Approaches to Enhancing Student Learning: A Quality-Assured, Creative and Performing-Arts Model

Abstract

Arts-based approaches to learning and teaching in higher education have a distinct capacity to provide students with authentic learning opportunities. This chapter, centred in the performing arts, demonstrates how an institutional approach to learning influences and embeds collaborative and interdisciplinary learning in the area of live theatrical production. It also demonstrates how students’ reveal curiosity and empathy by engaging with the work of others through a unique community of creative-arts practice, at the same time attaining disciplinary expertise and the aggregated knowledge that leads to a collective dramatic performance. The authors present a framework in which learning in the creative and performing arts is strengthened by the inclusion of higher education and discipline standards to ensure quality in student learning and comparative standing. Application of the framework is demonstrated through a case study highlighting creative teaching methods used in live dramatic performances at one of Australia’s leading performing arts institutes.