arts education

drama syllabus

Dramatic setback: Why the newly drafted senior drama syllabus falls short of a quality creative arts education

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The NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) just released new draft senior Creative Arts syllabuses for Year 11 and Year 12 students, including the drama syllabus. The announcement comes as part of raft of changes following the NSW Curriculum Review, ambitiously titled Nurturing Wonder and Igniting Passion. 

Among the new draft syllabuses, the subject of senior drama received its first major revamp since 2009. This means that the current opportunity for enhancing drama curriculum is momentous.

This curriculum review represented a potential step towards elevating the status of drama in schools and society. Drama is, after all, is one of the most important subjects in preparing students for the world of work.  The draft review fails drama and drama students.

Your chance to evaluate

Teachers, academics and other stakeholders now have the chance to evaluate the proposed drama syllabus in a formal consultation period that ends on 20 December 2024.

However, the interim reaction among stakeholders is mostly negative. Educators are dissatisfied and disappointed. The refined content reduces rather than strengthens the learning opportunities necessary for delivering a quality drama (and creative arts) education. This issue starts at a policy level and extends well beyond the decision-making practices of any school leaders and teachers. 

A dramatic cut 

The elimination of the HSC Group Performance examination is the most significant notable change. What’s in its place? An internally assessed rather than externally examined ensemble piece. This shift devalues the Group Performance as a major work that requires students to collaborate to devise an original piece of theatre. 

For many teachers and students, this component of HSC drama is the preeminent experience because of the intellectual demand and corroboration of knowledge and skills in making, performing and appreciating drama. It is also a vital means to valuing actor-audience relationships and honouring communication and storytelling through the relay of meaning in real time.

The devaluing of this core component of the existing drama syllabus is a threat to the craft of drama. It produces an overreliance on prescribed content and leaves fewer legitimate opportunities to showcase the dramatic arts as intended through style or form, role and character, and structure and action. 

It also signals cost-cutting measures. Facilitating external examinations across the state of NSW is not inexpensive. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile. 

Elimination of choice

Additionally, the proposed drama syllabus eliminates choices for the Individual Project. This component of the drama course requires students to communicate a directorial vison for a key text through deep exploration and application of specialised knowledge and skills. Current project options are Director’s Folio, Portfolio of Theatre Criticism, Costume Design, Lighting Design, Promotion and Program Design, Set Design, Scriptwriting, Video Drama, and Performance. 

However, the draft syllabus cuts Director’s Folio, Lighting Design and Video Drama. These projects are three critically important parts for sustaining any theatrical tradition and the entertainment industry more broadly. 

A reduction of choice might seem small. But we cannot underestimate the value of enabling students to choose which content to pursue to nurture their creative abilities. Giving students choice in drama specifically provides a scope and flexibility that is rare among most subjects. It provides learning benefits such as skills in time-management, self-regulation, creative autonomy, and risk-taking. In a society that looks to encourage higher order thinking and creative skills, such a move is retrograde at best.

Missing the texture

The draft syllabus now states that “All Individual projects, excluding performance, will be submitted electronically to reflect industry practice and support best practice in marking processes” (see p. 9). Now, projects are packaged and posted, then sent through the mail for external examination. This process is necessary because the projects are tactile in nature; for example, costume design projects tend to use carefully chosen and delicate fabric swatches. 

Limiting the Individual Project to digital submissions impedes creative and aesthetic possibilities available to students and is a disservice to the art form. The justification that this change aligns with “industry practice” relies on using software programs that many schools simply cannot afford to purchase. And the point about “best practice in marking processes” is debatable. 

Eroding the arts by curriculum design

Unfortunately, arts subjects are usually first on the chopping block in schools (and universities). 

Recent research also reveals a worrying decline in the proportion of NSW public secondary students participating in creative arts courses in Years 10, 11 and 12. This includes dance, drama, music, visual arts, visual design, and photographic and digital media. 

But any view that arts subjects appear less popular or that students are abandoning arts subjects overlooks that they are ranked lowly in the status spectrum of school subjects. They are deliberately positioned as optional extras – ‘peripheral’ as opposed to so-called ‘core’ learning areas. This subject hierarchy means that students are rarely equipped to make informed choices about studying arts subjects (or not) due to a lack of quality learning experiences within arts subjects. 

Indeed, this curriculum context remains devastatingly unjust given a vast majority of Australian school students still have little or no access to quality arts education. It also neglects the inherent value and human need for the arts and goes against a growing body of research about the benefits of arts education. If we learnt one thing from the recent Pandemic, it was the need for all of us to engage and consume arts content in a time of isolation.

‘Revival’ of the arts in Australia?

Ironically, the federal Labor Government (2022) initiated changes on a policy front that position the arts as an important agenda. Specifically, the national policy, Revive, outlines five pillars designed to enhance the cultural ambitions of Australia over the next five years and beyond. They are:  

  • First Nations First;  
  • A Place for Every Story;  
  • Centrality of the Artist;  
  • Strong Cultural Infrastructure; and  
  • Engaging the Audience.  

These pillars provide a timely policy framework for rethinking the role of the arts in society and education, particularly for nurturing the lives, livelihoods, and wellbeing of people across the country. 

A degree of scepticism

However, this policy warrants a degree of scepticism. The focus on ‘revival’ conveys a need to restore resources and strategies that are deficient given deliberate attempts to erode them. 

The gap between national policy aspirations and the proposed curriculum changes to creative arts subjects such as drama has severe potential consequences for what students have the opportunity to learn in school, and the future possibilities available to them outside of school, in terms of employment or otherwise. 

The hearings of 2024 NSW Inquiry into Arts Education continually demonstrated the ongoing diminishment, paucity and degradation of the Creative Arts in schools; despite the wealth of talent in both staff, pupils, and the wider community. As educators we can choose to either focus on basic skills creating industrial automatons, or recognise the Arts as a key skill to empower articulate, inventive, and engaged future citizens. When students study the Creative Arts they succeed across all aspects of their education, and beyond.

Matthew Harper is an early career researcher in the Teachers and Teaching Research Centre at the University of Newcastle. Matt has collaborated with colleagues on a range of research exploring student aspirations, quality teaching in schools and higher education contexts, and curriculum and pedagogy theory and development. His doctoral research compared secondary mathematics and drama in the Australian schooling context.

David Roy is a lecturer and researcher in Education and Creative Arts at the University of Newcastle (AUS); and was formerly a teacher for 17 years. He uses his research to inform inclusion and equity practices across Australia, with a particular focus on children with a disability, policy, and engagement with the Arts.

arts education online

Is arts learning an emerging priority for your primary school?

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We know that learning the arts improves both student engagement and well-being. Students develop self-esteem, capacity to collaborate and share their emotions, all part of learning to  communicate and developing socialisation skills. 

The COVID-19 lockdowns in Australia forced families and teachers to rethink how children might learn, in new online contexts where the usual teacher/student and student/student relationships were disrupted by emergency remote learning and teaching. Our research was particularly concerned with approaches to teaching the arts online which enabled and facilitated connection and communication between students, and between teachers and students.

The whole family got involved

Anecdotally we heard about some innovative approaches adopted by primary teachers to engage students in online learning in the arts. In some cases whole families participated in the arts learning activity. While in some situations families had limited technology available at home some students took the opportunity to be fully engaged in an arts learning activity for most of a day, enjoying the opportunity to focus on something they loved without having to change what they were doing upon the ring of a bell.

Our research showed that teachers and parents had expressed hope that online arts learning could facilitate positive online learning experiences, particularly for those students who had encountered challenges in a face-to-face environment. Here is what we have found.

During the online learning periods music and visual arts were the most commonly studied artforms, dance and drama were next. Media arts was the least reported artform. For many students and teachers  online arts learning was an overwhelmingly negative experience. But, for some, the arts online experience was remarkably positive and social.

Sharing their work with others

Parents and teachers equally endorsed reasons children enjoyed activities with highest scores being for these reasons: sharing their work with other students; learning was fun and showing something they had made. 

Parents reported that students did not create something with other students, talk or send messages to other students while engaged in online arts learning activities. But, some teachers found their students did so. Both parents and teachers indicated students watched other students present their work. Parents and teachers reported examples of students exploring visual arts making techniques using materials around the home to create collages, paintings and puppets. Some students responded to dance and drama online learning activities by recording their own movement sequences and creating short drama scenes using imagined television interview scenarios. One activity involved students bringing their siblings and parents into the activity to self-tape a recreation of a moment from a movie for which they overlaid the recorded film soundtrack.

Recreating ET

One parent and their child particularly enjoyed recreating a classic moment from ET using family bicycles. Mobile phones were a useful device for students to record sounds in their own garden. Students then recorded themselves talking about the sounds using elements of music such as pitch, dynamics and texture. While students completed these tasks individually teachers found ways to share students’ work through online classes and gallery platforms. Students engaged with each other’s artworks through conversations in online classes.

The post-pandemic return to school and face-to-face teaching and learning saw both parents and teachers reporting that students were highly motivated to resume face-to-face arts learning. Students were keen to connect in person with their peers and teachers. They were motivated to collaborate on arts projects like music and drama. Students were actively seeking creativity in the classroom. The arts online did not necessarily create positive experiences for many students and teachers. But it did increase students’ recognition and eagerness to explore the arts in their classrooms. Many students had renewed enthusiasm upon returning to school. But some did not, and still may not have returned to school.

Through the emerging priorities program research into primary arts learning online we worked with teachers and artform researchers from across the country to develop digital exemplars of arts online learning activities that teachers can use with students in Years 1 and 2. Each activity scaffolds elements of the personal and social capability, one of the general capabilities in the Australian curriculum.

The museum of me

These digital exemplars recognise the complexity of teaching since the pandemic. They include ways to involve students who may be learning online with students who are in the classroom. Visual arts includes the museum of me where students collect, draw and talk about items that are important to them. The dance and music learning activities can be used separately or interconnected through the use of a song and dance movement from Ghana. The drama learning activities involve short scenarios in which students learn to observe and make characters and develop character status. The media arts activity uses the drama learning activity to explore how to use camera angles to represent character status.

The exemplars in each of the five art subjects: dance, drama, media arts, music and visual arts include links to online videos and downloadable lesson plans to assist teachers engage students through arts learning. How to give feedback is modelled for students across learning activities in each artform using three stems: One thing I appreciated – ; One thing I discovered -; One thing I am wondering -. For each artform the elements of the personal social capability and signature pedagogies are identified. The EPP Arts Learning Online digital resources are available online as a free resource. They provide 10 hours of online self-paced learning for teachers, pre-service teachers and interested parents and caregivers. The researchers are keen to receive feedback from people testing out the activities. The opportunities to provide feedback are embedded in the digital resource.

This research project was funded through the Commonwealth Department of Education Emerging Priorities Program.

Linda Lorenza is a senior lecturer in the CQUniversity School of Education and the Arts. She is Head of Course for the Bachelor of Theatre,  teaching theatre, acting and drama. Lorenza is a qualitative researcher and arts practitioner whose interests are in the performing arts, arts education, and applied arts in health and rehabilitation contexts. She is a chief investigator, with Don Carter, on the Emerging Priorities Program research into arts online learning.

Don Carter is an associate professor in the UTS School of International Studies and Education, he specialises in working with teachers to investigate innovative writing pedagogies to improve student performance and outcomes across the curriculum. Carter is a chief investigator, with Linda Lorenza, on the Emerging Priorities Program research into arts online learning.

arts education

Arts education: we fail our students with so many tests

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The Impoverishment of Standardised Learning 

In today’s educational climate, with its intense focus on raising standardised test scores, it seems like we have lost sight of nurturing the extensive human potentials of both our students and teachers. There is an ongoing fixation with individualised student-centred approaches, along with drilling basic competencies in reading, writing and maths. Approaches are increasingly narrowed to “teach to the test” to accommodate these high-stakes metrics.  The need to develop foundational skills is necessary, although rigid, utilitarian approaches can be ideological and problematic in many ways .

This includes the risk of depleting our capacities for original creative thinking, empathetic cross-cultural understanding, ethical reasoning and collaborative problem-solving. We fail to cultivate the diverse cognitive, emotional and social capabilities if education becomes transactional.

Human beings can’t truly flourish and thrive if it’s just about prescribed knowledge, regurgitated on exams or for tests,

Different ways of knowing

Current education approaches may allow students to complete well on tests (although various indicators suggest otherwise such as recent NAPLAN results), but it is not clear how it serves students to envision innovative solutions to complex issues or what Eisner alludes to as being able to  reconcile competing perspectives. The unprecedented socio-ecological challenges we face as a global society – from climate crises to technological disruption, systemic injustices and societal fragmentation – demand different  ways of knowing, being and doing that many of our current precision education approaches neglect.  Moving from individualised notions of education we need collaborative leaders able to synthesize insights across domains, embrace diverse worldviews and to ethically co-create inclusive, transformative possibilities. 

The Generative Power of Learning In and Through the Arts 

This is where facets of arts education across all levels of schooling provides powerful pathways for societal progress and human flourishing. An ever growing body of research reveals that learning in and through the arts awakens the full spectrum of human ways of knowing, exploration mindsets and personal growth preparing young people for success, both in school and in life while also enriching individual and community wellbeing.  Learning in the arts involves direct engagement with arts practices, developing skills and techniques in specific art forms, whereas learning through the arts involves using artistic methods as tools to understand and explore other academic subjects or concepts. 

Authentic self-expression

There is Ample evidence  to  support both intrinsic and instrumental benefits of the arts. That has been documented – for example Ewing’s arguments in   The Arts and Australian education: Realising potential ,  as well as the repository provided by the National Advocates for Arts Education (NAAE). And more, recently in the UK by National Society for Education in Art and Design (NSEAD) and The benefits of Art, Craft and Design education in schools A Rapid Evidence Review by Pat Thomson and Liam Maloy.   Within this evidence we continue to see how the arts through participatory inquiry and hands-on creation processes promote imaginative visioning, authentic self-expression, interpretive depth, cross-cultural understanding, empathy, and the persevering practice of manifesting new ideas into realised form. We also saw the power of the arts during the peak of the COVID wave .

Crucial experience

Engaging in arts practices and processes also nurtures innovative confidence in students, empowering them to develop unique perspectives and collaborative abilities. Students gain crucial experience exploring real-world complexity through multiple creative lenses, as well as synthesizing original interpretations that honour and amplify their authentic voices, visions and cultural identities. 

Unlike standardised testing environments that encourage regurgitation of prescribed “right” answers, collaborative and individual artmaking allows diverse individuals and communities to experience firsthand how engaging differing viewpoints through dialogue, cooperative creation and respectful exchange can generate multiple and new understandings and possibilities that transcend any single worldview. 

Promoting Teacher Agency to Guide Expressive Flourishing 

Teaching we know is an increasingly complex task. There are many imposed requirements that can impact how we might imagine the role of educators in adopting teaching approaches that are linked to learning in and through the arts.  It is also not clear in current education systems if we are encouraging or intentionally nurturing teachers’ own capacities to be creative and design immersive experiences that awaken students’ expressive capacities, intrinsic motivations and unique potentials to unveil new possibilities.

We know it is it possible for teachers through their facilitation of exploratory creative practice, that they can model the vital human dispositions that involve what Maxine Greene refers to as wide-awakeness or  what Biesta refer to as engaging in a conversation with the world. Though the arts we can support teachers to adopt practices like open-mindedness, ethical reasoning, self-actualization and comfort with ambiguity that become classroom norms.

Similarly with the current trend for teachers to work with colleagues as a member of a professional learning community (PLC), are they able to work cooperatively to design innovative, arts-integrated lessons to awaken students’ imaginative visioning abilities, critical consciousness, changemaking impulses and self-actualizing identities as bold co-creators of more beautiful realities.

Overcoming Barriers to an Arts-Driven Future 

Of course, such a radical shift that I’ve alluded to here, as have others before me, faces considerable systemic barriers in the form of ingrained institutional inertia, standardised testing regimes, and entrenched industrial mindsets around education’s purposes. Adopting arts-driven, creative inquiry-based teaching approaches will no doubt provoke fears and resistance from those invested in existing power structures and conventional teaching philosophies.

Dan Harris in a previous post in this blog has  spoken about the tensions between arts policy and education policy. However, as intensifying social and ecological pressures converge into existential crises, the vital necessity for human flourishing will only grow more urgently apparent. We know that intentionally integrating the arts provides an inclusive, expressive pathway for focusing on key aspects of education as well as promoting basic competencies. 

Collaborative wisdom

When prioritised, arts education provides the vital spark illuminating a way to both cultivate students’ and teachers’ expressive talents, ethical vision and skills for imaginatively co-creating new sustainable systems and worlds.

There are options here to nurture the collaborative wisdom so urgently needed to navigate our era’s unprecedented planetary tests and initiate long overdue systemic transformations. Yet the evidence related to the power of arts education seems to be ignored or sidelined and instead the focus of education remains on testing.  

Mark Selkrig is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne. His research and scholarly work focus on the changing nature of educators’ work, their identities and lived experiences of these events. He has been the recipient of awards for publications in this field and acknowledged for his leadership, outstanding work and advocacy for arts development and education. Mark is on Twitter @markselkrig and LinkedIn.