The guided learning approach ...…………...…………………………………………………. 9 2.3 The significance of the role of the teacher ………………………………………...…….… 10 2.4 The continued dominance of modernist beliefs in early childhood visual arts …………. 10 2.5 Reconcceptualising practicehow do teachers develop pedagogies that value the visual arts as a tool for learning? ………………………………………………………………….... 12 2.6 The pedagogy of Reggio Emilia and the role of the visual arts ………………………….. 14
Although visual arts pedagogies are considered central within early childhood education programs, teacher self-efficacy has a direct impact on the quality and delivery of visual arts curricula. Until recently, the visual arts self-efficacy, pedagogical knowledge, and practice of in-service early childhood teachers have remained largely unexplored. The authors of this paper present a qualitative, iterative re-analysis of their three PhD studies which broadly focussed on early childhood visual arts praxis and specifically examined the visual arts beliefs and pedagogy of early childhood teachers in Australia and New Zealand. A thematic analysis of the intersecting self-efficacy findings raised in the three studies identifies the powerful influence of self-efficacy on teaching practice in the visual arts domain and offers new understandings about visual arts self-efficacy amongst early childhood teachers. The combined findings reveal several factors that restrain or enhance teachers’ visual arts self-efficacy across time, including the impact of childhood experiences, pre-service training and epistemological beliefs. The paper also identifies several enabling conditions that appear to support teachers to develop and maintain positive visual arts self-efficacy beliefs, including practical engagement with materials, sustained professional learning, relational trust and intentional leadership. These enabling conditions offer practical strategies and research recommendations in service of positive visual arts self-efficacy to enhance quality visual arts teaching in early childhood contexts.
The international pandemic and the national lockdown during semester one of 2020 meant the Manukau Institute of Technology Early Childhood teams needed to revisit the existing requirements of their programmes and particularly in terms of practicum. In response, the teams developed ‘virtual’ meetings to replace the usual observation visit by a visiting lecturer. In this revised approach, the students and lecturers engaged in weekly conversations and in these meetings the role of the Visiting Lecturer was significantly changed. By using communication software (Microsoft Teams with cell phone back up) the student and Visiting Lecturer engaged in critically reflective conversations that mentored the student in thinking about their practice, setting goals to work on and articulating their learning. By using the software in this way, the Visiting Lecturers changed their role from merely assessor of practice to firstly, mentor and guide. In the online triadic meetings (also using Microsoft Teams and cell phone back-up) it became clear that the traditional model of the student being told how the assessor felt they had met the practicum criteria was replaced with one where the student was able to articulate for themselves.
At the end of the semester, students and lecturers were invited to give feedback via a survey. The responses focused on the deep learning experienced, ownership of learning, and the confidence the students felt at the on-line triadic. Much more unexpected was the correlation between survey responses and much of the literature. Drawing on these findings, this presentation poses some possibilities for what both the practicum and a reconceptualised relationship between visiting lecturer, associate teacher and students could look like in the ‘new normal’.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.