Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of an Innovative Art Education Program by Pre-Service Kindergarten Teachers, With an Emphasis on the Artful Thinking Technique

Arts play a vital role in the development of children in preschool education. Artistic expression within the kindergarten setting offers children opportunities to explore the world around them, enhance their imagination, strengthen their self-confidence and creativity, express their ideas through various media, enrich their emotional world, and cultivate their cultural awareness. Today, engagement with the creation of art serves as an effective means of creative representation and communication of ideas and emotions for preschool children. Findings from numerous studies highlight the impact and significance of integrating arts into early childhood education, linking them to the development of lifelong learning skills. The international academic community recognizes the importance of building children's capacity to respond effectively to situations that require critical thinking, reflection, autonomy, creativity, and decision-making. Incorporating artful thinking (A.T.) and thinking routines (T.R.) into kindergarten classrooms has been shown to support both artistic reasoning and the development of children’s critical thinking skills. But how artful thinking, thinking routines, and the arts are connected in early childhood education? Can thinking routines, in the context of art, become effective and meaningful in developing children’s critical thinking skills? The purpose of the present study is to implement and evaluate a program for introducing works of art by pre-service kindergarten teachers (P.K.T.) to preschool children through the technique of artful thinking. Specifically, this research aims to investigate whether an innovative education program based on global artworks—conducted during the teaching practice of pre-service kindergarten teachers—can enhance preschool children's thinking skills through artful thinking routines. The study sample consists of 40 third-year pre-service kindergarten teachers from the Department of Preschool Education at the University of Crete, who are teaching in five public kindergartens in the prefecture of Rethymno during the 2024–2025 academic year. Data will be collected and analyzed through the examination of pre-service kindergarten teachers’ individual portfolios, classroom observation of their instructional interventions, and an evaluation questionnaire on the art program. The findings indicate a notable enhancement in young children's critical thinking skills as a result of the systematic implementation of thinking routines and the artful thinking approach within art-integrated instructional interventions. These pedagogical practices appear to support both the process of active knowledge discovery and the cultivation of aesthetic literacy, while also strengthening children’s reflective and interpretive abilities. Moreover, the majority of pre-service kindergarten teachers expressed a positive attitude toward the art program based on artful thinking, acknowledging its contribution to children’s cognitive development and creative expression. Article visualizations: