Young Children Using Drawing for Designing

Assessing children’s understanding of design drawing

As a result of several years analysing young children’s design drawings I have come to identify certain phases of development. There are no age norms attached to them. Many Reception children can begin to record their intentions if the task is simple - a puppet of a well-known story character, a meal on a plate.

However, some Year 2s may not have yet made the connection between drawing and making. Conversely, I have observed Year 2 children treating their drawings in an interactive way in discussion with a friend, yet have had Year 4s show me a single picture with the announcement "I want to make this". Most children can use drawings to progress their design ideas by age 9. My work has been with children aged 5-9 and completely satisfying all aspects of my Interactive category is off-scale for most 9 year olds.

• The picture - The child sees drawing as a way of recording their ideas but may includes features of narrative or representational drawing which are inappropriate to the genre of design drawing. They may then either abandon the drawing completely and make something entirely different, because they have seen the two activities, drawing and making, as unrelated except for subject matter, or they will decorate their picture.

   

• Single-draw - The drawing consists of a single drawing of an object that the child wishes to make.

  The genre of design drawing, an object disembedded from its background or context, has been grasped but the drawing is not used to develop design ideas, it is a picture of what they have been asked to make. Once allowed to handle the materials, the drawing is frequently forgotten. Older children may draw one detailed, labelled diagram. This still counts as a single-draw as they are not using drawing to generate a range of options which can be evaluated.

Progress in understanding then seems to take one of two alternative paths, which I call Multi-draw and Multi-design.

• Multi-draw - Multi-draw is typical of the "one right answer" type of child, who settles quickly on a possible solution to the problem and seeks to perfect their drawing of it, either by erasure and correction if working in pencil or by redrawing several times if given a non-erasable drawing tool. The drawing does not necessarily inform the making since the child's aim at the drawing stage was simply to perfect the drawing. Again, older children may make two identical drawings, but the second one is labelled with the materials of construction. I would still consider this as a multi-draw since they have not used drawing to explore other options or problem solutions.

• Multi-design - This is typical of the divergent child, who can produce lots of ideas and settle on none. Their design sheet will be filled with different ideas, some related more closely than others. The object that they make is frequently yet another different idea. The child has grasped the idea that the paper can be used to try out lots of ideas but without evaluation and choice of "the one".

Although they may arrive by differing routes, all children need to reach:

• Progressive - This is the point at which they realise that they can use drawing to develop an idea and work out how the object will be made or fit together. The Multi-draw child will develop the single idea into a sketch of something that can be made. The Multi-design child has more problems. They need to focus their attention on one idea and develop that. The vital difference between this stage and the previous two is the clarity of the developing ideas. Drawings are supported by labels, lists, instructions. The child is now using the recording process to help themselves develop a design solution.

And, hopefully, they will become: