1. CHILDREN’S ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 5
CHILDREN’S ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT
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Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
Explain the components of children’s art.
Discuss theories of artistic development, including those proposed by Kellogg and by Lowenfeld and Brittain.
Summarize artistic development from birth through age eight using author Robert Schirrmacher’s sequence.
Provide children with painting experiences.
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Early childhood educators are concerned with the content, motive, process, and product of children’s art.
Their interest focuses on:
What children choose to include or represent (content)
How children create (process)
Why children create (motive)
What they create as a result (product)
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Content
Content refers to the subject matter or object being represented in children’s art.
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Process
Process refers to the actions and skills involved in creating an art product— cutting and tearing paper, rolling clay, painting, or marking with crayons.
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Motive
Motive refers to the reason underlying a child’s art.
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Product
Product refers to the final outcome of artistic processing.
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Theories of artistic development attempt to explain what, why, and how children create. The theories are similar yet different. Each takes a different slant, perspective, or focus.
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9. Why does one need a theory of artistic development?
A theory provides the overall structure or foundation for what we do with children.
Different theories suggest different educational practices.
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Theories of artistic development can be grouped into the following categories:
Physical
Emotional
Perceptual
Cognitive
General developmental
Cognitive developmental
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11. Physical Development Theories
A physical explanation for the development of child art holds that the content, process, product, and style of children’s art are indicative of their limited physical development.
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12. Emotional Development Theories
An emotional explanation for the development of child art holds that the content and style of children’s art is indicative of their emotional makeup, personality, temperament, and affective state.
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13. Perceptual Development Theories
A perceptual explanation for the development of child art holds that the content and style of children’s art reflects their perceptual development. Perception is influenced by the neurophysiological structure, personality, and prior learning. The perceptual explanation holds that a child draws what he or she perceives rather than what he or she sees.
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14. Cognitive Development Theories
A cognitive explanation for the development of child art holds that the content and style of children’s art is indicative of general intelligence and a function of conceptualization. Children can draw or paint only what they know.
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15. General Development Theories
A general developmental explanation incorporates social, cultural, personality, and environmental factors, as well as elements of former explanations. General developmental explanations make use of a stage sequence approach in attempting to explain the artistic expression of the child in holistic fashion.
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16. Knowing the stages of artistic development will help teachers to:
Understand where a child is developmentally.
Set appropriate but flexible expectations, neither too high nor too low.
Plan a developmentally appropriate art program.
Develop a framework for evaluation and for conferences with parents.
Appreciate the processes and products of art during the early years.
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17. Kellogg’s stages in drawing a human figure
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19. Piaget and Children’s Art
Piaget believed it was more difficult to establish regular stages of artistic development than of mental functions.
He notes that general development is one of progression, whereas artistic development is one of retrogression.
Piaget holds drawing to be a form of the semiotic or symbolic functions and a representational activity halfway between symbolic play and mental image.
Lowenfeld and Brittain’s stages of artistic development appear to parallel Piaget’s stages of cognitive development.
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Creativity has distinct forms and needs during three developmental phases. (Gardner, 1980)
Phase I: Preschoolers are instinctively creative and delighted in music, art, drama, and language.
Phase II: Children’s imagination appears to get stuck; they stop engaging in creative processing in favor of a preoccupation with language, games, or peers.
Phase III: Adults experience a convergence of abilities to plan a creative project, implement, and evaluate it.
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Gardner on Child Art
Young Children
Adult Artists
Gardner and his colleagues have documented a nonlinear U-shaped developmental pattern in children’s artistic development, with young children more like the mature artist than an older peer.
Older Children/Many Adults
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22. Schirrmacher’s Stages: A General Overview of Artistic Development
Manipulating the media: scribbling and mark making (one–two years)
Making shapes, outlines, designs, and symbols that have personal meaning (two–four years)
Pictorial art that is becoming recognizable to others (four–six years)
Realistic (school-age, five–eight years)
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