Vol. 5 No. 2 (2011): REFLECTIONS FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE PERSONAL AND THE PROFESSIONAL

This issue of JACE has no single focus. It does, however, own a repeating theme through the ve articles concerning how curriculum is (and should) be impacted by ‘the personal’. This is an important topic; in the arts we are aware that a disjuncture often exists between documented curriculum and actual practice. What we are asked to do and what transpires in the classroom can vary widely, often because formal curriculum does not meet the needs of individuals –students and teachers. As a result, in the arts teachers often resort to hybrid curricula and ignore approaches dictated by professional bodies (Gray & MacGregor, 1991). Each article in this issue in some way challenges the notion of curriculum being a rational structure of learning, instead being a journey where personal values and beliefs dictate how it is rei ed in classrooms.

Two papers explore this from a curriculum design perspective, and a further three from the perspective of teaching practice. Of the latter, the common question being explored is; how do teachers use their own artistic practise to inform, develop or analyse their professional practise? The articles present the compelling case that a teacher cannot remove her or himself from the reality of how curriculum converts to actual lived experience for arts participants. Our teaching practice becomes an integral part of our own ‘being’; to be an educator is, in part, to accept that education shapes our life in ways not dissimilar to how, we hope, some of our students are enriched through our teaching.