Final Findings Report for the Emerging Priorities Program: An examination of primary teacher, student and parent experiences of arts learning online during COVID-19 lockdowns

The Issue

The last few years of COVID-19 lockdowns and online learning has resulted in tired teachers, disengaged students, and exhausted parents and caregivers. Primary-aged students have neither had enough time at school to experience collaborative learning nor develop relationships with their peers.

The lockdowns in Australia necessitated a recalibration in how arts programs could be delivered in school-based education. The arts offered “critical contributions to the healing, reflection, and political transformation of the nation” (Jacobs, Finneran & D’Acosta, 2021, p. 31), and learning the arts improves both student engagement and well-being (i.e., student self-esteem, collaboration, emotional communication and development of socialization) (Ewing, 2011). Where the usual teacher/student and student/student relationships were disrupted by online learning and social distancing (Patston et al., 2021), approaches to the arts in schools enabled connection and communication with students (Coleman & MacDonald, 2020; Joseph & Lennox, 2021; Naidoo et al., 2022; O’Connor & Estellés, 2021).

The Research

The “EPP Arts Learning Online” research is an examination of primary student, teacher and parent experiences of arts learning online during COVID-19 lockdowns. The aims of the research are to:

• Investigate the collaborative arts learning experiences of Australian primary school-aged children during the lockdown periods of 2020-2021;

• Reveal examples of best practice in online arts learning, connections between online and face-to-face arts learning as students return to school, and produce a compilation of digital case studies;

• Demonstrate that arts learning improves primary-aged students well-being and self-esteem, can reduce stress and anxiety, and develops student socialization skills; and

• Demonstrate that as children return to school after COVID-19 lockdowns, arts learning will contribute to students and their family’s re- engagement with school education.

The Research Questions

The study responds to the Research Questions:

• What arts learning activities occurred during COVID lockdown?

• What arts learning activities do teachers and students identify as contributing to well-being, engagement and socialization?

• What arts learning experiences can be provided as examples of practice to benefit teachers and students in returning to the classroom?

The Research Design

The mixed methods research design is in three stages.

• Stage 1 (Ethics Approval 23737) includes a systematic literature review and a survey of primary school students, parents and teachers.

• Stage 2 involves the comparison of the survey data with findings of the systematic literature review to identify examples of best practice for inclusion in Stage 3.

• Stage 3 (Ethics Approval 24340) is the trial of examples of practice in the classroom leading to digital resources.

The Researchers

The study is led by Chief Investigators Dr Linda Lorenza (CQUniversity) and Dr Don Carter (University of Technology Sydney).

The Partner Investigators who have been engaged as artform reviewers to provide an analysis on the art activity data include Dr Margaret Baguley (University of Southern Queensland), Dr Leon de Bruin (University of Melbourne), Dr Amanda Levido (Queensland University of Technology), Dr Jeff Meiners (University of South Australia) and Dr Naomi Zouwer (University of Canberra). Dr Robert Vanderburg (CQUniversity) was also engaged as a quantitative research partner to inform the analysis on the art activity data.

The research administrators included Dr Emily Booth (University of Technology Sydney), Deb Power (CQUniversity), Luz Stanton (CQUniversity), Vijay Rawat (CQUniversity) and Naomi Arnold (CQUniversity).

This Report

An Initial Findings Report (Lorenza et al., 2023) was published in July 2023, which provided a summary of (a) the initial key findings for the Stage 1 survey and (b) the artform reviewers’ preliminary analysis of the art activity data for music, dance, drama, digital media, visual media and the creative arts more broadly. The Initial Findings Report aimed to provide readers with a summary of the findings of the Stage 1 survey and Stage 2 analysis. It is recommended that you read the Initial Findings Report prior to reviewing this Final Findings Report.

Since the release of the Initial Findings Report, the Research Team have continued to examine the survey data in more depth, including undertaking a quantitative analysis comparing parent and teacher responses within the Stage 1 survey. Additionally, the Research Team conducted Stage 3 of the study, which involved the trial of arts learning activities online to a small group of students and inviting teachers to view a replay and provide their feedback. The Research Team have now reviewed and analysed the Stage 3 demonstration data.

This Final Findings Report aims to present the Stage 3 findings and outcomes. This will include a summary of the:

• overall research findings in relation to the literature review provided in the Initial Findings report which focused on the topics of school refusal, Arts Curriculum and Personal Social Capability;

• overall key findings discovered in the quantitative and qualitative analyses undertake following the release of the Initial Findings Report;

• artform specific key findings for dance, drama, media arts, music and visual arts.

Finally, the report will provide an update on how this information informed the development of best practice examples in online arts learning and the provision of digital resources on the CQUniversity website for teachers to access and use as an outcome of the study. Details will be provided on how you can access the resources when they are available. You will also be invited to provide feedback which will inform the development of the next iteration of digital resources.