Cognitive development and first drawings.
Figure 1.
Kid´s drawing
Hello creative bloggers!,
As the Pythagoreans, a group of thinkers and mathematicians from the 6th century BC, said, elementary geometric shapes are not products born from the world of ideas separate from human senses, but rather, as Luna (2014) states in his research, they are initially drawings that arise spontaneously within a child's graphic development and which, later on, can be conceptually understood as definitions within the field of geometry once they have been incorporated into primary education.
Children learn through words and images. Just as a painter observes reality, contrasts it, chooses the pigments to use, rectifies and tries to copy reality, children create their first geometric shapes through their scribbles. They do not know that these lines can be given a name, as they are merely shapes that have emerged from the motor processes arising from the movement of the arm and hand. However, they will hear their teacher use the words circle, or “round”, square, triangle, cross, etc., applied to certain lines that they themselves have drawn. Over time, they will learn to identify and name them, with the image and the word coming together to create a sign (Luna, 2014).
Psychologist Jean Piaget developed a theory on the construction of spatial knowledge in childhood, according to which understanding of space does not appear immediately, but is gradually constructed through the child's maturation and interaction with the environment. In this process, children progressively move from simple spatial perceptions to a more organised understanding of geometric relationships (Trullén, 2016).
Luna also shares in her thesis that the well-known Gestalt psychology criticised the ideas of associationism, which for a long time was the dominant theory for explaining how we perceive things. This theory advocated analysing the smallest parts of an image or shape in order to understand the whole. However, Gestalt proposed the opposite: people tend to perceive the whole first and then focus on the details. This idea is very important for understanding how children learn, especially in the teaching of geometry and art in primary education. For example, when a child draws a person or an object, they do not usually start by thinking about each small element separately. According to authors such as Georges-Henri Luquet and Rudolf Arnheim, children have a general image or idea in their minds of what they want to represent. From this general idea, they use simple shapes (circles, squares, or triangles) to construct the drawing.
In the early years, it is true that children use a basic ‘graphic language’ based on geometric shapes and that, by adding them together, they create more complex figures. This means that they use these shapes as tools to represent the image they already have in their minds. For example, when we mix different elements in chemistry, a new substance with different properties appears. Similarly, when several geometric shapes are combined in a drawing or artistic composition, the final result has a meaning and form that go beyond the simple sum of its parts.
Therefore, when teaching geometry and art in primary school, it is important to work on both the understanding of basic geometric shapes and the perception of the whole, so that children can understand that by joining and combining them, they can create images, works of art and other elements.
References
Luna.R, (2014).Origen y desarrollo de las formas geométricas elementales en el lenguaje gráfico y el pensamiento visual del niño. (Tesis doctoral, Universidad de Córdoba) https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/tesis?codigo=68192
Trullén Palos, M. J. (2016). Matemáticas y Arte: enseñar Geometría a través del Arte.
Comentarios
Publicar un comentario