Using drawings in picture books for literacy and creativity development of preschool children in a Shandong public preschool, China

Xia, Qiming (2025) Using drawings in picture books for literacy and creativity development of preschool children in a Shandong public preschool, China. PhD thesis, UTAR.

Preview

PDF Download (4Mb) | Preview

Abstract

In October 2021, the Ministry of Education in China released a recommended reading list of children’s picture books to promote children’s various abilities and language. This saw an increase in the number of preschool teachers who used picture books in their teaching, particularly in reading and drawing activities. In China, there are no designated textbooks for preschool education, and the choice of teaching materials largely depends on collective discussions and decisions made by preschool teachers. While picture books have emerged as the most commonly used teaching tool in preschools in China, preschool teachers face the arduous task of selecting appropriate picture books that align with their teaching objectives. This highlights the need for more guidance and support for preschool teachers in their decision-making process. Existing research has generally examined picture books for children’s reading, and the relationship between that and children’s literacy. While most of the work on teaching by using picture books to date has been at the primary school level with a specific discipline focus, early studies suggested that there are a number of benefits, such as the development of creativity, imagination, cognition, literacy and other abilities, involved in learning with picture books for children. Furthermore, studies on using picture books to teach at the preschool level have, to date, focused on picture book reading activities and language learning in China. However, there is an absence of research on using picture books to teach preschool children in creativity and literacy through drawing. This research’s objective is to explore, through preschool drawing teachers’ experiences and the researcher’s initial observation in a public preschool, elements in picture books which can be used to develop children’s creativity and literacy. Thus, how preschool teachers are able to use children’s picture books in preschool drawing lessons for encouraging children’s creativity and literacy is the main focus of this study.Therefore, this research explores the following questions: 1. What elements in picture books can be used to develop preschool children’s literacy? 2. What elements in picture books can be used to develop preschool children’s creativity? 3. What are the characteristics of these elements that have been explored? 4. What challenges do preschool teachers face when using picture books in drawing lessons? Adopting an ethnography research methodology, participant observation was used to capture the performance of teachers’ teaching and children’s learning by using picture books in drawing lessons. The researcher entered the observation place as a classroom assistant and participated in the observation from the internal perspective adopted by ethnographers. The researcher assisted the preschool teachers in the selected classroom so that the children could get comfortable with the researcher, and used the form of Classroom Observation Recording and Analysis, daily dairies, notes, photos, the electronic recorder, and collected drawings to record. There were also in-depth interviews and semi-structured interviews with preschool teachers to explore the challenges encountered when using picture books to teach in drawing lessons. The data include the recording of one classroom in Grade 3 with 56 children and three teachers for two drawing lessons a week for up to 21 weeks, and 40 recorded interviews. In addition, conversations with selected children, field notes, children’s drawings, examples of picture books, and photos of classroom drawing activities were also collected as additional data. The findings show that the complete narrative, sentence patterns, diversity of expression, the story plot, words and phrases in picture books are the essential elements to develop children’ literacy, and the composition design, colour tune and colour combination, setting representational skills, straightforward and logical expression, the details of drawing, the resemblance of the shape in picture books are necessary elements to develop children’s creativity when children are learning drawing by using picture books in drawing lessons. The data also point out that, in addition to the need to develop teaching skills in using picture books to teach drawing, a lack of theoretical knowledge about teaching drawing by using picture books and limited teaching evaluation capabilities are also issues that teachers encountered. The results indicate that the elements which can be used to develop children’s literacy and creativity in picture books as mentioned above can support preschool teachers in a practical way in their teaching activities. In addition to being able to better assist preschool teachers to teach drawing by using picture books, it is likely that curriculum settings for cultivating students majoring in preschool education in colleges and universities need to be considerably developed. Furthermore, if preschool teachers acquire a more sophisticated understanding of using picture books to teach, they are likely to be more insightful and skilled teachers. The results of this study will be shared with the preschool teachers in this preschool. This study benefits preschool teachers to identify and classify the elements in picture books which are recommended by the government in China and which can develop children’s creativity and literacy. Thus it can assist preschool teachers in designing feasible thematic teaching activities based on picture books in drawing lessons. The scant existing literature has revealed that picture books have a positive role in develop children’s literacy and creativity, but no details are given as to how this works. This study represents one of the first attempts to fill this important gap by exploring elements in picture books to be used to develop children’s literacy and creativity in drawing lessons, with an eye toward identifying reasons for problems encountered by preschool teachers. Based on the conclusion, it recommend that it is better for the education management department in the field of preschool education to consider setting up related courses and training sessions to support prospective preschool teachers and preschool teachers in using picture books to teach.

Actions (login required)