Understanding Elementary School Safety through Children's Drawings and Words

When depicting emotions, children have been shown to alter the content of their drawings (e.g., number and types of expressive cues) depending on the characteristics of the audience (i.e., age, familiarity, and authority). However, no study has yet investigated the influence of the audience gender on children’s depiction of emotions in their drawings. This study examined whether drawing for a male versus for a female audience have an impact on the number and type of emotional information children use to depict sadness, anger, and fear. Children aged 7 ( N = 92) and 9 ( N = 126) were asked to draw a figure and then to produce three drawings of a person, to depict three emotions (sadness, anger, fear). Children were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions: they were instructed either to draw with no explicit mention of an audience (control condition) or to draw so that the depicted emotion would be recognized by a male (male audience condition) or by a female (female audience condition). A content analysis was conducted on children’s drawings, revealing the use of seven types of graphic cues for each emotion. We found numerous differences between the three conditions relative to the type of cues used by children to depict emotions, particularly for anger and fear and particularly at the age of 7. Overall, children used facial cues more frequently for a female audience and contextual cues more frequently for a male audience. These results are discussed in terms of their implications in clinical, educational, and therapeutic settings.

Download Full-text

White men and electric guns: Analysing the Amazonian dystopia through Shipibo-Konibo children’s drawings

Global Studies of Childhood ◽

10.1177/2043610621995837 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 204361062199583

Author(s):

Thaís de Carvalho

Keyword(s):

White Men ◽

High Tech ◽

Children's Drawings ◽

Children’S Drawings ◽

Racial Dynamics ◽

Before And After ◽

Andean Countries ◽

The Village ◽

Dual Capacity

In Andean countries, the pishtaco is understood as a White-looking man that steals Indigenous people’s organs for money. In contemporary Amazonia, the Shipibo-Konibo people describe the pishtaco as a high-tech murderer, equipped with a sophisticated laser gun that injects electricity inside a victim’s body. This paper looks at this dystopia through Shipibo-Konibo children’s drawings, presenting composite sketches of the pishtaco and maps of the village before and after an attack. Children portrayed White men with syringes and electric guns as weaponry, while discussing whether organ traffickers could also be mestizos nowadays. Meanwhile, the comparison of children’s maps before and after the attack reveals that lit lampposts are paradoxically perceived as a protection at night. The paper examines changing features of pishtacos and the dual capacity of electricity present in children’s drawings. It argues that children know about shifting racial dynamics in the village’s history and recognise development’s oxymoron: the same electricity that can be a weapon is also used as a shield.

Download Full-text