This paper describes a curriculum designed to examine relationships between artistic fluency in middle school art classrooms, and a robust year-long paper curriculum. A sustained focus with one material, such as paper, combined with relevant artists and investigative skills activities was designed to increase artistic fluency during a time when students often experience a decline in identity and confidence. Concerns with the U-curve theory suggest that many factors affect the continuity of art during these crucial years of school. Educational standards of the Reggio Emilia Approach can be applied to secondary education, encouraging both students and educator to create dynamic compositions and innovative mark making.

The current study explores what characterizes the relationship between the pedagogical processes within a school culture of creativity in a Reggio Emilia-inspired school in the Southeastern United States. The questions which frame the study are: 1. How is a culture of creativity fostered within a Reggio Emilia-inspired school? 2. Within a culture of creativity, what characterizes the relationship between the pedagogical processes of curriculum and assessment? The research was designed as ethnography and incorporates multiple data sets which provide layers of rich and descriptive information that reveal how to foster a culture of creativity in a school for young children. These data sets were generated by the researcher and the study participants over 18 weeks of ethnographic fieldwork and participant observation. These data sets include class group observations, professional development observations, interviews, focus groups, and audio-photo vignettes of the life of the Reggio Emilia-inspired school which served as the research site for the ethnography. Through ongoing, iterative, and eclectic processes of qualitative data analysis, the researcher identified four emergent themes in the combined data generated during fieldwork. These themes represent the four findings of the study and are presented in the work in terms of answers to research questions, as well as how they support study conclusions, implications, and suggestions for future research in early childhood education. The four thematic findings that emerged in the ethnographic data generated for this study are: The Protagonists, The Daily Life, Research and Analysis, and Languages of Expression. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013.

Pedagogical documentation inspired by the early childhood schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy is a tool for teacher inquiry, learning, and development. Teachers systematically reflect upon artifacts that make visible children’s thinking, using for instance, digital photographs, quotations of children’s verbal thoughts, and teachers’ field notes. In two Reggio-inspired childcare centres in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, early childhood educators formed two teacher learning groups to study pedagogical documentation. As participants studied these artifacts (i.e. documentation), an underlying question emerges: What happens to teacher learning when early childhood educators form teacher learning groups to study pedagogical documentation in childcare centres? From this question, participants collaborated throughout six to seven research meetings to discuss and reflect upon documentation that they created. Portraiture research as a method of qualitative inquiry (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1983; Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997) offered a range of data collection methods used in this study, including videotaped research meetings, participants’ documentation work, open-ended group interview, and researcher’s field notes. These methods informed the portraiture research and constructed a vivid, in-depth look at participants’ experiences in studying pedagogical documentation in teacher learning groups. The results of this study are retold through two portraits focusing on the co-construction of teacher knowledge in teacher learning groups. Participants’ experiences such as deconstructing barriers to documentation practice, developing new documentation skills, critical self-reflection upon teacher practice, and emergent curriculum planning generated two rich portraits of teacher learning and development. Essential themes, conclusions, and implications appear in the examination of the two portraits and are explored in the final chapter. The themes included: (1) Skills of documentation, (2) Teacher learning and, (3) Teacher collaboration. Overall, this research study exposed the questions and assumptions, process of inquires, and new teacher knowledges and practices developed by two groups of early childhood educators in this study.

Pedagogical documentation inspired by the early childhood schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy is a tool for teacher inquiry, learning, and development. Teachers systematically reflect upon artifacts that make visible children’s thinking, using for instance, digital photographs, quotations of children’s verbal thoughts, and teachers’ field notes. In two Reggio-inspired childcare centres in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, early childhood educators formed two teacher learning groups to study pedagogical documentation. As participants studied these artifacts (i.e. documentation), an underlying question emerges: What happens to teacher learning when early childhood educators form teacher learning groups to study pedagogical documentation in childcare centres? From this question, participants collaborated throughout six to seven research meetings to discuss and reflect upon documentation that they created. Portraiture research as a method of qualitative inquiry (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1983; Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997) offered a range of data collection methods used in this study, including videotaped research meetings, participants’ documentation work, open-ended group interview, and researcher’s field notes. These methods informed the portraiture research and constructed a vivid, in-depth look at participants’ experiences in studying pedagogical documentation in teacher learning groups. The results of this study are retold through two portraits focusing on the co-construction of teacher knowledge in teacher learning groups. Participants’ experiences such as deconstructing barriers to documentation practice, developing new documentation skills, critical self-reflection upon teacher practice, and emergent curriculum planning generated two rich portraits of teacher learning and development. Essential themes, conclusions, and implications appear in the examination of the two portraits and are explored in the final chapter. The themes included: (1) Skills of documentation, (2) Teacher learning and, (3) Teacher collaboration. Overall, this research study exposed the questions and assumptions, process of inquires, and new teacher knowledges and practices developed by two groups of early childhood educators in this study.

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Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2017-10-26T13:03:24Z No. of bitstreams: 1 José Cavalhero Simon Junior.pdf: 6301666 bytes, checksum: 57035f57086493c49b19a117b79b2821 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-10-26T13:03:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 José Cavalhero Simon Junior.pdf: 6301666 bytes, checksum: 57035f57086493c49b19a117b79b2821 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-09-22 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / Fundação São Paulo - FUNDASP / This research project has been moved by the desire to cartographize different processes of subjectification produced within the territory of education, as well as their effects on learning. In order for such an endeavor to take place, a path was chosen that comprised affects of a body predicated upon the institutionalized teachings of formal education, as well as its practices as an educator who wished to be in contact with inventive learning within teacher education for early childhood education. Such a design has enabled me to promote dialog with the philosophy of the Reggio Emilia Approach (Italy) and concepts created by Deleuze and Guattari, both of which have been employed so as to generate zones of confrontation between systems of institutionalized teaching – which at its core has consensual objectivity as a means for subjectification – and educational systems that revolve around inventive learning which in turn open up space for singularization processes, assemblages posited outside the institutionalized and the production of difference / Este trabalho de pesquisa realizou-se pelo desejo de cartografar distintos processos de subjetivação produzidos no território da educação e seus efeitos na aprendizagem. Para que o percurso se realizasse, foi escolhido um traçado composto por afetos de um corpo educado por ensinamentos instituídos desde a escolarização básica, até as práticas de educador que quer se relacionar com aprendizagens inventivas na formação de professores da Educação Infantil. Esse traço composto permitiu-me entrar em diálogo com a filosofia da abordagem Educativa de Reggio Emilia–Itália e com conceitos criados por Deleuze e Guattari, referenciais utilizados para gerar zonas de confronto entre o sistema de ensino instituído - que tem em sua estrutura a objetividade consensual para a formação de sujeitos – e sistemas educativos para aprendizagens inventivas que abrem espaço para processos de singularização, efetivação de agenciamentos fora do instituído e produção de diferença