Record: Katie Burke & David Cleaver, “‘Authentic’ Arts Teaching and Learning: An Investigation Into the Practices of Australian Home Educators,” Journal of Educational Alternatives, Vol. 7 no. 1 (2018): 18-41. ISSN 2049-2162
Summary: Katie Burke and David Cleaver of the University of Southern Queensland, Australia investigate an often overlooked subset of home education: the arts. This study is part one of two, and it centers around identifying the ways that home educators supported their children’s art education. Burke and Cleaver sought to develop an understanding of current practices in arts education for homeschool families. They did so through inviting participants from an online community of home educating parents. There were fourteen participants (thirteen female, one male) who agreed to respond to a forum discussion for three months. In addition, the participants were expected to complete a survey towards the end.
The analysis of the discussion forums and survey yielded five common themes: child-led learning, resource-led learning, outsourcing, collaboration, and integration of the arts with other learning.
Child-led learning was mostly motivated by the “innate creativity of children” (p. 25). This theme was often seen in families with younger children as opposed to older children. Those with older children mentioned that they had followed child-led learning up to early adolescence when their children began responding to more structure. In child-led learning, the child’s creativity is brought about from the freedom to create as opposed to the direction to do so.
Resource-led learning involved the participants using curricular resources such as DVDs, online programs, and texts. This method was more popular for families with older children as they “focused on the intentional development of specific arts knowledge or skills” (p. 26).
Some homeschooling parents felt that their children would learn best from professionals; therefore, they would outsource private lessons or community classes. These programs would encourage social engagement and provided a more structured arts education. Participants who outsourced mentioned the need for passion when it comes to arts education. One participant acknowledged her own feelings of inadequacy in regard to teaching the arts, saying “my children are not going to catch much inspiration from me if I don’t have it to start with” (p.28). However, turning to professionals can be costly, and may not be the best option for all families.
Collaboration with other homeschool families is similar to outsourcing, but it is more cost efficient. In collaboration, families will focus on maximizing different parent strengths through trading lessons among the co-op. For example, one parent may teach all of the co-op children art and another parent may teach all of the co-op children math.
Only one participant cited integration of the arts into other classes as their primary approach to arts education. However, most participants recognized integration as an important component of arts education. Integration of the arts allows students to see the different applications of the arts with other subject areas, but it needs to be done well. The researchers stated that home educators would need some form of support to integrate the arts in a meaningful way.
The overall focus of this study was the concept of authentic arts education. From the survey, participants generally said that authentic arts education is motivated by individual interests and it is focused on how art is used in the real world. This is contrary to the definition provided by the researchers, which states that authentic arts education encourages the development of “critical thinking, aesthetic sensibilities, cultural understanding, and expressive capacities” (p. 22).
Appraisal: Considering that all of the discussion forums and survey questions were in relation to the concept of an “authentic arts education,” I do not understand why the researchers did not define what they meant by the term “authentic arts education” to the participants. This differing of viewpoints on what an authentic arts education is most likely skewed the responses of the participants, as their definition was different than that of the researchers. Participants had thought that they were providing an authentic arts education to their children, but instead their motivations were criticized by the researchers as being a “poor arts practice” (p. 32) due to the lack of attention given to the development of overall arts performance.
That being said, I thought that it was interesting to see the various methods that homeschooling parents used to educate their children. I also found it interesting to see that most parents used a combination of the five themes to educate their children in the arts. Despite the researchers’ disappointment that homeschoolers were not doing it right, the empirical findings themselves are very interesting and helpful, providing one of the first looks at how homeschoolers do art education.
Considering that the arts are not a content area that has mandatory testing, they are often overlooked in terms of assessment and regulation. The many studies comparing homeschoolers and conventionally schooled children on academic achievement have almost never mentioned this topic. Though, as usual, this is not a representative sample, and though it is a big leap to try to generalize findings from one country to others, Burke and Cleaver’s five categories of arts education offer a wonderful baseline that future studies of other homeschooling populations could use for comparison.
Marissa Donlevie, Messiah College