Sensitive and Supportive Interactions: Tuning into Children’s Requests for Help During Art-Making

Abstract

Engaging in sensitive and supportive interactions with young children involved in artistic experiences has long interested parents and to some extent been problematic for educators. For example, while educators may marvel at young children’s apparent innate creativity, they are also aware that children co-construct artistic knowledge, skills and expression through meaningful engagements with people, places and things. Thus, uneasy pedagogical spaces exist between traditional set-up-and-step-back approaches, which some argue promote children’s ‘natural’ creativity, and working alongside children while responding to requests for help, which others may argue promotes artistic growth. Children’s perspectives on their needs and concerns have been accessed in some research and it is timely to re-examine and discuss research-based insights into ways children seek and receive support from others, including siblings, parents and teachers. This chapter explores findings from quantitative and qualitative research in order to outline and illustrate the ways in which children seek and receive help during art making. It provides descriptive accounts of the ways two five-year-old children interacted with others and their environments through their art. Reflecting on children’s accounts of experience prompts consideration of the connections and disconnections between their art experiences in home and educational settings, especially in terms of interpersonal relationships during art-making and the roles educators and adults might take when actively engaging with children through art. They also highlight the value of promoting closer connections between children’s family-based arts education and those had in educational settings.