NEW TRENDS IN ART LANGUAGE TEACHING

This study deals with the experience of teaching Arts in the academic field, emphasizing its value as a language tool. We are teaching a four months program on Art learning and appreciation aimed at Early Childhood Educators (mostly kindergarten active teachers). We try to focus this proposal exclusively on Arts as a way to communicate ideas and feelings by analyzing art works and images. Spanish Universities, within the Bologna process, have encouraged the development of abilities for international communication and specialized formation. However, there are some disciplines where these needs are often disregarded. The importance of learning the language of Arts should be urgently considered because such competence will enable these professionals to communicate among themselves and to understand concepts more effectively in an increasingly image-oriented world. Several American universities and cultural institutions are already offering majors on Art Teacher Educator. This trend should be mirrored by European universities to effectively prepare future childhood teachers for improving communication with their students and deal with their feelings. The professional job to be carried out by an Early Childhood Educator includes to know the way whereby children come to understand paintings as descriptions of their own interests and activities, and how they progress from simple images to the grasp of richer symbols and the full use of metaphorical and artistic style in expressing complex life experiences. This understanding and conception of images should be understood as a common language. Exploration and encouragement are potential values for creating an art-world free of boundaries that gives back to art the global dimension inherent to its visual language.