A Portfolio Inventory: An Investigation of Visual Artwork Made by Children as Being Tool or Art Oriented in Structure

Abstract

This study aims to examine the visual artwork made by children as a result of the visual arts education practices of preschool teachers in institutions in terms of having tool- or art-oriented structures. The working group of the study consists of the visual artwork created by 763 children attending the lessons given by 61 teachers working at 18 independent kindergartens/nursery classes. The study used the general survey model. A “Personal Information Form” and “Form for Evaluating the Exhibited Visual Artwork of Children in Preschool Institutions in Terms of Artistic Structure” were used to collect data. In the study, the visual artwork made by children aged 48-60 months and over and displayed on the panels was collected using the "photograph recording method," one of the observation recording methods. To collect the data, a total of 18 schools were visited twice a week for five weeks with three to four days between both observations, and the visual artwork made by each class was observed. The two-step cluster method, which is formed by combining descriptive statistics with “k Means” (a non-hierarchical clustering technique from multiple statistics), and “Ward’s Minimum Variance” (a hierarchical technique), was used to analyze the data. As a result of the study, the first and second observations determined that there were two clusters, namely, tool-oriented structure and art-oriented structure and that the children’s mean scores in both clusters were low.