Abstract :
Lark-Horovitz, Lewis, and Luca [1973] described the emergence of ‘subject matter
specialists,’ children who create series of self-initiated or voluntary drawings
featuring consistent themes, characters, or settings that seem particularly compelling
to them. A decade-long study of the images preschool and kindergarten children
create when invited to draw in their own sketchbooks in the context of a weekly art
class suggests that the choice of what to draw shapes the process of learning how
to draw in decisive ways. The interests young children develop and pursue in
drawing and in other forms of symbolic play are influenced by gender and by
culture, by personality and circumstance. The choices children make inevitably open
certain possibilities and foreclose others, shaping early artistic learning in decisive
ways. Many early childhood educators [e.g., Katz, 1993] maintain that young
children’s learning should be firmly grounded in first-hand experience. However,
children whose drawings are autobiographical in content may be less consistent in
choosing topics for drawing and prone to pass the time between significant images
by drawing designs and symbols which seem less personally meaningful and
engaging. Children who draw upon imaginative themes seem to have an
inexhaustible source of inspiration ready at hand when they begin to draw.
According to Egan [1988], the fictional or mythic nature of these representations may
serve young children’s quest to make sense of their experiences in ways that
explorations of the everyday do not.
