A Unique Pedagogical Project Contextualised within a Children's Art Exhibition

Abstract

Interactions in learning between young children and early childhood student teachers, in a context outside the usual practicum, are reported in this article. The context is a children's art exhibition, in which over 280 artworks of children aged between 17 months and 6 years were exhibited. The project focuses on the mediation of thinking and creative expression between children and early childhood students, around three-dimensional works of art, which generated cross-modal artistic expression in both groups. Students visiting the exhibition were guided by their lecturer in a story-making process, prompted by children's symbolic expressions. The aim was to exemplify a pedagogical process in which children's thinking could be accessed, and then further mediated through story-drama. These stories, and other artworks, were then shared with children back in their early childhood programmes to stimulate further thinking, creativity, and representation across a range of symbolic languages — construction, music-making, dance and pretence. The ‘partnership in thinking’ between children and students thus occurred without face-to-face interactions, but through their symbolic communications. Hence, the art exhibition provided a stimulus and context for integrated learning exchanges between children and early childhood student teachers. This represents a creative pedagogical framework which exemplifies partnerships in action, and a Vygotskian approach to adult and child pedagogy.