Early Childhood Education and Contemporary Artists: a significant experience in the classroom to improve teacher training

Abstract

Within the academic framework of the Early Childhood Education Teacher Degree of the Faculty of Education, during the 2022-2023 academic year, an artistic and educational research project is carried out in the development of the subject Teaching and Learning of Plastic Arts. The main objective is to bring contemporary artistic processes closer to the training of students. To achieve this, a model that establishes links between professional artists, university students, and active teachers is implemented and evaluated. The starting point is the meeting with contemporary artists in university classrooms, thus creating significant and practical situations in the training process of future teachers. The identified creative processes are used as raw material to design learning environments; the project culminates with their practical implementation in different collaborating schools. The article describes and evaluates the process and experience from the perspective of the participating researchers, especially emphasizing the situations of encounters with artists in the Faculty of Education.