Reflecting contemporary theory and research in early art education, this volume offers a comprehensive introduction to new ways of thinking about the place of art, play, and aesthetics in the lives and education of young children. Enlivened by narratives and illustrations, 16 authors offer perspectives on the lived experience of being a child and discovering the excitement of making meaning and form in the process of art, play, and aesthetic inquiry.
This book explores why and how the personal creative practice of arts teachers in school matters. It responds to ethnographic research that considers specific works-of-art created by teachers within the context of their classrooms. Through a classroom-based ethnographic investigation, the book proposes that the potential impact of artist-teacher practice in the classroom can only be understood in relation to the flows of power and policy that concurrently shape the classroom. It shows how artist-teacher practice functions as a creative practice of freedom tending to the present and future aesthetic life of the classroom, countering the effects of neoliberal schooling and austerity politics. The book questions what the artist-teacher can produce within that context. Through the unique focus on artist-teacher practice, the book explores the changing nature of the classroom and the social and political dimensions of the school. It will be key reading for researchers and postgraduate students of arts education, critical pedagogy, teacher identity and aesthetics. It will also be of interest to art and design educators.
As researchers and theorists, teachers and teacher educators, parents and grandparents and advocates for children, the authors featured in Ethics and Research with Young Children share a common inclination to counter the idea of an ethics that is conventional-i.e., an ethics that reinforces existing models and discourses, which position children as irrational and incompetent; that de-anonymize children's ways of working and being in the world; that reduces and distorts the social, cultural and political forces that shape children's everyday realities; and, that routinely subtracts from these realities the complex responsibilities that adults have (especially as researchers) to recognize ethics as situated, relational, intersectional, and provisional. Aligned with the interdisciplinary commitments of a Childhood Studies approach and informed by a range of theoretical and practical frameworks, the perspectives offered in this volume are grounded in relationships between and among adults and children, their shifting social, cultural, political and material realities, and a world of ideas and experiences that impel them to face and reorient their ethical commitments to each other.
The Handbook of Research on the Education of Young Children is the essential reference on research on early childhood education throughout the world. This outstanding resource provides a comprehensive research overview of important contemporary issues as well as the information necessary to make knowledgeable judgments about these issues. Now in its fourth edition, this handbook features all new sections on social emotional learning, non-cognitive assessment, child development, early childhood education, content areas, teacher preparation, technology, multimedia, and English language learners. With thorough updates to chapters and references, this new edition remains the cutting-edge resource for making the field’s extensive knowledge base readily available and accessible to researchers and educators. It is a valuable resource for all of those who work and study in the field of early childhood education including researchers, educators, policy makers, librarians, and school administrators. This volume addresses critical, up-to-date research on several disciplines such as child development, early childhood education, psychology, curriculum, teacher preparation, policy, evaluation strategies, technology, and multimedia exposure.
Featuring the work of leading scholar-practitioners, Visual Arts with Young Children raises critical questions about the situated nature of the visual arts and its education in early childhood. Innovative chapters explore the relationship of place to art practice and pedagogy, culturally-responsive and justice-oriented perspectives, as well as critical and reconceptualist approaches to materials, technology and media. Ideal for researchers and students of both early childhood education and arts integration programs, this volume is an essential step towards a deeper understanding of how visual arts are understood, valued and practiced in the early years.
This book provides a revitalised account of the study of children’s drawing by outlining a departure from existing approaches privileging developmentalist accounts and presenting drawing as a specialised human endeavour separated from other material entanglements constituting children’s everyday experiences. The book takes on current developments in the fields of early childhood arts and early childhood literacies to advocate for process-oriented, new materialist and decolonial approaches that re-conceptualise the study of children’s drawing. It proposes a future-oriented approach, centred on thinking experimentally with a focus on nonrepresentational elements, such as movement, sensation, intensity, rhythm, story and place, which singularly assemble in drawing events. Thus, the book discusses drawing as a process of sense-making that is not enclosed in the individualised body of the child and that unfolds corporeally in time and space. It revises the relation of drawing with symbolisation by suggesting that the use of language and signs in drawing form in entanglement with matter and sensation in processes of creative speculation connected with the movement of thought. Presenting a series of contributions by internationally recognised scholars and artists, the book aims to create synergies between theory and practice that speak of everyday realities interconnecting children, learning and sense-making.
Young Children and the Arts: Nurturing Imagination and Creativity examines the place of the arts in the experiences of young and very young children at home and in out-of-home settings at school and in the community. There is great need for development of resources in the arts specifically designed to introduce babies and toddlers to participatory experiences in the visual arts, dance, music, and storytelling/theater. This book presents valuable guidelines for early childhood teachers, families, caregivers and community organizations. Young Children and the Arts presents a comprehensive approach to the arts that is aligned with early childhood developmentally appropriate practice and that combines an exploratory, materials-based approach with an aesthetic-education approach for children from birth to eight years of age. It addresses both how the arts are foundational to learning, and how teachers and parents can nurture young children’s developing imagination and creativity. The models presented emphasize a participatory approach, introducing young children to the arts through activities that call for engagement, initiative and creative activity. Additionally, Young Children and the Arts addresses the intersection of early childhood education and the arts—at points of convergence, and at moments of tension. The role of families and communities in developing and promoting arts suffused experiences for and with young children are addressed. Young Children and the Arts examines the role of innovative arts policy in supporting a broad-based early arts program across the diverse settings in which young children and their families live, work, and learn.
The Routledge International Handbook of Learning with Technology in Early Childhood focuses specifically on the most cutting-edge, innovative and international approaches in the study of children’s use of and learning with digital technologies. This edited volume is a comprehensive survey of methods in children’s technologies and contains a rich repertoire of studies from diverse fields and research, including both educational and developmental psychology, post-humanist literacy, applied linguistics, language and phenomenology and narrative approaches. For ease of reference, the Handbook's 28 chapters are divided into four thematic sections: introduction and opening reflections; studies answering ontological questions, which theorize how children take on original identities in becoming literate with technologies; studies answering epistemological questions, which focus on how children’s knowledge and learning are (co)constructed with a diverse range of technologies; studies answering practice-related questions, which explore the resources and conditions that create the most powerful learning opportunities for children. Expertly edited, this interdisciplinary and international compendium is an ideal introduction to such a diverse, multi-faceted field.
In childhood research, children's art-making has typically been viewed and understood through a lens of developmental psychology and the notion that children's art-making progresses through a linear series of stages continues to dominate how we design and implement art-making experiences for young children. Postdevelopmental Approaches to Childhood Art brings together the work of theorists from around the world who have presented postdevelopmental approaches to childhood art, thereby playing a vital part in unsettling the dominance of the developmental paradigm and offering worked examples of alternative models. Drawing on sociocultural theory, Deleuzian philosophy, posthumanism and postmodernism each chapter offers a theoretical basis that challenges developmentalism, as well as an application of that theoretical basis. The contributors also consider what this shift in our perspective means for the design and implementation of art-making experiences for young children.
Taking a unique approach, which highlights lived experience and engagement with community, this book guides the reader on how to create learning environments in which children are encouraged to develop relationships, build meaningful connections and take action which contributes to the wellbeing of their own communities. Through evaluations and feedback from participating professionals, as well as children’s learning in the form of artworks and photos, Building Empathy in Children through Community Connections: A Guide for Early Years Educators highlights how community partnership programs between children and community groups builds empathy and wellbeing in early childhood. Drawing on extensive research and professional experience in psychology and early childhood, it provides details of various community connections programs and considers the ways in which early learning settings can engage with their communities as they meet the requirements and objectives of the curriculum. Each chapter provides practical advice on implementation as well as take-home messages intended to encourage and enable community engagement. Demonstrating how young children can develop empathy through building community connections, this book is a vital resource for early childhood educators as well as parents and those working in community programs and early childhood settings.
