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DESIGN, IMPLEMENTATION, AND EVALUATION OF AN INNOVATIVE ART EDUCATION PROGRAM BY PRE-SERVICE KINDERGARTEN TEACHERS, WITH AN EMPHASIS ON THE ARTFUL THINKING TECHNIQUE
Get PDFArts play a vital role in the development of children in preschool education. Artistic expression within the kindergarten setting offers children opportunities to explore the world around them, enhance their imagination, strengthen their self-confidence and creativity, express their ideas through various media, enrich their emotional world, and cultivate their cultural awareness. Today, engagement with the creation of art serves as an effective means of creative representation and communication of ideas and emotions for preschool children. Findings from numerous studies highlight the impact and significance of integrating arts into early childhood education, linking them to the development of lifelong learning skills. The international academic community recognizes the importance of building children's capacity to respond effectively to situations that require critical thinking, reflection, autonomy, creativity, and decision-making. Incorporating artful thinking (A.T.) and thinking routines (T.R.) into kindergarten classrooms has been shown to support both artistic reasoning and the development of children’s critical thinking skills. But how artful thinking, thinking routines, and the arts are connected in early childhood education? Can thinking routines, in the context of art, become effective and meaningful in developing children’s critical thinking skills? The purpose of the present study is to implement and evaluate a program for introducing works of art by pre-service kindergarten teachers (P.K.T.) to preschool children through the technique of artful thinking. Specifically, this research aims to investigate whether an innovative education program based on global artworks—conducted during the teaching practice of pre-service kindergarten teachers—can enhance preschool children's thinking skills through artful thinking routines. The study sample consists of 40 third-year pre-service kindergarten teachers from the Department of Preschool Education at the University of Crete, who are teaching in five public kindergartens in the prefecture of Rethymno during the 2024–2025 academic year. Data will be collected and analyzed through the examination of pre-service kindergarten teachers’ individual portfolios, classroom observation of their instructional interventions, and an evaluation questionnaire on the art program. The findings indicate a notable enhancement in young children's critical thinking skills as a result of the systematic implementation of thinking routines and the artful thinking approach within art-integrated instructional interventions. These pedagogical practices appear to support both the process of active knowledge discovery and the cultivation of aesthetic literacy, while also strengthening children’s reflective and interpretive abilities. Moreover, the majority of pre-service kindergarten teachers expressed a positive attitude toward the art program based on artful thinking, acknowledging its contribution to children’s cognitive development and creative expression. Article visualizations
INTERCONNECTING THE USE OF ASSESSMENT DATA WITH EDUCATIONAL DESIGN DECISIONS IN THE KINDERGARTEN SETTING
Get PDFIn the context of modern pedagogy, assessment is not limited to the measurement of performance, but functions as a tool to diagnose, monitor and support the learning path of each child with the ultimate goal of understanding and supporting his or her all-around development. In kindergarten, assessment takes on a formative and diagnostic character as it focuses on the continuous observation, recording and reflective analysis of each child's learning path. Through the systematic and organized collection and analysis of data (such as observations, recordings, work samples, reflective journals, student portfolios, etc.), the kindergarten teacher can understand the needs, interests and particular characteristics of the children. These data provide important evidence to support children's development and learning, but also a valuable basis for making pedagogical decisions related to planning activities, selecting teaching strategies, and shaping a learning environment that meets each child's abilities and challenges. By integrating the context of assessment with the framework of educational design, the construction of a quality learning environment and the active participation of children in the learning process are enhanced, thus promoting their autonomy, self-activity and socio-emotional development. At the same time, the professional development of the kindergarten teacher is promoted through continuous feedback, reflection and informed decision-making. The purpose of this paper is to recognize and understand the importance of the interconnection of assessment with the educational design decision-making process and to highlight their contribution to the everyday educational life of the kindergarten. The results show that the use of assessment data makes the educational design process more flexible, adaptive and effective as it enhances the creation of a qualitative and democratic educational framework in kindergarten that respects and supports the development of each child, laying a solid foundation for his/her future learning and life path. Article visualizations
EVALUATION OF THE TEACHING PRACTICE: STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF ITS CONTRIBUTION TO THE BASIC TRAINING AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF PRE-SERVICE KINDERGARTEN TEACHERS
Get PDFThe teaching practice of students in Faculties of Education constitutes an integral part of their studies, as it represents their first contact with teaching and serves as the means through which they gain initial experiences related to their future profession. The purpose of this research was to explore students' views on the teaching practice, their teaching experiences and preparation, the challenges they faced, as well as the contribution of teaching practice to their overall academic development. The research sample consisted of 107 students from the Department of Preschool Education at the University of Crete, and a questionnaire was used as the main research tool. The study highlighted the importance of the teaching practice and its contribution to the acquisition of essential skills for the students’ future careers as kindergarten teachers. Significant challenges were also identified, such as the heavy workload, stress related to classroom management, high costs associated with implementing teaching activities, and collaboration issues with those involved in the teaching practice. At the same time, various benefits were recognized, such as the development of pedagogical skills, interaction with children, and familiarization with authentic kindergarten situations. The research findings underscore the value of the teaching practice as a bridge between theory and practice, shaping more competent and capable future educators. Article visualizations
ASSESSMENT OF LANGUAGE EXPRESSION IN EARLY CHILDHOOD: KINDERGARTEN TEACHERS’ ATTITUDES AND PRACTICES TOWARD CHILDREN’S INCORRECT RESPONSES
Get PDFThis study investigates kindergarten teachers’ attitudes and instructional practices toward children’s responses that diverge from expected or desired answers within the context of everyday learning activities. The research adopts a quantitative approach and draws on data collected from a sample of 72 kindergarten teachers through a structured questionnaire. The analysis reveals that most teachers do not perceive such responses merely as mistakes or deficits but rather as valuable entry points for pedagogical intervention, opportunities to foster metacognitive awareness, and moments that stimulate children’s creative expression. Particular emphasis is placed on the kindergarten teachers’ preference for open-ended questions, which are recognized as instrumental in encouraging critical thinking, enabling children to articulate their ideas freely, and promoting dialogic forms of learning. Equally important is the creation of supportive and emotionally safe learning environments that normalize error as part of the learning process and prevent stigmatization. The findings also underscore the role of collaboration with parents, who are seen as crucial partners in reinforcing reflective and exploratory approaches to learning at home as well as in school. The study concludes by offering practical and theoretical recommendations aimed at strengthening kindergarten teachers’ professional capacity to respond effectively to such pedagogical challenges. These include the systematic integration of reflective teaching practices, the cultivation of empathetic and flexible responses to children’s unexpected contributions, and the promotion of professional development programs that enhance teachers’ theoretical grounding and practical skills in managing errors as learning opportunities. By situating the discussion within contemporary educational theories and the broader framework of child-centered pedagogy, the study highlights the need for a shift from corrective to constructive practices in early childhood education. Article visualizations
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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