Dear Chuck,
 
Thanks for this useful note. Education and teaching young children is quite different to research on drawing, and it differs to reach on early childhood development.
 
This requires more than commentary and opinion.
 
We have a century or more of good research on how children draw, learn, and think. From Friedrich Froebel’s work on kindergarten education in the early 1800s to the work of Maria Montessori, Jean Piaget, and many more in the past century, there are thousands of carefully compiled reports on these issues. This is not the same as neuroscientific inquiry – but it is good, descriptive research. There is no need to start completely new in this field.
 
To do this, of course, one must examine the literature and read what is already available. While Jinan is calling for research collaboration, he seems more interested in stating his views than in working with the concepts and methods required for research.
 
Two issues occurred to me in reading his post.
 
The first involves the claim that all people were ambidextrous in preliterate cultures. In the past, I’ve seen literature on left-hand and right-hand orientation suggests that handedness is an evolutionary adaptation to cooperation needs in hunting and fighting groups. If this is so, then handedness began to evolve hundreds of thousands of years in the past, long before the emergence of alphabets and literacy in recent millennia. That’s why I asked the basis for Jinan’s claim. If there is evidence for his view, I’d like to read it for myself.
 
The second issue occurs to me now, in reading your post and reviewing Jinan’s earlier note. This involves research ethics.
 
As education and teaching, Jinan’s work with children seems to be responsible. Nevertheless, any research on the children by definition involves research on living human beings. If anyone from most universities seeks to collaborate in this research, the terms of research must be carefully defined, and the researchers will be required to get ethics clearance. Without this, most universities will not permit them to undertake research that involves human beings, and problems will emerge if the work is published. While many universities go overboard on the issue of ethics clearance, this is a reaction to an earlier, lax era.
 
There was a times when anyone calling himself a researcher could study living human beings without appropriate informed consent, and without demonstrating an appropriate understanding of the research issues involved.
 
Ethics clearance, at its best, requires us to demonstrate that we know what we are doing when we work with other living humans, and it requires us to show that we understand our obligations to those from whom we learn.
 
Best regards,
 
Ken
 
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 Sheji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in Cooperation with Tongji University | Launching in 2015
 
University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology ||| Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Adjunct Professor | School of Creative Arts | James Cook University | Townsville, Australia
 
Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn 
 
--
 
Chuck Burnette wrote:
 
—snip—
 
Jinan is seeing the power of drawing to help children observe, describe, and project, but I suspect the evidence he is collecting (?) will not inform the rest of us until it is parsed into the thoughts that accompany the drawings with some description of the children’s intent, age, and experience. Children say what they are drawing, but at certain ages their drawings show how they envision a tree, castle, or dinosaur, not what it looks like. It is quite different when they try to draw what they actually see. If this is what your students are doing, can you explain how they construct the image and what their thoughts are as they do it? A professional has a full range of knowledge and representational skills. What do they use in different situations? Why? How different are they from novices?
 
There are many testimonials to the value of sketching. I think we need less subjective information than we have. Still I look forward to reading the posted references, and thank all for posting them. I very much encourage Jinan to explore the mental world of his students as they draw - using any techniques available and appropriate to his educational goals.
 
—snip—
 
 

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