Stage 1 Initial 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, 2022, 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., 2021; O’Connor & M. 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 classroom learning? 

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 the findings of the systematic literature review to identify examples of best practice for inclusion in Stage 3. 

Stage 3 is the trial of examples of practice in the classroom leading to digital resources. 

The Researchers 

The study is being led by Chief Investigators Dr Linda Lorenza (CQUniversity) and Dr Don Carter (UTS). 

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). 

This Report 

This Initial Findings Report provides a summary of (a) the key findings for the Stage 1 Survey and (b) the artform reviewers’ analysis of the art activity data for music, dance, drama, digital media, visual media and the creative arts more broadly.