Draw-a-Monster: Scaffolding and nurse-child improvisations at a child health center

Abstract

This case study documents social interaction between a nurse and a 4-year-old boy during routine Draw-a-Man assessments at a child health center. Detailed analyses illuminate how the nurse scaffolded head, legs, arms, eyes, and mouth step by step, as elements of a jointly improvised monster story. Nurse-child interaction alternated between scaffoldings and joint improvisations during the child’s drawing of a man who would ‘guard’ a monster. The drawing was co-construed through storytelling and alignments. Divergent participation frameworks were invoked, when the child did not let go of his precious drawing, insisting on taking it home to dad, while the nurse invoked the center’s routines (archiving all drawings). This brief micro drama was resolved through whispered by-play between mother and child. The analyses show how a drawing task is co-construed through improvisations and storytelling, and it also illuminates the role of joint performance for building we-teams and adult-child alignments.