Valuing Children’s Drawings - Guest Article By Dame Prof Cathy Nutbrown & Dr Josephine Deguara [Listen Along]
This Month's Fantastic Guest Article By Dame Prof Cathy Nutbrown & Dr Josephine Deguara
When we sit alongside children as they draw, we are invited into their worlds. It is never just about marks on paper, but about stories, feelings and identities taking shape. In their new book: ‘Children Making Meaning’, Cathy Nutbrown and Jo Deguara show us how powerful it can be to really listen as children draw. They remind us that drawing is not a pastime or a filler, but a language of thinking and imagining. In this article, they share how giving children time, space and trust with their drawings allows us to see the richness of their ideas, their culture and their sense of self. Enjoy!
Valuing Children’s Drawings
By Dame Professor Cathy Nutbrown and Dr Josephine Deguara
Our book, Children Making Meaning: Exploring Drawings, Narratives and Identities (Deguara & Nutbrown, 2024) is about the pedagogy of listening; listening to children drawing, and understanding their rich processes of meaning making. This is not merely observation; it is an invitation into their worlds. Watching and listening as children draw is a great privilege, and as a pedagogical practice, it opens a portal to their lives, their ways of thinking, their world, their emotions and their identities. In early years settings, actively watching and listening to children draw helps practitioners to capture children’s here-and-now moments, and value the importance of drawing. Listening practitioners can see how young children express what matters, and in doing so, they can appreciate what is remarkable in the ordinariness of children’s everyday experiences.
As adults listen to children draw, at home or in their group setting, they can better learn to believe in them more fully, trust them more deeply, and to more honestly respect their ideas. Adults who attend to children drawing, come to value more highly the significance of what they say and do. The children in our book expressed themselves through multiple modes in their drawings, using various forms of communicating their emotions and their knowledge as they depicted both real aspects of their lives and imagined fantasies. Thea, one of the participant children in the book seamlessly blended reality and imagination, using the drawing as a medium of invention to create a world of possibilities.
She drew a car which she transformed into a van enroute to the airport. The van then evolved into an aeroplane, first piloted by Thea and later by her father, taking them to Sweden to visit her Aunt Victoria. Finally, she drew herself as a superhero in charge of the vehicle, creating a unique storyline that intertwined real-life experiences with imagined fantasy. Children’s drawings can be complex and deeply meaningful to them, and their words are often laden with sense-making, that are specific to their situations and contexts.
Drawing as a reflection of children’s funds of knowledge
Children’s social, cultural and geo-contexts are often reflected in their drawings and narratives, which are more fully appreciated when adults take time to listen as children draw. Our book is, amongst other things, a catalogue of young children’s cultural knowledge – their funds of knowledge – derived from their unique familial, geographical and cultural contexts. Children draw what they experience and also as they wish them to be. Bertly, drew Fireworks, which offers rich insights into his social and cultural world.
He referenced his father’s hobby of detonating fireworks and linked it to another of his father’s interests gun shooting. Bertly captured the essence of Malta’s socio-cultural context, where fireworks are a characteristic of summer festivities. His drawing blends community traditions with personal experience, constructing a layered understanding of fireworks and gunshots, putting a personal hallmark on meaning.
Children’s free drawing and drawing-narratives can give educators untoldinsights into the matters they are paying attention to - what children notice, wonder about, care for and matters to them. Such understanding is essential if early education is effectively to facilitate children’s holistic learning through culturally responsive curricula that value and embrace children’s interests, and identities; honouring the children themselves as individuals. In the context of children’s socio-cultural practices, meaningful pedagogy can be built around, andinformed by, every child’s unique funds of knowledge, some of which they will share with us – if we listen whilst they draw.
Educators who are open to children's funds of knowledge, build on firm foundations because their pedagogy will match their learners. They understand that children must have agency in their drawing. This means educators understanding that children must have control of their free drawings to create their meanings. When given space, time, resources, and adults who respect and understand how to support drawing, children’s drawings become richer and more reflective of their unique interests, critical commentary, and personal knowledge.
And further to pedagogical implications … adult attempts to control children’s drawing risk restriction of their ideas, limiting educators’ insights into children’s funds of knowledge and matching their teaching to children’s interests and realities.
Educators should resist the tendency to ask children to draw specific content. This is not drawing, but recording, and whilst recording may have a place at times, this should not be regarded as, or replace, the uniqueness of free drawing and individual creativity. A funds of knowledge pedagogy, which includes and values children’s free drawing, should be at the heart of early years practice. If we listen sensitively to children as they draw, we can learn more about who they are, how they feel, where they belong in their communities, who their families are to them, what they wish for, and what is important to them.
Creating and recreating identities
Listening attentively to young drawers, can teach us how they use their drawings to create and recreate their identities – playfully, purposefully and with great intensity - as they try on characters and behaviours, which variously communicate and epitomise their unique lives. The children in our book drew themselves into many identities: from their past, in relational identities of their present, in the future, or as fantasy characters. Thea’s drawing, Erika and mum before I was born, shows Thea’s mother and sister together.
Thea drew herself apart - cut out on a separate piece of paper, with her own patch of sun and grass, isolated in a circle in the bottom corner of the paper. Thea said, “This is Erica, this is mummy, and I was in mummy’s tummy. This is me when I was a baby,” It was her way of showing that she was there, but not really part of their world yet. She captured a feeling of being present and absent at the same time - belonging but still separate and not fully part of the world; in her mummy’s tummy, but yet outside. What is so powerful about this drawing is how, Thea was trying to understand where she fit in - making sense of her place in her family even before she was born – already thinking about belonging, time, and relationships — connecting the past with the present to build a sense of self.
In I am Ben Ten, Luke drew himself as the superhero Ben Ten – adopting a fictional persona to save his family and the world.
Imitating Ben Ten’s actions, he declared “I want to catch the Blue Lady” [a fictional character], Luke drew black lines around the Blue Lady, signifying tying her with ropes. Through this act of imaginative role-play, Luke positioned himself as the powerful hero, manipulating both the narrative, characters and visual elements of his drawing, capturing the Blue Lady and protect his loved ones.
In trying on and reflecting on their multiple identities children affirm who they have been, are, will be, and might be (just as they might do during dressing up play, small world play, and storying). Through drawing children try on roles, reflect on relationships, and construct narratives of self. In experimenting with, and affirming their various identities, children - as they draw - confirm themselves as creators, and curators, of their worlds.
Drawing in educational settings
Like parents, educators are key influences in children’s developmental journeys. When educators truly understand the value of drawing as a mode and language of communication and embrace drawing as one of Malaguzzi’s metaphorical “hundred languages” (Edwards, et al., 1998, p. 12), they have acquired a vital pedagogical tool. Drawing becomes a language of thought, emotion and connection.
Children need educators who trust drawing as a vital, and valuable process, which requires knowledge and understanding, sufficient time, and a well-resourced designated space that is easily accessible, and comfortable for children to draw, free from distractions and interruptions. Educators who encourage children to express themselves through drawing individually or co-creating drawings with others, are patient pedagogues who allow children time to think, plan and revise their drawings, appreciate unfolding developments and changes, and let the children finish their drawing (if they wish to) at their own pace.
When educators adopt a slow pedagogy around children's drawings, they can learn from engaging in unique and unfolding conversations as children develop their drawing-narratives. When the drawing is an integral element of a child-centred curriculum, educators provide children with a medium to express themselves that goes beyond expected forms of communication and consider drawing as a significant mode for meaning-making.
Where educators appreciate drawing as social practice, they inspire the co-construction of meaning and shared understanding. Drawing affords children with opportunities to engage in conversation, as they construct and reconstruct the familiar and the strange, the ordinary and the extraordinary. In drawing, children can develop their new understandings, build shared interests, and makenew meanings. Educators who approach drawing in these ways, learn more about the children they teach; their interests, their funds of knowledge and their identities. They are also better positioned to support children's holistic development and to build on what children already know and can do as they enable the next steps in learning to be taken in a socially constructed pedagogy.
Recognising the diversity of identities that emerge through drawings can help educators to develop their teaching strategies in ways that embrace individuality, nurture each child’s emotional well-being, encourage inclusivity, and respect children’s rights. This ensures that all children can bring what they know, their experiences and creativity to their drawing processes.
Attending to the whole child
When adults are present during the process of drawing, comfortably attending with a child closely, in-depth and at length, from beginning to end, they can witness their movements and facial expressions, and hear their accompanying dramatised vocalisations and sound effects that reflect their thinking process. This gives a multifaceted perspective on the activity, enhancing meaning while deepening our understanding of the drawing and the drawer.
Drawing is a meaningful space
Drawing is not “just” an activity, or a time filler. It is a space for thinking, feeling, imagining and becoming. When educators, parents and family members enter this space and listen to children as they draw, they learn so much about their unique selves.
Finally…
This study reported in our book investigated the multiple layers of meaning-making which young children create and communicate through their drawings. It contributes to understanding the richness of young children’s unique meaning-making processes. We have listened to children’s drawing narratives, subjective interpretations, poignant silences, and ways of meaning-making. In so doing we have uncovered insights into how children used drawing as a meaningful space.
We have seen how, in drawing, they voiced their emotions and ideas, and communicated their knowledge and theories. We have come to better understand the transformative and agentive processes that they used to construct and mediate their identities. We invited everyone privileged to spend time in young children’s company to truly listen to them as they draw. In doing so, we honour their voices, their meanings and share their lives.
Pablo Picasso told us:
“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
To paint like a child is to see with an open heart, an innocent eye, seeing the essence of a subject, and to embrace the wonder - it takes a lifetime.
The website that accompanies this book offers materials to support educators who want to learn more about children's drawings may wish to study the topic for themselves. https://sites.google.com/view/childrenmakingmeaning/home?authuser=0
Reference
Edwards, C., Gandini, L., & Forman, G. (1998). The hundred languages of
children: The Reggio Emilia approach advanced reflections. (2nd ed.). Ablex.
Thanks for reading! If you’re interested in reading Cathy and Jo’s fantastic new book, you can find it HERE.
And if you’d like a bit of further reading on this subject, visit the ‘Children making Meaning’ web page HERE.
