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Postdevelopmental Approaches to Challenging Myths and Misconceptions in Early Childhood Art

Postdevelopmental Approaches to Challenging Myths and Misconceptions in Early Childhood Art cover

Postdevelopmental Approaches to Challenging Myths and Misconceptions in Early Childhood Art

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Pre-order. Available 05 Mar 2026
$129.60 RRP $162.00 Website price saving $32.40 (20%)

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Description

This book examines the role that adults play in shaping children's earliest experiences of art making and challenges common myths and misconceptions around early childhood art.

Written from a postdevelopmentalist position, it offers new approaches to teaching that foster children's agency and participation with art. Drawing on the works of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Jacques Ranciére, Lauren Berlant and Elizabeth Grosz, the authors explore a range of theoretical perspectives, including childism/adultism, epistemic injustice, postdevelopmentalism, posthumanism, motherscholarship and new materialism to present an alternative vision of young children. The book includes chapters from academics and practitioners based in Canada, Finland, the UK and the US, and makes use of rich photographic documentations and vivid case studies of practice to illustrate different approaches and teaching of art in early childhood. By sharing artmaking experiences from different cultures and contexts the contributors reconceptualise the art studio as somewhere to reimagine the cultural identity of young learners.

Table of Contents

Series Editors' Foreword
1. Introduction: “All Children Are Foreigners”, Heather Kaplan (University of Texas El Paso, USA) and Christine Marmé Thompson (Pennsylvania State University, USA)
Part I: Uncovering Myth Through Affect
2. The Work of Fantasy and Erasure In Childhood Art, Christopher M. Schulte (University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA)
3. Artistic/Aesthetic Inquiry, and the Myth that Children Should Be Seen and Not Heard, Heather Kaplan (University of Texas At El Paso, USA)
4. Learning from Children's Drawing and Talk About the Multiplicity of Meaning, Mona Sakr (Middlesex University in London, UK)
5. Random Nonsense and Chaos: Ways that Children Make Sense, Jeff Cornwall (Colorado State University, USA)
6. The Hospitalities and Generosities of Young Children's Drawing, Sylvia Kind and Adrienne Argent (Capilano University, Canada)
7. The Story of Complexity and Enchantment: The Rhythm of the Easels, Vicky Grube (Appalachian State University, USA)
Part II: Uncovering Myth Through Method/Action/Activism/Enactment
8. Drawing Pedagogy: Towards An Enchanted Education, Leslie Rech Penn (University of Georgia, USA)
9. Teaching Art Methods and Disobedience to Pre-Service Teachers, Sally Pirie (University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA)
10. Visualized Moments of Disruption and “The Child”, Marleena Mustola and Mari-Jatta Rissanen (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)
11. Creating Space for Young Children's Aesthetic Points of View As Socially Engaged Art Practice, Geralyn Schroeder Yu (University of New Mexico, USA)
12. I Remember Damage: Reparenting as Re-Education, Marissa Mcclure Sweeny (Carlow University, USA)
Part III: Uncovering Myth Through Questions of Space, Place, and Institution
13. Children Teaching Children: Myths of Incompetence in Early Childhood Education - An Autoethnographic Narrative From Career and Technical Education in Rural Pennsylvania, Kristine Sunday (Independent Scholar, USA)
14. Artful Invitations: Pedagogical Offerings as a Reciprocal Process, Jaye Johnson Thiel (University of Alabama, USA)
15. The Myth of the Art Studio in Early Childhood Education, Kwang Dae (Mitsy) Chung (University of Western Ontario, Canada)
16. Children Unwelcome: Troubling 'No Kids Zones' in South Korean Art Museums for Democratic Public Pedagogy, Hayon Park (George Mason University, USA)
17. Potty Talk Is Not Allowed At School: School Art + The Myth of the Innocent Child, Shana Cinquemani (Rhode Island School of Design, USA)
18. Opening Up A Co-Laboratory: (Re)Searching Traces of Play, Christina Macrae, Rachel Holmes, & Laura Trafi-Prats (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
References
Index

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published 05 Mar 2026
Format Ebook (PDF)
Edition 1st
Extent 240
ISBN 9781350539297
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Illustrations 40 bw illus
Series Postdevelopmental Approaches to Childhood
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

Heather G. Kaplan

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