3rd Global Conference
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Friday 9th February - Sunday 11th February
2007
Sydney, Australia
Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers
Session 5: Creative Engagement in Alternate
Sources
Chair: Michael Meany
Engaging Children with the Concept of Beauty: A Joint Investigation
of Current Advertising
Raelene
Anderson
Classroom Teacher and Teacher Educator, University
of Wollongong,
Australia
This paper seeks to reveal the interaction between
teacher and students using one current TV advertisement as a means
of investigating the concept of female beauty. Through the joint deconstruction
of one advertisement using the processes of text analyst collaborative
discussion was promoted as a means of highlighting and enhancing student’s
understanding of the ways in which advertisements position an audience.
Discussion of what constitutes beauty and messages carried in the advertisement
raised student awareness of societal perceptions of beauty, media manipulation
in its quest to ‘create’ beauty, and the pressures these
perceptions place on the young men and women of today.
A set
of “worksheets” had been developed for the lesson
where students could personally respond to questions relating to various
elements of the advertisement. During the course of the lesson the
role of the teacher was redefined as students and teacher merged and
formed a communal negotiation where participants shared these personal
thoughts, opinions, and experience. The relevance the advertisement
topic had to students within this age group enhanced the degree of
participatory responsibility of students’ as they were able to
make connections to their own experiences and current situations. Responsibility
for guiding the discussion was given to students with the teachers’ role
being to participate in, monitor and refocus students when needed.
Some students commented that they were aware of media manipulation
in an attempt to further enhance beauty. Many however appeared surprised
(even dismayed) as they viewed the commercial in its entirety. It would
appear that as far as this class was concerned the purpose of the advertisement
to debunk the medias myth of beauty had been a success as students
were now alerted to the fact that all is not what it seems in the media.
The New Symbolic Space: The Use of Popular
Culture as Tools of Engagement
Phil
Fitzsimmons/ Barbra McKenzie
University of Wollongong, Australia
This paper will argue that young children are rapidly becoming the ‘new rich’ in regard to engaging with, understanding and exploiting the many forms of popular culture found in Australian society. While politicians, teachers and administrators argue and debate ‘skill acquisition’ and mastery over conventions, we will argue that children are tending to ignore school based texts and are engaging in reading texts that represent a ‘new interiorisation’ of cultural understanding and are using a new set of associated reading skills. At the turn of the new millennium Brockmeier predicted that reading as a skills based approach is only the entrée to what he termed literacy as ‘symbolic space’and that a new approach was needed. We believe that children are now ahead of teachers in terms of accessing this approach and in many instances teachers have missed the boat altogether. In this presentation we aim to demonstrate and discuss the nature and elements of what Olsen and Torrance have termed the new ‘societal literacy’and the nature of the engagement with popular culture and ‘community based texts'.
Drama, Engagement and Creativity
Susan
Davis
Central Queensland University, Noosa Hub, Australia
In an era where
what we make with our minds is of growing importance economically,
the way that we generate new and creative ideas is the focus of educational
and economic think tanks across the globe. It’s
important therefore for educators to be able to articulate what it
is that we do that supports creativity in a digital age if we aren’t
to be consigned to the ‘nice but not necessary’ category
in the educational hierarchy.
In the past, many Arts Educators have
been concerned with the notion of ‘aesthetic’ engagement,
however this kind of engagement does not necessarily have a ‘generative’ component
to it. The
notion of ‘creative engagement’ is perhaps now more appropriate, with
the focus on the participant as a creative agent. This kind of
engagement is not just about the way students perceive and evaluate
objects or a contemplative state alone (thought these are still important),
but it is about a kind of focused experience (or series of experiences)
that leads to young people producing ‘creative’ work.
Czikszentmihalyi proposed a system of three components within which
creativity occurs. This system is comprised of: the individual,
the domain in which they work and the field which recognises their
work. For my work in education, I have adapted this model and
focused on terms and aspects of creativity that are useful for exploring
young people’s creativity in a digital age. The three terms
I’m exploring are ‘creative engagement’, ‘creative
practice’ and ‘communities of practice’. In
my current work I am exploring the pedagogy and practices that scaffold
and support the development of young people’s creative practice
(particularly within the fields of Drama and Film and Television),
which open up the possibilities for them to be ‘creative agents’ in
the digital age.