Letting Art Teach Aesthetics, Math and Language

Abstract

This papers presents a practical work model as well as an educational theory discussion on the status and potential of art work in teaching and learning math in early childhood education. The central idea is to let the child’s free creative art activity reveal, or “teach”, whatever mathematical thinking was inherent in the creative process. Paying careful attention to art and math adequate language in “meta talks” with children about their art work, is found to be a rich tool in enhancing the young learner’s development of aesthetic, numeric and linguistic literacies in gainful interplay. A field study in preschool teacher education is reviewed, including a mapping of Alan Bishop’s [2] mathematical activities in doing art work, and an interpretation of the work model in line with John Dewey’s [5] and Gert Biesta’s [1] thinking on art as experience and art as education.