Developing Visual Art Education in Early Childhood Education

The aim of this thesis is to highlight the importance of visual arts education in early childhood education and to create a manual to inspire early childhood educators to focus on visual arts education in their daily teaching, helping children to achieve cognitive, physical development, self-expression, and creative and imaginative development through visual arts. The data was collected through interviews with early childhood educators from our working life partners - two day care centers in Helsinki and Vantaa, Finland, respectively. Through a semi-structured interview format using pre-prepared questions, the aim was to understand the educators' past experiences and pedagogical barriers to visual arts education. The theoretical background of the thesis is based on the Finnish National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care (2018), where visual arts is divided under the area of Diverse forms of expression. We will exploit the theory of children’s artistic development by Viktor Lowenfeld (1957) to and Howard Gardner’s theory about the artistic curve to discuss our topic. Howard Gardener’s idea about the artistry curve and the concept of children's artistic developmental stages proposed by the renowned Austrian art educator Viktor Lowenfeld are the main theoretical background of the paper. The interviewed teachers also evaluated the manual and gave relevant feedback on its usefulness in kindergartens, which suggests that the aims of this thesis have been successfully achieved. Although the research shows that there are still many aspects of arts education that need to be developed in current practice and understanding, this thesis and the arts education manual offer some possibilities for addressing approaches to visual arts education for children. Keywords: visual arts, early childhood education, manual, art & aesthetic