Women in Resistance: The Role of the Atelierista/Atelier in Anti-Facist Art Pedagogy

• In Event: Confronting the Raciolinguistic Injustices Recycled in Early Childhood Spaces: Advocating With a Feminist-Abolitionist Approach

Abstract

Aesthetics and the unique role of the atelierista/studio art teacher are often overlooked and perceived as frivolous add-ons in early childhood contexts serving low-income, racially diverse, immigrants, refugees, and emergent bilingual and multilingual learners (Oviedo & Schroeder Yu, 2023). U.S. early childhood contexts that do employ studio art teachers generally represent monolingual speakers. The presenter shares a counter-perspective emphasizing a feminist pedagogical art practice as a form of resistance within racially and linguistically diverse school contexts.

In the late 1970s, a “new breed of educator with an arts background,” became known as atelierista and was introduced into the Reggio Emilia, Italy preschools and infant-toddler centers (Cagliari et al., 2016, p. 155). This role was predominantly cultivated by women responding to prior fascist forms of schooling in Italy. The contemporary role of atelierista represents a collaborator in the schools, supporting curiosity, imagination, and creative thinking throughout all learning experiences. Similarly, the atelier represents both the physical space in Reggio schools and mindset that challenges dichotomies such as art versus science, technical versus poetic, and verbal versus nonverbal languages. However, in U.S. early childhood contexts, the atelier and atelierista are often mistaken as transmitters of technical skills rather than promoting the right to freedom of expression in all languages.

The presenter employs autoethnography as a feminist methodology (Ettore, 2016; Chappola & Datta, 2023) to reveal the complex narrative of her own experience as a monolingual studio art teacher in racially diverse, bi-and multi-lingual early childhood contexts. As a white mother-scholar, this narrative is further complicated and enriched by the experiences of her biracial Korean American children, drawing awareness to feelings of vulnerability and humility as generative (Boyd Acuff, 2016; Kim-Breunig & Vittrup, 2022).

Data includes the presenters’ self-experience gathered from journals and photographs. Surveys and interviews completed by U.S. early childhood educators in Italy (n=76), and follow-up interviews with the U.S. early childhood educators (n=8) reaffirm her narrative and discuss the misunderstandings, importance, and inequalities of the aesthetic dimension within racially, economically, and linguistically diverse early childhood contexts.

Findings illustrate multimodal self and collaborative creative expressions create a sense of belonging for multilingual young children. The atelierista’s essential role is to provoke art materials’ contributions to an expanded repertoire of languages. A feminist art pedagogy values relational and reciprocal learning, empathy, solidarity, and grace (Vecchi, 2010) as integral to freedom of expression and essential to meaning-making in bi- and multilingual early childhood contexts. Additionally, the role of the atelierista can contribute to sophisticated observation and documentation that tell the story of young children’s learning experiences.

There is very little literature about the role of the atelierista/studio art teacher in multilingual early childhood contexts. The linguistic repertoire of multilingual children should include nonverbal forms of expression, quality art materials, and opportunities for exploration and communication of theories and ideas. Studio art teachers have in-depth knowledge and experience with art materials and processes for expression and communication. The presenter advocates for synergetic relationships among atelierista, teachers, children, and materials.

Author

• Geralyn Schroeder Yu, University of New Mexico