Quality arts education delivered in early childhood has a positive impact on children's early development and learning. The Arts and Meaning-Making with Children focuses on arts in early childhood through the lenses of 'play' and 'meaning making'. Examples of creative arts such as drawing, painting, sculpture, movement, music, dramatising and storytelling are provided alongside theoretical principles, to showcase how children can express ideas and make meaning from early ages. Each chapter includes case studies, examples of arts-based research, links to the EYLF guidelines, and end-of-chapter questions and activities to engage students and help them reflect on the content. Suggested adaptations for younger and older children are also included. Written by experienced educators, artists and academics, The Arts and Meaning-Making with Children offers a focused, in-depth exploration of the arts in early childhood and is an essential resource for pre-service and in-service educators.
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An exploration of the arts in early childhood and a resource for pre-service educators.
1. A First Nations art pedagogy in Australian early childhood education
Hope O'Chin;
2. Embodied music-making, singing, and song-making: young
children's agency, identity and world-making through music Margaret S.
Barrett;
3. Transformative learning through dance-play and drawing-telling
Susan Wright and Jan Deans;
4. Teaching the arts: am I doing it 'properly'?
Felicity McArdle;
5. Meaning expression through music in teacher-child
interactions Lynn Lee-Pang;
6. Culturally responsive dance in the early years
Kerrin Rowlands, Jeff Meiners and Wendy Schiller;
7. Young children's
semiosis with artworks in residence Julie Wren;
8. Meaning-making with
children: semiotics, learning and communicating Susan Wright;
9. Teachers as
co-players: creating with children in play Sarah Young and Rebecca Lewis;
10.
Media arts and meaning making with children in S.P.A.C.E: a living inquiry
storied through place and technology SWISP (Speculative Wonderings in Space
and Place) Lab Kate Coleman, Sarah Healy and Angela Molloy Murphy.
Susan Wright (Ph.D.) is Honorary Professor at the University of Melbourne, where she was formerly the Chair of Arts Education, Director of studioFive UNESCO Observatory of Arts Education and member of the UNITWIN international consortium of arts education research. She also previously held positions at the National Institute of Education (Singapore) and Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane). Susan's research and teaching interests are in early childhood arts education, with a particular focus on semiosis, multimodality and arts-based praxis. Her desire to foreground the voices of young children underpins her evidence-based exemplars of quality arts-based research, pedagogy and learning. Through video documentation and multimodal transcripts, she illustrates how children create, communicate and interpret signs using six broad meaning-making modes: linguistic, audio, spatial, oral, visual and gestural. Children's visual-spatial imagery, embodiment, narration and theorising often include metaphor, analogy, allegory and symbolism. Susan advocates for the nurturance of such creative expression throughout lifelong learning.
