Paper short abstract:

What do we know and what do we say about children working with artists in pre-schools? My paper discusses the ordinary knowledges on childhood, especially early childhood, on the basis of a collaborative research involving adults working in pre-schools in Lyon, France.

Paper long abstract:

What do different social actors working in the same place with the same children say about situations involving these children working with an artist ? This question is the major concern of a research based on fieldwork into an educational art programme in pre-schools, Lyon, France. Answers were expected through the method of using shootings of work sessions between an artist and children, combined with individual and group interviews.

In this paper I will try to show how this form of debate, involving a plurality of points of view on children aged between 2½ and 5½ working with an artist, leads or not to a consensual interpretation. I will focus :

- on the pregnancy of developmentalism and how some assessments on verbal and non verbal behaviors or performances have an effect on ordinary knowledge of childhood,

- on the way these observations generate questions about specific learning in artistic context and about school and pre-school as institutions.