COMMUNITY CASE STUDY article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Teacher Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1501558
Folk tradition, transition and transformation for early childhood education
Provisionally accepted
- University of Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus
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Transformation of folk culture is unavoidable when aiming to make traditional elements relevant to children today. An educational event was planned during a semester based on the above assumption, as a collaboration between the Department of Education of the University of Nicosia, Cyprus and the Cyprus Folk Art Museum. The context of activities of two undergraduate courses was modified to make museum exhibits relevant initially to 11 student-teachers, and later to 20 preschool children invited at the end of the semester to participate in activities at the museum. The student-teachers' instructional design process was based on strategies followed by artists who pursue meaningful artmaking. These strategies-stages include identifying and personalizing a big idea, building a knowledge base, setting boundaries, and problem solving. Whether with a small or large deviation from the initial folk cultural experience, all participants were actively involved in activities, which were inspired by tradition and evolved to transition and transformation for an educational event.
Keywords: folk art1, early childhood education2, situated learning3, museum education4, meaningful artmaking5, slow looking6
Received: 25 Sep 2024; Accepted: 02 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Pitri and Michaelidou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Eliza Pitri, University of Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus
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