Knowing in the making: becoming-artist/academic with an inquiry into child art pedagogy

In this arts based autoethnographic work I was a researcher and a teacher and an artist who was becoming academic. I co-curated an exhibition of art in early childhood education connecting with the Cizek method of Child Art. As part of the approach to the research I then made art, travelled through parts of Europe visiting galleries and museums, and experienced children’s art in a museum at the holding/concentration camp at Terezin, also referred to as Thereseinstadt, Czech Republic. Knowing was evident in the processes that became ways of making meaning as I gathered items, collected information, took photographs, stuck and stitched these together as art, together with poetic writing and photo/writing. In this research I involved myself in arts-based practice as I inquired into early childhood art pedagogy; thinking about what teaching with art does. Questioning ‘what can I do?’ and ‘how might I teach?’ opened the research up to new ways of knowing (and wondering) about opportunities and potentialities in using art for early childhood education. I also found ways that fragments of lives, materials and becomings might be gathered, evoked, and documented using art. My knowing was in the making as artist/researcher/teacher as well as with materials in embodied encounters through a/r/tographic living inquiry that was personal work. Three influences on the analysis are evident in the art works that supported the discussion: a mosaic on a case, a quilted calico bag and an album. These are presented and discussed in relation to teaching children and knowing in the making with art. The idea of ‘becoming’ is accessed through artist and teacher and researcher perspectives and the thesis argues for new possibilities in becoming-artist/academic while in pedagogical relationships with young children.