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.