Today, I decided to explore some articles in the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy and found an article titled, "When pictures aren't pretty: Deconstructing punitive literacy practices." This article was written by Teresa R. Fisher, Peggy Albers, and Temmy G. Ferederick, all from Georgia State University College of Education.
I thought this article was fitting for my K-3 Literacy course and Art Methods course.This interpretive analysis focuses mainly on how and what young children describe through visual texts, and drawings in particular, especially when written language is not an option. Visual stories are told by children to communicate their thoughts, feelings, and understandings to adults. These stories usually portray cheerful events with family or pets. However, sometimes children's visual texts tell troubled stories of their social and literacy practices, including behavior. This paper specifically dives into a story about a 6-year-old boy, John, who was forced to document challenging moments across his first-grade year through drawings and written text on a mandated behavior form called, 'My Action Plan.'
These researchers wanted to examine the following:
(a) What can a visual analysis of John’s texts help us understand about how he represented and made meaning of his behavior across time?
(b) How do visual and written language operate together to create a narrative of John’s behavior? and
(c) How do both contribute to meaning making in a text/punitive task that he was obligated to compose?
"The literature on the creation of visual texts suggests that this medium is a powerful tool that children use to make visible their beliefs, biases, values, affiliations, positions and identities" (pg. 5). The practice of using writing as punishment has been part of the discourse in the literacy community for a few decades. However, less attention is paid to problematizing the use of multi-modal literacies as a disciplinary engagement for young learners (pg. 5). Since literacy practices such as drawing are used in a disciplinary way, these pictures need to be critically examined in order to determine: what is being communicated visually, how that communication is significant to the child, and what needs to be done to help the child.
John drew many pictures over time and through these pictures we can see a narrative of John's self-concept throughout the academic year.
At the start of the year, John saw himself as a vital part of the classroom. In general, he used a great deal of color and detail in his pictures, and saw himself in a positive light.In this picture, he positions himself alone and away from the action of the class. However, John looks at the teacher and the class, and indicates interest in the class action. Even though his teacher (Teresa) has no smile, John visually represents her with energy; she has colorful clothes and red high-heeled shoes. Even though he is in trouble, he draws himself in color, arms raised high to the sky, still connected to his class and classmates, and quite happy.
The following pictures depict John's timeline of behavior in and out of the classroom throughout the rest of the school year.
"Across these images, a once mischievous, bold and happy boy in September, turned violent and angry in the winter, is now resigned, weak and feels little agency in the control he has over himself. His initial pictures were filled with bold and joyous colors which transformed into colorless pictures. His enthusiasm for school waned, as did his writing. Across the latter images, John seemed to care about what he wrote and how he wrote (in complete sentences), and even this aspect of his literacy matters little, though we acknowledge that spending a great deal of time and energy in the writing on such an unpleasant topic likely did not engender a great deal of desire to focus on the quality of writing" (pg. 21).
These visual texts show us that it is not enough to look
at them individually and that we must also examine them over time. It is only when we look at them in the light of other texts (and in this instance, visually) that we can see when significant shifts in their behavior, self-concept or learning represented visually. In John’s case, his pictures trace his changes in his view of himself and his agency (or lack thereof) during troubling classroom-based moments over time. Further, the schoolbased Action Plan itself as an intervention may have been one of several factors which encouraged John to enact the ‘bad boy’ identity instead of serving to aid him in making more positive choices (pg. 22).
If we are to require children to engage in a literacy practice (or any practice) and do not examine what children do with those practices and what those practices offer and limit, we cannot be certain that these practices are healthy or helpful to our most vulnerable learners. We must carefully consider the impact of these practices. Conversations around these practices are vulnerable, but also empowering as teachers learn to look carefully at visual texts over time and find alternative ways to support children.
When Pictures Aren’t Pretty: Deconstructing Punitive Literacy Practices
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