Vicars, Mark (2011) Artful Practices: identities at work in play. Global Studies of Childhood, 1 (1). pp. 60-71. ISSN 2043-6106

Abstract

This article considers the connectivity between arts-based pedagogies, multimodality, popular culture, learning and identity work within the semiotic domains of communities of play. Drawing on the artful practices of two Year 5 boys of Vietnamese and Sudanese cultural heritage, it reflects on how cultural artefacts were put to work in identity play during a seven-week drawing class in an urban Australian primary classroom. The article proposes how the technology of play in childhood is increasingly situated and connected to artefacts of identity. The troublesome presence of play challenges the axiomatic, regulatory norms of pedagogical practices in educational domains, and by drawing on the production of multimodal texts as a narrativizing practice the author endeavours to understand how arts-based pedagogies that utilize young people’s cultural capital can create teachable moments and have a positive effect on engagement, participation and achievement in learning.

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