Heaton, Rebecca

When children draw multiple facets of their cognition, like their beliefs, actions and perceptions, activate and connect to facilitate expression. Children’s drawings and their drawing experiences however, are not always valued or nurtured as cognitive endeavors or given recognition as useful contributions to a child’s learning journey. This paper therefore presents how a cognition conceptual frame (Heaton, 2021), can be used to help people conceptualise and nurture cognition in early drawing experiences by considering cognitive forms, influencers and applications. It unpicks through a purposive micro-visual inquiry as to how cognition may be identified in a small sample of children’s drawings to demonstrate how cognition may present, be influenced, and be cultivated to develop an early learners’ cognitive abilities, capacity and understanding. This paper advocates for a renewed consideration of the cognitive complexities of children’s early drawing experiences and suggests that people designing and supporting such experiences should engage with cognition so that it is nourished through learning journeys and lived experiences.