Arts and Humanities in Higher Education

While the word ‘creativity’ is used liberally in contemporary discourse, some studies show that creativity has been in steady decline for decades, particularly within the education system. This paper addresses the reason for this decline, focussing specifically on the teaching and practice of creativity in the visual art studio setting at the tertiary level. A case is presented by way of a pedagogical structure – broadly informed by constructivist principles – and an assessment regime that can facilitate a different way of engaging artistic creativity in the classroom. The assessment regime is formalised through a schema designed to illustrate the ‘play with determinants’ delivered through the pedagogical design. This approach provides a space for ‘play’ between the assessment criteria, the pedagogical setting and course materials, institutional determinants and the developing creative interests of the student. Such an approach offers a new way to encourage and formally capture creativity in the tertiary visual art classroom.

This paper focuses on the aspirational stance of varieties such as environmental and urban humanities to better understand the opportunities and risks associated with the humanities reaching outward, especially in the context of so-called societal challenges, wicked problems, and missions. The analysis takes a genealogical and discourse-centered approach, considering individual epistemic traditions alongside shared patterns in relation to how these fields have been negotiated and developed, to bring forth tensions useful for considering the how of engaging humanistic knowledge to collaboratively respond to challenges and problems, not only through individual projects or even fields, but in terms of capacity building.

In response to the growing need for authentic, pedagogically sound assessment in Initial Teacher Education (ITE), this study presents a model of praxis-focused Creative Arts assessment designed to integrate arts-making, critical reflection, and pedagogical theorising. Drawing on a multi-site, collaborative autoethnographic study involving six Australian universities, the research uses document analysis and thematic analysis of student survey data to identify critical characteristics that underpin effective praxis-focused assessment: meaningful context, embodied arts engagement, and critical reflection, which collectively contribute to theory-practice integration. The study results in a theoretically grounded and empirically supported model of praxis-focused assessment that is affirmed as a pedagogical tool for preparing confident, competent arts educators. The model offers a framework for assessment in Creative Arts ITE, enhancing student engagement and classroom readiness while addressing contemporary challenges such as generative AI and online learning.

Despite extensive cultural infrastructure and the growing popularity of musical events, musicians remain an under-researched group within higher education. Given the psychological demands of public performance, understanding the emotional challenges faced by musicians is crucial for supporting their artistic development and well-being. The main goal of this study was to examine the relationship between trait anxiety and music performance anxiety, testing for the mediation effect of different coping strategies and the moderation effect of self-efficacy beliefs. The sample comprised 130 musicians. Results indicated that coping strategies partially mediated the effect of trait anxiety on music performance anxiety. A significant interaction also emerged between anxiety and self-efficacy in predicting adaptive coping strategies. Overall, the study demonstrated that self-efficacy is an important factor strengthening adaptive coping with performance anxiety, regardless of trait anxiety, and provides a promising foundation for developing training programs for current and future musicians in higher education context.

New modes of online and hybrid course delivery can pose significant challenges for teaching film studies. The shift from in-class screenings to online delivery of course films impacts what is available to screen—privileging work available in digital form—and how this material is accessed and engaged with. This article discusses some of the issues and opportunities that can arise from the move to online learning for film programs by reflecting on the place of ‘unseen’ films in the curriculum and classroom. Over the past few years ‘unmade films’ have become an area of interest for film scholars for understanding how material resources and opportunities are allocated in screen industries. This article proposes that contemporary film studies teaching needs an analogous discourse of unseen cinema, and explores how teaching ‘the films we can’t see’ might offer a productive way of teaching film studies in the age of online delivery.