Special Edition Call for the International Journal of Education and the Arts

The International Journal of Education & the Arts is an open-access platform for scholarly dialogue. We are committed to the highest forms of scholarship invested in the significance of the arts in education and education within the arts. As editors, our goal is to create a communal space in which to incite productive dialogue revealing the potential of the arts within education through all forms of inquiry. The journal primarily publishes peer reviewed research-based field studies including, among others, aesthetics, art theory, music education, visual arts education, media education, drama education, dance education, education in literature, and narrative and holistic integrated studies that cross or transcend these fields.

Special Edition Focus

Communities worldwide face various adverse circumstances associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, inequality, oppression, violence, discrimination and global unrest. There consequently is an increasing need for people to develop their capacity to deal with challenges, be resilient, and persevere if we are to flourish. Positive psychology and the therapeutic qualities of music education hold the potential to provide unique opportunities to promote solidarity by recognising differences and strengths within various educational contexts, and to hold communities together. This special edition calls for studies that shed light on how positive psychology as well as psycho-educational learning and music education across the lifespan and in many contexts, could enable people to make meaning out of suffering, to live fully in the moment, and to promote abiding joy and well-being.

This special edition includes but is not limited to the following themes:

• Music education and psychological, social, and emotional well-being

• How gratitude during musicking develops across the lifespan

• Whether and how gratitude during musicking differs cross-culturally

• Positive emotions in music education

• Music education and spirituality

• Music education to feel good and function well

• Music education to foster hope

• Autonomy, relatedness and competence in music education

• Develop any of the 24 virtues in action (VIA) character strengths through music education: Creativity, curiosity, judgment, love of learning, perspective, bravery, perseverance, honesty, zest, love, kindness, social intelligence, teamwork, fairness, leadership, forgiveness, humility, prudence, self-regulation, appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, humour, spirituality

• How music education builds resilience and perseverance

• Meaningful music education

• Transformation through music education

• Symbiotic relationships in music education

• Care ethics in music education

• Intrapersonal, interpersonal, institutional and community well-being through music education

• Music teacher well-being

Important Dates and Information:

• We invite interested authors to express their interest in submitting work for this special edition by sending your proposed title and a 100-150 word abstract to the guest and associate editors via email to Liesl.VanDerMerwe@nwu.ac.za and Ewie.Erasmus@nwu.ac.za by 7 December 2022.

• We invite articles of between 4000 and 6000 words for this special edition. For author guidelines, please visit http://www.ijea.org/submit.html. All submissions must comply with IJEA requirements.

• Articles must be submitted by 31 March 2023 via the IJEA submission portal at https://journals.psu.edu/ijea/.

• All submissions will go through a double-blind peer review process.

• Depending on the outcome of the review process, final drafts will be due in July 2023.