Gaining professional experience through service learning : opportunities for diverse, innovative and challenging learning experiences in teacher education

![CDATA[Service learning has been used for many years to enhance and strengthen teacher education courses, preparing student teachers with real life learning experiences as they work with community groups in mutually beneficial projects. This paper outlines an innovative and challenging service learning project which involved second year students in an undergraduate teacher education course taking over a whole school for four afternoons and team teaching creative arts lessons to all classes. The school involved in this service learning project is located in a -low socio-economic area with 87% of children coming from a non-English speaking (mainly Arabic) background. Many of the teachers lacked confidence in implementing a creative arts program due to the lack of resources, time, training, priority and support in this key learning area. Service learning in this context was used to help student teachers learn more about teaching strategies, behaviour management and subject content within the creative arts, subjects which are often given minimal time and priority in teacher education courses and primary schools, as a consequence are often ineffectively taught or not taught at all on a regular basis in the classroom. As part of the innovative service learning component of their Creative Arts unit, the students were required to work with a local school and team teach two lessons in each of the art forms. Prior to the start of the teaching series, the student teachers discussed with the classroom teacher suggestions they had for the lessons, as well as ascertaining what prior learning the children had in each of the art forms. From this information they planned and implemented a series of two lessons in each art form to children from diverse backgrounds. 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, each small group of students interviewed the classroom teacher about outcomes in relation to the cognitive, social, artistic, and creative skills of the children and what effect seeing their children engaged enthusiastically with the arts had on them as teachers and their proposed practice in arts education. 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 practices in relation to the arts, of the teachers involved in the project.]]