Early Drawing and Writing: A Study of Young Children's Products, Processes, and Perceptions

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate how young children perceive the processes of drawing and writing, to determine the characteristics of the drawing and writing samples and episodes, and to determine what relationships exist among the processes, products, and perceptions. Ten nursery school children were interviewed to investigate young children's perceptions and abilities within the drawing and writing processes. The children were asked to produce one drawing and one writing sample and to respond to six interview questions. Responses to interview questions were categorized and then descriptively analyzed. Drawing and writing episodes were classified and described according to the characteristics of the episodes and the samples that were produced. The following results emerged from the descriptive analysis. The young children in this study draw and write mainly for personal enjoyment and have a limited perspective of the other functions that drawing and writing serve. Sixty per cent said that drawing is not hard for them, whereas 30% said that writing is not hard. Analysis of the samples revealed that children preferred to use capital rather than lower-case letters. Analysis of the drawing and writing episodes suggested that oral language plays a critical role in facilitating children's written language learning. This study's findings yield insight into how drawing provides children with a transition to writing, as well as how children use the medias of drawing and writing interchangeably as they learn to communicate symbolically. Implications for research included conducting similar studies using larger samples of children from a variety of environments over a longer period of time and investigating the role of the teacher and the family in children's literacy learning. Classroom recommendations included using the design of this study to develop a tool for ongoing assessment of children's writing development, helping children to become more aware of the various functions of drawing and writing through modeling, and encouraging oral communication about the child's drawing and writing.