The Arts in Children's Lives

by Bresler, Liora; Thompson, Christine Marme

• ISBN13: 9781402004711
• ISBN10: 1402004710
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-07-01
• Publisher: Kluwer Academic Pub

Summary

Advocates for the arts have contributed significantly to the philosophy and practice of early and elementary education throughout its history. Yet the nature, value, and purpose of arts experiences in the lives of children seem to remain puzzling and problematic to those most directly involved in teaching the young. Conversations between scholars and teacher educators in the arts and in education occur all too infrequently. Seventeen authors, whose work represents the best of contemporary research and theory on a constellation of issues concerning the role of the arts in children's lives and learning, address critical issues of development, context, and curriculum from perspectives informed by work with children in formal and informal settings. This anthology strives to reinvigorate dialogue on the role and significance of the arts in the education of children drawing on various cultural and institutional context and traditional and contemporary practices from different parts of the world.

Table of Contents

Foreword	1	(4)
Laura Chapman
Prelude	5	(4)
Christine Thompson
Liora Bresler
I. Context Interlude	9	(78)
Liora Bresler
Christine Thompson
Children's contextual art knowledge: Local art and school art context Comparisons	15	(14)
Karen A. Hamblen
What's to be learned? Comments on teaching music in the world and teaching world music at home	29	(14)
Bruno Nettl
Becoming Japanese: Manga, children's drawings, and the construction of national character	43	(14)
Brent Wilson
The musical cultures of children	57	(14)
Patricia Shehan Campbell
Playing the music: Comparing children's song and dance in Namibian Education	71	(16)
Minette Mans
II. Development Interlude	87	(66)
Christine Thompson
Liora Bresler
We begin as poets: Conceptual tools and the arts in early childhood	93	(8)
Kieran Egan
Michael Ling
Constructing an artistic self A cultural perspective	101	(12)
Daniel J. Walsh
Early childhood musical development	113	(16)
Graham Welch
Drawing together: Peer influence in preschool-kindergarten art classes	129	(10)
Christine Thompson
Fictional worlds and the real world in early childhood drama education	139	(14)
Shijra Schonmann
III. Curriculum Interlude	153	(84)
Liora Bresler
Christine Thompson
What we teach is who we are: The stories of our lives	157	(12)
Susan W. Stinson
School art as a hybrid genre: Institutional contexts for art curriculum	169	(16)
Liora Bresler
Early childhood literacy education, wakefulness, and the arts	185	(10)
Daniel K. Thompson
Pleasure, creativity, and the caroivalesque in children's video production	195	(20)
Donna J. Grace
Joseph Tobin
Music technology and the young child	215	(22)
Peter Webster
Afterwords	237	(2)
William Ayers
List of Contributors	239	(6)
Name Index	245