Signs, symbols and schemas: understanding meaning in a child’s drawings

Abstract

This paper examines the schematic underpinnings in the drawings of a four-year-old girl, Thea. The paper reviews literature on graphic representations, signs and meaning-making before discussing schematic form in children's drawings, the theoretical background for the study. The paper discusses ethical issues and methodological approaches to the study where data include drawings made at home and school, Thea's recorded talk about drawings, and video recordings of her drawing sessions over a four-month period. These were coded manually and using NVivo to identify schemas. The paper discusses examples of Thea's exploration of enclosure and trajectory schematic form, which are represented by rich content derived from her experiences and imagination. The paper concludes that Thea's drawings included many schematic signifiers with clear evidence of complex thinking around enclosures and of vertical and horizontal trajectories. The paper evidences the importance of listening to children's talk as they draw in order to understand more fully, the meanings they are making. Through signs, symbols and personal narratives, Thea used drawing as a meaningful semiotic space where her persistent schematic concerns were manifest.

Children’s drawings speak a thousand words in their transition to school

“…In the 'now' image, the children were accustomed to and knowledgeable about the school and continued to emphasise the classroom and playground, the two areas where they spent most of their time. The children's feelings were reflected in their drawings (Deguara & Nutbrown, 2018) and the changing roles people played in their lives as they moved from home to school were also depicted, with friends and sometimes teachers becoming more important than family members as a source of support at school.…”

“…Each interview involved the draw-write-tell activity focused on identifying the feelings, factors, people and involvement that had an impact on the children's transition to school. The drawing activity was adapted from research involving children's recollections of their first year at school (Dockett & Perry, 2004b) and demonstrates successful use of drawing to explore children's feelings and views (Deguara & Nutbrown, 2018). The children's explanatory narratives, including the emphasis on and importance of objects, people and other elements, were noted to assist accurate interpretation.…”

Pictographic Representations of the Word “Nature” in Preschool Education Children

“…For the analysis, the components of the productions were identified and granted keywords in order to determine the participant's perception of the subject. This way, ambiguities when interpreting the products were reduced, which is what Macdonald (2009) describes as a holistic approach of the representations that the participant has regarding the understanding of the phenomenon (Deguara and Nutbrown, 2018). The analysis was also based on the visual discourse analysis proposed by Albers (2007), which states that the support systems present in drawings help interpreters understand the meanings the creator intended to depict by decoding the semantics of the symbols used through a cultural tenet.…”

Images in words and pictures: Issues arising from a shared experience of talking and drawing

“…The initial line drawing is carefully made, pays greater attention to the relative proportions of windows and door and is surmounted by three triangular roofs. Deguara and Nutbrown (2018) and Lim (2015) point out the importance of imitation for young children suggesting that friends build on each other's ideas as they engage in reciprocal conversation, while Dyson (2010) regards imitation as an intrinsic part of the semiotic process as children experiment with new possibilities.…”

“…While exchanging thoughts and building hypotheses may extend children's ability to analyse experiences and develop the skills of cooperation and competition (Schaffer, 2004), they also provide the basis for increasingly complex interaction leading, Bronfenbrenner (1979, p. 57) considers, to an enhanced level of cognition. It is the collaborative nature of this type of interaction, Deguara and Nutbrown (2018) suggest, that can lead children to draw on each other's skills, knowledge and experiences to determine the direction a drawing might take. In fact, drawing and talking together allows children to become aware of and thereby recognise the potential of each other's images for their own thinking, leading to a situation in which a more profound sharing of thoughts and ideas is possible.…”