Re/Presenting Artful Pedagogy: Relational Aesthetics in Early Childhood Contemporary Art Experiences

Abstract

Iafelice, a program manager at the Toledo Museum of Art, earned a master's in art education in 2013 and a BA in art education in 2009 from Kent State University. Maria's positions in museums and nonprofit organizations have provided her the opportunity to work with young learners and teens, and she currently leads a volunteer workforce and manages projects focused on informal learning. She is particularly interested in the radical changes and pedagogical shifts in contemporary art and their implications for art education. Email: iafelice.maria.e@gmail.com Re/Presenting Artful Pedagogy: Relational Aesthetics in Early ChildhoodContemporary Art Experiences Fox (2001) notes the capacity of contemporary art "to stop us in our tracks, to break the momentum of current themes in educational research, educational practices and educational theory" (p. 33), which provides a point of departure for this research. Specifically, contemporary art has the ability to stop us in our art education tracks, and, within contemporary art, relational aesthetics (Bourriaud, 2001) has the potential to excite new ways to look at curriculum planning, pedagogy, and children's learning in art education contexts. Art provides different ways to consider, imagine, and represent our lived situation (Desai & Chalmers, 2007). Contemporary art is the art of now, both a mirror and a window to contemporary society, and in that sense becomes "a rich resource through which to consider current ideas and rethink the familiar" (Art 21, 2017, para. 1). Relational aesthetics is an art form that takes its theoretical departure from the social interactions and relations of participants, emphasizing everyday experiences as art. Maria Iafelice OverviewThe research in this paper presents a counternarrative of art education while acknowledging the ever-present state of flux and time of challenge in art education. To ignore contemporary art leaves us unprepared (Garber, 2003). The purpose Young children are experts in creating unpredictable projects akin to the work of contemporary artists and within contemporary art practices. The author utilized a hybrid method of a/r/tography and action research to reveal the relational moments, specifically conversations, collaborative art making, and interactions of early learners. Contemporary art, specifically as it relates to relational aesthetics, has the potential to blend with pedagogy and point to new directions for art education of young children: an artful pedagogy. Art created with a relational aesthetic emphasizes and only exists from participation and interactivity. Within the context of classroom experiences, compelling findings surrounding unpredictable projects and young learners as experts are deeply explored. In particular, implications are brought into focus for visualizing conversations with young learners through art. The connections of relational aesthetics in art education to artful pedagogy are revealed through images of conceptual work by young learners and blurry photographs. Interpreting relational ...