Can Information in Children’s Drawings Inform Teachers’ Practices? A Study of Singaporean Pre-school Teachers’ “Reading” of 5-6 year olds’ Drawings.

Abstract

Children’s drawings are graphic visual records of learning experiences (e.g. a zoo outing) often displayed on the walls of Singapore preschools to celebrate children’s learning and teachers’ teaching. At best, drawings are pictures to report to parents (e.g. child’s colouring skills or impressions of learning). Drawings are under utilized as representations of learning and thinking to inform teachers’ practices in lesson planning. First of all, a questionnaire survey with 325 teachers was collated to understand factors that influence teaching decisions. While face-to-face interviews with 61 children (5 - 6 years) had provided factors that influence their learning from children’s perspectives. The study aimed to explore with the goal of developing a strategy to teach teachers to read children’s drawings for information to support learning. As a result, the Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives (TEO): cognitive processes (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) with a focus on learning and cognition was the framework for the “children’s drawing evaluation checklist” designed to deduce information of content-knowledge and cognitive processes. About 140 teacher-respondents evaluated 50 pre-and post-lesson drawings on wild animals and the water cycle by 25 children (5 – 6 years old) from two preschools. The findings showed children’s cognitive processes were directed at Bloom’s “Remember,” “Understand,” “Apply,” and “Analyze,” capturing alongside rich information of children’s spontaneous knowledge. The checklist was later revised and integrated with Biggs and Collis (1982) the Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) taxonomy to reflect the amount of information represented. The revised checklist was tested with 18 mainstream teachers to evaluate wild animals and the water cycle drawings. To test for generalizability, the checklist was tested with 22 special needs teachers to evaluate 17 high functioning special needs children’s (5- 6 years old) drawings. Consequently, implications of the use of information in children’s drawings in this study are discussed.