Drawing, Bodies, and Difference: Heterocorporeal Dialogues in Children's Classroom Drawing

• In Event: 64.089 - Sheraton Roundtable 12 - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 64.089-8 - Disrupting Narratives of Children: Embodiment, Materiality, and the "Whole" Child

Abstract

Much research in language and literacy education shows clear connections between children’s drawing and writing, positioning drawing as a rehearsal for writing. But Newkirk (1989) and others argue that children weave talk, text, and images in more fluid ways. In an eight-month case study on children’s drawing in a kindergarten writing workshop, I looked closely at intra-actions between drawing and children. Of the many findings, prevalent is the notion that drawing mediates critical, creative, and constructive classroom experiences. In this paper, I focus on ways children appropriate and transform drawing conventions, techniques, and meanings. Bakhtin’s (1981) dialogic heteroglossia and Hayashi & Tobin’s (2015) heterocorporealtity coalescce into a theory of heterocorporeal dialog, the subtle transfer between drawing, bodies and culture.

Author

• Leslie Kendall Rech, University of Georgia - Athens