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Studies have examined the assumption that teachers have previous perceptions, beliefs and knowledge about learning (Cochran-Smith & Villegas, 2015). This study presented the In-Action Mental Model of twenty leading artist-teachers while teaching Visual Arts in three Israeli art institutions of higher Education. Data was collected in two stages: videotaping of art lessons and stimulated recall interviews. Data was analyzed in three steps: Three artists-teachers' data was analyzed and based on the results, explicit (behavioral) and implicit (mental models) categories were built. In the second step, all the categories were analyzed in accordance to the three teachers' data. In the third step, data collected only from the artist-teacher that used different lesson patterns in the same lesson was analyzed. The teacher's mental model is influenced by the subject matter--visual arts. As evidence, the general mental model (Mevorach & Strauss, 2012) does not include all the components of the in-action mental model of teachers teaching visual arts. The characteristics of various types of subject matters may contribute to the understanding of the in-action mental model of teaching, and understand how these subject matters influence the in-action mental model, and the Teaching Model as a whole.

Many theoreticians focus on understanding the belief system regarding the mind of the learner--The Mind Theory. Olson & Brunner (1996) referred to this belief system as "folk psychology." They named the processes required to promote learners' knowledge and understanding "folk pedagogy." In their opinion, folk pedagogy reflects the learners' folk psychology. In other words, the study of folk psychology has focused on how everyday people--those without formal training in the various academic fields of science--go about attributing mental states. This domain has primarily been centered on intentional states reflective of an individual's beliefs and desires. The present study set up to characterize the folk psychology (contains expressions and summaries of various settings as a way of informally shaping quite general meanings or organizing experience) and the folk pedagogy, which deals with where, when and why people teach or educate one another in various ways for the sake of making out of things (Olson & Bruner, 1996) in early childhood education students with respect to education and care during the first three years of life and examine whether these views change during the course of their formal education. The sample comprised of 379 students of education majoring in early childhood education at three colleges in Israel. Data was gathered by a structured questionnaire examining five domains: the impact of year of life on child development, domains affecting child development, care and educational settings, care and educational methods and the role of caregivers. The findings reveal that the perceived influence of family care centers and daycare centers influence on child development decreases between the beginning and the end of their studies. The perceived effectiveness of coping through awareness increased, while strict coping methods were perceived as less effective after the training.

The aim of this paper is to propose a research tool in the field of education--the "metaphorical collage." This tool facilitates the understanding of concepts and processes in education through the analysis of metaphors in collage works that include pictorial images and verbal images. We believe the "metaphorical collage" to be an important research tool that enables both researcher and research participant to understand children's worldview in regards to concepts in the field of education. The collage permits the use of expressive language in order to describe the question under investigation. The researcher has the ability to interpret the meaning of the events in which people are involved, and he is also capable of evaluating their educational significance. It is the researcher who is equipped with the requisite ability, sensitivity, and experience for conducting research by means of the "metaphorical collage." With the help of the collage, the educational situation is grasped, and its meaning is interpreted.

This research was designed to examine how early-childhood educators pursuing their graduate degrees perceive the concept of happiness, as conveyed in visual representations. The research methodology combines qualitative and quantitative paradigms using the metaphoric collage, a tool used to analyze visual and verbal aspects. The research population included 32 students from various locations in Israel. The findings revealed that the concept of happiness is perceived as love, spirituality and emotions. In their collages, approximately half of the participants represent happiness as a list of separate and fragmented components such as children, health etc., while others attempted to find connections and relations in order to achieve a more profound view of happiness. Although the majority of the participants experience happiness as something intangible, they did not perceive academic studies and learning processes as a component of happiness.