Drawing and Writing:
Research on Connections

There is a credible language arts literature that looks at drawing in early childhood as the beginning of children's writing (Calkins, Dyson, Graves, Harste, Hubbard, Luria) and that argues strongly for the inclusion of drawing in reading and writing classrooms, often in the form of illustrating text.

These studies focus on art as instrumental in the development of linguistic literacy. They are generally not interested in art as another mode of literacy. As one commentator notes, "Illustrative drawing is more a function of eliciting information from text than it is an expression of creativity - although many times children produce imaginative, creative pictures." (Neu/Stewig,1991)

Researchers Neu and Stewig, in reviewing this literature, report that these studies find "that, besides using drawing for artistic expression and emotional enjoyment, many children draw to explore and understand language." Among the various hypotheses they cite about how children use drawing are the following:

• As a rehearsal and scaffolding technique while learning to write, read, and comprehend language.

• To decode words and understand story-language patterns.

• To learn spelling.

• To generate and organize ideas for reading and writing.

Soviet psychologist A.R. Luria has pointed out that without being taught to draw, young children naturally and compulsively draw to explore and "play with" their expanding world (Neu/Berglund).

Another psychologist has suggested that some visually-oriented children become slow learners when visual experience such as drawing does not take place. In fact, many low-achieving learners have been shown to be highly visual.

Unfortunately, there is also a predictable tendency for drawing to disappear from children's writing as they mature. But there is disagreement among educators about what this disappearance means. Some believe it is a sign of writing growth, that the child has taken control of language. Others believe that children stop drawing because their visual perceptions exceed their drawing skills and they are frustrated or embarrassed by not being able to reproduce accurate representations of what they see. Constraints on class time and teachers' indifference increase these natural inhibitions. There is evidence that without formal art teaching at this point most children stop drawing.

Extending the Range: Why Stop with Children?

The connections between drawing and writing have been made explicit. According to researcher Ann Dyson (1982, quoted in Neu/Berglund):

• Both graphically symbolize an object.
  
• Both create one graphic object for another.
  
• Both represent a symbolic narrative form.

In the early stages of reading and writing, print and picture form a complementary whole.

These researchers suggest that teachers give older children opportunities to continue drawing as part of their language experience as a means of facilitating language learning, comprehension, vocabulary, and more. For poor readers and slow learners, it provides a way of literacy "seeing" words, helping them get to the meaning in a way that traditional teaching has not; for strong readers and able learners, it provides a way of extending their thinking.

If this rationale is taken to its logical end, why stop with children? The classroom experiments that Catherine initiated in her course suggest to us that adults also welcome the invitation to draw, as well as write, their lives; This opportunity could be a powerful aid to learning in many subject areas, including adult literacy and second-language classes. The possible classroom applications are as varied as teachers' imaginations. [L.S.]