Notes on Children's Text Development-Drawing, Pictures & Writing

Christianakis, M. (2011). Children's text development: Drawing, pictures, and writing. Research in the teaching of English, 46(1), 22-54.

This article answers the following research questions:

1) How do children develop as writers in school?

2) How do writing and drawing function in children's texts?

3) How do teaching practices shape children's writing development?

Ethnographic research was conducted in a 5th grade classroom in the San Francisco area in an urban setting. She utilized three separate epistemologies-literacy ideologies, sociocultural theories of development, and semiotics (p. 24). Christianakis asserts that in many current school contexts, alphabetic writing is priviledged over multimodal forms of composing, due to curriculum mandates, standards, and assessments. Findings indicate that "When given semiotic choices, the children in the present study integrated drawing, pictures, and writing in sophisticated and creative ways that challenged the primacy of alphabetic monomodal ideologies promulgated in their schooling" (p. 23). She acknowledges that while students participated in "border skirmishes between art and writing" (p. 28), they eventually negotiated with their teacher and peers towards a written project that fit the cultural norms of schooling. Moreover, she noted that while the classroom teacher appreciated the students' creativity, he evaluated their work on the written words and the "visual dimensions...were considered supplementary or decorative" (p. 35). In addition, she asserts "visual symbols combine with written language to make new meanings, not necessarily linked to the concrete world, but possible to social, imagined, and critical worlds" (p. 48) and she suggests it may limit students' composing capabilities if we limit their use of semiotic systems.

Quotes:

"Drawing is not just for children who can't yet write fluently, and creating pictures is not just part of rehearsal for real writing. Images at any age are part of the serious business of making meaing-partners with words for communicating our inner designs."

-Ruth Hubbard, 1989, p. 157(as cited on p. 22)

"Young children use drawings to both mediate social interactions around writing and situate their own texts alongside popular media" (p. 23).

"Writing development is more dynamic, recursive, and flexible, involving multimodal, communicative tools that children learn over time in and out of school" (p. 42).

"Bruner (1971) reminds us, pictures 'make it possible for a seemingly limited symbol to spread its power over a range of experience' (p. 14, as cited in Christianakis, p. 44)."