Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Art education|Early childhood education'

Within this dissertation I discuss my experience as both teacher and researcher in an early childhood art education research project with the goal to challenge traditional conceptions of power and knowledge in work with young children. Inspired initially by the idea of reactivating children’s traditionally subjugated knowledges, in this research I aimed to foster a space where children and adults could ethically collaborate in art, making, and research. Over the course of 10 weeks, this art classroom was built as a space created for children, grounded in notions of change, movement, trust, and respect. The children were not only encouraged to create their own opportunities for making, and also to challenge what it means to exist and make in the early childhood art classroom by engaging in play, exploration, and collaborations with adults. In what follows, I share some of the children’s words and work in order to make their experience in this classroom space visible. Both their artworks and experiences are analyzed through various theoretical lenses, including theories surrounding nomadism and movement, ethical encounters, collaborations between adults and children, and chaos theory in play. Ultimately, I argue that challenging conventional understandings of power, authority, and knowledge in the art classroom demands resistance from both adults and children. However, this resistance is coupled with a responsibility for educators to listen deeply to what their students both want and need, and to embrace curricular spaces that welcome the unknown. Throughout this dissertation it is my hope to present new and different ways of being and engaging with young children in spaces of art education.

The purpose of this study was to examine how collaborative artmaking activates and supports the development of interpersonal skills in young children. By means of a qualitative case study, this study explored how collaborative art projects engage children in using problem-solving, cooperation, and negotiation skills. Data were collected through observation of small groups of preschool children as they participated in collaborative art projects. Field notes, videotaping, small group interviews, and conversations with colleagues were the primary methods for data collection. The data were analyzed using the literature from the Reggio Emilia philosophy and research on collaborative artmaking and interpersonal skills development. Thematic groupings from both deductive and inductive coding techniques were used to analyze the data and draw inferences about the findings. Results show that children co-construct knowledge through the visual language of art during collaborative artmaking. Over time, this construction supports children in their interpersonal skill development. The art medium used in the projects and the role of teacher were examined, revealing how the children were supported in developing problem-solving, cooperation, and negotiation skills. This study makes an important contribution to the literature because it draws connections between collaborative artmaking and interpersonal skill development.

The affective domain of loneliness is an essential creative force in children's lives. Unwanted solitude, although disparaged in our culture, is a theme that takes center stage in stories. This study explores the ways in which Loneliness as an active archetypal presence operates in positive ways in children's imaginations as revealed by children's literature, folklore, film, and myth. The isolated orphan or banished outsider lost within the wilds of narrative makes and enriches her emergent world using the tools of the body, imagination, and voice. Utilizing the modalities of visual art, dramatic play, and lyrical storytelling, inventive companions and elaborate landscapes are constructed which succeed in soothing and expanding the child's psyche.

Employing the archetypal psychology approach, this study imagines (and personifies) Loneliness as the youngest of three sisters: Solitude, Aloneness, and Loneliness. Although these three siblings share similar genetic traits and are woven together in countless tales, Sister Loneliness stands apart as a unique archetypal actor. She is far more restless and angst-ridden than her sisters. Dissatisfied with her companionless state, she holds within her a yearning—the desire/eros—to construct a new cosmology filled with inventive possibilities. This dissertation qualitatively describes these vast and varied universes.

In conjunction with an analysis of well-known (and lesser-known) children's stories, the research examines Loneliness's real-world creations in the classroom and therapeutic settings, including children's drawings, sand play constructions, stories, and poetry. Further areas of focus are the role of the adult in solitary geographies, the gendered-base response to loneliness, and the transitional object as a vital compass on the path towards individuation.

Key Words: loneliness, creativity, children's literature, child development, folklore.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the development of children's drawing skills through the use of technology. The research involved five children two girls and three boys, ages three to five years in a preschool center located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Specifically, the researcher observed and analyzed the response of the selected children to the use of tablet-based programs in the development of their drawing skills. The result showed that boys between three to four were more interactive with drawing on the iPad than girls. This result will be helpful for teachers and technology specialists to understand how to optimize technology to support early childhood artistic efforts.

The first chapter of this thesis is an introduction and holds the purpose of the study. The second chapter is a review of literature. Chapter three is the methodology. And in chapter four, findings and results are discussed. Chapter five is the conclusion and recommendations for further study.

This qualitative research examined how two early childhood educators initially integrated tablet technology in the curriculum through classroom observation, interviews and a review of documentation. The overall question was: how are early childhood educators initially integrating tablet technologies in the curriculum? The researcher also asked three sub-questions to further delve into developmentally appropriate practice while choosing apps. The three sub-questions ranged from what the early childhood educators believed about the impact of tablet technology within the curriculum, to how the early childhood educators were choosing developmentally appropriate apps.

The results of the research were the early childhood educator were initially integrating tablet technology at a cautious pace, but were not aware if the apps were developmentally appropriate. The researcher observed for seven weeks with 14 observations per educator. The observations and unobtrusive documentation showed that the iPads were used as a teacher driven goal. The children did not get to choose an app during the 7 weeks study. Each educator had an app in mind for each observational period. The researcher observed that many of the children, in one particular room, never had an opportunity to use the iPad.

The data collection strategies for this study were unobtrusive documentation, interviews, and unobtrusive observations. The unobtrusive documentation was the lesson plans submitted by one of the educators and app lists. The researcher arranged pre- and post-interview for the two educators. Though the unobtrusive documentation, observations and interviews, the researcher answered the initial research questions as well as the three sub-questions.

Seven themes emerged from the data. The themes included: a slow and cautious pace of integrating technology, the limited access to iPads, evidence of the lack of emphasis in lesson planning, need for more and continuous professional development, a trial and error approach to app selection, educators reliance on others for app selection, and uninformed app selection.

2-Shapes (Stuebe, 2017), an art-based antecedent intervention, was introduced as an intervention to regulate disruptive behaviors in this study. The researcher was interested in discovering whether this art-based antecedent activity could help manage self-regulation in a K3 student during group time. The goal of this art-based antecedent study was to provide a meaningful intervention to a child that supports self-regulation, improves self-awareness, and supports intrapersonal and interpersonal thought processes to manage changing conditions. The results of the study revealed the importance of completing a thorough Functional Behavioral Assessment followed by a Functional Analysis to understand the function of a class of disruptive behaviors exhibited by a K3 child. The interview process prior to any assessments may answer many of the questions researchers have about the function of target behaviors and should be completed thoroughly with a great deal of thought and detail. This study demonstrated the need for addressing these steps in determining an appropriate intervention. Results from a Functional Analysis performed after the data collection process determined that the function of the disruptive behavior was attention and that this intervention, if proven effective, would have been addressing the function of attention and therefore would have been an effective treatment for the identified child.

This qualitative study explores the level of satisfaction of parents regarding early identification/intervention services for children who are deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH). The purpose of this study is to compare the progress of children who are D/HH with their hearing peers on elements used to measure the readiness of students to enter the first grade as measured by teacher and parental perception/satisfaction. This study will include a qualitative exploration of assistive strategies and parental choices regarding early-intervention services, amplification, and modes of communication. Furthermore, it will provide and analyze data concerning teacher and parent perception of the relative success of the various pre-school interventions for children with hearing losses.

The study employs a qualitative case-study methodology using an in-depth guided-interview format to collect data. Participants include four families of children who are deaf or hard of hearing. Triangulation of data sources is achieved through guided in-depth interviews with parents, document review, verbatim transcripts of all interviews, and personal observations. The findings reveal levels of functioning for children who are D/HH upon entry into the school system through the end of their kindergarten year and levels of parental satisfaction concerning their choices made about early-intervention services prior to their children's entry into the school system.

This study was undertaken to explore ways to assist at-risk African American students in phonemic awareness skills using their cultural vernacular. African American, at-risk preschoolers typically lag behind their peers. Teachers typically do not use culturally responsive methods to instruct them. For these reasons, these children struggle with literacy. Research questions were as follows: (1) Do African American at-risk preschoolers’ phonemic awareness increase after exposure to AAVE instructional strategies? (2) Do African American at-risk preschoolers’ rhyming and alliteration increase after exposure to AAVE language instructional strategies? and (3) Do African American at-risk preschoolers’ blending, manipulation, and segmenting increase after exposure to AAVE language instructional strategies? The theoretical framework of this study was African American at-risk preschoolers and all children must be taught in a manner in which they can learn and this would include using their vernacular. The methodology used was a quantitative study involving two groups of 20 randomly sampled preschoolers enrolled in a Head Start Preschool for All program. The study took place for twelve weeks with a control group of 20 and a treatment group of 20. Data analysis included an independent T-test, followed by a paired dependent T-test. Results indicated there were insufficient data to indicate significant differences in phonemic awareness. Recommendations include further research regarding culturally responsive teaching.

This teacher research study examined the pedagogical practices and conditions for learning that supported the literacy learning of the children in my kindergarten classroom during the 2006-2007 school year. An additional focus was to determine the meaning-making strategies employed by effective young beginning readers in this classroom.

The participants were 21 children, 12 girls and nine boys, who were students in my kindergarten. They were also representative of the primarily Caucasian population within a school district on eastern Long Island that included a small percentage (less than 5%) of other ethnic groups.

Data collection included ethnographic observations (kidwatching), along with still and video, digital photography. These data were examined within the literacy events in the classroom that included reading to children, reading with children, and children reading by themselves or to others. Portions of the video collection included the children reading the morning message with me. Video of children reading to me was also transcribed and examined using miscue analysis to determine the meaning-making strategies used by five effective young beginning readers.

Findings indicate that the tenants of whole language, along with Cambourne's (1988) conditions for learning, were in place and supported the pedagogical practice during the literacy events studied. Miscue analysis of the readings done by the children indicated that the children avoided any reliance on the surface features of text (phonics) and employed complex, meaning-making miscues to produce a reader's text that also maintained a high syntactic and semantic relationship with the author's text.

The implications are that similar literacy development could be realize for children within other classrooms where this pedagogy and conditions for learning are in place.