Research in Visual Arts Education - The National Society for ...

MEDIATED ACTION AND AESTHETIC LEARNING
Not only the original philosopher and educator Lois Malaguzzi but also the
atelierista Vea Vecchi and, indeed, the thirty-four day care centres in Reggio
achieved status of legends of modern child education. The Diana child care
centre became almost a place of pilgrimage for Swedish progressive educators.
Some of them looked for a complete system to implement at their own
day care centres. One of the first projects to be documented on video was
about doves living at the squares of Reggio. On a visit to Sweden and our day
care centres, Malaguzzi once noted the plethora of projects investigating
the life of doves. “Do you have such a plenty of doves in your country” he
asked. Of course, we had not! The doves rather indicated a widespread but
superficial appropriation of the Reggio approach. Later on, Professor Gunilla
Dahl berg and her colleagues at the Reggio Emilia Institute in Stockholm
have made a great effort to deepen the public understanding of the Reggio
approach by interviews (e.g., Barsotti, 1997), case studies (e.g., Kennedy, 1999)
and political-philosophical expositions (e.g., Dahlberg, Moss & Pence, 2007).
Inspired by the importance attached in Reggio to the internal environment,
called ”the third pedagogue”, Elisabeth Nordin-Hultman (2004) compared
British and Swedish day care centres in this respect. She focused on how
rooms and materials regulated the use of time and space. In Gothenburg,
Tarja Häikiö (2007) presented an analysis of the role of the atelierista (art
teacher) in the Reggio approach, based on comparative case studies of art
education in three countries and on an elaboration of the Vygotskian theory
of imagination.
A contrasting perspective on the arts in early childhood education is suggested
by Professor Ingrid Pramling and her colleagues (2008), who advocate
a ”developmental pedagogy” and teaching of art for art’s sake, i.e. for understanding
the manner in which the artist presents her subject matter.
Art in the compulsory school
Hans Wetterholm would probably never dream of exhibiting school
children’s drawings and paintings at an art museum. In his doctoral work,
Wetterholm (1999; 2001) makes a useful taxonomy of the 1994 national art
curriculum for the compulsory school. He then assumes the role of mentoring
two teachers who are trying to implement the curriculum for the earlier
school years. Both teachers found the curriculum feasible and whether
they taught an integrated curriculum or not, they felt strongly that, with
younger school children, art should be taught by the class teacher rather
than an art specialist.
56 NORDIC VISUAL ARTS EDUCATION IN TRANSITION