Children’s Imagination Through Creative Drawing Prompts

Abstract

There are a myriad of problems confronting learners at the early grade of their drawing practice. These problems are mainly as a result of the underpinning issues with regards to the imaginative production and lull identified from the classroom performance of learners with regards to drawing. The bases of these problems highlights that, learners have a tendency to doubt their drawing ability, there is insufficient allocation of drawing materials and time needed for practical activities such as drawing and there is a lack of diversity found within the drawing approach. With that, the focus on exploring children’s imagination through the introduction of creative drawing prompts at the basic school level, primarily utilises prompts as a drawing aids, a guide or cue, crucial in promoting and nurturing imagination, originality, independence and the general positive outcome of drawing. The researcher relied on the action research design with various methods of diagnosis which provided the evidence to establish a cause of action. The diagnosis also aided in providing needed information for creating a baseline with the pre-test, to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the class and to intervene in certain aspects of the drawing approach by monitoring the progress made with the intervention of the drawing prompts. Assessment strategies based on the qualitative approach were also used to form a systematic plan of action for how the study was going to be approached when determining learners’ imagination. Interviews, observations and documents reviewed were the various instruments for collecting necessary data and information from the respondents. The data analysis plan based on the thematic and content analysis aided in transcribing codes from participants wording and drawing outcomes, as emerging themes and pictorial data were analysed on the criteria of vividness, originality and transformativeness. Previous empirical studies made on prompts also contributed in affirming the credibility of the study. Therefore from the data collected, the outcome of the study revealed that, drawing prompts enabled learners to easily conceptualise diverse ideas into drawings based on the type of instructions given. Learners demonstrated high levels of independence, composure and focus in the drawing activity and the signs of struggle and frequency of erasure was less in comparison to their previous experiences with drawing. The researcher therefore recommends that drawing prompts should be further explored in other areas and more research should be done by instructors and teachers in the field of creative arts when handling practical lessons and seeking alternative approaches to nurture imaginative thinking.