Turkish Children's Drawing of Nature in a Certain Way: Range of Mountains in the Back, the Sun, Couple of Clouds, a River Rising from the Mountains.

Abstract

AbstractThis study reveals that Turkish kindergarten through 8th Grade (K-8) students draw nature pictures in a certain way; range of mountains in the background, a sun, a couple of clouds, a river rising from the mountains. There are similarities in the K-8 students' nature in the way these nature items are organized on a drawing paper. We conducted a sample study (n=263) of Turkish aged 6-14 years (Grades K-8). Children were asked, Please draw a nature picture on the blank white paper in front of you and each child made a drawing of nature. Results showed that the overwhelming majority of Turkish K-8 students drew nature in a certain way; range of mountains in the back, sun, a couple of clouds, a river rising from the mountains. There was no study performed before to examine Turkish Children's of nature. Future research is needed to explore this phenomenon with different age groups. In what age Turkish start drawing nature in a certain way? In what age Turkish stop drawing nature in this certain way? Or do they ever stop?Key WordsTurkish K-8 Students, Turkish Kindergarten Children, Nature Drawing, Visual Arts Curriculum.The constructivist approach views learning as an active process, in that the students construct their own meaning by combining their experiences and prior knowledge with what they obtain from the environment instead of building their conceptions totally on formal school science learning (Prokop, Kubiatko, & Fancovicova, 2007). According to Piaget (1971), reconstruct reality and they create their internalized concepts. Dewey (1938) stated that should have K-8 experience themselves so that they may evaluate it. Yilmaz (2012) also agrees that young learners need to construct their knowledge with free play rather than being imposed. Teachers construct classroom themes from daily events and promote children's active participation in free play in student-centered instructional environments (Ulker, 2009). According to Piaget and Szeminska (1952), students move from concrete to pictorial thinking and then to abstract thinking. Abstract thinking in does not emerge before the age of 7 and it is not very well established before the age of 9 (National Association for the Education of Young Children [NAEYC], 2009).Various methods can be used to collect information about students' level of knowledge, experiences, mental processes and perceptions. Although some of them; interviews or written response open ended questions are effective ways to gather in depth data about students' thinking they are hard to quantify and can be subjective (Prokop & Fancovicova, 2006). Researchers believes that children's can be used as a powerful tool for understanding their thinking and mental processes (Borthwick, 2011; Piaget, 1951; Piaget & Inhelder, 1956). Prokop and Fancovicova states that can be used as a simple but an effective research instrument that provide researchers with the opportunity of international comparison. Moreover, Malchiodi (1998) suggested that drawings provides a multidimensional view of children (as cited in Borthwick, 2011, p. 38). According to Weber and Mitchell (1996) are readable since they are a form of a text. They believed that visual representations also strong communicative messages.Several studies pointed out value of the using drawing tasks to gather information about children's mental images, perceptions and thinking. For instance, Tunnicliffe and Reiss (1999) indicated Non threatening nature of the task to many pupils and the comparative ease with which a rich mass of data can be obtained (p. 1188). Weber and Mitchell (1996) thoughts allows people to express their feelings and thoughts in a way language expressions are inadequate to describe their thoughts and emotions. Reiss and Tunnicliffe (2001) also indicated help students, who are very shy in verbal communication, are second language learner and are experiencing some speaking difficulties, to express their thoughts. …

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