"Look at My Leaves!": Young Children's Artistic Entanglements with the Natural World
Open Access
- Author:
- Taudien, Rebecca Brittain
- Graduate Program:
- Art Education
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 30, 2020
- Committee Members:
- Christine M Thompson, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Christine M Thompson, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Christopher M Schulte, Committee Member
Booker Stephen Carpenter, II, Committee Member
Mark Thomas Kissling, Outside Member
Booker Stephen Carpenter, II, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- art education
child art
early childhood education
young children
environmental education
ecological sustainability - Abstract:
- Visual art and the natural world are intertwined in the lives of young children. Using a qualitative ethnographically informed approach, I explore what emerges when three- to five-year-old children use art to form relations with the natural world. A focus of this inquiry is on ethical, respectful, and meaningful relationships and researching with both the children and nature. This work includes both an emergent artful inquiry and a deliberate artful inquiry. First, I research the children’s self-initiated spontaneous artmaking during their free play time outdoors. Later, I examine the children’s deliberate artmaking as land artists during planned sessions in the woods. The philosophy of the Reggio Emilia approach and Brent Wilson’s third site pedagogy provide theoretical grounding for this work. Researching with nature and the agency of the natural materials used for artmaking are considered. Central to this understanding is repositioning ourselves within, not separate from, nature. Nature as teacher and nature as art studio are also considered. Artmaking is a meaningful way for children to form relations with the natural world and contribute to their ecological identity. Consistent with the goal of researching with children, the children use cameras to document their own creations in the woods and curate their final art exhibition. Narrative inquiry is used, since the essence of the data collected in this study is best illustrated through the telling of the children’s stories. This dissertation, which focuses on children’s artistic entanglements with the natural world, not only highlights the possibilities of researching with children and with nature, but also unsettles and disrupts the dominant ageist and anthropocentric discourse that surrounds both researching children and researching the natural world.