Arts as vehicle or procedure for the learning of own contents of the Early Childhood Education: Group Edebé’s Project
Author(s):
Eugènia Arús (presenting / submitting) Marta Fiol (presenting) Eva Flores
Conference:
ECER 2013
Format:
Paper

Session Information

20 SES 05 JS, Intercultural Practices

Paper Session
Joint Session with NW 07

Time:
2013-09-11
11:00-12:30
Room:
D-303
Chair:
Ghazala Bhatti

Contribution

There is nothing as amazing and fascinating as children learning process. Between 0 and 6 years old, a child brain develops in a way that will never be repeated. At this age, children are eager to discover and they have great potential of active and affective life. Because of this, their learning capacity in this period is incalculable. (Jordan-Decarbo y Nelson, 2002; Wild, 1999).

Pre-school Education is a unique and special stage, with self identity, which aims are:

  • attending children as a whole,

  • motivate them to learn,

  • give them an affective and stable environment in which they can grow up and get to be balanced and confident people and in which they can relate to others, learn, enjoy and be happy.

Arts, Music, Visual Arts and Drama (Gardner, 1994) can provide a framework of special, even unique, personal expression.

We can see how important this stage is in Spain by having a look at Pre-school Education schooling rates. According to the report from the Ministry of Education Panorama de la Educación, Indicadores from OECD 2012, Spain is among those countries with the highest schooling rates, even though it is a voluntary stage.

School attendance in children between 3 and 4 years old in Spain is up to 99 %, almost universal, whereas in OECD is up to 71.9 % and in the EU is up to 78.1 %.

With the aim of introducing qualitative improvements in the education of children and to ensure their emotional wellbeing, and having noticed that teachers had important needs and concerns as regards to diversity in their student groups, we developed a program based on the detection of needs and concerns explained by professionals in education.

This program of Grupo edebé, object of our research, is a multicultural, interdisciplinary and globalizing project the aims of which are:

  • developing children's talent and personality,

  • keeping their imagination and creativity and using these as a learning resource,

  • promoting reasoning, favouring expression and communication,

  • providing children with the tools to manage their emotions,

  • and especially, introducing Arts as a procedure to increase learning.

We wanted to start the research by studying the impact (Brice, 2003) that this last point had on the learning of five-year-old children schooled in multicultural environments.

Therefore, the main goal of the research was the assessment of the implementation of a child education programme attending to diversity in a population of five-year-old children, specifically in the practice of procedures based on the use of Arts (music, arts and crafts and theatre) as a vehicle or procedure for learning contents in Pre-school stage.

Because children emotional welfare was a subject of our concern, and bearing in mind that the affective aspects are of vital importance for learning and child development (Parke and Gauvain, 2009), Grupo Edebé has also evaluated the starting, evolving and final impact in five-year-old children given that they finish Pre-school education at that age.

Method

Methodologically, we welcome the participative assessment investigation model, as our pretenses were to value the efficiency of the implementation of the element, process and educational programme (Sandín, 2003). Because of this, we have informed the people involved in the project, who have collaborated with Grupo edebé’s project since the foundation of the research, from the very beginning and throughout the whole process. Teachers have been in charge to implement the programme and its assessment, concentrating on the critical analysis of the personal and social circumstances which have surrounded the action. The sample was made up of 100 children from two multicultural centres settled in Barcelona and Madrid. The instruments used to obtain information were: –The test of Children's Human Figure Drawings by Elizabeth Koppitz (2010): to obtain information about the emotional state of a child, as initial and final assessment of the programme’s implementation. –A systematized observation guideline to obtain progress information and thus, being able to evaluate their achievements and promote the teaching staff’s observations as one of primary procedures implementated. –An open-structured interview aimed at the teachers, to benefit from an appropriate and rich discussion regarding interpretative of information.

Expected Outcomes

1. Attention to each child's strength helps teachers to get more positive learning results. Arts is an excellent vehicle or procedure to learn contents from other subjects (Maths, Language…) in multicultural contexts. 2. The emotional impact of the programme as an educational conduct has been significantly beneficial for a large part of overall sample (80 %) improving over the first period, particulary in emotional stability and self-esteem. 3 . Teachers have evaluated in a positive way the existence of programmes and materials for pre-school education that attend to diversity, because they give them freedom of action and make it easier to be constantly adapting to the necessities of each school, each group of students and even, each child.

References

Brice, M. (2003). Pédagogie de tous les possibles... La Rythmique Jaques-Dalcroze. Ginebra: Papillon. Gardner, H. (1994). Educación artística y desarrollo humano. Barcelona : Paidós. Jordan-Decarbo, J. y Nelson, J.A. (2002). Music and Early Childhood Education. A Colwell, R. Y Richardson, C. (ed.) The new handbook of research on music teaching and learning. A project of the music educators national conference. New York : Oxford University Press Münsterberg Koppitz, E. (2010). El dibujo de la figura humana en los niños. Buenos Aires: Guadalupe. Parke, R.D. y Gauvain, M. (2009). Child psychology. A contemporany viewpoint. New York: McGraw-Hill. Sandín, M.P. (2003). Investigación cualitativa en educación. Fundamentos y tradiciones. Madrid: MacGraw Hill-Interamericana de España, S.A.U.

Author Information

Eugènia Arús (presenting / submitting)
University of Barcelona
Barcelona
Marta Fiol (presenting)
edebe
Childhood Education
Barcelona
Grupo Edebé
Barcelona

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