Dr Margaret Brooks is a senior lecturer at the University of New England, Australia. She has been researching drawing and art for almost thirty years. Her research focuses on young children’s drawing processes and the relationships between drawing and meaning making from socio-cultural perspectives. She uses arts-based and visual ethnographic methods to examine the drawing processes of both children and adults. She is also a practicing artist. Her most recent art work involves collaborations with artists, young children, and art museums around environmental, cultural and social issues. Her studio work focuses on drawing and installation. She believes in the power of art to facilitate "trans-actions" between people, issues and places.
Margaret has a strong global audience and is owner and editor for the International Art and Early Childhood web site and the International Journal for Art in Early Childhood Research Journal. See https://artinearlychildhood.org/. The International Art in Early Childhood Association supports a biennial conference, and more recently a virtual symposium from which is emerging a beautiful set of eBooks.
Authentic Art with Children
Author(s): Dr Margaret Brooks (click on the author's name for more titles)
When you give children fat brushes and splodgy paint you get splodgy paintings. If this is the only media children are given for art-making how can they express the delicacy of a butterfly wing or the detail of the flower on which it sits? Young children deserve authentic, quality art media to work with. The media artists use are chosen specially for their expressive qualities. It takes time and practice to learn how to use them. The quality of the representation rests upon the artist’s familiarity with the media and a repertoire of skills in their use. However, we know that many educators, not having had experience with art making and authentic art media themselves, do not feel confident doing art with children. This beautifully illustrated book is a practical guide that aims to fill those gaps in an educator’s experiences with art making. As studio practices are unpacked and demonstrated the reader is invited to join in a journey through the same kinds of exploration, experimentation, practice and processes that artists engage in. The author is both artist and educator with over thirty years of experience and research in the arts and early childhood. She takes the reader into the studio and explains and demonstrates how many artists think and work. The reader gets to try ‘being an artist’. Studio practices are then braided with socio, cultural, historical theories to develop a rich set of pedagogical practices for working with young children in the visual arts. This companion book to ‘Drawing to Learn’ brings the theory developed in that book alive. It illustrates and demonstrates just how the theoretical framework outlined in Drawing to Learn can be applied to support young children’s thinking, development and meaning making. Together these two books comprise a resource for students, practitioners and researchers in early childhood that is both inspirational and practical.
RRP $74.00
Drawing to Learn
Author(s): Dr Margaret Brooks (click on the author's name for more titles)
Drawing and artmaking are core to programming in early childhood. We know that children use the arts to make sense of their world. But do we know how this happens and how to best support it? Art is a form of communication, a language. For young children who do not yet read and write it is a primary means of communication. But can we speak this language? Do we fully understand how the arts supports thinking and meaning making for young children? Much of early childhood practice rests upon socio, cultural and historical theories. However, until now there has been no framework for the arts in early childhood that is congruent with these theories. This book effectively addresses this gap in the literature. It is a scholarly work that carefully unpacks the art making processes of young children from a Vygotskian perspective. It illustrates and demonstrates, through stories and samples of children’s art making processes, how drawing and the arts are a leading activity in the development of the child. It links theory with practice to empower educators to support the artistic development of young children. A companion book, ‘Authentic Art with Children’, provides practical guides for art making with children that link these theories with practice. When read in conjunction, they take theory a step further and demonstrate how art studio practices, when braided with socio, cultural, historical theories, provide a powerful tool for learning.
RRP $74.00
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