What can year-5 children’s drawings tell us about their primary school experiences?

Abstract

This study describes the research process and trialling of a drawing technique for gathering pupils’ views within a Personal Construct Psychology framework. Seventy-two pupils in curriculum year 5 were asked to produce two drawings of themselves in school (144 drawings), one in a ‘happy’ situation and one in an ‘unhappy’ situation. They were encouraged to add titles and speech bubbles. The drawings were thematically analysed using a phenomenological framework, which explored the affective, behavioural and cognitive elements of each drawing. The initial emerging themes were the location of the drawing, the school setting, the activity occurring and the people present. Further analysis explored the ‘unhappy’ drawings, with the emerging subthemes of Learning (being tested, not knowing what to do and comparing self to peers) and Social Interaction (friendships and conflict). The most noticeable conclusions were the impact of peer relationships (96 drawings included peers), the relatively few teachers and other adults included (only in 22 pictures) and the evidence of a wide variety of negative learning and social interactions. The study also provided evidence that asking children to draw pictures of themselves in school at this age was an effective way of accessing their views about a range of experiences and situations in school.