This article presents an exploratory study into the use of diagrammatic representation to aid problem-solving. It consists of a case study of one preschooler (3.9 years) who over a 12-month period was encouraged to use drawing as a way of reasoning about daily problems or issues. For this child, diagrammatic representation was found to facilitate effective reasoning as well as the use of metacognitive strategies. The implications for educational practice are discussed.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AronA., & AronE. (1999). Statistics for psychology (2nd edn).Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
BrunerJ. (1964). The course of cognitive growth. American Psychologist, 19, 1–15.
4.
CopeB., & KalantzisM. (Eds.) (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy, learning and the design of social futures.London: Routledge.
5.
DeLoacheJ. (2000). Dual representation and young children's use of scale models. Child Development, 71(2), 329–429.
6.
DeLoacheJ., & MarzolfD. (1992). When a picture is not worth a thousand words: Young children's understanding of pictures and models. Cognitive Development, 7(3), 317–329.
7.
GallJ., GallM., & BorgW. (1999). Applying educational research: A practical guide (4th edn). New York: Longman.
8.
GibsonJ. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception.London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
9.
McDevittT., & OrmrodJ. (2004). Child development: Education and working with children and adolescents (2nd edn). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall.
10.
MarlowC. (2000). Research methods for generalist social work (3rd edn).Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning.
PaivioA. (1990). Mental representations: A dual coding approach (2nd edn). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
13.
ResnickL. (1987). Education and learning to think.Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
14.
WilliamsonK. (2000). Research methods for students and professionals.Wagga, NSW: Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University.
15.
ZhangJ. (1992). Distributed representation: The interaction between internal and external information. Unpublished PhD thesis, Department of Cognitive Science, University of California.
