ABSTRACT
Drawing is often overlooked as a valid or valuable learning experience in US public education. Despite the growing body of research on positive correlations between drawing, language arts, and STEM disciplines, drawing in the classroom continues to be perceived by educators and administrators as a time filler, an ancillary activity, or means to another. Researchers, educators, administrators, and others in the field of early childhood and elementary education would benefit from a more nuanced understanding of drawing and other material encounters in the classroom. In an eight-month ethnographic case study on drawing in a kindergarten language arts curriculum, I focused specifically on the juxtapositions of children, writing, and drawing(s) and how these intra-actions affect formal and informal learning in the classroom. In this paper, I extend Barthes’ (2010) notion of animation, the affective push and pull between human and image, to explore the material intra-actions between children and drawing(s) beyond the predetermined rectangle of drawing space. In this way I might illustrate ways that drawing(s) animate and are animated by children beyond the boundaries of what adults perceive as drawing(s) and learning.
