Dr Geraldine Burke is an artist, researcher, teacher-educator lecturing into visual and creative arts education at Monash University (Melbourne and Singapore). She is passionate about art-based educational research and how it can be employed to explore issues of our time. Her research engages with artistic practice, pedagogy and community projects. She has an enduring interest in how local knowledge, place and immersive a/r/t (art, research, and teaching) develop across kindergartens, schools, seniors and community groups. Her Masters in Art and Design was by exhibition and exegesis and her PhD (by photo-book and exegesis) explored immersive art pedagogy. Recent arts-based projects explore art and wellbeing through intergenerational/community and Museum connections; intergenerational art pedagogy within Australian and Chinese contexts; Plastic Ocean Provocations (POP!) with/in Oceanic and Pacific regions and the ‘Our Waste, Our place, Our Actions’ Place-making grant.

Geraldine has taught art in a range of countries and across a range of age groups.  Recently she worked on an intergenerational art education project with Monash/Hangzhou Normal University (with pre-service teachers, young children and seniors), and was an invited Outstanding Educator in Residence (OEIR) - with the Ministry of Education’s, Singapore's Teachers' Academy for the Arts (STAR) on four occasions.

Geraldine is currently co-leader of the Art, Creativity and Education Faculty research Group at Monash Faculty of Education and teaches into a number of early childhood and primary units. In Singapore and Melbourne, she works into the ‘Art, Community and Environment’ unit while also teaching the Creative Connections: Visual Arts unit in Melbourne. This sees Geraldine include ART-REACH experiences with kindergarten/school children, pre-service teachers, seniors and cultural institutions as a means to build vibrant social and ecological connections through art. Recently Geraldine was a keynote speaker, workshop planner/convenor for the National Gallery of Victoria’s Education day for Monash Child Care services. This saw her explore and develop intersections between art, environment and community through the Gallery’s collection via workshops and seminars that encouraged active connections between early childhood learning and cultural institutions. In 2019 Geraldine was a speaker/delegate at the ECEC Talanoa Pasifika symposium, Fiji, where she explored the role of art in early childhood education in pacific/global contexts as relevant to UNESCO's Sustainable Development Goals for 2030.

As a researcher and PhD Supervisor Geraldine priveledges the intersection of material knowledge, image and text as a means to explore given topics.

ART-REACH: Making intergenerational connections through the arts

Geraldine is a keen advocate for ART-REACH as a means to build intergenerational connections through the arts. ART-REACH enables Monash Faculty of Education to build connections with community through creative inquiry. Through ART-REACH our pre-service teachers (Primary and Early Childhood) join with children from local Schools and Early Learning Centres, and/or local seniors, in order to build innovative art/s experiences that share generational knowledge on issues and topics that matter. 

• Reimagining art education through intergenerational learning
• Participatory arts based research as a tool for wellbeing
• Activating art education for ecological awareness
• A/r/tography, arts based research, immersive art pedagogy, narrative inquiry
• Art in Early childhood, Primary and community contexts
• Art REACH: creative connections through the arts

• EDF1063: Creative Connections: Visual Arts (Peninsula/Flexible)
• EDF3181: Art, Community and Environment (Peninsula & Singapore/Flexible)
• EDF4026: Arts Education in the Primary Years (Peninsula & Clayton)
• EDF5034: Arts and Design in Primary Education (Peninsula & Online)