Advisor ： Min-Puu Chen Presenter ： Kuei-Hui Hsiao Date ： March 2, 2009

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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).

5. 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.

6. 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 • Observationalmethods 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

7. 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

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.