Teaching for Emergent Disciplinary Drawing in Science? Comparing Teachers’ and Children’s Ways of Representing Science Content in Early Childhood Classrooms

Abstract

This classroom-based study aims to contribute knowledge about children’s opportunities to make use of drawing to make meaning in science. Employing a social semiotic approach to drawing, we examine what ways of representing science content that are (1) made available by the teacher and (2) adopted in children’s drawings. We analysed observation data from 11 science lessons in early childhood classrooms (children aged 3 to 8 years), including the drawings that children made during those lessons (129 drawings in total). Our findings suggest that the semiotic resources that teachers provide have a large impact on how children represent science content in their drawings. Moreover, we interpret that teachers strive to support children’s ‘emergent disciplinary drawing’ in science, since they predominantly provided semiotic resources where the science content was generalised and decontextualised. Finally, we propose that ‘emergent disciplinary drawing’ is incorporated as an element of science pedagogy in ECE practice and ECE teacher education.