Wow, We're Stepping on the Weeds: Animation and Aliveness in Children's Classroom Drawing(s)

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Art, Aesthetics, and Aliveness: Analyzing Children's Mobility, Making, and Marking

Abstract

Despite the growing body of research on drawing as a site of critical, creative, and collaborative teaching and learning, drawing in the classroom continues to be perceived as a time filler, an ancillary activity, or a means to another end. Educators in the field of early childhood/elementary education would benefit from a more nuanced understanding of drawing and other arts based experiences. In an eight-month case study on drawing in a kindergarten language arts curriculum I focused on the exchanges between children, writing, and drawing. In this paper, I extend Barthes’ notion of animation, the affective push and pull between human and image into a discussion of the material and agentic call of drawing(s).

Author

• Leslie Rech Penn, University of Georgia - Athens