The visual arts as a learning tool within an early childhood setting

This article reports on a research project that investigated the connections between early childhood teachers’ visual arts pedagogies and children’s engagement in the visual arts as a tool for learning. The journey of how one early childhood education centre had developed visual arts practices that were informed by sociocultural/constructivist theories, and how this played out through the children’s visual arts experiences, was conducted through qualitative and arts-based methods. The research revealed complex influences that had informed the development of teachers’ thinking, including key factors that had allowed fundamental pedagogical shifts to occur. This had enabled the development of a centre culture where the visual arts were valued as a vital tool in the co-construction of knowledge. This research offers teachers wishing to reconceptualise their visual arts pedagogies a rich narrative of how one early childhood education setting had negotiated this process.