This study examined the piloting of a literacy, arts and wellbeing (LAB) project in a rural school in Queensland, Australia. The research involved a Year 1 class (n = 24) participating in co-designed lessons with their classroom teacher and two visiting researchers from a regional university. These lessons were developed with literacy learning…

This paper presents research undertaken in an early learning centre in Melbourne, Australia. The first of four case studies, it explores how arts practices and pedagogies can be embedded within and integrated across an early childhood centre curriculum, with a focus on the role of the teacher in achieving this. Twenty-one children aged 3to-5 years…

Visual arts provisions are central to children's holistic, play-based learning, yet the visual arts self-efficacy beliefs and subject content knowledge of early childhood educators influence pedagogical choices. When early childhood educators lack the visual arts confidence, skills, and knowledge required to effectively support children's visual…

In this paper we propose the concept of 'becoming-with' in relation to the experience of the catastrophic fires in the summer of 2019-2020 in Australia, and their implications for research into young children's response to bushfires, and their learning about bushfire recovery, which resulted in the development of an arts-based project to explore…

This paper draws from a cross-cultural study of young children's arts curricula. The initial phase of the original study consisted of a comparison of the intended arts curriculum for 5--6 year old children in China and Australia. This was followed by a survey in Beijing exploring 88 contemporary early childhood educators' beliefs about children's…

This article concerns itself with the potential for ateliers to disrupt conformist approaches to pedagogy in early childhood education and care. An illustration of the role of the atelier in amplifying the aesthetics of the experience of the educational project of Reggio Emilia illuminates how disruption of conformity can be activated through the…

Many countries, including Australia, China, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, have included art subjects in their core curriculum. Using the theory of governmentality as a critical lens to investigate the intricate power--knowledge system in relation to curriculum, arts and pedagogy, this paper makes a comparative document…

This book brings together a collection of work from around the world in order to consider effective STEM, robotics, mobile apps education from a range of perspectives. It presents valuable perspectives--both practical and theoretical--that enrich the current STEM, robotics, mobile apps education agenda. As such, the book makes a substantial…

While the known health impacts of sedentary lifestyles have focused attention on children's outdoor activity, the development of their physical literacy -- the physiological, social, cultural, cognitive, expressive, and psychological dimensions of their physicality -- is much less in focus. Developing children's physical literacy is embedded in…

This article is based on uncanny encounters with Julia deVille's exhibit, "Phantasmagoria". Inspired by Deleuzian-informed research practices, the author experiments with provoking practices to defy dominant developmental notions of childhood. This article reworks a humanist ontology by bringing together the discursive, the material, the…

Picasso once famously said "All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." This visual inquiry is engaged through a community of creative practice in two rural children's centers where the researchers along with 4- and 5-year-old children collaborated to create a large-scale canvas and several smaller…

This paper examines Karagiozis--Greek shadow puppet theatre for children--as a way to explore how the Arts might support socially just education in the early years. As authors from diverse cultural backgrounds with different experiences of arriving and residing in Australia, we consider themes of social justice identified in a Karagiozis play and…

This article presents the findings of an investigation of eLearning & teaching in Arts education in Australian Initial Teacher Education (ITE) degrees. This project used survey and interviews to collect data from academics in 16 universities in 5 Australian states regarding their experiences of eLearning and Arts education. A rigorous and…

Australian and international research has identified that many generalist teachers have limited confidence and experience in teaching the Arts in the early years of schooling and education. There is also a significant gap in the provision of quality professional learning programs for teachers. Research has identified that appropriate training and…

Contemporary early childhood teacher education is situated in a knowledge and policy environment where on the one hand preservice educators have the opportunity to connect with unlimited knowledge sources and, on the other, are expected to conform to standardized outcomes. This situation is compounded by increasingly inequitable learning outcomes…