Browsing by Author "Naski, Malin"

The purpose of this study is to explore how educators view sustainable development and visual arts, and how these phenomena are incorporated into practice in early childhood education. This study is a qualitative study in which sustainability in early childhood education and visual arts are studied through a social constructivist and posthumanistic perspective. Method of enquiry is focus group interview. Educators where of the opinion that visual art activities using physical tools are important, but that the addition of digital art adds a new dimension to visual arts. Visual art activities were present in the practice of the educators both as planned activities and as spontaneous child-initiated artmaking. To make artmaking more ecologic educators taught children to use materials sparingly, or to make artwork that could be documented digitally, freeing the material for reuse. Using recycled material was seen both as a solution to making artmaking sustainable and as problematic. Children were taught a sustainable lifestyle and empowered by learning methods to work for sustainable development.