No abstract

In 2010, a newspaper article speculating about the inclusion of cooking in the Queensland, Australia, school curriculum was published. Readers were invited to post comments to a newspaper‐managed blog. Ninety‐seven posts were made. These posts (N = 97) comprise the data for this study. Data were analyzed using Leximancer to determine frequency and connection of terminology. The analysis found “cooking” to be the core concept, connected to either the “school” (formal learning) and/or to the “home” (informal learning). Content analysis determined the themes and their relative frequency. Three main themes were generated: informal food literacy learning, formal food literacy learning in schools, and formal food literacy learning in home economics. Subthemes in the formal food literacy theme included: status (should a home economics course be compulsory?), enjoyment of home economics in school), and gender (with many positive comments from male respondents). The findings of this study represent a first step in understanding the potential contribution of home economics to develop food literacy.

ACCORDING TO THE NATIONAL Education and the Arts Statement (Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, 2007), all children and young people should have a high-quality arts education. To achieve this teachers require a high level of skill and training, and the belief that they are self-efficacious in the teaching of arts education (Andrews, 2004). This points to the role of pre-service teacher education to develop the capability to teach arts education. This study utilises Bandura's (1997) model of self-efficacy beliefs. Novice early childhood teachers were invited to reflect on their professional practice experience during pre-service teacher education to provide insights into how this has contributed to the formation of their self-efficacy beliefs in the arts. Findings confirm that novice teachers develop beliefs about arts education during professional experience that shape their future beliefs towards teaching arts in the early years. These beliefs are likely to be negative, thereby contributing to the formation of negative emotional association and low self-efficacy beliefs for teaching arts. Furthermore, three main themes emerged from the data about the impact of professional experience: 1) supervising teacher practice (vicarious experience); 2) supervising teacher feedback (verbal persuasion); and 3) the profile of arts as a subject experienced by the respondent (vicarious experience). The implications of these findings are considered in terms of pre-service teacher education and ongoing professional learning for teachers.

For students in Years 1–10 in Queensland, Australia, The Arts (hereafter referred to as ‘arts’) is one of eight Key Learning Areas in the core curriculum. Yet, while arts – comprising five strands including music – is a mandatory component of the curriculum, implementation varies widely. This occurs for a range of reasons, one of which is the common practice that generalist teachers are allocated delivery of the arts programme in their teaching load. Furthermore, research reveals that music and the arts are frequently considered to be the ‘frills subject’ in a school's timetable, often the first to be removed from the timetable when time is short and the first to feel the impact of budget cuts, including the engagement of specialist arts educators (Russell-Bowie, 2004). This study highlights the gap between policy rhetoric for music and the arts and the pedagogical reality in generalist classrooms. Using a narrative informed case study methodology, a story constellation derived from a beginning generalist teacher and a school principal is revealed. The discussion which follows provides a focus, through the generation of key values statements derived from the data, on the tensions this beginning teacher has experienced in his practice as a teacher responsible for teaching music and the arts, juxtaposed with a similar narrative of the school principal.

However, little is currently known about how beginning teachers themselves use agency, efficacy and resilience (AER) when taking up their initial appointments. This study partially addresses this gap in research, focusing on the experiences, perceptions and feelings of a particular group of novice teachers during initial year of teaching. Their experiences were recorded as conversational entries on a self-initiated group email site over the course of a single year. The participants' exchanges documented their experiences as they journeyed through five discrete phases of development, those of anticipation, survival, disillusionment, rejuvenation, and reflection, that typify a teacher's first year (Moir, 1999).