Semiotic Approach to the Analysis of Children's Drawings

Abstract

Semiotics, which is used for the analysis of a number of communication languages, helps describe the specific operational rules by determining the sub-systems included in the field it examines. Considering that art is a communication language, this approach could be used in analyzing children's products in art education. The present study aiming at examining primary school students' drawings with a semiotic approach was designed via the art-based research method, and the drawings were analyzed through the semiotic approach. The study was conducted in the primary school 3rd grade course of Visual Arts at two primary schools, one of which had students with lower socio-economic status, and the other had students with higher socio-economic status in the central town of Eskisehir in the spring term of 2010-2011 academic year. The study was carried out with a total of 26 students, and the participants were asked to draw a picture regarding a concept. The research data were collected via the students' drawings and via the clinical interviews held with the students regarding their drawings. At the end of the study, it was found out that the semiotic analysis conducted regarding the students' drawings was not only a tool that helped make psychological descriptions but also an approach that allowed following their mental development processes; that mostly the students attending the school from the lower socio-economic status used both the direct meanings of objects and their meanings based on reason-result relationships; and the symbolic meanings of objects were mostly favored by students attending the school from the higher socio-economic status. In this respect, the semiotic approach could be considered as an effective way to diversify the diagnostic techniques used both by educators and by parents to give meaning to students' inner-worlds and their viewpoints about the environment and to monitor their mental processes while analyzing students' drawings.