Drawing Bodies/Drawing Students: Making Up Relationships in Curriculum Reform

Abstract

Drawing has a unique and complicated association to teaching and learn­ing. Much of this complexity stems from shifting definitions about the body. What drawing is and how it invokes certain pedagogical responses depend on certain ways of thinking about the body as in relation with the world. The following comic essay describes two images of the body — affected and unaf­fected — circulating in curriculum reform efforts. Drawing primarily upon Science, Technology, and Society (STS) literature, critical pedagogy, and cog­nitive research, this comic examines how body discourses and the idea for drawing align with a commonsense logic of formal schooling: changing the conditions of schooling occur through changing the child (and adult).

Keywords

• Drawing
• Bodies
• Objectivity
• Vision
• Teaching
• Learning.