Investigation of children's understanding of the earth can reveal much about the origins and development of scientific knowledge. Vosniadou and Brewer (1992) claim that children construct coherent, theory-like mental models of the earth. However, more recent research has indicated that children's knowledge of the earth is fragmented and…

A sample of 315 children aged between 6 and 9 years participated in a 5-month longitudinal study aimed at investigating constraints on representational flexibility as observed in drawing behaviour. The study specifically looked at how external interventions affected children's representations over time. The intervention involved showing children…

The authors take a reflective journey to explore the research methodology utilised in a multi-method, multi-site research study of children's environmental learning in schoolgrounds in Australia. Informed by an extensive literature review and dialogue with researchers around the world, the study constructed a research design and procedure that…

Pictorial space can be conceptualized as aggregate space (where figures compete for limited available space) or as axial space (where space is infinite and exists independently of figures). That these two kinds of space concepts follow a developmental sequence was tested by investigating size regulation mechanisms in 7- to 12-year-old children's…

This article presents an exploratory study into the use of diagrammatic representation to aid problem-solving. It consists of a case study of one preschooler (3.9 years) who over a 12-month period was encouraged to use drawing as a way of reasoning about daily problems or issues. For this child, diagrammatic representation was found to facilitate…

The purpose of this article is to explore how the descriptive processes developed by the Prospect School (1965-1990), in North Bennington, Vermont, and used in the Prospect School Teacher Education Program (1968-1990) managed to grasp to art in everyday experience and serve as a way of revealing, supporting, and celebrating the emerging humanness…

Background: Recognizing that arts education is important in facilitating learning and in enhancing creativity in students, recent education reform in Hong Kong has sought to promote arts education and efforts to encourage creative expression through different art forms. Among different modes of creative arts expression, drawing has been suggested…

Forty-three adolescents (11-16 years of age) attending a health care program, Project Alternatives, for "street children" in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, drew randomly assigned pictures of either the ideal man or woman, engaged in some activity. These drawings were compared to samples from adolescents in various parts of the world to assess…

This document presents a demonstration of how drawing affects writing, how writing affects drawing, and how both affect the thinking process of students. The third grade students participating in the studies were selected on the basis of their prior performance in reading and mathematics and their identified potential for achievement. The students…

A study investigated why children's drawing becomes less flexible and less exploratory as the children age. Subjects, 92 students in two kindergarten and two first grade classrooms in two different public schools in Queens, New York, were interviewed about their feelings concerning drawing and writing. Each classroom was visited for 1 week each.…

This book is intended for use by older beginning writers and visual artists. It is not intended to be a comprehensive guide to the complexities of the creative process. The document is a guide to opening and using the creative process in the later years of life. It is arranged in chapters that take the student through a learning process. Exercises…

Giving children opportunities to image and draw the words in the text and what they represent tends to unblock and extend children's potential abilities to assimilate and synthesize language. Evaluation of representational drawing need not be a barrier which discourages teachers from allowing children to draw. In effect, it might be judicious to…

The expression of children's concepts of sex-roles was explored by examining changes in the masculinity and femininity of human figure drawings of males and females. A total of 106 sixth-grade students participated in two Draw-a-Person sessions. In the drawing task, persons to be drawn were either specified in terms of gender or unspecified as to…

Investigated preschool children's understanding of temporal relationships in terms of their comprehension of sentences containing clauses linked by "before" and "after". Also evaluated was the relative importance of order of mention and main-subordinate relations strategies in children's interpretation of temporal order information. (Author/SDH)

This article discusses a project about birds and their nests undertaken by 3- to 5-year-olds in a preschool class in Florida. After a description of the center and the goal of the project, the three phases of the project are presented. Reflections of the teachers and photographs taken for documenting the project are also included.