Various researchers (Brockmeier, 2001; Hall, 2008; Jewitt and Oyama, 2001; Norris, 2004) claim that children’s drawing preferences, patterns and styles, together with their personal interests and ways of creating meaning, interact with the available semiotic resources and modes to lead to another function of drawing, that of “identity-construction” (Hall, 2010b, p. 343). This notion is supported by others (see for example, Ahn, 2006; Kress, 1997; Nicolopolou, et al., 1994; Pahl, 2003b) who assert that children’s texts act as symbolic and semiotic spaces which allow them to explore and gain an understanding of what Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner and Cain, (1998) describe as a “sense of self” (p. 43). In their drawings, children refer to their past and future experiences, actions and relationships, to represent their world with intention and meaning, in a process of “authoring the self” (Edmiston, 2008, p. 81). This helps them form their identities. Thus, as Bleiker (1999) states, drawing becomes a large part of the children’s identity and an important part of themselves. From an intertextual notion, Brockmeier (2001), Edmiston (2008) and Hawkins (2002) point out that children’s hybrid compositions that include continuous social, cultural and individual dynamics, act as “tools of identity” (Holland et al., 2001, p. 43) for the exploration of “different possible selves” (Edmiston, 2008, p. 12). Through the shifting of modes, children use their drawings to construct, deconstruct and reconstruct their self-identity to negotiate “multiple personalities” (Wright, 2007a, p.22) and identity roles (Norris 2004), where “the self is seen as a product of
the texts which write the individual into being” (Hawkins, 2002, p. 211). Considering
children’s drawings as artefacts, Pahl and Rowsell, (2010) and Rowsell and Pahl (2007) argue that children’s drawings are full of remnants of “sedimented identities in texts” (p. 9) infused with their “habitus” (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 6) or in other words, with their social practices, lifestyle, values, everyday routines and lived experiences, where texts, memories, emotions and identities intertwine to bring out who the children are.
Defining identity as “the specific characteristics of a person” (De Ruyter and Conroy, 2002, p.510), children not only use their drawings to illustrate features from their personal identity but also imagine, explore and create their “ideal identity” (p. 510), or what Kendrick and McKay (2004) define as “imagined identity” (p. 115); that
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____________________________________________________________________ 78 identity which is not yet realised but which they aspire to, would like to achieve or “imagine themselves in future roles” (p. 120). Making use of their graphic-narratives as “authoring space[s]” (Edmiston, 2008, p. 98) children draw an amalgamation of “real world” (p. 23), and “pretend identities” (Dyson, 1997, p. 14), to communicate who they are or wish to be (Ahn and Filipenko, 2007; Pahl and Rowsell, 2005; Wright, 2011). Using drawing as a playful space where myth and reality overlap, children explore personal and social issues that facilitate the formation of their “moral identity” (Edmiston, 2010, p. 205) and integrity. Describing identity as “dynamic and multidimensional”, Hall (2011, p. 106) argues that children’s drawings frequently involve some level of self-transformation, such as, altered bodily appearances, where for example, they change the colour of their hair or their height; explore different realistic and fantasy-based roles and draw themselves as a doctor, a bride, a pirate or a superhero; or engage in metaphoric resemblances where for example, they draw themselves as animals. Drawing on popular culture, also helps children to engage in a process of “authoring selves” (Edmiston, 2010, p. 205), where they create “fictitious identities” (Hagood, 2008, p. 540) which they merge with their “multiple everyday selves” (Edmiston, 2008, p. 19) and other particular characters and episodes in their real lives to create personal meaning-making. This confirms that the process of identity formation is not a “monolithical construct” (De Ruyter and Conroy, 2002, p. 511) but is composed of “multiple everyday selves” (Prain, 1997, p.460) where children explore their “particular” (Hagood, 2008, p. 540) and “alternative identities”
(Hall, 2011 p. 108), to define and recreate their real identity (Bleiker, 1999).
Identity is a complex, multidimensional, emerging and fluid construct that is negotiated within the children’s “multiple worlds” (Dyson, 1988, p. 383) to create a combination of real, imaginative and symbolic meanings out of a lived experience (Ahn and Filipenko, 2007). Influenced by the surrounding socio-cultural resources, situations and affiliations, children use drawing as a way to author their agency, which allows for the negotiation, emergence and co-construction of the self (De Ruyter and Conroy, 2002; Gee, 2000; Holland et al., 1998). This puts into perspective Kress and Jewitt’s (2003) observation that “social semiotics views the agency of socially situated humans as central to sign-making …[where] people use the resources that are available to them in the specific socio-cultural environments in
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____________________________________________________________________ 79 which they act to create signs” (p.10). De Ruyter and Conroy (2002) argue that social contexts and interactions between the children’s home, school and the wider world contexts influence their social roles and perceptions of self, where any changes in one’s social and cultural setting results in a change in identity. This concept of identity was also explored by others (see for example, Coates and Coates 2006; Hall, 2010a; Hawkins, 2002; Leander, 2002; Rowsell and Pahl, 2007; Wright, 2010b), who concluded that drawing as a text, is a medium that affords children with the possibility to explore their roles, and construct and stabilise their identity as moral, social and cultural beings, or what Ahn and Filipenko (2007) define as “engendering” (p. 279). Through their shared conversations, storylines and meanings which accompany their embodied drawings, children explore multiple roles to “socially position” (Edmiston, 2008, p 98) themselves as individuals with a “recognisable social identity” (Kendrick, and McKay, 2004, p. 124). Through their drawing, children learn about power structures and the hierarchy of social relations, where they affirm their “positional identity” (Holland et al., 1998, p. 125), and situate themselves within the power relationships of their families and other social structures in which they function.
As argued above, when drawing, children engage in during and post-drawing interaction with others, which also has significant impact on the formation of their identity. When peers or an adult participate in the children’s narratives of their drawings, they engage in a process of co-construction of meanings that leads to the co-authoring of “ethical identities” (Edmiston, 2010, p. 209), where personal identities interrelate and overlap with social and cultural ones. This changes the children’s “relational identities” (Holland et al., 1998, p. 127), that is, the way they socially interact with others. This process which is very aptly captured by Edmiston (2008) who argues that:
Children, like adults, have agency in authoring selves and, over time, identities. They do so by improvising responses to affect their relative position. They opportunistically draw on their cultural resources in response to particular situations, as mediated by their senses and sensitivities. They will co-author selves and identities when they improvise in a situation with an adult. (p. 98).
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____________________________________________________________________ 80 Using their agency when drawing helps children to construct their own unique identity and shape themselves as social beings within power structures, socially- constructed discourses and meaning-making practices, while simultaneously attributing and validating the identity of others (Ahn, 2006; Côté and Levine, 2002; Gee, 2000; Jewitt and Oyama, 2001; Holland et al., 1998).