The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing stay-at-home orders have shifted family lives worldwide. Government regulations about social distancing and isolation have resulted in parents/carers and children spending most of their time together in private spaces. During the northern hemisphere spring 2020 semester, most childcare and school systems closed…

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…

The transformative agenda of sustainability education constitutes the focus of early-years education. In quality sustainability educational projects, children are supported to draw links between nature and society and relate to the studied phenomena. Is this methodological approach realized in educational programs for the early years? The present…

Dewey's philosophy of experience has aesthetic experience at its core as he melds artificial dualities between thinking and experiencing [Dewey, J. 1934. "Art as Experience." In "John Dewey the Later Works," 1925-1953, Vol. 10. 1988, edited by J. Boydston, 1-352. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press]. This deeply…

This paper proposes that the future is uncertain for many children. Both natural and human-made disasters are adversely affecting the lives of millions of children and their families. An example of an environment-related disaster is cited from Sichuan Province, China, where a massive earthquake killed some 70,000 people in 2008. How the teachers…

Play, an elusive concept despite the extensive literature on the subject, remains especially problematic for research focused on the perspective of children. The author discusses her study on children's perspectives about play, exploring drawing as a method for learning how young children conceptualize play within a social-semiotic framework. Her…

The study aimed to statistically analyze forest fire perceptions and cognitive deficits of children through drawings. Results showed that children's perceptions on forest fire were under desirable levels. Also, perception levels were significantly impacted by gender and grade level, whereas impact of school type was not significant. Since…

The present study reports findings on pre-service teachers' thinking during planning and implementing play-based art activities. "Thinking" (in the present study) is informed by discourses emphasising art teaching and learning in relation to play and theoretical assumptions conceptualising planning as "practice of knowing."…

This article describes how American and Japanese kindergartners see play and what teachers can learn from them. The authors share their findings from analyzing photos and interviews from 44 American children in the southeastern United States and 55 Japanese children in the main island of Japan, all aged five to six years. In the study, children…

The purpose of this study was to increase understanding of the diversity of characteristics in the drawings of children in Mexico City. The authors conducted a thematic analysis of 174 drawings from children ages 6 to 11 that revealed two main discrete themes: nature and stress. A personalized, supportive relationship with nature emerged as a…

Understanding how children experience life in educational settings should be an imperative for educational practitioners, evaluators, and researchers. Listening to children's points of views would facilitate the development of educational settings that meet the needs of children and contribute to their wellbeing and development so that their…

The data featured in this article were collected during a classroom-based study with seven- and eight-year-old children in British Columbia, Canada. The multiple purposes of the research included exploring how the development of the students' understanding of elements of visual art and design would affect their subsequent application of these same…

Digital technologies have material and social properties that have the potential to create new opportunities for children's expressive arts practices. The presence and development of oral narratives in young children's visual art-making on paper has been noted in previous research, but little is known about the narratives children create when they…

The purpose of the current study is to determine the effect of talking drawings on Turkish preschool children's mental models of the water cycle. The study was conducted in the city of Kastamonu, located in the north-west of Turkey. A total of 40 five-year-old preschool children participated in the study in the spring term of the 2015-2016 school…

The creative research method "draw and write" has been used in health, social care and education research for several decades. A literature search of studies utilising this method was conducted during the planning stages of a study exploring primary school children's perceptions of infant feeding. A review of this literature noted a…