This paper describes work with two children, placed for late adoption who have suffered relational trauma. The paper explores the long-term consequences of such trauma, which includes problems with affect regulation, difficulties in generalising from one experience to another and shifts between phantasies of omnipotent control and sudden…

Representing the spatial appearance of objects and scenes in drawings is a difficult task for young children in particular. In the present study, the relationship between spatial drawing and cognitive flexibility was investigated. Seven- to 11-year-olds (N = 60) were asked to copy a three-dimensional model in a drawing. The use of depth cues as an…

Drawings offer new possibilities to develop understandings about how pre-service teachers experience becoming a teacher. It is in drawings that often "those elusive hard-to-put-into-words" (Weber & Mitchell, 2004) aspects of the self appear to add to the developing story of what it is to become a teacher. Using a triangulated…

This study investigated the views of the nature of engineering held by 6th-grade students to provide a baseline upon which activities or curriculum materials might be developed to introduce middle-school students to the work of engineers and the process of engineering design. A phenomenographic framework was used to guide the analysis of data…

This paper reports on the findings of a research project investigating children's experiences of their local environments. Children's experiences of spaces and places and the interaction of such experiences and their learning were investigated, using mixed research methods, informed by phenomenological and participatory methodologies. Through…

The author likes to have her middle school students work with pens, patterns and textures. Because she was tired of the usual texture project she had been using, Shirley Laird began looking for a new approach. While searching for an inspiration, she ran across some old calendars that had excellent photos of teddy bears dressed up in different…

In this article, the author describes a texture and pattern project. Students started by doing an outline contour drawing of an animal. With the outline drawn, the students then write one of their names to fit "inside" the animal.

Over the past two decades, educational scholars have seen major shifts in how literacy is viewed. One of these shifts has been toward conceptualizing literacy as a set of social practices (Street, 1995) that people embody and value. To disrupt current definitions of literacy, the valued practices that keep those forms of literacy in place must…

The author is always on the lookout for new ideas, and found one with her state's new "grade-level expectations" in art. She had printed the expectations from the state department and bound them in book form for herself and other art teachers in her district. When the author was flipping through the booklet thinking, two things caught her eye:…

This article discusses learning that occurred during primary school visits to the UK National Marine Aquarium (Aquarium). Before visiting, children were asked to independently create a drawing of marine life off the Devon coast and a drawing of tropical reef marine life, allowing an assessment of prior knowledge. Post-visit, children created…

Rurality is an active agent and central to the lived experiences of children growing up on a farm and attending a farm school. It is a key to their everyday experiences, and influences family life, schooling and their future. Previous studies elsewhere in the world have explored the notion of childhood in rural contexts, but there is a dearth of…

The underwater ecosystem of the ocean is a topic that is explored extensively by first-grade students in the author's school. By engaging students in literature and science, the author was able to introduce the topic of endangered sea life and the ways students can make a difference to protect the oceans. (Contains 1 online resource.)

This investigation employed exploratory methods to examine career aspirations in 141 students in Grades 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 from an international school in Bangkok. Students specified the jobs that they were most likely to pursue as adults, rated the importance of potential influences in making career decisions, and drew a picture of themselves in…

Where adults go, children follow. The reality of a globalized, interconnected world, characterised by the mobility of people, goods and knowledge, across physical and virtual spaces and time, has had a significant impact on children's early experiences of language, literacy and identity. Children are not peripheral to, but constitute an integral…

This article describes a cooperative project between eighth graders and first graders called "Going Green in the Neighborhood." The project entailed the first grade students sketching home designs on paper to make a model community, and the eighth grade students taking those drawings and making them into 3D computer models and then…