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ERIC Number: EJ894294
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2008
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1463-9491
EISSN: N/A
Reflection, Renewal and Relationship Building: An Ongoing Journey in Early Childhood Arts Education
Deans, Jan; Brown, Robert
Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, v9 n4 p339?353 2008
The established place of the arts within early childhood education is rarely questioned. Nevertheless, social, cultural and political shifts in values, beliefs and practices impact on approaches to the arts, as early childhood practitioners grapple with increasingly complex views on how children learn and what factors impact on their learning. This article maps some of these shifts over the past 15 years, at one Early Learning Centre (ELC) in Australia. The centre has created and regularly re-conceptualised its vision for the place of the arts in the lives of young children. Curriculum is informed by a layered and multidimensional theoretical framework, where the arts are integrated into the children's learning, and theories are considered as collections of partial truths. The article documents a number of significant events where the children engaged with the arts as ways of making and communicating meaning, and as a means for inquiry-based learning, for developing their artistry and as a space for relationship building between individuals and communities. Reflections on these events examine the image of the child, symbolic languages, emergent curriculum, the role of artist/ teacher and the impact of socio-cultural values on arts pedagogy and practice. (Contains 8 figures.)
Symposium Journals. P.O. Box 204, Didcot, Oxford, OX11 9ZQ, UK. Tel: +44-1235-818-062; Fax: +44-1235-817-275; e-mail: subscriptions@symposium-journals.co.uk; Web site: http://www.wwwords.co.uk/ciec
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Early Childhood Education; Preschool Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Australia; China
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A