"Evil cats" and "jelly floods": young children’s collective constructions of digital art-making in the early years classroom

Digital technologies have the potential to offer new opportunities for children’s expressive arts practices. While adult expectations surround and shape children’s visual art-making on paper in the early years classroom, such expectations are not so established in relation to digital art-making. So how do children make sense of digital art-making when it is newly introduced into the classroom and adult input is minimal? Drawing on a social semiotic ethnographic perspective, this paper explores this question by examining instances of 4-5 year olds’ spoken dialogue around the computer during a week in which digital art-making was first introduced into the classroom. Analysis focused on interactions where children proposed, reinforced or challenged conceptions of digital art-making. These interactions demonstrated that children’s digital art-making was negotiated and constructed through particular processes. Three such processes are presented here: the use of collective motifs and metaphors; attributing ‘expert’ status; and polarizing conflicts. Understanding these processes offers a starting point for thinking about how a new activity like digital art-making can be integrated into the early years classroom and supported by practitioners

'We’re just gonna scribble it': The affective and social work of destruction in children’s art-making with different semiotic resources

In this paper I explore children’s destruction of their artwork as it occurs on paper or digitally via the interactive whiteboard (IWB). Social semiotics offers a theoretical lens for understanding children’s acts of destruction as meaningful and how different semiotic resources shape the meaning-making involved in destruction differently. To explore this further, I consider two episodes of art-making: firstly, an episode of child-parent art-making that ended in the five year old child scribbling over a drawing on paper with a black crayon, and secondly, an episode of a five year old child using touch to cover over the drawing she had made on the classroom IWB during free-flow activity time. A comparison between these two episodes is used to explore how digital and paper-based semiotic resources may impact differently on the experience of destruction and the affective and relational work that it can achieve

Beyond the fine art ghetto: Why the visual arts are important in education

The importance of the visual arts lies not in the reasons why some of them ar privileged, but rather in the fact that as a whole they are such an ordinary part of life. They are to be found in all aspects of modern life, and apart from personal experience they structure much of what we know about the world. They take us to the core of social structures with all their contradictions and moral dilemmas. Yet most people have very little conscious knowledge about how to employ the visual arts in their best interests. No greater gifts can be offered by formal education than to facilitate critical minds that ask which images serve one's own interests and which need to be incorporated so that they do so, and also to encourage people with inquiring minds which ask, "What is not shown?" These arguments are advanced by reference to a range of disciplines, including psychology, evolutionary biology, postmodern cultural studies, media studies, semiotics, and the history of science and technology

Arts education in isolated areas of Queensland

Examines primary arts education, especially visual arts and drama, in the area covered by the Longreach School of Distance Education.. "The study examines primary arts education, especially visual arts and drama, as it operates in the area covered by the Longreach School of Distance Education. This includes one quarter of the area of Queensland which is twice the area of Victoria. Data was obtained from School Principals, teachers, and support staff, parents, governesses and children through extensive open ended interviews and a questionnaire."--p. 3