Annual Report 2016, Dublin
The EERA Network 29: Research in Arts Education attracted a good number of participants to the sessions organized this year. There were almost 40 papers being delivered in 14 sessions. Particularly the sessions around themes of arts based research were very well attended (about 50 delegates).
The paper sessions were organized around the following themes:
- Challenges and Possibilities for Improvisation in Music Education;
- The Construction of Knowledge and Pedagogical Practices within Museums;
- Case Studies in Music Education;
- Looking for Non-representative Approaches in Arts Education;
- Arts-based Research; Artists and Teachers;
- Alternative Pedagogies in Music Education;
- Alternative Pedagogies and Questionings in Arts Education;
- Ways of Approaching the Visual;
- Digital Media and Arts Education;
- Artistic Research;
- Contemporary Stories of Arts Education;
- Busoni and Boccioni: Artists, Radicals and Teachers of Modernism.
Two of these sessions also included video presentation and discussion. The possibility of including the video format into regular sessions made possible the time to watch and to discuss. There was organized, also, a practical workshop, that combined research in music with research in drawing. The 2 artists/researchers made a public performance followed by debate.
Undoubtedly, the practical workshop was one of the high points this year, allowing for experimenting alternative ways of exposing and discussing research in the arts. Although we know that the technical requirements for this kind of sessions are difficult to set up in a format like ECER, we would like to invite future presenters to suggest more in these formats.