Collaboration in Arts Education

Title: Collaboration in Arts Education Authors: Adams, Jeff Abstract: The merits of collaborative learning through the arts are immediately obvious: many of the arts physically lend themselves to shared contributions and joint productions –theatre, dance, murals, singing, textiles, graphics, design and printing, to name only the first to spring to mind. Underpinning each of these are social and communal learning: how to be together, and share in an enterprise. This is turn feeds into the idea of a democratic society where the learner is not only acquiring knowledge and skills, but also an understanding of what it is to be a citizen; it is hard to overestimate how important being well socialised at an early age is to the coherence of a functioning civic society. Given the seemingly obvious advantages of such an education, and the equitable society that it is designed to support, it is troubling that collaborative education, and with it arts education, is increasingly neglected in favour of individual and competitive learning. Description: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Adams, J. (2015). Collaboration in Arts Education. International Journal of Art and Design Education, 34(3), 280-281. DOI: 10.1111/jade.12093, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jade.12093/abstract. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving