Arts in Education Special Issue Editorial

This Special Issue for the Australian Journal of Education came from my own experience of education and the idea that creativity and positivity were needed in our classrooms, in teacher professional development, in initial teacher training, and in learning. The idea of a holistic education is not new: for me, many years ago, my parents had introduced me to Herbert Read, who in his 1943 work Education Through Art emphasised that art should be the basis of education. But what of arts in the current landscape of Australian education? And more generally? As we considered how to visually introduce this Special Issue, we found ourselves returning to the same questions that are asked in the articles within it: How do we honour creativity in a changing world? And how do we help teachers and learners navigate the tools that now shape our cultural landscape? Artificial intelligence, for all its challenges and disruptions, is already transforming the arts and education in ways we can neither ignore nor fully anticipate.