandings in their students?

Event details:
This event will be held in the Frank Tate Room and will commence at 11:00am. Please register your attendance with Marie-Claire Moloney.

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28 April: PhD Completion Seminar, Indelible stains: researching pedagogy with/in spaces and tensions of an ethnographic study of learning to teach, Kim Ann Senior

Abstract:
Within a ‘Post-post’ (Lather 2006, 2007) feminist positioning, this thesis illuminates living pedagogy with its complexity and incompleteness. Working through a qualitative social sciences approach the purpose of this research is to traverse theory in a way of ‘coming to know’ (Britzman, 2003, p.26) how to speak/write of pedagogy. The thesis offers another way of engaging in ethnographic research to resist the reductive and abrade the hegemonic relationships between reading/writing/drawing,absence/presence, image/text and researcher/researched.  Set in a government secondary school in Victoria, Australia, over one academic year, twenty-five Year 8 and 9 high school students and a cohort of twenty-five student teachers (Diploma of Education and Bachelor of Education) explored issues of teaching and learning, curriculum and assessment. Positioned as Knowers, the Year 8 and Year 9 students were asked to act as mentors to the university students. All students (school and university based) involved in this cohort were invited to become co-researchers in the process of learning to teach. By the end of the year, thirteen student mentors and thirteen student teachers and a teacher educator colleague contributed to the research. A bricolage of critical discourse analysis, visual analysis and reflexive interpretation were brought to the data analysis. The analysis is generative, non-linear and multi-layered. The manga is assembled from amongst a collection of over five hundred digital photographs that are interwoven with fragments of emails, letters and notes to tell an uneasy ‘story’ of pedagogy.

Event details:
This event will be held in the Frank Tate Room and will commence at 5:00pm. Please register your attendance with Marie-Claire Moloney.

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28 April: Colloquium, Signs of China, Dr Trevor Hay and Wang Yong Yang

Abstract:
An exploration of images/perceptions of China that are apparent (or maybe not apparent) in Chinese literature for Chinese, for learners of Chinese as a second language and in ‘intercultural’ literature in English about China. The talk will focus on cultural identity as perceived and portrayed through literature and the uses of literature in the transmission of traditional and contemporary culture. Wang Yongyang (Catherine Wang) is academic programs manager for the Confucius Institute. She recently completed her PhD on uses of literature in the curriculum for teaching Chinese to second language learners. She is currently working with Trevor on a number of joint publications in this area. Trevor Hay has been studying, researching and writing on China for many years, and has written 3 books and numerous short stories about China.. He recently contributed to an award winning reference on Asian theatre.

Event details:
This event will be held in the Frank Tate Room and will commence at 5:00pm. Please register your attendance with Marie-Claire Moloney.

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12 May: Colloquium, Artistic partnerships in the music classroom: What is sustainable? , Dr Neryl Jeanneret and Mr Andrew Swainston

Abstract:
This presentation reports on two artist-in-schools projects, one of which focussed on Australian Aboriginal music in a secondary school and the other on Indonesian music in a primary school. Both programs were “successful” in their implementation and outcomes, but one more so than the other, especially when considering the issue of sustainability. The content and delivery of the programs are outlined and then analysed and compared in relation to Ofali’s (2004) models of artists working in schools.

Event details:
This event will be held in the Frank Tate Room and will commence at 5pm. Please register your attendance with Marie-Claire Moloney.

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2 May: PhD Confirmation Seminar, Nourishing the seed: a case study of an inner city Uniting Church of Australia arts/spirituality mission, Wendy Hopkinson

Abstract:
This project aims to examine the adult learning for all those involved with the arts/spirituality programmes which are offered as a form of community outreach (i.e. mission) at Richmond Uniting Church. The research will involve an ethnographic case study and participants of the study will include the programme presenters, learners and stakeholders. These arts/spirituality classes offer the participants the possibility of becoming more in touch with their creative core and the spirit that inspires them. The classes are not widely advertised nor are they structured for marginalized members of the community as are many community outreach efforts. This study aims to identify the benefits and negatives of the participants’ experiences and to consider the value of such programmes as a form of mission. Hopefully the identification of worthwhile outcomes could be beneficial for justifying other community based arts programmes.

Event details:
This event will be held in the Frank Tate Room and will commence at 5pm. Please register your attendance with Marie-Claire Moloney.

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23 May: Colloquium, Assessment feedback: What do pre-service education students at the University of Melbourne prefer?, Dr Peter Ferguson

Abstract:
This presentation is a report on a survey of 465 graduate students (Dip Ed and BTch) and 101 undergraduate students (BEd) studying in the respective teacher education courses at the University of Melbourne in 2007. The aim of the study was to investigate what students believed about type, quantity and quality of assessment feedback they would like to receive from lecturers and tutors. It examined how assessment feedback and its procedures might be improved in the undergraduate and graduate education courses by asking students what their preferences for feedback would be. There are some studies (e.g. Brown, 2007; Case, 2007; Weaver, 2006; Hounsell et al, 2005; Higgins, Hartley & Skelton, 2001) conducted on assessment feedback in HE. Some of this research indicates the presence of an association between students’ perceptions of assessment feedback and their grade. Research generally into assessment would suggest that feedback strategies are a very important component of the assessment process. However, in a recent study on undergraduate university students, Sinclair and Cleland (2007) found that less than half of the students (46%) actually collected their formative feedback. Although from personal experience I would predict that the figure is lower here at the University of Melbourne, it is still a significant percentage. The data reported on in this paper was collected by means of pen and paper survey and attempted to find out which feedback strategies the students perceived to be the most effective for them, particularly within the context of large cohort teaching. Findings suggested that students did have clear preferences in terms of assessment feedback processes and strategies. The presentation reports upon this collective view as well as more individual issues highlighted by students. Hopefully the findings will help staff choose strategies that provide a closer match to student preferences and expectations.

Event details:
This event will be held in the Frank Tate Room and will commence at 1pm. Please register your attendance with Marie-Claire Moloney.

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12 June: PhD Confirmation Seminar, Let’s Act Now – Identifying strategies for helping Indigenous students engage and succeed in further education and training, Ms Rosemary Blight

Abstract:
This research is based on a creative drama project “Let’s Act Now” which has been developing at Nungalinya College, Casuarina, Darwin since March 2006. The central research questions are: To what extent might Drama, as a creative methodology, positively impact on Indigenous students and extend their capacity to engage and succeed in further education and training, and if it does so, how does it? What are the characteristics, constraints and limitations of using successful Drama programs for Indigenous students?

In 2005 a nine month pilot project for marginalized indigenous teenage girls was established at Nungalinya College, which is a partnership of the Anglican, Catholic and Uniting Churches and plays a significant national role in the education of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The courses offered by Nungalinya are designed at the request of Indigenous communities, and are developed through close consultation with Aboriginal people.

The presentation will highlight some aspects of the research to date, having completed the initial pilot Drama program in 2006 following with a major research program in 2007.

Event details:
This event will be held in The Alice Hoy Building, Room 333 and will commence at 1pm. Please register your attendance with Marie-Claire Moloney.

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12 June: PhD Confirmation Seminar, Kwathi ke kaloku ngantsomi: Developing academic writing through accessing oral art forms, Carol Carter

Abstract:
The purpose of this research is to investigate the role that educational drama can play in bridging the gap between students’ informal knowledge of writing and the more formal academic writing requirements of a university. I aim to access culturally specific oral art forms, using drama contexts, to develop academic writing. South African indigenous oral art forms, which I am familiar with, will be used where applicable, as well as culturally specific oral art forms which research participants bring to the research process.

The research design of this study combines both quantitative and qualitative data within a participatory action research approach. ‘Arts-based research’ will be employed within the action research process, using drama forms as a way of investigating as well as representing findings. This proposed investigation seeks to contribute to learning and teaching methods within higher education that encourage active, experiential learning and have moved away from ‘dysfunctional conventional university pedagogical approaches...created centuries ago’ (Levin and Greenwood 2006: 103).

Event details:
This event will be held in The Alice Hoy Building, Room 333 and will commence at 1pm. Please register your attendance with Marie-Claire Moloney.

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24 July: Colloquium, Made for Each Other: Creative Arts and Sciences, Professor Shirley Brice Heath

Abstract:
Professor Brice Heath will explore the commonalities among studios, laboratories, and rehearsal zones, investigating the natural but often unnoticed links between sciences and arts. The presentation is based on her research in a secondary school in the UK.

Professor Shirley Brice Heath, Margery Bailey Professor of English and Dramatic Literature at Stanford, is a linguistic anthropologist whose primary interests are oral and written language, youth development, race relations, and organizational learning. . She is also an unashamed advocate of the importance of the arts in education. She is the author of the prize-winning book Ways with Words: Language, life, and work in communities and classrooms (1983) and co-editor of Identity and Inner-city Youth: Beyond ethnicity and gender (1993), as well as several other books and over 100 articles and book chapters. She is widely known for her work with young people as co-researchers in the townships of Johannesburg, South Africa, as well as economically disadvantaged communities of the United States. She is in Australia as Keynote Speaker for the Re-imagining Special Education through Arts and Arts Therapy Symposium.

Event details:
This event will be held in Frank Tate Room, Alice Hoy Building and will commence at 5pm. Please register your attendance with Marie-Claire Moloney.

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4 August: Book Launch, Music Time! Discover Things!, Dr Ros McMillan

Abstract:
Due to the vagaries of the Victorian government’s policy on arts education, generalist primary teachers are expected to be competent to teach at least two of the art-forms of dance, drama, music and visual arts no matter what background they have. However, the thought of teaching music is something that strikes fear in the hearts of many primary teacher trainees, not helped, no doubt, by their own memories of classroom music as well as a popular belief that one cannot engage in the performance of music without formal study. Contrary to this belief, ideas will be presented in this colloquium that show how students of all ages and abilities can participate in exhilarating and fulfilling music-making if they are encouraged to create their own sounds. Ways of linking musical concepts with Key Learning Areas such as Science and English and the other Arts strands of Drama, Dance and Visual Arts will also be discussed, while Grades 1 and 2 students from a local primary school will demonstrate some of these ideas at a practical level..

Dr Ros McMillan is a Senior Fellow in Artistic and Creative Education within the Faculty of Education in the University of Melbourne. This appointment was made followed her retirement as Head of Music Education at the University in December 2004 where she was a staff member for 20 years (1984-2004). Prior to this Ros was Director of Music at PLC for 13 years (1974-1987) and Director of the Yamaha Music Foundation of Australia and first Australian Yamaha teacher (1970-1974). Following her retirement from the teaching staff she was commissioned by Hal Leonard Australia to write teacher workbooks for the four levels of primary schooling that included ideas specifically linking music with KLAs other than The Arts, such as Science, English and Health and PE, and the other Arts areas of Dance, Drama and Visual Arts.

RSVP:
Please register your attendance with Marie-Claire Moloney. for catering purposes.

Time and Location:
This event will be held in the Frank Tate Room on Monday 4 August between 5:00pm - 7:00pm