EDF1064 Creative connections 2: Music and performing arts

This unit extends your understandings developed in EDF1063 about the role art-making plays in early childhood with a focus on musical and performing arts creativities. You will investigate the relationship between creative play, music, and the performing arts as vital means of belonging, being and becoming from birth across cultures. You will develop competencies as teachers, artists and researchers through practice-based study of musical, bodily and non-verbal forms of expression. These experiences support your theoretical understandings of fundamental sonic and kinaesthetic ways of thinking and learning in early childhood. A foundation of this work is socially engaged practice that connects performing arts teaching and learning to family, community and cultures. You will address the need for culturally responsive teaching with a focus on developing competencies in Australian First Nations and Oceanic arts and culture. Across the unit you will engage with a range of strategies and pedagogical approaches to music and performing arts teaching that develop your capacities as research-led educators. To put this knowledge into practice you will plan, implement and evaluate ‘Arts Reach’ experiences that involve you engaging with young children to facilitate guided creative music and performing arts making. Arts Reach ensures that work-based learning is embedded in the unit so that meaningful links are experienced between arts practice, research and the profession.