Peter Wright PhD

Mobile learning is not pervasive in higher education and yet its potential is enormous. This paper describes a project to instigate mobile learning in a School of Education using a whole-of-school approach to technological literacy and professional learning among academic staff. The project involves supporting every academic in the School to use an iPhone or iPodTouch in their professional lives, and to research their use of the device in pedagogical contexts. The paper describes the planning process together with the professional development initiatives to be implemented and issues associated with the acquisition and use of mobile phones in professional contexts.

This paper will describe a 3 year research project with marginalised and disenfranchised young people based in rural and regional Tasmania. In this project arts skills and processes where used to develop various forms of performance texts. These texts became the basis of a series of radio plays and performance projects with the objective of developing intergenerational relationships, promoting social inclusion and building identity. The research revealed how performative means can: • unleash creativity • expand horizons • build social bonds • create a sense of common experience • re-engage people experiencing dislocation and isolation with communities around them • provide pathways back to education and into employment • provide vitality to communities and quality of life. It is these artistic processes that allow young people to CELEBRATE (the present), HONOUR (the past), and ENVISION (the future).

Students entering primary teaching programs at Murdoch University have consistently shown anxiety about teaching the arts. They indicate a lack of content knowledge, artistic experiences and pedagogical understanding to effectively teach the arts in schools. The authors report on introducing students to active, hands-on, practical and embodied learning; model "studio thinking" (Hetland et al) and focus on arts practice and aesthetic understanding.

As part of a National Review of Visual Education, commissioned by the Australian Government, research in Australia, informed by international research and scholarship, revealed that education in the visual is transforming. This process of transformation is driven by changing contexts in technology, curriculum, social, economic and political forces and research itself. The process is changing what is happening in Australian classrooms. Analyses of the process reveal a number of principles for a re-designed Education in the Visual. The process also presents implications for Visual Educators, curriculum designers, schools and teacher education programs.

As digital technology and globalisation not only reshape the way we work but also how we conceive, think, experience and act, Visual Education emerges as a field of education that conceptually and organisationally responds to these new developments. Visual Education essentially unifies traditional and emerging disciplines by the primacy of the visual. It recognises that today's students increasing need to be visual proficient within an understanding of aesthetic, artistic and cultural concepts, in order to function in the contemporary world. Our capacity to deliver Visual Education depends on the capacities of teachers, with those working in the fields of visual arts, design and media having a particular contribution to make. This paper is based on research completed for the National Review of Education in Visual Arts, Craft, Design and Visual Communication. It focuses on the quality of teacher education for Visual Education, with particular reference to visual arts, design and media teachers. It establishes the significance of this cluster of teachers and examines how well teacher education and development is supporting teachers' capacities to visually educate students. It argues that teachers relied on for growing Visual Education, particularly in Early Childhood and Primary school settings, are under-prepared and under-supported.

If we want our emerging art educators to embrace an approach to art education that acknowledges the cultural significance of art, it behoves teacher education courses to demonstrably do likewise. In Western Australia, two universities have successfully implemented programs that provide the opportunity for student-teachers to have direct professional experience of the broader cultural and community context within which art education occurs. These programs require student-teachers to utilise their art and education skills to undertake specific relevant projects in partnership arrangements with a range of art and community organizations. The feedback from student-teachers and their hosts is routinely positive. Recent research has also shown that partnership arrangements are one of the hallmarks of good quality art education (Bamford 2005), so the use of partnerships in teacher education provides good modelling for these future art teachers too. This presentation will outline the principles of these teacher-education innovations and showcase several student-teacher projects.