Understanding analytical drawings of preschool children: the importance of a dialog with a child

ABSTRACT

Child's understanding and intentions are not always easy to read in drawings. This is particularly evident in the type of drawings we refer to as ‘analytical drawings’. In order to understand analytical drawings made by preschool children, it is important to have a dialogue with the young authors. In our study, we examined the ability of students of pedagogy study programmes to interpret an example of a preschooler’s analytic drawing where the intentions are not readily apparent. Using the example of an analytical drawing of a six-year-old girl, we designed a questionnaire that was administered to 226 students of the Faculty of Education at the University of Ljubljana. Using the questionnaire, we evaluated the students’ ability to interpret the content and the child’s intentions expressed in the analytical drawing, as well as their opinions about what they would find most useful to help them to interpret the girl’s drawing. The results confirmed our hypothesis that it is impossible to understand, interpret, and evaluate these types of children’s analytic drawings without a dialogue with a child.

KEYWORDS:

• Preschool child
• children’s drawing
• analytical drawing
• visual art competence
• dialogue

1. Introduction

1.1. Cognitive role of children’s drawings

Children are constantly searching for meaning in the world around them (French 2013) and use their prior knowledge and experiences to negotiate and construct meaning through their interactions with people and artefacts (Brooks 2005). Art plays a crucial role in this process, as children use it to explore their environment, people, objects, and various phenomena and their relationships to them.

Children’s artistic activity and development is not only an expression of their aesthetic need, but also a means of their cognitive development (Brooks 2005; Quaglia et al. 2015). The cognitive role of children’s art is two-sided: art is a way of expression and a way of thinking. ‘Human experience, knowledge, visions, attitudes, views etc. can be expressed and communicated in many different ways. In other words, as humans, we can use many forms of “language”, including different forms of symbolic and visual systems, or so-called “non-verbal” language’. (Alerby 2015, 15) Although monomodality (use of verbal language) has long been over-privileged in society and education, this has changed in recent decades and multimodality has become part of our everyday educational practices (Hartle, Pinciotti, and Gorton 2015; Kress and Van Leeuwen 2004). Through drawing, children not only express and share their thoughts, but also make meaning (Wright 2003; Deguara and Nutbrown 2018) because art gives them a ‘sensory involvement with objects and ideas’ (Twigg and Garvis 2010, 199). Drawing is a constructive process of thinking in action and children’s drawings are intentional expressions of meaning. Therefore, the focus in understanding children’s drawings should move to recognising children’s intentions and the process of children’s drawing as purposeful: ‘from the psychological stance of describing children’s drawings in terms of developmental sequences, to considering children’s drawings as expressions of meaning and understanding’ (Cameron et al. 2020).

1.2. Analytical drawings

Children’s drawings are an intentional manifestation of their thinking and an effective visual language (Clark 2005) ‘which helps them convey what they cannot easily express otherwise’ (Deguara and Nutbrown 2018, 5). When children draw, they incorporate symbols into their production (Pinto et al. 2018; Tarchi and Pinto, 2015). However, these symbolic systems differ and are domain-specific and even from the same child drawings are not all of the same type, complexity and cognitive relevance. Children’s drawings ‘can demonstrate a child’s self-understanding or relationship to others, document new learning, or simply be an expression of the joy of making art’ (Twigg and Garvis 2010, 199). The ways in which children draw are contextual. They may doodle when they are upset, stick to canonical, ‘safer’ representations when drawing for an adult who is judging them, or, when drawing for themselves, invent very creative forms (Bombi, Pinto, and Cannoni 2007). Therefore, we distinguish two types of drawings that children make in the preschool and early school years: ‘relaxation drawing’ and ‘analytical drawing’.

The ‘relaxation drawings’ follow a predictable pattern and a tendency towards likeable decorativeness. They are often filled with schematised forms or ‘image schematas’ (Šmajdek and Selan 2016) which make them similar to each other. Such drawings are usually not elicited on a cognitive basis (or at least this is not predominant in them), but have an external motivation: to please others, such as teachers, parents, siblings, to get an appraisal, attention, etc.

The ‘analytical drawings’, on the other hand, are drawn out of cognitive necessity. Children use them as intentional cognitive tools to express and articulate their understanding of certain phenomena that interest or even irritate them at a particular moment. Dyson understands such a drawing as ‘a way of giving graphic voice to an intention’ (Dyson 1993, 24; see also Cameron et al. 2020, 99). The child does not strive for the pleasingness of decorative ornamentation, but focuses on solving a particular problem, such as clarifying the properties of a phenomenon, expressing an internal structure of an object, explaining how something works, etc. Such drawings may seem less decorative and even unpleasant, but they show us how children experience and understand the world, despite not necessarily corresponding to the actual properties of real phenomena. Children’s analytical drawings of children are particularly important for adults because they help provide insight into children’s intentional thinking, decision making, and how they come to conclusions about the world (Lamm, Gernhardt, and Rübeling 2018).

The role of analytical drawing is particularly relevant with younger children due to their linguistic limitations. The advantages of drawing lie in the nature of analogical representation, which captures ‘at a glance’ many features of a situation that would require a sequence of many words to describe (Pinto and Bombi 2008). Drawing can therefore be used to facilitate communication and access younger children’s knowledge (Pinto, Gamannossi, and Cameron 2011). Drawing is a ‘graphic speech’ that conceptualises an internal representation (Pinto and Bombi 2008) and reduces the risk of overlapping between conceptual and expressive constraints. Inviting children to draw can help them express issues that are relevant to them in ways that are most accessible to them (Pinto, Gamannossi, and Cameron 2011).

Spontaneous concepts might in fact be best expressed at the implicit level of children’s pictorial expression, before an explicit (linguistic) mastery of them would be acquired. For these reasons, drawing can be ‘user friendly’ for young children, who are indeed highly motivated towards graphic activity, one of their favorite and regular activities. (Pinto and Bombi 2008, 124)

1.3. The role of dialogue with a child in understanding the child’s intentions in analytical drawings

Educators dealing with children in the preschool and early school years should pay special attention to analytical drawing because it is a tool for revealing children's cognition and intentions (Golomb 2003; Twigg and Garvis 2010). However, to gain such insights, one must have access to all the information necessary to understand the drawings.

Because analytical drawings help children externalise a thought (Clark 2005), in order to understand them, adults should look for what children wanted to express in them. However, many analytical drawings themselves do not provide all the information needed to understand what is being expressed through them. Although they include details that were important for the child’s understanding in a given situation, preschoolers’ drawings may not be easily readable due to ‘the omission of parts and their misplacement, the transparencies, the odd proportions and disregard for the relative size of figures, the schematic nature of the drawings, and the absence of realism’ (Golomb 2003, 120). Kress (1997) emphasises that an interpretation based only on the observation of a child’s finished drawing does not allow for a deep understanding. Therefore, the question arises how to approach the interpretation of those analytical drawings where the intentions cannot be readily deduced.

According to Olson (2003), there is a very close relationship between language arts and visual arts in preschool and early school years, which highlights the importance of dialogue with a child, which will further enhance children’s social and cognitive development (Brooks 2005; Cox 2005). Drawing is a spontaneous and complex mode of communication that children embed with other modes such as speaking and writing, in which they make intentional decisions about what and how to represent (Deguara 2019). Therefore, Deguara and Nutbrown (2018) emphasise the importance of listening to children’s talk as they draw in order to understand more fully the meanings they make, concluding that a child uses drawings through signs, symbols, and personal narratives as a meaningful semiotic space in which to manifest their ongoing concerns. Listening is not about eliciting information from children in a one-way event, but is a dynamic process in which children and adults discuss meanings. ‘Co-construction and meaning-making involve educators becoming aware of children’s knowledge and understanding and engaging with that; developing excellent communication skills and having the interest and enthusiasm to discover more about the child’s topic of interest.’ (French 2013, 26). Communicative dialogue with the child helps the educator to understand how each child brings certain experiences, inclinations, and perspectives from their home and social environment to kindergarten and school (Bresler and Thompson 2002), which influence their overall functioning as well as their art.

The fact that a drawing alone does not provide all the necessary information for the outside observer should encourage adults to have a conversation about the drawing (Coates and Coates 2006). Tay-Lim and Lim (2013, 65) emphasise that ‘the quality of the dialogical engagement is as important as the drawing itself, and both visual images and verbal exchanges are central to children’s meaning-making process’. A child needs to feel that the teacher is genuinely interested in their drawing. Children will only be willing to explain and elaborate on their drawing if they feel that the teacher views them as competent and valuable informants about their learning and social experiences (Danby and Farrell 2004). When treated as such, children readily describe their intentions expressed in the drawing and disclose how they reached conclusions (Thompson 2003; Olson 2003). Pinto, Gamannossi, and Cameron (2011) emphasise that the presence of a communicative support system, embedded in social relationships, through verbal language, gestures, and facial expressions, can help children learn to communicate effectively through drawing. They also stress that conversational exchanges between adults and children have a stronger effect on language acquisition than reading storeys or telling storeys, and that conversational exchanges about graphic representations are formative for the development of children’s conceptualizations of the symbol system (Pinto, Gamannossi, and Cameron 2011).

To illustrate the importance of dialogue in understanding a child’s intentions in an analytic drawing, we analysed and interpreted a drawing of a six-year-old girl (Figure 1). This drawing was also used in research, as an example in a questionnaire we gave to students.

Figure 1. Drawing of a 6 years old girl.

We chose this particular drawing for four reasons. First, the drawing is an example of an analytical drawing, where the child’s intentions are not obvious and can even be easily misunderstood; second, the drawing arises from the girl’s understanding of a particular real-life experience; third, the drawing depicts a human figure, which is one of the most commonly drawn motifs (Lamm, Gernhardt, and Rübeling 2018); and fourth, ‘mistakes’ that appear at first glance (e.g. missing hands) in the drawing, turn out not to be mistakes at all, but a way of solving problems (Quaglia et al. 2015).

Based on first impressions, one might think that this is a drawing of a preschooler depicting a happy person with a broad smile on his face. However, a closer look reveals that there are details that are difficult to understand, but are obviously not accidental and could have a significant impact on the semantic content of the drawing. On the one hand, the drawing shows parts of the body that are accurately and precisely drawn (mouth with teeth), but at the same time a complete absence of other elements (hands). The girl has obviously focused on the details that are significant for her understanding and left out the unimportant ones. The importance and significance of the details is not apparent per se and can only be revealed to us through a dialogue with the child (Table 1).

Table 1. Dialogue between the girl and the researcher and analysis of certain details in the drawing.

The dialogue between the girl and the researcher	Parts of the drawing to which the conversation refers to
Girl: ‘Look, what I’ve drawn!’ Researcher: ‘Oh, what a happy girl! Is that you?’
	Girl (6 years)
Girl: „Yeah. But I'm not happy. See, what I have here?’ (she points to the mouth on the drawing) Researcher: ‘Teeth?’ Girl: ‘Yeah. But one is about to fall out!’ Researcher: ‘Aha, now I see. This one, right?’ (she points to the tooth with arrows next to it)
	Arrows next to the tooth below on the left show how tooth was supposed to move left and right, before it fell out.
Girl: ‘Yeah. Will I then look like this when I smile?’ (she asks worried and points to the mouth in which she only drew one tooth) Researcher: ‘Oh, no! You won’t have an empty mouth like an old lady if only one of your teeth falls out.’
	Sickle-shaped form on the drawing represents the mouth in which there is only one tooth. The dialog reveals the girl’s fear that when her tooth actually falls out her smile will change drastically and she will look funny. The researcher deliberately brings some humour into the conversation in order to ease the girl’s worries.
Researcher: ‘What is this?! (she points to two composed forms at the bottom) Girl: ‘Well, toothbrush and toothpaste!’ Researcher: ‘Aha, aha. And here I thought you almost stepped onto two birds that came by.’ (she deliberately provokes the girl)
	Scribbled circular form represents a dirty fallen out tooth that needs to be cleaned. And two composed forms at the bottom represent a toothpaste and toothbrush. The girl’s answer reflects amazement over the question asked. In her opinion the question does not make sense since it is clear from the drawing that these are the things, we need to clean our teeth.
Girl: ‘Oh, come on! Look how dirty the tooth is. It needs to be washed so that it’s clean when you put it under the pillow.’ Researcher: ‘For the Tooth Fairy?’ Girl: ‘Yes. I’ve drawn it, here.’ (she points to the circular form on the left side)
	A long arrow on the left shows the transfer of the tooth under a pillow.

As could be inferred from the dialogue with the girl, the drawing is composed in such a way that the articulation of details narrates the sequence of events. The most important details in the drawing are not self-evident, and they cannot be easily recognised; they can be clarified only with the help of the child’s explanation in conversation.

2. Methods

2.1. Research problem

Understanding children’s analytical drawings is especially important for teachers dealing with children in the preschool and early school years. Therefore, in the study we investigated the ability of students, prospective teachers, to contextualise and interpret such instances of analytical drawings where children’s intentions are not easy to read, as well as their opinions about what would help them better appreciate children’s analytical drawings. Our basic thesis was that without understanding the context of the drawing, which can only be uncovered through dialogue with the child, students will not be able to assess, interpret, and understand such types of children’s analytical drawings where the children’s intentions are not easily discernible.

2.2. Research questions

RQ 1: How do students interpret the content and child’s intentions in analytical drawing in Figure 1?

RQ 2: How do students estimate the importance of the dialogue with the child concerning the analytical drawing and what, in their opinion, would provide them with enough information to interpret, understand and evaluate the analytical drawing in Figure 1?

2.3. Research sample

226 students of the Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana, participated in the study. Students of the following study programmes were included (Appendix 1 in Supplementary material): 99 students of general teacher education (GTE) (43.8%), 54 students of preschool teacher education (PTE) (23.9%), 39 students of special and rehabilitation education (SRE) (17.3%) and 34 students of art education (AE) (15.0%). All students participated in the research voluntarily and the informed consent was collected. The questionnaire given to students was anonymous. Most students were female (f = 219; 96.9%). The analytical drawing (Figure 1) which was taken as a basis for the questionnaire, was analysed with the prior consent of the child’s parents.

2.4. Instrument

For the study, we composed a questionnaire, consisting of 10 questions (five closed and five open-ended questions). Questions referred to the example of an analytical drawing in Figure 1.

Regarding Figure 1 students were asked: to interpret the content of the drawing (question 1); to analyse art-theoretical (question 2), and art-developmental characteristics of the drawing (question 3); to estimate the age of the child who made the drawing (question 4); to define what kind of mood (question 5), actions (question 6) and thinking is expressed in the drawing (question 7) according to their opinion; where is the main emphasis of the drawing (question 8); how, according to their opinion, the child, when asked about the drawing, presents the drawing (question 9); and what would facilitate their (student’s) interpretation of analytical drawing (question 10). Regarding the last question, several choices were given (the title of the drawing, child’s age, conversation with the child, observing the drawing process, description of the context, teacher’s explanation) and students were asked to estimate the importance of each of them on the Likert Scale (5-totally, 4-very, 3-partially, 2-little, 1-no).

The reliability of the questionnaire was tested with the Cronbach coefficient, which showed the appropriate level of reliability (α = 0.771). The content validity of the instrument was assessed by four experts.

2.5. Data analysis

The answers to open-ended questions were analysed with qualitative data analysis and coded according to the most frequent terms that appear in respondents’ answers. We coded the answers under question 1 as ‘visual-descriptive terms’, answers under question 2 as ‘art-theoretical terms’ and answers under question 3 as ‘art-developmental terms’.¹ In addition, also the qualitative analysis of the complexity of respondents answers was made, which was graded on the level from one (least complex) to five (most complex). The analyses of the coded answers were then analysed with quantitative data analysis by SPSS software. Results are presented with descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages). Chi-square tests with adjusted standardised residuals were used to test the difference among answers from students of different study programmes. The measure of effect size is Cramer’s V.

3. Results and discussion

3.1. RQ1

To answer RQ 1, we analysed students’ responses to questions 1 through 8. We expected that all students would be able to ‘see something’ in the drawing, and thus describe the drawing visually and analyse it to some point in terms of art theory and art development. However, we expected that none of the students would be able to interpret the content of the analytical drawing because they did not know the context and the child's intentions behind the drawing. When we analysed the responses, these assumptions were confirmed.

Under question 1 students have answered with a large amount of different visual-descriptive terms (they used 913 visual-descriptive terms; Appendix 2 in Supplementary material), which suggest that students had no difficulties visually describing the drawing and suggesting its interpretation. The results also show that there are no statistically relevant differences among students of different study programmes when it comes to the usage of visual-descriptive terms (χ²(21) = 22.590; p = 0.366, V = 0.091), which means that they pointed out similar aspects of the drawing, and there are also no differences in the complexity of their interpretation (χ²(12) = 16.072; p = 0.188, V = 0.154) (Appendix 3 in Supplementary material). However, what is most important for us, none of the students was able to decipher the content and child’s intended expression in the drawing. A more detailed analysis of answers to question 1 and other questions help us understand that in more detail.

A detailed analysis (adjusted standardised residuals; Appendix 2 in Supplementary material) of the answers to the question 1 showed that regarding the content of the drawing all students strongly emphasised the emotional aspect of the drawing (f = 150; 16.4% of all responses), which was greatly connected to positive feelings (joy, happiness, love, warmth, etc.). Qualitative analysis showed that this was mostly influenced by the fact that the central figure in the drawing had a heart, a wide smile and a butterfly next to it, which were all frequently listed in their interpretations and made the respondents believe that the drawing depicts a certain positive activity in nature. Regarding the central figure in the drawing, most students believed that it was a child (e.g. boy, girl, self-portrait), while students of AE mostly thought that the central figure was an adult (e.g. mother, grandmother, father, giant, etc.).

It is interesting to notice that while the number of terms listed under question 1 was high, the number of terms listed under questions 2 (415 art-theoretical terms) and 3 (307 art-developmental terms) was much lower. This suggests two possible reasons. First, students most easily describe drawings with visual-descriptive terms that they use in their everyday conversation and have more difficulties with terms that are more professional in nature and demand art-theoretical and art-developmental knowledge; and, second, a drawing itself provides a student with enough information to clearly define art-theoretical and art-developmental terms, while under question 1 students have to be more speculative in interpretation, therefore providing more terms. Under question 2 most frequently mentioned art-theoretical terms were the ones typical of drawings, like light–dark and line (Appendix 4 in Supplementary material). With regards to the number and complexity of use of art-theoretical terms, students of AE stood out in a positive way (Appendix 5 in Supplementary material; χ² (12) = 57.493; p < 0.001, V = 0.294), which is expected considering their preference and knowledge in this field and the fact that only them have art theory in their study programme. The effect size was large. Under question 3 (χ²(21) = 117.604; p < 0.001, V = 0.358) students have to determine artistic development of the drawing (Appendix 6 in Supplementary material). The prevailing were general art-developmental terms (e.g. listing various developmental stages) (f = 66; 21.5%), accentuating the absence of individual body parts (arms and neck) (f = 64; 20.8%), and the importance of the details (f = 58; 18.9%). Despite differences in the art-developmental terms listed by students of different study programmes, in reference to their complexity (Appendix 7 in Supplementary material), there were no statistically relevant differences among the students of different study programmes (χ²(12) = 21.372; p = 0.099, V = 0.166). This could be contributed to the fact that learning on art-development is included in all study programmes.

The analysis of the answers to question 4 (Appendix 8 in Supplementary material), where students estimated how old they thought the author of the drawing was, showed that most respondents (f = 99; 44.0%) estimated child’s age between 4 and 5. Students of GTE (f = 33; 33.7%) came closest to the actual age of the author (5.5 years), while a great majority of PTE (59.3%) and SRE (43.6%) students thought that the drawing was made by a younger child (4–5 years). Most AE students believed the author was even younger (3–4 years).

When asked about the mood in the picture (question 5; Appendix 9 in Supplementary material), more than half of the students (f = 119; 52.7%) believed that the drawing portrayed joy, while a quarter of them saw happiness (f = 55; 24.3%). 11.1% of students chose both options (joy and happiness). Respondents who saw less pleasant moods or feelings in the drawing were in the minority – worry (f = 3; 1.3%) and fear (f = 3; 1.3%).

The action depicted in the drawing (question 6; Appendix 10 in Supplementary material) was connected to playing by most students (f = 87; 39.4%), and the objects next to the figure were connected to various playing equipment (bicycle, ball, animals, etc.). Some students thought that the drawing showed taking a walk in nature (f = 60; 27.1%), mostly because of the butterfly next to the central figure.

When it comes to thinking depicted in the drawing (question 7; Appendix 11 in Supplementary material) most respondents believed that the author had put some thought into the portrayal of emotions or feelings (f = 96; 54.5%), especially positive ones. Some respondents (f = 61; 34.7%) thought that the author’s thinking was mainly focused on the description of a person (e.g. memory of a grandmother, thinking about why grandma has so many teeth, etc.). The smallest number of respondents (f = 20; 11.5%) believed that the child was thinking about a specific action (e.g. spending free time, the birth of a brother or sister). Under the question 8 (Appendix 12 in Supplementary material), most respondents thought that the greatest emphasis in the drawing was the heart (f = 64; 28.4%) and smile (f = 59; 26.2%), fewer believed it was the person/figure (f = 42; 18.7%) or face (f = 32; 14.2%), while only a few saw the emphasis in the mouth (f = 15; 6.7%) and teeth (f = 13; 5.8%).

In relation to RQ1, the results showed that students were able to identify different aspects of drawing in terms of its visual, artistic and art-developmental qualities. Different students used different terms and accentuated different aspects of drawing, but mostly there were no statistically significant differences between their use of the terms and the complexity of the interpretations, except for the art-theoretical terms, which the students of AE used in a more complex way. Most importantly, however, although all of the students were able to ‘see something in a drawing’, none of them interpreted the content of the drawing in a manner consistent with what the child actually intended to depict. In fact, the students’ interpretations were at odds with the intended content of the drawing, as they mostly interpreted the drawing as depicting a happy and joyful moment in nature, when in fact it expressed an event that was stressful for the child.

We see the reason for this apparent discrepancy between the students’ interpretation and the intended content of the drawing in three points: First, some elements in the drawing that are relevant to the interpretation are not visually stressed, and their content is not self-evident (e.g. the tooth that has fallen out of the mouth and is lying on the floor; separate drawing of the mouth with only one tooth; a tooth fairy; a toothbrush and toothpaste); second, some elements that are visually stressed and seem self-evident should not be interpreted in a way that makes them seem self-evident (e.g. open mouth with teeth are not self-evident). (e.g. open mouth with teeth are not a smile, but indicate that a tooth is moving and about to fall out); and third, some elements that are visually emphasised and therefore spontaneously interpreted as important are actually irrelevant to the interpretation (e.g. a heart and a butterfly).

Thus, the results confirm that despite students’ ability to describe a drawing visually and artistically, such ability is no guarantee of understanding and interpreting the intended content of the analytical drawing in Figure 1.

3.2. RQ2

To answer RQ2, we analysed students’ responses to questions 9 and 10. We expected that most students of different study programmes would be aware of the difficulties in interpreting the drawing and would recognise the importance of dialogue with the child in order to understand the intended content of the drawing. The analyses confirmed our prediction. The vast majority of students namely believe that a conversation with the child would give the most information about the drawing (f = 226; 63.7%; Appendix 13 in Supplementary material). The respondents also placed great importance on the title of the drawing, which would make estimating easier for more than a half of all respondents (mostly for the students of SRE; 69.2%) and to the description of the context in which the drawing occurred (f = 105; 47.3%). The latter was mentioned mostly by students of PTE (f = 12; 22.2%), who also attached a lot of importance to the observation of the process (f = 10; 18.5%). In addition, most respondents believed that in a dialogue (Appendix 14 in Supplementary material) a child is capable and would be willing to talk about his/her drawing and very few expected that a child would not wish to do that (f = 5; 2.2%). However, most believe that a child would only list the objects in the drawing (f = 97; 42.9%), 23.5% believed that he/she would describe what is happening in the drawing and the same percentage 23.5% thought that a child would tell a story and add imaginative elements.

3.3. Discussion

The results of our study are in line with other research dealing with the heuristic potential of drawing as a complement to verbal language. It can be said that our research is consistent with Bombi, Pinto, and Cannoni’s (2007) PAIR approach to using drawings as a communication tool. This approach differs from the traditional s.c. symbolic approach, which assumes that when a child draws, he/she unconsciously takes symbolic forms that can then be read by an outside observer. The communicative approach differs radically from the symbolic approach in that it does not assume the presence of unconscious defence mechanisms, but only that the child knows and experiences something about the world and can express this pictorially. The understanding of children’s drawings should move towards seeing drawings not as representations, but recognising children’s intentions and the process of children’s drawing as purposeful: Drawing as a constructive process of thinking in action. Therefore, our research is in line with other recent studies that have moved ‘from the psychological stance of describing children’s drawings in terms of developmental sequences to considering children’s drawings as expressions of meaning and understanding’ (Cameron et al. 2020).

The results of our study also confirm previous research on the combination of verbal and graphic methods in understanding experiences, understandings, and intentions in children’s drawings. As pointed out by Pinto and Bombi (2008), children’s drawings can be seen as a mixture of graphic and linguistic resources in the service of complex conceptualisation. In studying children’s attention skills, Pinto, Gamannossi, and Cameron (2011; see also Pezzica, Pinto, Bigozzi, and Vezzani 2016) found that a combination of verbal and graphic methods can add information to our knowledge that is not comparable to that gathered through either medium separately. Our study refers to the concept of ‘multiple literacies’ (e.g. drawing, writing, musical notation, and mathematical notation) as a tool to capture children’s behavioural, cognitive, affective, contextual, and social experiences (Pinto, Gamannossi, and Cameron 2011). According to Clark (2005), listening to children talk about their own drawings can reveal important insights into their understanding. Similarly, Cameron et al. (2020) emphasise that children’s drawings should be used to access young children’s views and experiences by listening to them draw and paying attention to their narratives and interpretations.

A very important way for the child to access literacies is via a cross-modal strategy that requires a transfer of information from one mode of representation to another. For instance, a transfer of information is achieved from drawing to writing. The goal of the transfer is mutual inter- influence: each mode of representation intends to extend the other. The result is a transformation, or a new kind or level of information or understanding. (Pinto, Gamannossi, and Cameron 2011, 427)

Obviously, there are some limitations to our study. First, we only gave students one analytical drawing to evaluate because we wanted them to focus and do their best when interpreting. Interpreting more drawings would take more of the students’ time and inevitably reduce their focus and attention, which we felt would weaken the strength of evidence in our study. Focusing on one drawing allowed us to emphasise the importance of dialogue to students’ interpretations, even though the results cannot be generalised. To demonstrate the importance of dialogue in understanding analytic drawings, we used the example of an analytical drawing, which is somewhat unusual because the child’s intentions expressed in it could not be readily inferred on their own and may even be easily misunderstood. Thus, it should be noted that the results of our study may not be normative for children’s drawings in general.

Second, the sample of students we used is nationally and culturally limited. Therefore, the sample does not have much generality and depends on cultural contexts.

Because of this limitation of the present study, we cannot generalise the results demonstrated in the sample of one drawing to drawings in general and to all student populations. However, despite the limitations of our study, we can assume that our research has demonstrated the importance of dialogue with the child in understanding the intentions in all drawings, whether analytical or not. Therefore, the general and concluding assertion that emanates from our research is the following. Teachers must allow children to express their ideas through drawings as this is one of the basic forms of expression (Anning, Cullen, and Fleer 2004; Kress 1997). However, one should be aware that a drawing ‘per se’ does not always provide all the information needed to understand the child’s intentions expressed in the drawing. Because drawings are ‘multisemiotic’ means of expression, in which children use a variety of semiotic devices simultaneously to construct and communicate ideas, knowledge, and experiences to others (Deguara 2019), adults should approach them in a variety of ways to unlock the meaning within them. One important way to do this is through dialogue with the young author, as this is also sometimes the only way to contextualise the drawing (Kress 1997; Olson 2003).

4. Conclusion

There is no single standard for the analysis of children’s drawings and no absolutely right or wrong interpretation of them. However, one of the most important aspects of interpreting analytical drawings is to gain an understanding of the intended content that the child expresses in them. Understanding children’s intentions in analytical drawings based solely on the visual features of the drawing is often difficult, as some features of the drawing may be overlooked and neglected (e.g. the fallen tooth and the mouth with only one tooth in Figure 1), others may be overestimated based on their visual emphasis, such as size (e.g. the butterfly and heart in Figure 1), and still others may be misinterpreted based on our stereotypes and predictions derived from past experiences (e.g. the smile in Figure 1). In such a case, understanding the context and intentions behind the drawing, which can only be obtained through a careful dialogue with the child himself, prevents us from overlooking, overestimating and misinterpreting visual characteristics of the analytical drawing. Therefore, our research aimed to shed light on the importance of dialogue in understanding children’s intentions expressed in analytical drawings. Our research revealed two things: (1) based on the elements of the drawing alone, students were able to interpret the art-theoretical and art-developmental features of the drawing up to a point, but without understanding the context of the drawing, they were unable to interpret the meaning and child intentions of the drawing; (2) most students were aware of the importance of understanding the context of the drawing, the vital importance of dialogue with the author in this regard, and that a child is able and willing to engage in such dialogue with an adult.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Visual-descriptive terms are those related to visual representation of objects and phenomena (e.g. smile, butterfly etc.). Recognition of visual descriptive terms doesn’t demand art theoretical or art educational knowledge. Art-theoretical terms are those related to formal structure of the drawing (e.g. line, light-dark etc.) and presuppose some art-theoretical knowledge. Art-developmental terms are those describing the elements of the drawing that reveal the phase of artistic development of the child (e.g. x-ray drawing, headfeet etc.). These terms reveal some level of art-educational knowledge of the respondent.