The importance of art viewing experiences in early
childhood visual arts: The exploration of a master art
teacher's strategies for meaningful early arts experiences
Advisor ：Min-Puu Chen
Presenter：Kuei-Hui Hsiao
Date ： March 2, 2009
Eckhoff, A. (2008). The importance of art viewing experiences in early childhood visual arts: The exploration of a
master art teacher's strategies for meaningful early arts experiences. Early Childhood Education Journal, 35(5), 463-472.
Introduction(1/2)
• In early childhood arts education, art viewing or art
appreciation experiences are often non-existent or a
minor component of children’s interactions with the
visual arts.
• However, support for introducing children to art viewing
experiences is evident in the national education standards
and curriculum recommendations for children birth
through eight.
– In K-12 education, national standards for arts education support
activities associated with art viewing experiences.
• Art viewing experiences remain, at best, a minor
component of young children’s visual arts.
Introduction(2/2)
• The research reported in this article provides support for
integrating rich, meaningful art viewing experiences as a
regular part of young children’s arts experiences while
offering early childhood educators teaching strategies for
early art viewing experiences.
• This paper documents the teaching strategies utilized by a
master art teacher at the Denver Art Museum to engage
preschool-age students in art viewing experiences which
were part of a museum-based art program.
Literature review(1/2)
• Piscitelli and Weier (2002) discussed the important role of
the adult or teacher in a museum setting, ‘‘(w)hen adults
scaffold children’s behavior by focusing their attention and
posing questions, they challenge children to a deeper level
of understanding that moves them beyond their current
level of functioning’.
• Eglinton (2003) presents a comprehensive early arts
program model where art making, encounters with art, and
aesthetic experiences are integrated and equally weighted
(see Fig. 1).
Literature review(2/2)
• Kolbe (2005) provides additional support for the pivotal
role that early educators play in scaffolding young
children’s arts-based experiences through the
acknowledgement of the sociocultural nature of learning in
a classroom setting.
• All components of the setting—teachers, children, artworks,
art materials—come together to create arts learning
experiences.
Methods (1/2)
• Four museum-based art education classes for children ages
4–11 years at the Denver Art Museum (DAM) were studied
to explore young children’s interactions with the visual arts.
– two classes designed for children aged four to five in the DAM’s
summer program
– 16 children(11 girls and 5 boys)& 16 children(9 girls and 7 boys)
– 2.5 h a day for a week in the summer of 2005
• Observational methods of research were employed to
examine this dynamic learning environment and allowed
for the development of an understanding of the teaching
strategies used to encourage young students’ active
involvement in art viewing and art making experiences.
– field notes, transcriptions of audio-taped sessions from each class,
and semi-structured interviews with the art class teachers
Methods (2/2)
• Throughout the data coding process, coding categories were
developed through constant comparative analysis (Charmaz 2000;
Glasser and Strauss 1967) aimed at identifying and refining categories of
teacher talk.
• To ensure the reliability of the student and teacher codes,
four independent raters coded a subset of transcripts.
– r = 0.86
Results
• The DAM’s master teachers used four main teaching strategies
to introduce and develop class conversations about artworks:
game play, questioning, storytelling, and technically focused talk.
– Game Play was teacher talk involving planned or impromptu games.
– Questioning was teacher talk involving both openand close-ended questions
initiated by the class teacher.
– Storytelling included experiences where the teachers told stories regarding the
history or creation of an artwork and times when the teachers read picture books to
the students.
– Technical talk by the teachers focused on specific aspects of an artwork for
purposes of better understanding the way in which the work of art was designed or
created.
Conclusions (1/2)
• The teaching strategies employed by the DAM’s master
teachers can provide an initial groundwork for beginning to
engage early educators in the process of including art
viewing activities in their classrooms.
• In the DAM study, the art making experiences were always
guided by the gallery viewing experiences.
– By making this connection explicit to the children, Mary
ensured that the art viewing experiences remained
connected and purposeful to her students.
Conclusions (2/2)
• While there is no real substitution for the experience of
viewing an original work of art, high-quality reproductions
can assist early childhood teachers in creating regular art
viewing experiences in their classrooms to enable the
development of children’s observational skills.
• Having reproductions of a variety of artworks available to
young students in the classroom can create the opportunity
for art-based dialog that may not be present in a
production-focused classroom.
Recommendations
• Future research exploring the application of the teaching
strategies presented here is needed to explore both
effectiveness and practicality for the early childhood
classroom.
• As teachers and children communicate with each other
through an art-focused dialog, they negotiate the meanings
of the artwork and of art itself.
• It is precisely this process of meaning making that will
support children’s views of the visual arts in the present
and on into their futures.