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K-1 Teachers’ Visual Arts Beliefs And Their Role In The Early Childhood Classroom, Blythe Annette Goodman-Schanz

Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore and describe the visual arts beliefs and practices of eight K-1 teachers in four schools and in two different school districts in a southern state. Using a phenomenological framework (Creswell, 2007; Leedy & Ormrod, 2005), the research revealed the teachers’ understandings of beliefs and how they applied them to their early childhood classrooms. Data were collected consisting of formal and informal interviews with the eight teachers. Interview data were analyzed using triangulation in phenomenological reflection suggested by van Manen (1990). The analysis yielded three major themes and three sub-themes. The first …