Georgina Barton

University of Southern Queensland · Faculty of Education

The chapter examines the role of language, literacy and literature in developing creative and critical thinkers, making strong claims for the political importance of English. We share accounts from Australian secondary English teachers regarding their perspectives on how an English curriculum can support young people to become creative and critical...

Purpose Faced with increasing systemic constraints and pressures, secondary school English teachers often implement transactional approaches to pedagogy and curriculum aimed at improving student results on external exams, which are then used to rank schools. Despite the pressure to teach this way, teachers acknowledge the power of literature, liter...

Young people engage daily with various social media platforms to communicate with one another across the globe. Adolescents not only share text, but also use images and sound to express themselves on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok to provide access to user-created content. The recent emergence of InstaPoetry-poetry with images on Instagram-...

This study examined the piloting of a literacy, arts and wellbeing (LAB) project in a rural school in Queensland, Australia. The research involved a Year 1 class ( n = 24) participating in co-designed lessons with their classroom teacher and two visiting researchers from a regional university. These lessons were developed with literacy learning out...

The work of contemporary teacher educators in university contexts is under increasing political and public scrutiny as the focus on Initial Teacher Education (ITE) reform intensifies. Consequently, there are growing concerns for teacher educators’ wellbeing amidst escalating expectations and pressures. While research has explored the wellbeing of u...

This chapter shares theoretical and practical insights into how educators might understand and enact assessment within APP environments. We view assessment as a way of understanding students’ progress in, and through, learning. Of utmost importance in such an approach is student voice and choice. We argue that students should not only have agency i...

Aesthetic Positive Pedagogy (APP) is an approach in education that values and prioritises all students’ strengths and virtues. In this chapter, we argue for the need for educators, schools and systems to consider implementing APP given the many challenges children and young people are facing in their lives. APP provides an opportunity for hope and...

COVID-19 catapulted education into a new era as early learning centres, schools, training institutions and higher education providers closed their doors and pivoted to online learning. While many institutions have returned predominantly to ‘business as usual’ post peak-pandemic, learning providers now maintaining and building their online learning...

In this chapter, we provide an in-depth explanation of Aesthetic Positive Pedagogy and the unique contribution it can make to the many challenges facing education. The chapter begins with a reflective invitation for the reader to consider why they chose teaching as a profession as well as how they currently feel as a teacher. We then discuss the no...

This chapter will explore the implementation of Aesthetic Positive Pedagogy (APP) in higher education contexts, based on findings from reflective studies of our own experiences as higher educators. It begins with some of the challenges higher educators might face when teaching in university within an era of neoliberal rationalisation. We explore ho...

Chapters 1 and 2 provided insights into foundational pedagogies from which APP has evolved. Understandably, Aesthetic Education has been heavily drawn upon in developing APP. As such, we highlight studies in Aesthetic Education including early doctoral work and the work of Maxine Greene and John Dewey. We also explore contemporary research driving...

This chapter will share data from several research projects conducted in schools. Each of the projects related to the teaching of literacy through the arts. The process used in each classroom was Aesthetic Positive Pedagogy. Students were therefore encouraged to lead the learning through their own voice and choice. Students ranged from ages 6–13 an...

The final chapter of the book provides reflective provocations to aid readers in considering ‘where to from here’. We also share our own reflections on our work and careers through metaphorical artworks. We both created a piece to represent our feelings about the importance of APP in educational contexts in the hope that many educators ‘take it up’...

Primary school teachers in Thailand are encouraged to u se English as a language of instruction across a ll curriculum areas in their classrooms, not just in English lessons. However, many non-English major teachers who teach in rural schools struggle to deliver lessons in English due to the lack of professional knowledge and ongoing support for En...

Doctoral studies can be daunting unless candidates are able to implement effective self-directed strategies and motivational tools to ensure success, which is reflected in the high attrition rates of doctoral candidates globally. This paper explores the use of a learning management system (LMS) to support the completion of a PhD for a doctoral cand...

Purpose Employee satisfaction is critical in any workplace. Research suggests that the environment that people work in can contribute greatly to levels of satisfaction as well as productivity. Limited research exists, however, on how the aesthetics of a workplace impact both employee satisfaction and well-being. This paper aims to identify whether...

Teaching writing is complex and research related to approaches that support students’ understanding and outcomes in written assessment is prolific. Written aspects including text structure, purpose, and language conventions appear to be explicit elements teachers know how to teach. However, more qualitative and nuanced elements of writing such as a...

Aesthetics is a broad topic viewed from a number of perspectives. This paper understands aesthetics to involve beauty and design, and it is used to communicate meaning, particularly in multimodal texts. Knowledge of aesthetics is necessary for effective communication both during and post-schooling as many professions use aesthetics in their line of...

High-quality children's literature, including picturebooks, are important resources in the classroom for students to engage with complex and sometimes concerning contemporary issues. One strategy to involve students in learning about such issues is through the use of metafictive devices, which are literary stratagems that draw readers into knowing...

Throughout 2020, the world was significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the context of higher education, the pandemic critically affected professional experience, a core component of teacher education. This paper shares data from a large-scale survey about teachers’ sense of self-efficacy and the impact of COVID-19 on professional experi...

This chapter covers important information related to key terms including aesthetics, Aesthetics Education, and aesthetic literacies. The chapter provides an overview of why it is important for children and young people to learn about aesthetics and the literacies associated with this learning. Given the uncertainty in today’s world, it is critical...

Research in the field of education has explored how different spaces influence learning and teaching. In addition, aesthetics within these educational spaces have been noted to influence learning positively. Not only is space important to consider in learning contexts, but the ways in which people treat, value and respect each other within these ca...

Aesthetic literacies involve a certain way of thinking about learning. It has been noted that aesthetics feature in our everyday lives and importantly they are needed in schooling and work. This chapter covers how aesthetic literacies can be conceptualised in educational contexts and research through the lens of New Literacies Studies (NLS). It wil...

Given aesthetic literacies are in the curriculum it is important for teachers to know how to both teach and assess aesthetic literacies within their classrooms as already highlighted in this book very little is known about how, when, and why teachers need to teach aesthetic literacies. This chapter, therefore, explores ways in which teachers can co...

This chapter explores the concepts of Aesthetics Education and aesthetic literacies. It describes the benefits of Aesthetics Education for young children including social and emotional development. The notions of aesthetic inquiry and reasoning are also discussed. The chapter also argues that due to large advancements in communication and technolog...

Children and young people are living in the most difficult of times. Indeed, they have experienced many events that many of us could not even fathom 10 years ago. With the global pandemic, significant natural disasters due to climate change and human impact as well as civil unrest and conflict the world is a complex and challenging place. How then...

Aesthetics plays an important role in many professions, now more than ever. The development of many products, for example, requires in-depth knowledge of aesthetics, that is, how we present information, objects, and concepts. Without the knowledge of effective design, businesses may be at risk of losing millions of dollars as people will not purcha...

Dans cet article, nous présentons une analyse réflexive et théorique de l’utilisation d’Instagram comme catalyseur à la production de textes poétiques au secondaire, à l’issue d’un projet de recherche subventionné par le Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada. Nous nous penchons sur l’utilisation de la plateforme Instagram, en particu...

Teacher professional development in writing is an increasing area of interest due to the complex nature of the profession including learning needs of students and the demands of external assessment regimes in the contemporary landscape. However, professional development often denies the contextual experiences and expertise of teachers in favor of p...

Publishing in the academy is a high-stakes activity often used to measure academic staff progress and inform promotion. Many universities have increased pressure on academics, even at the earliest stages of their careers, to publish in high-ranking journals resulting in increased stress and uncertainty. The authors of this paper are members of a wr...

Many museum or art gallery visitors record their experience through social media platforms. Instagram is a case in point. Instagram is an application for mobile devices where people post images and comments, sharing their experiences in different places, with different people. This paper shares data from a project exploring people’s art gallery vis...

The ways in which we communicate have expanded substantially. Not only are we expected to read and create print-based text but also those that include images and other modes. To effectively make meaning from contemporary texts, students need to know about aesthetics, that is, how various texts are appreciated and presented. However, evidence sugges...

The ways in which we approach the process of writing can tell us much about our confidence, linguistic and textual knowledge, and our desire to please self or others through language. School writing often focuses on the process and product of writing, rather than the conditions that shape how we make decisions when writing for an authentic purpose...

Dans cet article, nous présentons une analyse réflexive et théorique de l’utilisation d’Instagram comme catalyseur à la production de textes poétiques au secondaire, à l’issue d’un projet de recherche subventionné par le Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada. Nous nous penchons sur l’utilisation de la plateforme Instagram, en particu...

For many international students the prospect of employment in overseas locations post-study is a strong desire. The concept of employability has infiltrated the literature but little is known about how volunteering experiences might impact international students’ preparedness for work placement during their programs of study. Using theoretical fram...

Academics face many challenges throughout their careers, and reflection is noted to be crucial in addressing these issues. This chapter shares how an early career researcher and a professor used arts-based practices to explore the competitive and demanding culture as female academics in higher education. The study draws on the 4Rs Model of Reflecti...

Despite the importance of writing skills to school and life success, there is scant research into the enabling and constraining conditions that shape elementary students’ views about their writing practices. This paper examines students’ views about writing through the lens of reflexivity theory. Applying an explanatory sequential model of mixed-me...

This paper works on the premise that classroom talk conveys meaning about students as writers and asks how classroom talk facilitates the formation of students’ identities as writers. We present findings from an ethnographic investigation of elementary writing lessons across six participant schools in Australia. Our data analysis is informed by two...

The pedagogical approaches of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) have both recently been trending in educational contexts but there is still little evidence highlighting the benefits of such approaches. However, there is evidence to suggest that the term STEAM h...

Music is learned and taught in multiple ways dependent on the socio-cultural contexts in which learning occurs. The processes employed by music teachers have been extensively explored by music educators and ethnomusicologists in a range of contexts, although there has been limited research into which modes are most predominantly used in different s...

Writing requires a high level of nuanced decision-making related to language, purpose, audience, and medium. Writing teachers thus need a deep understanding of language, process, and pedagogy, and of the interface between them. This article draws on reflexivity theory to interrogate the pedagogical priorities and perspectives of 19 writing teachers...

Research in a broad range of disciplines has explored how specific modes of communication can contribute to meaning-making in diverse texts such as picture books, films, short animated features, and to a lesser extent video games. Fields such as literacy, semiotics, and critical communication studies have aimed to reveal different interpretative po...

Reflection, reflective thinking and reflexivity have received significant attention in the scholarly literature on higher education yet there is limited research that explores these concepts in relation to international students. This paper consequently explores what reflection and reflective thinking might look and feel like for international stud...

This paper reports on an arts-based research study that aimed to support international students to reflect on their studies and personal working lives during the COVID-19 global pandemic. The authors implemented a reflective process involving mindfulness and body mapping to support international students in expressing their experiences and feelings...

The International Student Barometer indicates international students’ interest in work experience, career advice and employment post-study. A necessary skill for all graduates is the ability to be able to reflect on and in professional practice, yet there is limited research that explores reflection, the teaching of reflective thinking, and reflexi...

Donald Graves’ visit to Australia in 1980 was the catalyst for ongoing work in the area of process writing. In this book 33 chapter authors from Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States share effective and empowering writing pedagogy – some reflecting back on much of the good thinking that has happened over the past 40...

This chapter explains what skills are needed for reading success. It highlights the Simple View of Reading and its core components, word recognition and language comprehension, and how it may be used as a guiding framework across different year levels to describe students’ reading abilities and/or difficulties, plan subsequent intervention, and mon...

This chapter describes the results of the Year 4 student responses to the Reading Self-Concept Scale (RSCS; Chapman & Tunmer, 1995). It then outlines three case studies that include data from interviews carried out with students involved in the programme. These students were selected on the basis of their low responses on the RSCS, regardless of th...

In this chapter, we provide three case studies of students with different reading profiles. We demonstrate how using the five-step assessment to intervention approach explained in Chap. 2 assists in creating a detailed profile of each student’s strengths and weaknesses in spoken and written language skills that are needed for successful reading com...

This chapter describes the Reading Success results across the year groups and compares the students’ performance on the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension (YARC) with results from school-based reading measures. For students in their learning to read phase (Year 1), we also report their Year 2 results. For students in their reading to lear...

This chapter describes the methodology used in the Reading Success project. We start by briefly describing the school’s context, including the student cohorts who were involved in the project. The specific qualitative data collection methods relating to existing school initiatives for improving the reading performance of their students are then des...

This chapter describes four evidence-based intervention initiatives at three levels of instruction (whole class, small group, and individual): (a) Robust Vocabulary Instruction was provided in Year 5 classrooms by the classroom teachers with support from the speech pathologist; (b) small-group intervention targeting expository structure was provide...

This chapter starts by outlining what we have learned from the Reading Success project. Based on a summary of the main findings from the Reading Success project, we then consider ways in which the Reading Success project findings and practices shared in this book may be transferable to other contexts. We offer recommendations for best practice for...

For the past three years over 400,000 international students have enrolled annually to study in higher education contexts in Australia (Australian Government, 2019). The extensiveness of international student enrolments has been equalled to Australia’s third highest export industry after coal and iron ore (Grewal & Blakkarly, 2017). Given the signi...

Effective assessment design and subsequent assessment practices are essential for student success in the higher education sector. A plethora of research on assessment in higher education exists which tends to focus primarily on the student experience. This paper shares results from a 3 phased study that explored staff perceptions related to assessm...

Much literacy research has explored how young people’s literacy practices at home and in their communities may be more diverse and engaging than those experienced at school. What is less known is how the skills learnt through these diverse literacy practices may contribute to building early adolescents’ personal and social capabilities. This paper...

Adolescence is a developmental phase during which young people experience profound physical, emotional and social changes. The diversity and complexity of these changes has increased exponentially over the last 20 years. The arts provide important opportunities to enhance the resilience of adolescents with the benefits of engagement including impro...

In this chapter we present a summary of seven positive influences on resilience and well-being that are identified within the research presented in the preceding chapters. We theorise that arts-based research methods: provide agency through the foregrounding of participants’ voices; afford transformational learning opportunities; create opportuniti...

Resilience and well-being are critical attributes for survival in today’s world. Often people face many challenges in the home, workplace environments and/or educational institutions. This chapter will introduce and theorise key concepts such as resilience, well-being and reflection. It will advocate for arts-based approaches to researching these c...

This book investigates how arts-based research methods can positively influence people’s resilience and well-being, particularly in constraining environments. Using examples from arts-based research methods in different contexts and from across the globe, the book brings together a diverse range of perspectives to understand how both resilience and...

This open access book describes the Reading Success project, in which a 5-step, assessment-to- intervention process, based on the Simple View of Reading, was used within a primary school setting in Australia to better support those students who struggle with reading. It provides an easily accessible overview of each step of the process involved in...

The recasting of education as an economic rather than a social good means that governments around the world will continue to pursue agendas to show that schooling systems are effective in raising standards. Literacy is a key area of comparison on the world stage, placing literacy educators under enormous pressure to perform in this culture of accou...

Purpose Working in the academy can be both challenging and exciting as it can be trying and difficult to negotiate if one is unprepared. Past research has acknowledged the importance of reflective practice in order to face such trials positively. This study utilises arts-based/multimodal reflection to contemplate the lived experience of one early c...

Compassion and empathy are attributes that are critical for productive and supportive classrooms. They are also important qualities for the world outside of the classroom. An effective way of encouraging compassionate and empathetic thinking and actions with students in schools is through the use of quality picture books. Many children’s books deal...

Compassion and empathy are important attributes in supporting social and cultural cohesion, yet there is limited research on how we can teach compassion and empathy in schools. Similarly, it is important to show compassion and empathy towards teachers in supporting their everyday work in a complex world. This chapter therefore shares past research...

This international collection discusses how the individualised, reflexive, late modern era has changed the way we experience and act on our feelings. Divided into four sections that include studies ranging across multiple continents and centuries, Emotions in Late Modernity: Demonstrates an increased awareness and experience of emotional complexity...

This book explores the importance of compassion and empathy within educational contexts. While compassion and empathy are widely recognised as key to living a happy and healthy life, there is little written about how these qualities can be taught to children and young people, or how teachers can model these traits in their own practice. This book s...

Music and sound contributions of interpersonal meaning to film narratives may be different from or similar to meanings made by language and image, and dynamic interactions between several modalities may generate new story messages. Such interpretive potentials of music and voice sound in motion pictures are rarely considered in social semiotic inve...

Teaching is a complex profession, and it can have a significant impact on teachers' wellbeing. Awareness of personal and contextual factors that support resilience can help to improve teachers' wellbeing and counter burnout. Three case studies are presented to illustrate how arts-based reflection helped the participants to identify and express thei...