Beyond the Gates: Examining the Issues Facing Early Childhood Teachers when they Visit Art Museums and Galleries with Young Children in New Zealand

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 14-21
Author(s):  
Lisa Terreni
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Mixed Methods Research ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Early Childhood Teachers ◽  
Art Museums ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Key Factors

EXCURSIONS TO CULTURAL CENTRES, such as art museums and galleries, can add new and valuable learning opportunities for young children. This paper presents the findings from a large scale national questionnaire that asked early childhood (EC) teachers in New Zealand about their engagement with art museums and galleries for learning experiences, outside of their EC centres. As part of a mixed methods research project, the questionnaire also sought to ascertain the degree to which the EC sector uses art museums and galleries as excursion destinations, and the ways in which they are used (or not). The findings suggest that key factors that both help and hinder visiting art museums and galleries with young children include: the pedagogical approaches EC teachers have in relation to visual art education, the ways in which teachers view successful learning opportunities for young children, and a teacher's own perceptions and fears of art museums and galleries. This study suggests that teachers have mixed views about whether visiting art museums and galleries will provide appropriate experiences for young children.

scholarly journals “I know what that is! It’s modern art!” Early childhood access to and use of art museums and galleries in Aotearoa New Zealand

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lisa Terreni
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Art Education ◽  
Data Gathering ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Art Museums ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand

<p>This thesis examines issues of access to art museums and galleries for young children attending early childhood (EC) centres, the ways in which the EC sector uses the institutions to enhance young children’s learning, and the relationship art museums and galleries have with New Zealand’s youngest citizens. It is the first in-depth study of young children’s use of art museums and galleries in Aotearoa New Zealand.  A mixed methods approach to the research involved a range of data gathering tools to observe, document, and analyse the practices and attitudes towards art museum visiting by the EC sector. Key participants were EC teachers, art museum directors, and art museum educators. Rich quantitative and qualitative data were elicited from a national survey of 17 of New Zealand’s largest art museums and galleries, an extensive national online questionnaire to EC centres, and an embedded case study of three EC centres who visited art museums as part of the research. Bourdieu’s key concepts of habitus, cultural capital and, particularly, field provide the fundamental tools for analysis within this inquiry. These have been used to examine and attempt to explain why some EC teachers visit art museums and galleries with young children while others do not, and understand issues of power within the field of art education in an art museum or gallery.  The study found that there are both facilitators and barriers to art museum and gallery visiting by the EC sector. Barriers included: funding limitations, teachers’ fears about using art museums and galleries with young children, lack of professional development for teachers, and poor marketing of exhibitions to the EC sector. Facilitators included EC teachers’ positive perceptions of art museums and galleries as places for enriching and extending young children’s visual arts education, visual art pedagogical practices that support visiting, and the willingness of some art museums and galleries to work with the EC sector. On the basis of the findings from all three phases of the research and informed by the literature reviews and the conceptual tools used in the analysis of data, a ‘third space’ for art education in art museums and galleries for young children attending EC centres is proposed.</p>

scholarly journals “I know what that is! It’s modern art!” Early childhood access to and use of art museums and galleries in Aotearoa New Zealand

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lisa Terreni
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Art Education ◽  
Data Gathering ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Art Museums ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand

<p>This thesis examines issues of access to art museums and galleries for young children attending early childhood (EC) centres, the ways in which the EC sector uses the institutions to enhance young children’s learning, and the relationship art museums and galleries have with New Zealand’s youngest citizens. It is the first in-depth study of young children’s use of art museums and galleries in Aotearoa New Zealand.  A mixed methods approach to the research involved a range of data gathering tools to observe, document, and analyse the practices and attitudes towards art museum visiting by the EC sector. Key participants were EC teachers, art museum directors, and art museum educators. Rich quantitative and qualitative data were elicited from a national survey of 17 of New Zealand’s largest art museums and galleries, an extensive national online questionnaire to EC centres, and an embedded case study of three EC centres who visited art museums as part of the research. Bourdieu’s key concepts of habitus, cultural capital and, particularly, field provide the fundamental tools for analysis within this inquiry. These have been used to examine and attempt to explain why some EC teachers visit art museums and galleries with young children while others do not, and understand issues of power within the field of art education in an art museum or gallery.  The study found that there are both facilitators and barriers to art museum and gallery visiting by the EC sector. Barriers included: funding limitations, teachers’ fears about using art museums and galleries with young children, lack of professional development for teachers, and poor marketing of exhibitions to the EC sector. Facilitators included EC teachers’ positive perceptions of art museums and galleries as places for enriching and extending young children’s visual arts education, visual art pedagogical practices that support visiting, and the willingness of some art museums and galleries to work with the EC sector. On the basis of the findings from all three phases of the research and informed by the literature reviews and the conceptual tools used in the analysis of data, a ‘third space’ for art education in art museums and galleries for young children attending EC centres is proposed.</p>

scholarly journals ‘You can’t totally avoid accidents. So how hard should you try?’

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 79
Author(s):  
Sue Stover
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Early Childhood Teachers ◽  
Professional Status ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Oral History Interviews ◽  
Early Childhood Settings

  The question of ‘how hard should you try?’ to control accidents introduces a quixotic question which is grappled with daily by early childhood teachers. In the context of contemporary early childhood settings in Aotearoa New Zealand, young children are expected to be kept ‘safe’ and yet also to take risks through active play. When considered historically, ‘safety’ becomes evident as a socially constructed concept that holds paradoxes and ethical dilemmas. Both ‘play’ and ‘safety’ are difficult to closely define and their meanings shift with context. Drawing on oral history interviews with historic leaders of the early childhood sector in Aotearoa New Zealand, this paper explores how, with the presence of very young children increasingly in institutional settings, ideas about ‘safety’ have shifted. This is evident in how those settings are regulated, and in what is understood as ‘normal’ activities for children, and for adults – parents and teachers. Three overlapping discourses of ‘safety’ are suggested which reflect the sociocultural context, the professional status of early childhood teachers, and existential concerns.

scholarly journals Pre-Service Early Childhood Teachers’ Preparedness to Teach Education for Sustainability

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-96
Author(s):  
Anita Croft
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Early Childhood Teachers ◽  
Education For Sustainability ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Sustainability Practices ◽  
Preparedness To Teach

The benefits of beginning Education for Sustainability (EfS) in early childhood are now widely documented. With the support of their teachers, young children have shown that through engagement in sustainability practices they are capable of becoming active citizens in their communities (Duhn, Bachmann, & Harris, 2010; Kelly & White, 2012; Ritchie, 2010; Vaealiki & Mackey, 2008). Engagement with EfS has not been widespread across the early childhood sector in Aotearoa New Zealand (Duhn et al., 2010; Vaealiki & Mackey, 2008) until recently. One way of addressing EfS in early childhood education is through teacher education institutions preparing students to teach EfS when they graduate.

scholarly journals Positioning Children Citizens: Exploring Discourses in Early Childhood Curricula in China and Aotearoa New Zealand

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Peng Xu
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Citizenship Education ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Citizenship Status ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand

 Positioning young children as citizens, now rather than as citizens in waiting, is an emerging discourse in early childhood education internationally. Differing discourses related to young children and early childhood reveal various ideas of children as citizens, and what their citizenship status, practice and education can be. This paper analyses the national early childhood education (ECE) curricula of China and Aotearoa New Zealand for the purpose of understanding how children are constructed as citizens within such policy discourses. Discourse analysis is employed in this study as a methodological approach for understanding the subjectivities of young children and exploring the meanings of young children’s citizenship in both countries. Based on Foucault’s theory of governmentality, this paper ultimately argues that young children’s citizenship in contemporary ECE curricula in China and New Zealand is a largely neoliberal construction. However, emerging positionings shape differing possibilities for citizenship education for young children in each of these countries.

Early Childhood Teachers’ Concept Map of Gifted Young Children Education

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-65
Author(s):  
Kyoung Ha Hwang ◽  
Sae Byeol Lee ◽  
Hee Sook Hwang
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Concept Map ◽  
Early Childhood Teachers ◽  
Children Education
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