DrFiona Phillips

Fiona’s on-going research includes inquiries across early years settings, primary schools, community spaces, developing nations and museums and galleries. Fiona uses arts-based, participatory methods including posthuman and new materialist perspectives and community-based strategies to bring art, sound, music and media into closer relationship with everyday experiences.

Fiona’s continued research into her own practice in ITE and music and the arts teaching and mentoring on-line, is focussed on the integrated use of digital audio, digital scoring applications, video and webinars in concert with embodied intensives to support on-going collaborative pre and in – service teacher development.

Her research also focuses on strengthening the confidence of all to becoming musical, collaborating with cultural institutions and professional associations and other ways of knowing, thinking and doing to interrogate the stories of existing music learning through narrative inquiry methods.

Her work continues to interrogate how the capacity and confidence of teachers in rural and regional settings might emerge and be sustained using a blend of cloud-based and emerging technologies and embodied participatory experiences.

• Play-based pedagogies for intergenerational work with children, youth and adults.
• Arts-based making and communicating with music, sound and multimodal literacies
• Decolonising practices and pedagogies for social and planetary justice
• Critical and Creative thinking through the creative processes, music making and post digital learning. 

Projects
2011 Second Life a study of Virtual Collaborative Environments.

2011 Hearing the voice Musical experiences for the early years: a study of the musical experiences offered in Early learning centres in the Surfcoast and Belmont Highton areas.

2012 Developing a model of teaching and learning music and movement in Early Childhood.

2012 What is the Bass-line? Inquiry onto the musical experiences offered to 4 Y O in the year before school. Masters Research Paper

2013 "Music In Schools Project" Warrnambool - Report published

2014 "Could the Cloud be a drought breaker?" investigating the role that cloud- based and emerging technologies play in building the capacity and confidence of teaching and learning in and through music in rural settings.

2014 - ongoing The Heinze Music Project Mooroopna Primary School and Greater Shepparton Region. 

2016 A second Second Life application 

2019 Reggio Inspired studios in Early Childhood and Primary settings 

2020 Playful playing and musical moments project 

2022 Becoming musical: Stories from The Staff 

2023 Kooyang Yandah: The creative exploration of data on water and eels in the Barwon river system through sound and digital artefacts

2023 Bunjil Place Professional learning and participatory arts activiation. 

2024 Geelong Design Week exhibition and activation. Radial Design and Re-cycling 

2025 Becoming Musical: More Stories from the Staff.