Chapter 13: Listening to children drawing

Chapter overview:

This chapter concludes this book, where we have interpreted the drawings of three children while understanding the meanings they attributed. Inviting adults to actively listen to children’s drawings, we review how observing and listening to children draw provides invaluable insights into their realities, thoughts, knowledge and ways of understanding their surroundings and how the world works. We claim that the children’s drawings unveiled complexities and deep personal meanings enriched by their unique geo-contexts and circumstances, which enabled us to gain an understanding of their meaning-making processes from their perspective. Through this process, we underscore the significance of children’s drawings in capturing ordinary and extraordinary moments in everyday experiences. By actively listening to children draw, adults cultivate a deeper trust in their abilities, ideas and drawings. Spending time observing children as they drew, revealed how they used their drawings to shape and reshape their identities while experimenting with different roles that encapsulated their individual lives. We also offer some implications for parents, educators and educators-researchers, teacher-educators, school leaders and policy-makers to help them understand the value of drawing. We conclude the book by suggesting various ways of perceiving drawing and understanding children as young drawers.