Problems in Primary Art Education: Some reflections on the need for a new approach in the early years

Abstract

This article is concerned with a problematical aspect of primary art education, and the extent to which this may be linked with traditional Early Years approaches to this subject. A range of possible causes for the loss of confidence which many older primary children suffer with regard to art are considered, and early teaching is identified as a significant element in the emergence of such a response. Whilst the literature confirms the existence of difficulties in the later stages of primary art education, the article argues that the origins of such difficulties are to be found in the essentially passive nature of much early years art teaching. This approach, it is suggested, derives both from the logistical problems inherent in Early Years classrooms and—more importantly—from a particular notion of the nature and purpose of children's art which has dominated primary practice for many years. As a result, it is argued that there is a need to develop a new, more active, pedagogical approach to art in the Early Years of education.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 8 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.