Reviews

Teaching the Arts: Early Childhood and Primary Education by David Roy, William Baker, Amy Hamilton

stefhyena's review

4.0

There was a lot to like about this book including the fact that is was practical (had real life ideas for what you can do as a teacher) without being technicist. I learned something from going through each of the "arts" and was brought back to what I used to think as a teen (that you should be allowed to explore all the arts not just focus on one or two). There was good balance between freedom of expression and learning actual techniques so you have more means of expressing yourself.

My only real issue with it (and this is endemic to textbooks in the modern day) is the accessibility issue with constantly referring to the online supplements to the text book. Such supplements can be useful (and especially so for a multi-media topic like the arts) but students often lack the means to buy all their textbooks new and shouldn't have to- we should be looking to spread good practice and deep knowledge as broadly as we can. I don't blame the authors for this as it is unlikely to have been their decision but greedy producers of textbooks are doing us all a disservice by having extras that only people who buy the book can access and by encouraging academics to make these so central.

Part of the blame for this of course goes to managers of universities and to governments as a well-funded tertiary sector would mean universities can produce knowledge for everyone not just for sale.

Despite not being able to access everything in the book, I very much liked the level of detail and the way the authors had added a lot of reasoning (not just what but why) to convince a teacher to teach the arts in depth and with respect both for content and the learner. There was more than a hint of a critical orientation as well, which is something we really need. I will be changing aspects of my teaching based on this book and I've quoted it in work -related contexts already.