The main concern of this article is to introduce the concept of the authentic gesture as a vital, largely self-determined expression of the child and to make it fruitful for art education. Because of the assumed educational importance of the concept, some hints to other learning areas will also be given. This should be done from a historical and…

Enhancing our knowledge about students' experiences during their studies in higher music education is essential to understand and support them as they cope with their specific workloads in studying music. This study provides a research-based understanding of what engaging in music means to music students when they reflected on their experiences of…

Black women in higher education are situated in a hegemonic, white, patriarchal context of academia. Despite staff and faculty attempts to support students utilizing foundational theories of student development, these efforts still reinforce controlling stereotypes of Black women and (re)subjugate them to a tumultuous existence in the academy as…

Enhancing our understanding of students' experiences during their studies in higher music education is essential to supporting them as they cope with their specific workloads in studying music. This study provides a detailed description of and model for how music students' lived experiences can be approached and analysed through transcendental…

Ofsted, the inspection authority in England, has told schools to ensure that all students have access to cultural capital, taken as a canon of music, literature and art. In this paper, we trouble this guidance by analysing conversations with 1447 senior secondary students. The students reported that the arts offered considerable personal benefits,…

In this paper, the author considers the contribution of creativity to pastoral care in education. Since its advent in English schools in the early 1970s, pastoral care has placed the affective realm and individual enrichment centre stage in both its curriculum aims and teaching approaches. These principles have, however, had much to contend with…

Scholars are calling increasingly for educational reform to embed meaningful out-of-class events in the current curriculum, in order to enhance students' generic competency development. Towards this goal, featuring self-confidence as an important generic competency, this mixed-method study explores key characteristics of extracurricular activities…

The present study examined whether and to what degree empathy increased in adolescents who participated in a high-intensity writing program over the course of a year. Data for this study came from writing samples of a randomly selected group of middle-grade students (n = 61) collected at three different time points to answer whether: (1) it was…

People express part of their identity through their style, gestures, speech patterns, and language use. Other people read these displays as presentations of ourself, an insight into who we are. It is important, therefore, for students to recognize their own performance of identity and be able to express that identity in a clear way. By focusing on…

This article reports on the student benefits of a school-based Hip Hop and beat making program. While a significant amount of literature has reported the benefits of Hip Hop programs in North American schools, comparatively little is known about the benefits of such programs in the Australian context. Using an ethnographic approach, this study…

I have worked with students at-risk for the greater majority of my career. The term has a number of meanings. Officially, it means they are at-risk of failing, but often the risks are much greater. At one extreme they are at-risk of losing their lives to substance abuse or suicide. Less drastically they are at-risk of making their way through the…

A sandtray group experience is a creative intervention that counselors may want to incorporate into their work with adolescents. This qualitative inquiry explored the experiences of adolescent females who participated in a sandtray group while attending an alternative school. The researchers identified five themes that emerged from the data: (a)…

This study sought to determine how identification and engagement with the hip hop culture influenced the educational experiences of undergraduate students at a Midwestern, predominately White university by interviewing 11 students who self-identified as being immersed in the hip hop culture. Through a qualitative, phenomenological investigation,…

The purpose of this interpretive study was to understand how students made sense of their experiences in a technology-based youth development program. This study was framed by James P. Connell and Michelle A. Gambone's, Community Action Framework for Youth Development, conceptual model for understanding youth development that identifies the…

In this qualitative study of a girls only technology program, the authors argue that an emphasis of self-expression through the use of technology limited middle school girls' developing technological fluency. The authors show how the metaphor of "technology as a paintbrush" was evident in (1) the organization of the physical environment…