Landscapes of Identity: Young children and the visual arts

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Published: Dec 12, 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.26443/crae.v44i1.41

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Lesley Margaret Pohio
The University of Auckland Faculty of Education and Social Work

Abstract

Abstract: This research investigated how early childhood teachers responded to young children’s cultural and ethnic diversity through the visual arts.  The visual arts are a critical means through which children’s cultural ways of knowing can be communicated and made visible. This was a key discovery from a research project underpinned by the New Zealand early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki, which cites cultural diversity as a central  principle, and motivated by statistics in the 2013 New Zealand Census that showed a strong demographic contrast between the ethnicities of the youthful and adult populations. The research findings presented the teacher participants’ understandings of culture and ethnicity and their interpretation of the multi-faceted and complex ways children’s visual artwork expresses children’s cultural and ethnic identities. Fragments of the artworks were interwoven within a tapestry to visualise these complex and multi-faceted findings.


Keywords: Early Childhood Education; Visual Arts; Cultural and Ethnic diversity 

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Article Details

Issue
Vol. 44 No. 1 (2017)
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Articles
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Author Biography

Lesley Margaret Pohio, The University of Auckland Faculty of Education and Social Work

Lesley Pohio teaches at the University of Auckland's Faculty of Education and Social work with early childhood teacher and primary education students. Lesley has taught in the early childhood sector before teaching in tertiary. Her main areas of teaching and research centre around the visual arts and the pedagogy of place.

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