Visual Arts Pedagogy in Early Childhood Contexts

Assignment Task

Introduction

Early childhood services are ideal settings for early visual arts engagement through play-based curricula (Churchill-Dower, 2020). Visual arts materials and processes enhance opportunities for meaning-making, communication and playbased learning (Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA, 2018; Churchill-Dower, 2020; Vecchi, 2010). However, the visual arts continue to be a curriculum area lacking definition or clarity regarding best practice in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) settings (McArdle, 2012; Probine, 2017). Many Early Childhood Educators (ECEs) comment that they are not artistic and express a lack of confidence in their own visual arts skills and knowledge (Smyth & Davis, 2016; Lindsay, 2015a). Divisive ‘art verses craft’ and ‘process versus product’ debates, along with uncertainty regarding an educator’s role in facilitating visual arts learning experiences, suggest a lack of clarity in the domain of early childhood visual arts pedagogy (Lindsay, 2016a). McArdle (2016) particularly notes the requirement to shift the visual arts research paradigm beyondthe ‘why’ of arts education to instead articulate the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of visual arts education.

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