An international symposium on promoting early childhood aesthetics education was held Nov. 3 in the southern city of Tainan to share experiences and promote exchanges between local educators and their global counterparts.
Organized by the Ministry of Education, the one-day event featured keynote speeches and panel discussions and involved more than 200 local early childhood educators. It was a key part of the ministry’s early childhood aesthetics education cornerstone project that has been underway for more than 10 years, the MOE said.
One of the event’s highlights was a speech by Rebecca Chan, an expert on psychology and child and human development at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. She shed light on the key role visual arts play in childhood development and shared the innovative approaches to promoting aesthetics education that have been adopted by her government.
Stephanie Sanders-Smith, an assistant professor in curriculum and instruction at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, presented practices in Italy, the U.S., Hong Kong and Taiwan, comparing approaches and highlighting how their respective curricula reflect cultural characteristics.
The MOE added that two short case studies, filmed in 2022 at a local kindergarten, allowed experts from home and abroad to exchange their views and seek opportunities for future cooperation. (SFC-E)
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