Building bridges, crossing barriers : using service learning to bridge the gap between teacher education theory and classroom practice in music and other art forms

![CDATA[Service learning can be used to contextualise what students learn in their teacher education courses, preparing them to work in classrooms by involving them in mutually beneficial school-based projects. This paper describes a service-learning project that involved second year students in an undergraduate teacher education course team-teaching four sessions of music and other creative arts lessons to all classes in a local primary school. After each lesson, the student teachers reflected on what they had learned about teaching, arts education, their children and what they had taught, as well as evaluating how effectively they had achieved the anticipated indicators and outcomes of the lessons. At the end of the four sessions, all teachers, children and students were enthusiastic and positive in their responses to the project, and outcomes included an increase in the student teachers' self-confidence, skills, knowledge, communication and behaviour management strategies, the positive and enthusiastic engagement of all children in a diverse variety of arts learning experiences, and increased positive attitudes and proposed change in practice in relation to the arts, of the teachers involved in the project.]]