You are here

Enhancing Learning in the Arts: A Professional Development Resource

What is happening in arts teaching and learning in our classrooms? Recent NEMP reports tell us that Year 4 students are not performing well but that there is an increase in scores at Year 8.

This new professional development resource builds on research into teacher practice in Years 0–6 classrooms in New Zealand primary schools. It offers new insights into teaching the arts, challenging teachers to confirm, interrogate, and disrupt established rituals of practice.

There are some big questions. Why teach the arts? What do children bring to the arts? How do we currently teach the arts? How do we develop ideas in the arts? Rich examples from visual art, music, drama, and dance provide the stimulus for discussion in response to these questions.

The key competencies are signalled throughout this book, showing how the arts contribute to their development.

Enhancing Learning in the Arts, with its companion CD-ROM (for PC and Mac), is an essential resource for all primary schools.

This resource was funded in 2007 by the Beeby Fellowship, a joint initiative of the New Zealand Council for Educational Research and the New Zealand Commission for UNESCO