Today’s article follows the journey of six drama teachers from Victoria, Australia who set out to include First Nations content in curriculum. Each teacher came to the project with a shared moral purpose and a lot of fear. To embark...

We are hearing more than ever about how  teachers are burning out. How young teachers aren't coping with the stressors of this demanding profession. I was wondering how graduates could be better supported and came across this ...

This week we look at a study which did a review of 21 studies measuring the effectiveness of feedback interventions on motor skills. And the good news for me in this is that we have a purpose! Apparently our feedback is important if students wa...

How to teach Pop when you’ve only even known Classical?There is increasing pressure on music programs to include popular music genres however arguably the biggest stumbling block to this is us. The teachers! Sadly most of us...

Whether we teach dance, drama or music, motor learning is an integral part in performance achievement. Aside from class, there's an expectation our students will work on their performance skills in their own time and for this, they need to be m...

I remember when I first had my babies,  I was astounded at how much they practiced. Without me doing anything to encourage them!When they learned to use their voice they would lie in their cot and experiment with slides and sounds....

As performing arts teachers there is an expectation that we are brimming with creative vibes! That we are able to come up with inspiring and innovative solutions to anything from lack of budget to poor commitment in our students.  ...

We work in an age where our students are more often fixed on their phones than on faces of their friends. Presentation of self is stylised and without the imperfections of everyday existence. Students whose attention is habitually split find it...

Do we really need to demonstrate? This 2018 dance study trials movement vs instruction. To answer “how necessary are visual demonstrations to embed performance skills”. Enjoy! 

Our students are constantly being pushed to extend their boundaries, recognise what they don't know and try to expand on that knowledge base. This for many causes considerable discomfort which can lead to poor learning outcomes. Today's 2022 ar...

What does it take to make a confident ensemble that works cohesively? This 2020 study of an amateur choir comes up with some interesting ideas. Enjoy!

Welcome to Season 2 of Bringing out their Best. This season we are going to look at effective feedback for developing performing artists. Today's episode is about whether we should bother with feedback at all or are we wasting our breath!

Today’s article reviewed over 3700 studies to see how the performing arts plays an integral role in improving and maintaining well-being.So let’s remind ourselves of these benefits and how we can renew our wellbeing and be rewarded too!<...

Be honest… have you ever thought about using drama to teach scientific concepts to a group of 10 year olds? I know I haven’t. Today's study looks at how 10 year olds research Electricity and turn it into an award winning play!<...

In recent years there’s been a shift towards recognising and empowering those in our community whom have historically been without a voice. e.g. Black Lives Matter, Me2 and LGBTQI+ movements.As teachers there has been a growing requireme...

In the last few months we have examined how Actors and Musicians memorise. Today we are going to look at how Dancers memorise hours of complex movement sequences, and find out if there are any symmetries between their strategies and those of ot...

Are you a performing arts teacher and a perfectionist? I suspect if I asked who wasn’t I might get a more manageable response. Well, we’ve talked about perfectionism in our students and what we can do to help them but today I thought I’d talk a...

Are you the kind of person who can’t stop thinking about a performance after it is done? Particularly if it didn’t go as planned? I confess I am guilty of this and as it turns out, I’m not the only one. This is actually a thing. It’s even got a...

We all know that as performing artists we are expected to perform whilst others are watching. Well our students arguably have it worse. From their perspective, they have to perform whilst others watch and assess their performance for grading, a...

I don’t know about you, but I certainly have some “entitled students” come into my studio. You know the type I mean? Who feel they deserve special treatment that isn’t warranted based on their academic performance. The students who...

Musician's memorise enormous amounts of music using kinaesthetic, visual, auditory and conceptual memory. So how does this process work and what we can do to enhance and speed up memorisation. https://performingartspd.com/blog/memo...

How to thrive and remain positive as a performing arts educator?  These  teachers explore how they have battled overwhelm and are able to bring out the best of themselves in their pedagogy.https://performingartspd.com/blog/thr...

Mother Nature has given us an antidote to stress known as the Tend and Befriend Response which  neutralises stress hormones in our system.The Tend and Befriend response can be a fabulous tool to assist developing performing artists ...

“our best moments usually occur when a person’s body and mind are stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile – this state can be called FLOW” - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Studies in d...

Have you seen peer assessment build up some students and deplete others? Can peer assessment build self-efficacy for all performing arts students, when as humans we are biologically pre-programmed to cling to negative feedback?&nbs...