In order to help student teachers to clarify what they know about art, thus to improve the quality of learning and teaching about art for kindergarten teachers, an action research was designed and implemented during the Qualified Kindergarten Teacher Education Course offered by the Hong Kong Institute of Education. This paper presents the changes of conception of art for the student teachers in the course. Before and after the art activities, the students were invited to discuss as well as complete open-ended questionnaires to express their own ideas on art. They were requested to explain what they thought art is for themselves as well as for the early childhood children. It is interesting to find that after they had undergone the process of the project they showed that art is not only for art’s sake. Art activities mean more than an abstract term. Then the relationship between art learning and other aspects of children’s development was identified and disputed.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]