The importance of art viewing experiences in early childhood visual arts

The Importance of Art Viewing Experiences in Early ChildhoodVisual Arts: The Exploration of a Master Art Teacher’s Strategiesfor Meaningful Early Arts Experiences

Angela Eckhoff

Published online: 25 October 2007

� Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007

Abstract The visual arts can be an important and rich

domain of learning for young children. In PreK education,

The Task Force on Children’s Learning and the Arts: Birth

to Age Eight (Young children and the arts: Making crea-

tive connections, Washington, DC: Arts Education

Partnership, 1998) recommends that art experiences for

young children include activities designed to introduce

children to works of art that are high quality and devel-

opmentally appropriate in both content and presentation.

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. This research

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.

Keywords Art appreciation � Early childhood �Museum education � Teaching strategies �Visual art education

Introduction

Through engagement in art viewing and art making expe-

riences, the visual arts1 can be an important and rich

domain of learning for young children. 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 (Epstein and Trimis 2002;

Colbert and Taunton 1992). However, support for intro-

ducing children to art viewing experiences is evident in the

national education standards and curriculum recommen-

dations for children birth through eight. In K-12 education,

national standards for arts education support activities

associated with art viewing experiences (NAEA 1994).

Similarly, in Pre-K education, the Task Force on Chil-

dren’s Learning and the Arts: Birth to Age Eight (1998)

recommends that art experiences for young children

include activities designed to introduce children to works

of art that are high quality and developmentally appropriate

in both content and presentation. In spite of these standards

and recommendations, art viewing experiences remain, at

best, a minor component of young children’s visual arts

education. It is likely that there are multiple factors that

contribute to this trend; early educators’ lack of training or

experience with the visual arts is one probable contributing

factor. The research reported in this article provides sup-

port 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.

Theoretical Framework

The museum-based research examined here explores an

early childhood art program that emphasized both art

viewing and art making experiences for young children. As

such, this research required a theoretical framework that

A. Eckhoff (&)

Eugene T. Moore School of Education, Clemson University,

401 B Tillman Hall, Clemson, SC 29634-0705, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

1 In this paper, the visual arts are defined as a broad category of the

arts that includes the fine arts, communication and design arts, and

architecture and environmental arts (NAEA 1994).

123

Early Childhood Educ J (2008) 35:463–472

DOI 10.1007/s10643-007-0216-1

accounted for the rich interplay between students and their

teacher as situated within the museum galleries and studio

classrooms. Current research in the learning sciences sup-

ports a view of learning that emphasizes the role of context

in learning experiences (Bransford et al. 2000), situated

cognition (Roth 1996; Greeno 1989), distributed cognition

(Hewitt and Scardamalia 1998; Cole and Engestrom 1993),

and sociocultural views of learning (Wertsch 1985, 1991)

all emphasize the important role of the learning environ-

ment. Thus, the sociocultural context of the art viewing or

art making experience becomes an inextricable part of

understanding the educational practices occurring within

the museum learning environment.

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’’ (pp. 126–128). The art objects an

instructor chooses for inclusion for student viewing expe-

riences and how they are introduced have great

implications for children’s developing understandings and

appreciation of the visual arts. Because young children’s

experiences with art are largely shaped by the adults in

their lives, it is important to explore the instructor’s

teaching methods during art viewing and art making

experiences with young children. While Kindler and Darras

(1997) present a map of pictorial development during early

childhood production experiences that supports the theo-

retical foundations outlined above, a focus on early art

viewing experiences in addition to related arts production

necessitates the utilization of an integrated early arts

model.

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). In this model, all artistic experi-

ences are dynamic; each experience leads to more

experiences; discovery generates further exploration. The

teacher plays an integral, active role in Eglinton’s model

where he/she is responsible for engaging and motivating

children to participate in an arts-based dialog. In addi-

tion, Eglinton’s model also requires teachers to engage in

observation and reflective practices (2003). The key to

Eglinton’s model is the active involvement of teachers

and students which can lead to mutual construction of

understandings of fundamental visual and conceptual

relationships. Eglinton’s model provides support for the

research presented here because of the focus on the

integration of art making, art viewing, and aesthetic

experiences as well as the identification of the integral

role of the early educator in developing and imple-

menting early arts experiences.

In addition to the role of the teachers outlined in Egl-

inton’s comprehensive model, 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. As Kolbe states, ‘‘Have

faith in children’s abilities to learn through exchanging

ideas and bouncing off each other’s thoughts. Make it

possible for them to learn from each other…’’ (2005,

p. 74). The sociocultural nature of a museum-based edu-

cational setting is undeniable. All components of the

setting—teachers, children, artworks, art materials—come

together to create arts learning experiences.

Study Description

A museum-based arts education program for young chil-

dren provided a dynamic learning environment in which to

study teaching strategies during art viewing experiences.

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. This paper reports on the art viewing experiences that

took place in two classes designed for children aged four to

five in the DAM’s summer program. The student make-up

of the first class consisted of 16 children, 11 girls and 5

boys. The second preschool-age class also had 16 children,

9 girls and 7 boys. Four students were enrolled in both

camps. Each camp met for 2.5 h a day for a week in the

summer of 2005.

The DAM’s summer arts classes were designed to meet

the needs and abilities of young children and covered a

wide variety of topics in the arts. DAM’s classes provide an

ideal environment in which to examine teaching practices

Art Making Experiences

Aesthetic Experiences

Encounterswith Art

Fig. 1 Holistic experiences in art (Eglinton 2003)

464 Early Childhood Educ J (2008) 35:463–472

123

involved in introducing young children to a variety of

artworks because the class teachers are considered to be

‘master teachers’. To be considered a master teacher at

the DAM, one must demonstrate mastery of three main

categories of knowledge: art knowledge, pedagogical

knowledge, and knowledge of museum research. The

classes reported on in this paper were taught by Mary,2 a

master teacher. This was Mary’s first time teaching each

preschool class because, prior to the summer 2005 classes,

the DAM had not offered a summer arts class for the

preschool-aged child. Mary had previously taught several

other art classes for older children and had worked in the

education department of the DAM for many years. In

addition to Mary, the preschool classes had two interns

from a nearby university, Susan and Tom. Both interns

were students in the art department of the local university.

The focus of each of the preschool classes was chosen

by the museum’s education department. Mary chose gal-

lery art that was ‘‘related to the topic and was within the

realm of familiarity to the children. I wanted objects that

were interesting and had lots of things happening so that …they could be taken in lots of directions’’ (Interview, 07/07/

05). Mary stated that her overall goal for each class was for

the children to have a positive experience. She planned to

evaluate the effectiveness of each class activity based on

the level of involvement of the children and the children’s

own perceived level of success. Mary designed art projects

that were open-ended to allow children to participate

without feeling frustrated or hampered by their ability

level. Mary’s teaching philosophy was ‘‘if they are doing

their own thing and they are happy with their progress and

project then I just let them go. I tend to only get involved or

give the children help if they act frustrated or specifically

ask for help’’ (Interview, 07/07/05). As Mary’s comments

demonstrate, the preschool classes were designed to

introduce young children to visual arts world through

positive and meaningful art viewing activities and art

making projects.

Description of Study Design

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.

This paper will focus on the teaching strategies used during

art viewing experiences. I acted as the principal researcher

for this project and, as such, took detailed field notes during

the entirety of every camp session throughout the time each

class spent in the galleries and while the students learned

about and made their own works of art in the classroom. I

also documented, through digital photographs and informal

student interviews, each student’s artwork created during

class sessions. The artworks created by the students were a

central component of the camp classes and provided a

valuable source of data for this study. This paper docu-

ments, though observational study, the strategies a master

art teacher employed to introduce and involve young

children in art viewing experiences.

This research draws upon three main sources of data:

Field notes, transcriptions of audio-taped sessions from

each class, and semi-structured interviews with the art class

teachers. While each class was in the museum galleries and

studio classrooms, class discussions were audio-taped and

later transcribed. I began coding the transcriptions of the

audio-data by identifying and labeling instances of the

teachers’ art-related talk. The rules for deciding which talk

to include, and thus classify as art-related, were quite

simple. Only talk that was focused on or mentioned an art

object, an art project, art tools, or art materials was inclu-

ded in the analysis. Off-topic talk was coded as Other but

was not included in the analysis.

Following the identification of art-focused talk, came

the important step of identifying thought segments of

individual utterances. I used DeSantis and Housen’s (2001)

conception of a thought segment, an individual, meaningful

unit of speech. In my analyses, a thought segment could be

as long as a paragraph or as short as a few words but the

underlying thought remained the same in each identified

segment. Throughout the data coding process, coding cat-

egories 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. Inter-rater

reliability was r = 0.86 averaged across the subset of

transcripts and raters.

Teaching Strategies During Art Viewing Experiences

During the initial analyses, I compared categories of teacher

talk across observation segments and class sessions. The

aim of these comparisons was to identify particular patterns

of teacher talk in each class. These patterns of talk were

then used to look across classes and teachers in an effort to

identify similar or different patterns that occurred as a result

of class or teacher variables. Data analysis revealed that the

DAM’s master teachers used four main teaching strategies

to introduce and develop class conversations about art-

works: game play, questioning, storytelling, and technically

2 All teacher and student names throughout this paper have been

changed to maintain the confidentiality of participants.

Early Childhood Educ J (2008) 35:463–472 465

123

focused talk. While this paper reports the results of the two

preschool-aged classes, it is important to note that the same

teaching strategies were utilized in all of the DAM classes

studied although the application of the strategies varied as a

function of the class topic and teacher’s goals. Mary most

frequently used Questioning strategies (62%) and also used

Game Play (19%), Storytelling (12%), and Technical (7%),

strategies (see Fig. 2) in the preschool classes during art

viewing experiences.

These four categories of teacher talk should be consid-

ered as different methods or strategies for introducing

students to the artistic and aesthetic elements of artworks:

Game Play was teacher talk involving planned or

impromptu games.

Questioning was teacher talk involving both open-

and 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 under-

standing the way in which the work of art was

designed or created.

In the following sections, I present excerpts from the

preschool art class transcripts to illustrate each category of

teacher talk. In addition, I will briefly illustrate the rela-

tionship between the art viewing experience highlighted by

the transcript excerpt and the subsequent art making

experience that followed each art viewing activity.

Game Play

Game Play was a popular mode of introduction to artworks

during class visits to the galleries. The games Mary

introduced included games of Eye Spy, color-match games

using a spinner, and games of ‘‘go find’’ where Mary’s

students were charged with the task of finding a particular

artwork or components of an artwork housed in the gallery.

To illustrate how Mary used Game Play talk to introduce

gallery artworks, the following excerpt comes from a class

of 4- and 5-year olds while they were playing a game of

‘‘go find’’ in the DAM’s Objects gallery. The children had

just viewed several family portraits and entered the Objects

gallery charged with the mission of finding different types

of ‘‘families’’ in the still life paintings housed within the

gallery. As was typical with the Game Play I observed

throughout the summer classes, this game of ‘‘go find’’

continued until all students in the class had at least one turn

to name a family they discovered.

Mary: Okay, let’s go around in here.

Student: There’s a family of flowers.

Mary: And what color of family of flowers?

Student: Pink. Orange and red.

Mary: Sort of an orangey-red; yeah; a family of poppies;

very good. Are there any other families in here?

Student: There’s a family of fruit right here.

Mary: All right good; a family of fruit.

Student: A family of grapes.

Mary: Yes.

Student: A family of fish over there.

Student: I also see a family of fish.

Mary: That looks like a family of fish. You know, Tyrie

that’s a very good observation there and that’s good

thinking.

(Transcript: Telling June 29 Gallery, lines 136–158)

As this excerpt documents, the ‘‘go find’’ game was

introduced to the children as a planned gallery activity.

Mary’s use of the game focused the children’s viewing on

the subject matter featured in the still-life artworks. As a

result, the children’s talk was focused on naming objects

and noticing how they were grouped together in the art-

work. However, if Mary had a different goal for game play

she could have structured the game to focus the children’s

attention on other dimensions of the paintings. For exam-

ple, had Mary focused the ‘‘go find’’ game on the various

colors evident in the paintings and, as a result, the chil-

dren’s talk would have reflected that game’s aim.

Therefore, the aim or goal of the games played in the

classes focused the children’s attention to particular

dimensions of the artworks. In this example, the learning

environment is shaped by not only game play but, the aim

or purpose of the game being played.

Following this day’s gallery viewing experiences, Mary

and the students went to the museum’s studio classroom to

create their own art projects. As with all of the classes’ art

making experiences, the children’s art project for the day

grew from their gallery viewing experience. Mary used the

gallery viewing experience to guide or frame the day’s art

0% 20% 40% 60% 80%

100%

Teaching strategy use in Preschool classes (combined)

Two Preschool Classes (ages 4-5 years)

Per

cen

tag

e o

f

Tea

cher

Utt

eran

ces

Questioning

Story-telling

Technical

Game Play

Fig. 2 Teaching strategies used during gallery art-viewing

experiences


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making experience. On this particular day, they created

their own ‘‘family’’ puppets using felt puppets, paint,

string, construction paper, glitter, and a host of other dec-

orative accents (see Figs. 3, 4 for an example of student

work). Mary introduced the project when the students were

in the studio classroom by revisiting the topic of families

and what the ‘‘families’’ they had explored in the gallery

had in common. For example, one still-life had different

flowers grouped together while another featured a variety

of fruit. This discussion helped to frame the children’s

grouping of their chosen subject matter for the puppet

project.

Questioning

The following except introduces a popular technique used

by the DAM master teachers for involving young children

in art viewing experiences, Questioning. As the excerpt

below documents, Questioning was used by the class

teachers to introduce the children to the technical and

contextual components of the gallery artworks. The

selection begins as Mary and her students are sitting in

front of the Storytelling Cloth About the Hero Pabuji in the

midst of their initial discussion of the artwork.

Mary: Where do you see them? Look at here. Do you see

this blue strip? What do you think that blue strip is?

Student: Paint.

Mary: You’re right. It is paint. You’re absolutely right,

but it’s supposed to look like,

Student: A river.

Mary: A river, and what do you think these look like?

Student: Turtles.

Mary: Like turtles, fish or something that lives in the

water, so look at this; this is Section 1, and then you can

look over here, and then,

Student: Big people.

Mary: What kind of big people? What do you think

they—Who’s the most important person you see?

(Transcript: Telling June 28 Gallery 2, lines 15–33)

In this excerpt, Mary’s questions were designed to get

her students involved in the viewing and discussion of the

artwork. The first question the students respond to, ‘‘What

do you think that blue strip is?’’, garnered a technical

response, ‘‘Paint.’’ Mary extended that response with a

contextual question, ‘‘You’re absolutely right, but it’s

supposed to look like…’’, aimed toward directing the stu-

dents to attend to the symbolism of the colored strip.

Mary’s questions initiated the art viewing experience and

provided the students an entry point into a discussion about

the art piece. Following the initial period of questioning

featured here; the students and Mary continued their

exploration of the artwork through storytelling.

Storytelling

The following excerpt highlights a storytelling experience

that followed the introduction to Storytelling Cloth About

the Hero Pabuji featured above in the discussion of

Questioning strategies. In the above discussion, Mary used

Questioning strategies to engage students in the artwork.

Mary followed the Questioning strategies with a storytell-

ing experience designed to further engage her students in

the viewing experience.

Fig. 3 Flower family: Student puppet

Fig. 4 Penguin family: Student puppet


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Mary: Okay now, listen carefully. If I were to make you

little teeny tiny, okay, little teeny tiny, and you could

jump into this painting, I want you to think about where

you would be and what you would be doing, but don’t

tell; keep it a secret for right now. Just look at it

carefully, and then I’m going to ring the chimes, and

when I ring the chimes, you pretend you’re teeny tiny,

okay, and that you’ve gone into the picture, and you’re

sitting someplace doing something, okay? All right.

Pretend like you’re getting smaller; pretend like you’re

getting smaller; you’re hearing the chimes; [Ringing

Chimes] There you go. Where are you going to find

yourself? Okay, ____, where are you? Where did you

end up?

Tamara: The queen.

Mary: Tamara’s going to be the queen. You know what I

think I might like to be? The flower that the queen is

smelling, and you know what? What do you think it

would smell like?

Tamara: Strawberries.

Mary: Maybe like strawberries.

Jackson: I gonna be…Mary: Where would you go, Jackson?

(Transcript: Telling June 28 Gallery, lines 59–82)

As shown in this excerpt, Mary initiates a storytelling

adventure by asking the children to pretend and place

themselves in the artwork. Mary encourages the children to

share their pretend locations and respond to follow-up

questions about their imaginative experiences. This type of

Storytelling experience took place frequently in the DAM’s

classes. Mary, like all of the DAM’s teachers, reported that

she used storytelling to engage the students, to extend the

time length of art viewing experiences, and as a way to

discuss both the technical and historical components of the

gallery artworks.

Following their story-telling adventure, Mary and the

students went to the studio classroom to create their own

art projects using reprints of the paintings that had been a

part of the day’s gallery viewing experiences. Mary

introduced the art project by presenting the children with

several postcard-sized reproductions of gallery artworks

and instructing them to choose a postcard of a painting

they’d seen in the gallery because they were going to tell

its ‘‘story’’. After each child chose one reproduction, Mary

and the teaching assistants helped the children mount each

postcard onto a larger piece of paper. Mary revisited the

idea that artworks can tell stories by reminding the children

of their storytelling adventure in the gallery and asking,

‘‘What story does your postcard tell?’’. For this experience,

Mary set out glue, paint, glitter, markers, and crayons for

the children to use in the creation of their artwork (see

Fig. 5 for an example of student artwork). Following the

creation of their storytelling artworks, Mary invited all of

her students to tell the class the story behind the pieces they

created.

Technical

Identifying and attending to the technical components of

visual artworks is an important part of both art viewing and

art making experiences. In the galleries, Mary drew stu-

dents’ attention to the design or creation features of

artworks on display through a focus on materials that were

used in the artworks’ creation and the time period or his-

tory of the artwork. In the following excerpt, we join Mary

and her class as they explore Rawhide Box (Lakota, 1930s)

housed in the Native American exhibit. On this particular

day, Mary and her students toured three of the DAM’s

galleries in search of special, ‘‘treasure’’ boxes from vari-

ous cultures. The class’s final stop was in the Native

American gallery to explore Rawhide Box.

Mary: Hey guys, look at this box right here. This box

right here would be a box that would keep very

important things in it. And how did they decorate this

box? What do you see on it?

Student: Decorations.

Mary: Decorations. And how did they get there?

Student: Made them.

Mary: How did they make them, do you think?

Student: With sticks.

Mary: Maybe with sticks. What made the color?

Student: Or hay? Or hay?

Mary: Do you think hay? How did they make the color

on there, do you think?

Fig. 5 Summer: Student use of reproduction


123

Student: Painted.

Mary: Maybe it was painted. Yeah. Maybe it was

painted.

Student: I know what they used for a paintbrush.

Mary: What did they use?

Student: For paint brushes? They used sticks for paint

brushes.

Mary: You know what? They did use some sticks that

were made of yucca.

Student: Yucca?

Mary: And yucca, I’ll show you a picture of yucca on

our way out. And the yucca branches were used to paint

with. And you know why they were used to paint with?

Student: Why?

Mary: Because, inside each piece of yucca are some

little hairs, some little fibers. And so, whenever

anybody wanted to use a paintbrush, they’d take that

yucca and they’d pull it through their teeth. And

they’d scrape all the green stuff off of it and inside

were little bristles, just like you use on your

brushes. And I’ll show you a picture of yucca on

our way out.

(Transcript: Thinking July 1 Gallery 3, lines 1–48)

Mary begins the discussion by asking the students to

look at the artwork’s design and question the means by

which the designs were applied. She allows the students

to brainstorm until she was able to build onto a student’s

response. She then proceeds to describe how yucca was

used in the art making process. As demonstrated in the

excerpt, Mary’s technical comments are presented to the

children in language they can understand. In addition,

Mary has visual aids ready in order to show the children

a picture of yucca because she anticipated that they

would not be familiar with the plant or plant name.

These practices helped to support Mary’s students by

encouraging their participation and developing under-

standings of the technical components of the visual

artworks.

Following the art viewing experiences on this partic-

ular day, Mary’s students created their own treasure

boxes. Mary introduced this project, as she did with all

projects, by revisiting the discussions held in the muse-

um’s galleries. On this day, the discussion centered on

design for three-dimensional artworks such as those

viewed in the gallery. Mary’s inclusion of the idea of

designing a box to hold a ‘‘treasure’’ helped to shape the

children’s design plan for their treasure boxes. To

complete the treasure box design project, Mary provided

each student with a small, cardboard jewelry box and a

variety of decorative paints and objects to construct their

personal treasure box (see Fig. 6 for an example of

student artwork).

Connections Between Gallery and Studio Classroom

Experiences

As noted in the prior discussion, each of the preschool art

classes in the DAM program included experiences in the

museum galleries and the studio classroom. The rich

environments of the museum galleries and studio class-

rooms extended data collection opportunities and included

not only audio data but also the children’s own artworks.

The following vignette is drawn from gallery and studio

classroom experiences and is intended to demonstrate how

the children engaged in art making experiences that were

directly related to their experiences in the museum gal-

leries. This vignette features a preschool student, Zach,

from one of Mary’s classes. In the vignette, Zach draws

upon his personal knowledge and experiences with a car-

toon series to create a connection with an art object in the

Asian Art gallery.

Storytelling with Scooby Doo

On this particular day, Mary and her students were

exploring objects in the DAM’s galleries that held a story

about another place or time. To begin the viewing expe-

rience, Mary has gathered her group of preschoolers in the

Everyday Traditions gallery around the Storyteller’s Box

Illustrating the Life of Krishna (India, Rajasthan @1900).

This is the class’s second time in this gallery but it is the

first time the class is focusing on this object. Mary begins

with a description of this box and how it was used a long

time ago to tell stories to people in different towns in India.

All right. These are the three characters in this story. I

need for you guys to take one step back, thank you.

Fig. 6 Design box: Student treasure box


123

Now, in this story, this is telling all the tales of

Buddha, and the storyteller comes to the village and

the box is all closed up. See those doors? They’re

completely closed over in front, sort of like this idea.

Like this. And then when the storyteller wants to tell

you the story, he has you all sit down and he starts to

tell you about the different things that are in there.

Now, [I] went to look for stories about this so that I

could tell you one. And you know what? I couldn’t

find any stories. So apparently, it’s only something

that the storyteller himself knows. But what I did find

out is, that one Buddha is always shown in the color

blue. So, in the three guys, is Buddha one of them?

Mary’s question to the preschoolers brings several

children to respond, ‘‘The blue one’’ and ‘‘The blue guy.’’

Mary and the students go on to talk about the scenes

involving Buddha portrayed on the box. To close the les-

son, Mary tells the students that they are going to go down

to the studio classroom and make their own Storytelling

box. As the class is leaving the Asian art floor of the DAM,

Zach (age 4) shouts, ‘‘Hey, I saw him in Scooby–Doo,’’ as

the class walks past the display of Suit of Armor and

Helmet (by Haruta Katsumitsu and Juryo Misumasa,

1700’). During the brief elevator ride down to the class-

room, Zach animatedly retells the plot of an episode of the

cartoon Scooby-Doo involving a monster dressed like the

samurai suit he’d just seen. Once in the classroom, Zach

began quickly working on his Storytelling box while still

discussing Scooby-Doo with his tablemates. After 15 min

of work Zach announced that he was finished with his box

(see Fig. 7). I, as the researcher, asked Zach if he wanted to

tell me about his work. He responded, ‘‘It’s about Shaggy

and Scooby and then a monster comes and then the

phantom cowboy comes and then Scooby is laying on the

ground and then Scooby sees a little globe and then it turns

out to be an angler guy and then Shaggy starts to say

‘Zoinks!’ And the blue lines here are the wind. Whoo!!!’’

This vignette illustrates how important personal interests

and experiences can be in imaginative thought. Zach’s

artwork was clearly influenced by a chance encounter with

an object in the gallery that sparked his interest in Scooby-

Doo as well as his storytelling-based experience with the

Storyteller’s Box Illustrating the Life of Krishna (India,

Rajasthan @1900). Without the encounter with the samurai

suit or the storyteller’s box, it is doubtful that Zach would

have brought his own personal interests into his artwork to

the same extent or covering the same topic that he did. This

is a clear example of how the power of personal experi-

ences in the visual arts can combine with personal interest

resulting in the development of a unique artwork. In

addition, the classroom environment and teaching practices

used by Mary supported Zach’s exploration of his own

personal interests which Schiller (1995) suggests to be an

important practice when discussing art with young

children.

The Scooby-Doo vignette illustrates the relationship

between the gallery and studio classroom experiences. In

each preschool class, Mary drew attention to the idea that

the gallery viewing experiences would be related to the

children’s own art making experiences. In doing so, Mary

underscored the important relationship between art viewing

and art making experiences for her students on a daily

basis. Each art making experience in Mary’s classes fol-

lowed a visit to one or more of the DAM’s galleries where

the students engaged in a visual exploration of the art-

works. In addition, Mary always grounded her

introductions to each new art making experience to the

students in a discussion of what the children had viewed

and experienced in the galleries on that day. Through the

use of the teaching strategies presented above, Mary was

able to engage her students in meaningful interactions

during art viewing experiences and, in turn, those art

viewing experiences helped to provide meaning and con-

text to related art making experiences. As presented in the

theoretical framework discussion, Mary’s role in her stu-

dents’ arts experience is evident throughout both art

viewing and art making experiences: As guide, fellow

explorer, materials supplier, and supporter.

Implications and Extensions for Early Arts Education

Epstein and Trimis (2002) discussed the importance of

providing early childhood teachers with the vocabulary and

strategies for implementing art appreciation activities as a

necessary first step toward expanding art appreciation

experiences during the preschool years. Thus, this research

has implications for everyday practice in the earlyFig. 7 Scooby-Doo and the samurai


123

childhood classroom. During data collection and analysis, I

uncovered the procedures and strategies used by experi-

enced art educators when introducing young children to art

viewing experiences. These teaching strategies can be

especially useful when considering the preparation of early

childhood educators. This population of teachers is

expected to teach children in all major subject disciplines,

including music and art. Given that fact, it is conceivable

that early childhood educators may have received minimal

academic instruction related to visual arts education. As

such, many early childhood educators themselves may not

have had experiences looking at and talking about art. 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. The early childhood

literature base in this area is small but growing as

researchers seek to expand our understandings of the role

of the teacher in early arts experiences (Danko-McGhee

and Slutsky 2003; Korn-Bursztyn 2002, Taunton and

Colbert 2000; Taunton 1983). In addition to the growing

early childhood literature base, research exploring teaching

strategies involved in engaging students in art viewing and

discussion activities have been explored extensively at the

middle and high school populations (Barrett 1994, 1997,

2004; Wilson and Clark 2000; Mittler 1980, 1985). In spite

of the different focus on age groups, the middle and high-

school research literature provides an important framework

for developing strategies for art viewing with young

students.

For example, Barrett (2004) offers several prerequisites

for improving student dialog about art that are applicable to

work with younger populations. Barrett recommends pro-

viding a suitable physical environment, selecting

appropriate artworks, encouraging multiplicity of voices

during discussions, and providing closure during discus-

sions. Barrett’s prerequisites provide a framework for

developing the educational environment and with the

addition of DAM’s teaching strategies, early educators are

provided with a powerful methodology for structuring the

discussion for an art viewing experience. Used in combi-

nation, early childhood educators could develop

meaningful classroom-based art viewing experiences to

enhance and extend current art making practices.

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 con-

nected and purposeful to her students. 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 experi-

ences in their classrooms to enable the development of

children’s observational skills. Field trips to visit art

museums and galleries are not an everyday possibility for

early educators. However, the use high-quality reproduc-

tions can be a regular part of everyday classroom

experiences and, thus can provide young students a way to

enter into art viewing experiences. 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.

Future research exploring the application of the teaching

strategies presented here is needed to explore both effec-

tiveness and practicality for the early childhood classroom.

In the interim, art appreciation and art viewing experiences

continue to be an overlooked component of early arts

experiences. It is important for those responsible for the

development and education of pre-service and in-service

teachers to emphasize the importance of a holistic, bal-

anced visual arts curriculum (Eglinton 2003) that

acknowledges the important role of the teacher in early arts

experiences (Kolbe 2005; Bae 2004; Kindler and Darras

1997). Ensuring the inclusion of art appreciation experi-

ences is important in early childhood education. 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.

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Referenced artwork

Storyteller’s Box Illustrating the Life of Krishna, India, Rajasthan

@1900. The Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO.

Story Telling Cloth About the Hero Pabuji, India @1920. The Denver

Art Museum, Denver, CO.

Suit of Armor and Helmet by Haruta Katsumitsu and Juryo Misumasa,

1700s. The Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO

Rawhide Box, Lakota 1930s. The Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO.


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