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Many studies have explored children’s meaning-making and drawing (Brooks, 2009; Coates, 2002; Cote & Golbeck, 2007; Cox, 2005a; Dockett & Perry, 2005; Driessnack, 2006). Others such as Worthington (2010) and Wright (2010) champion the work of both Vygotsky and Kress as providing knowledge and frameworks for exploring children’s meaning-making.

In early childhood literature, many authors refer to children’s ‘meaning-making’. Therefore, it is important to define meaning-making within the context of this study and social semiotics because of its widespread use and definitions. Indeed, the term is used extensively to mean or refer to different aspects of constructing, as well as conveying, knowledge and meaning. For example, Kress suggests that children are always making meaning. However, others argue that certain circumstances, such as activities which are predominantly adult-led, provide little scope for children’s meaning-making (Ring, 2006). This suggests that making meaning and meaning-making are often used interchangeably to refer to similar processes as well as defining different aspects of children’s meaning-making practices. Some authors exploring children’s literacy suggest using terminologies such as comprehension, understanding, and meaning- making in reference to the same concepts (Dooley, 2011).

62 From a developmental perspective, meaning-making is an important part of understanding how children make sense of the world and construct meaning. Wright (2003:114) describes how

Between approximately eighteen months and three years of age, nearly everything assumes meaning to the child….through interaction with others, and through the exploration of objects and events.

Meaning-making is viewed as an important process in education because it can evidence particular cognitive development in the child. Meaning-making can be used to refer to children’s attempts at abstraction, the use of symbol systems, and describe how children make sense of the world (Brooks, 2009; Cox, 1992; Matthews, 1999). Furthermore, it has been argued that children’s multimodal meaning-making

Increases children's capacity to use many forms of representational thinking and to mentally manipulate and organise images, ideas and feelings. (Wright, 2007:38)

The term meaning-making is used frequently in constructivist approaches to education because from this perspective, meaning is considered as being constructed from knowledge. These notions of meaning-making are also often linked to socio-cultural models of understanding the ways in which young children learn. For example, early drawings as a form of meaning-making can be an integral part of young children’s learning (Coates, 2002). Children construct meaning from their experiences and for this reason will have their own theories and interpretations of the world. For example, Kendrick and McKay discuss children’s meaning-making in the context of literacy construction within Vygotsky’s theoretical premises:

The first being that transmission and acquisition of cultural knowledge such as literacy takes place on an interpersonal level between individuals as a precursor to

63 internalization of such knowledge on an intrapersonal level within the individual. An understanding of this relationship between the individual and the culture enables us to view the children’s individual meaning construction as embedded in their social and cultural milieu. Vygotsky’s (1978) second formulation…is that of spontaneous concept development. Spontaneous concepts develop from the child’s …personal experiences of literacy, that is, what sense they have constructed of the complex world of literacy in which they are situated. (Kendrick & McKay, 2009:55)

My interest is in children using drawing as a semiotic tool to communicate a particular message. In other words, I am not exploring meaning-making from a developmental perspective in terms of children’s construction of knowledge. Instead, asocial semiotic approach means that I explore meaning-making as the messages children create in and through drawing(s) in an effort to communicate their perspectives on play. Thus the term meaning-making when related to children drawing is the process of constructing and interpreting signs in order to convey children’s thoughts, ideas, concepts or opinion (Wright, 2007).

Drawing has been described as an instrument of representation (Freeman, 1980), a cultural resource to share meanings (Cox, 2005a), ‘is part of higher mental functions’ (Brooks, 2009:18), and something that children use to make sense of the world and their experiences (Matthews, 2003). It is also argued that drawing indicates children’s individual thought patterns by externalising concepts, thoughts, and ideas (Pahl, 1999), thus is viewed as an important part of children’s meaning-making (Brooks, 2009; Ring, 2006).

In studies exploring children’s drawings, the construction and communication of meaning are often used synonymously:

64 Children draw to create meaning and to communicate this with others. (Wright, 2010:23)

Young children’s drawing is part of their playful, meaningful and multi-modal engagement with the world. It supports their ability to hold ideas in the mind and to communicate these ideas with others and with themselves. (Ring, 2010:115)

This suggests multiple processes are occurring at the same time, such as constructing ideas and knowledge, and communicating these through drawing. Therefore, drawing could be used to make meanings of an experience where the child reaches a level of understanding. Alternatively, drawing could be used to make meaning evident in an effort to convey or communicate meaning to another. However, it has been argued that children’s early drawings are not created as communication to share thoughts with others. Instead, they are intended for personal reflection (Matthews, 1994). Informed by Vygotsky’s notions of ‘spontaneous’ and ‘scientific’ concepts, Brooks suggests that

Drawing plays an important role in focusing children’s attention on the spontaneous concept as well as allowing them to make connections between concepts. Drawing will often contain and make visible the essence of an idea or concept. When these thoughts or concepts exist outside of the child, the child can then work with the idea in relation to other ideas. Drawing, when used as a medium of exchange, can form a dynamic function that allows an elaboration of an initial idea and the definition of a concept. (Brooks, 2009:19)

Therefore, the concept of meaning-making can refer to drawing as a meaning-making process which does not have to be interpretable by others. Instead, it is to make meaning and sense of experiences and the world for oneself.

65 Kress (1997) suggests that there are very different requirements in meaning- or sign- making depending on the individual’s objectives. For example, communicating meaning is focused on the audience. In comparison, representing a concept or idea focuses on the creator. Consequently, the latter does not necessarily convey meaning which can be interpreted by another. Both have different objectives and requirements regarding sign-making. Kress continues to clarify the distinction whereby

The requirements of communication are that the participants in an act of communication should make their messages as understandable for a particular person in a particular situation as it is possible to do. (Kress, 1997:14)

In other words, the objective of sign-making in this instance is to make meaning as transparent as possible so that it can be interpreted by another individual. Whereas

The requirements of representation are that I, as the maker of a representation/sign, choose the best, most plausible form for the expression of the meaning that I intend to represent. (Kress, 1997:14-15)

Therefore, young children may deem a drawing successful if it has met their intentions, irrespective of it being recognised by an external observer (Freeman, 1995). Despite this being an important process of meaning-making for the child, within a research context, this can prove challenging when using drawing as a method of accessing children’s perspectives.

Meaning-making from a social semiotic perspective requires an awareness of the communicational environment. Therefore, central to Kress’s exploration and theorising of children’s meaning-making is ‘interest’ and the ‘motivated sign’ (Kress, 1997:87).

66 Thinking about signs as motivated and transformative highlights the continuous social ‘work’ involved in producing and maintaining the conventions of meaning. (Jewitt, 2012:22)

Subsequently, within the research context, where children are being asked to convey their perspectives through drawing, the principle objective is to communicate meaning in order to share ideas and concepts. For this reason, children may choose or attempt to use more conventional representations in order to express meanings in more traditional ‘visual language’ which can be interpreted by an external observer. My focus is on the communication of a particular topic through drawing. In this respect, it would be detrimental to use unconventional or obscure representations as this would risk being misunderstood.

Studies have suggested that drawings alone cannot fully represent the child’s intention or meanings. Cox (2005b) suggests that children’s representations may not be discernible by an external observer if they have not been a part of the drawing process. This may be a result of young children’s tendencies to verbalise their thoughts and ideas while creating the drawing, clarifying the meanings represented by the physical representations on the page (Einarsdottir et al., 2009; Hopperstad, 2008b). Cameron and Clark (2004:496) reinforce these ideas by suggesting that

Researchers may gain more from listening to young children’s talking during the drawing process than from a formal analysis of the final drawing.

This is supported by other studies illustrating how the child’s drawing can be changed, erased and added to during or even after its completion, as well as much of the meaning being expressed in children’s narratives generated throughout the drawing process (Dockett & Perry, 2004; Einarsdottir et al., 2009; Pahl, 1999; Punch, 2002). There are

67 studies which have been influenced by Kress’s work on children’s multimodal meaning-making which also acknowledge and value the multimodal nature of the drawing process (Hall, 2009; Hopperstad, 2008a; Hopperstad, 2010; Mavers, 2009; Mavers, 2011).

Two important concerns arise from this discussion. The first is methodological approaches researchers adopt for collecting drawings. The primary concern here relates to researchers’ choices of how to gather children’s drawings. Will the researcher be present during children’s drawing practice? Is the process recorded in some way? Or does the researcher obtain drawings through secondary sources such as teachers and parents? These decisions will inevitably have important implications for the types of data that will be available to facilitate researchers’ interpretations. Take, for example, studies which use scrapbooks through which drawings are gathered by proxy (Anning, 2002; Wood & Hall, 2011). In these situations, parents, teachers, and grandparents may all play a part in the collection. Researchers may either analyse the data as independent artefacts, or depend on teachers and parents recollections from the original drawing activity. Although seeking parents’ or teachers’ accounts of the drawing process can provide additional information regarding the drawing context and possibly the child’s intentions, this cannot substitute the child’s meanings associated with their own drawings. It should be noted, that often when children’s drawings are gathered in this manner, drawings are used to study general topics such as ‘what children draw’ or in Wood and Hall’s case ‘what children’s drawings communicate’, or Ring (2006) exploring everyday routines and rituals and their impact upon young children's use of drawing for meaning-making. A similar but much earlier study was conducted in 1924 (McCarty, 1924) where thousands of children’s drawings were collected with the

68 purpose being to investigate children’s interests as represented through their drawings. Children were simply asked to draw a picture of anything they wanted.

These latter studies use drawings as records of children’s general interests, from which the researcher then extracts recurring themes or concepts across a large pool of drawings. In contrast, I am using the method for a more specific purpose: as a tool to access children’s perspectives on play. In other words, my research aims to access children’s perspectives by directly asking them to express these through the drawing process. The former studies are not attempting to use drawing to access children’s perspectives on particular subjects or concepts; but rather, to learn about particular aspects of childhood through what they can find out from children’s spontaneous drawings. Consequently, researchers are limited to themes and concepts which typically appear in children’s drawings and may not access other important aspects of children’s lives simply due to children not drawing these things in the pool of spontaneous drawings.

The second concern arising from these initial discussions relates to our choice of analytical techniques. These will be influenced by the data that we gather or have access to. Gathering drawings directly from children allows the researcher to observe the drawing process while accessing valuable data to inform interpretation. This means that analytical approaches can incorporate and privilege children’s signification and interpretation of their representations. Subsequently, the analytical technique must also be applicable to different forms of data such as the visual image, text, transcripts, and children’s behaviour. In contrast, a methodology which focuses on the children’s final product as independent units of analysis without gathering further information regarding the drawing process, explanations or context of its creation, cannot guarantee

69 that interpretations will be similar to those resulting from children’s own interpretations or meanings ascribed to drawings. It is our responsibility as researchers to develop methods through which we can observe, record, analyse, and interpret the multiplicity of ways a child can convey meaning through drawing. Therefore, it is important to consider how multimodality has developed within the fields of Education, children’s learning, and impacted the use of visual methods (Jewitt, 2012; Kress, 1997; Kress, 2010; Mavers, 2011).