Visual arts provisions are central to children’s holistic, play-based learning, yet the visual arts self-efficacy beliefs and subject content knowledge of early childhood educators influence pedagogical choices. When early childhood educators lack the visual arts confidence, skills, and knowledge required to effectively support children’s visual arts learning and engagement, children’s learning in the visual arts domain may be restricted; resulting in a negative cycle of influence whereby the next generation are denied their right to access visual languages. Qualitative case study research explored the visual arts beliefs and pedagogy of 12 degree qualified and vocationally trained early childhood educators. The conceptual framework, designed to to interpret and analyse the research data, aligns Dewey’s philosophies of democracy, education and art with the philosophy and visual arts praxis of the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education. The research findings suggest educator’s low visual arts self-efficacy beliefs develop during childhood and are not improved by pre-service training, resulting in limited visual arts skills and knowledge. The research participants’ visual arts pedagogy appeared to be strongly influenced by the experiential ‘baggage’ they carried into their pre-service training and practice contexts, by the participants’ theoretical beliefs about children’s development and by a range of divergent beliefs about the purposes of visual art in the early childhood context. Although training has the potential to broadly inform knowledge and practice, this study suggests that unless limiting visual arts self-efficacy beliefs are disrupted by constructivist theoretical knowledge and combined with practical skills and knowledge, the visual arts curriculum offered to children may be significantly compromised.

视觉艺术规定对儿童的整体，基于游戏的学习至关重要，但是早期儿童教育者的视觉艺术自我效能感信念和学科内容知识会影响教学选择。当幼儿教育者缺乏有效支持儿童视觉艺术学习和参与所需的视觉艺术信心，技能和知识时，儿童在视觉艺术领域的学习可能会受到限制；导致负面的影响循环，从而下一代被剥夺了使用视觉语言的权利。定性案例研究探索了12个合格且受过专业培训的幼儿教育者的视觉艺术信仰和教学法。这个旨在解释和分析研究数据的概念框架符合杜威的民主哲学，雷吉欧·艾米利亚（Reggio Emilia）的哲学和视觉艺术实践在幼儿教育中的教育和艺术。研究发现表明，教育者的低视觉艺术自我效能感信念在童年时期就已形成，而在职前培训并没有得到改善，导致视觉艺术技能和知识有限。研究参与者的视觉艺术教育似乎受到他们进入职前培训和实践环境的体验式“包bag”，参与者对儿童发育的理论信念以及对儿童发展目的的一系列分歧信念的强烈影响。幼儿时代的视觉艺术。尽管培训有可能广泛传播知识和实践，