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Handbook of Child Well-Being pp 941–956Cite as

Artistic Activity and Child Well-Being in Early Schooling: Revisiting the Narratives

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Abstract

The relationship between children’s artistic activities and their well-being is framed within larger constructs of child health and safety, educational achievement and cognitive growth, and social and emotional development. Given that increasing numbers of young children around the world spend time in early care or school contexts outside of the home, this chapter focuses on the relationship between children’s artistic activities and their well-being through the lens of artistic activity as it is contextualized in early school contexts. Underlying assumptions about early schooling as a social and cultural enterprise, images of children as artists, and arts as pedagogy are examined in order to situate a reconsideration of the relationship between artistic activities and child well-being. Ultimately, this chapter raises questions about images of the child as artist that underestimate the young child’s emotional and intellectual capacities and explores an alternative emerging image that situates artistic activity as a kind of meaning-making that creates possibilities for more authentic spaces for child voices.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Childhood Education & Literacy Studies, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Ave EDU 105, Tampa, FL, 33620-5650, USA

    Dr. Jolyn Blank

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  1. Dr. Jolyn Blank
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Correspondence to Jolyn Blank .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Asher Ben-Arieh

  2. Research Institute of Quality of Life, University of Girona, Girona, Spain

    Ferran Casas

  3. Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Ivar Frønes

  4. Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA

    Jill E. Korbin

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Blank, J. (2014). Artistic Activity and Child Well-Being in Early Schooling: Revisiting the Narratives. In: Ben-Arieh, A., Casas, F., Frønes, I., Korbin, J. (eds) Handbook of Child Well-Being. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9063-8_32

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9063-8_32

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-481-9062-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-90-481-9063-8

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