Creative Capacity Building When Young Children Visit Museums: Theorizing Artifacts as Coauthors

• In Event: 41.083 - Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: 41.083-13 - Creativity and Agency as Resistance to Governing Discourses in/Outside of the Early Childhood Classroom: Interrogations and Transformative Imaginaries

Abstract

This paper theorises the opportunities for creative capacity building during young children’s visits to museums with their teachers, and contributes to discussions about creativity and young children with a particular focus on the artifacts’ co-authoring role. The paper invites a reimagining of educational purposes and practices, to include creativity and alternative narratives about what it means to be a learner.We provide research evidence that a museum visit is an especially valuable site for unsettling existing structures and for expanding what it means to be a learner and a knower to include a creative possible self.

Authors

• Bronwen Cowie, University of Waikato

• Margaret A. Carr, University of Waikato

• Jeanette Clarkin-Phillips, The University of Waikato

• Brenda Soutar, Mana Tamariki