YOUNG CHILDREN’S IDEAS ABOUT SNAIL INTERNAL ANATOMY

Analysis of student’s drawings is becoming increasingly popular among researchers seeking to elicit information about pupils’ understanding of natural phenomena (Barraza, 1999; Reiss & Tunniciffe, 2000; Reiss & Tunnicliffe, 2001; Ehrlen, 2009). Although it might be sometimes difficult to analyze drawings for a variety of reasons such as: drawings might be difficult to recognise what’s on them, some children find it more enjoyable to draw while others may not like to draw (Osborne & Gilbert, 1980; Novak & Musonda, 1991; Salmon & Pipe, 2000), some pictures may represent only a small part of what actually a child knows about the subject, because they can not draw all that they know. On the other hand, drawings are a popular way of children presenting their world among young at kindergarten or in early year classes at school. Gardner (1980) points out that drawings or paintings are important in preschool years and “they become less central and less common as the school years pass”. Classical biology teaching involves using drawings as representations of biological objects, although it seems to be a neglected area in teaching nowadays. Dempsey and Betz (2001) also point out that drawing is an important skill in the learning and teaching of biology, but also that biology teachers do not spend time on developing that skill. These authors report that drawings are closely connected with observation and interpretation of nature, and both are key components of the scientific process. In the last few years some researchers have used a combined method to explore data, where drawing analysis have been used together with interviewing some children from the whole group (Osborne & Gilbert, 1980; Ehrlen, 2009; Bartoszeck & Tunnicliffe, 2013). Ehrlen (2009) describes that analysis of children’s drawings may be a tool for collecting information about children’s conception, but this is only when we know the meaning children give to their own drawings. YoUnG CHILDRen’s IDeAs ABoUt snAIL InteRnAL AnAtoMY