Preschool Teacher’s Role in the Art Activities of Early and Preschool Age Children

Visual arts capacitate the realisation of children’s creative potential from the early age. This potential is visible through research activities of play with the use of different materials and techniques; it develops children’s visual-spatial intelligence, imagination, aesthetic perception and specific artisticexpressive abilities. Great importance for the development of children’s creativity and artistic abilities lies in the influence of a preschool teacher, who enables the wealth of motivational stimuli, allows children’s freedom and appreciates their interests and possibilities. This research examined preschool teachers’ attitudes about their role in the art activities and the frequency of some didactic approaches to art activities implementation. It was conducted on a sample of 207 preschool teachers from 17 kindergartens in Croatia. Research results show that preschool teachers rate their knowledge of the art areas as good, and that there is no statistically significant difference in preschool teachers’ attitudes about their personal knowledge of visual art, considering the education degree and professional title. The results also show no statistically significant difference in the preschool teachers’ attitudes about their own role in the art activities, with regards to the education degree. Using the Spearman’s correlation coefficient, the correlation between the frequency of including works of art in the art activities with children and the preschool teachers’ attitudes about personal knowledge of art history basics was found.