This study was based on the understanding that children's drawings reflect what they know, feel, and care about, and that culture informs what they draw. Culture, in this context, refers to the environment in which children live and features of that environment which are of interest to children, such as food, their home, and their neighborhood. While previous research examined children's drawings from different cultures and countries, there were no studies focusing on what Jordanian children draw.
This study addressed this gap in the literature by examining the following questions: “What do five-year-old Jordanian children draw? Specifically, does the child draw what the child sees and knows from his/her culture and environment?”
Teachers from fifty Jordanian preschools allotted 40 minutes for children to draw whatever they wanted to draw. Researchers then analyzed the drawings from 736 children participating in the study. Three early childhood education faculty members reviewed and categorized the contents of each of the drawings. They agreed 95% of the time on how to code and group the contents, using 10 categories: nature, people, environment, literacy, animals, transportation, feelings, mathematic and geometric shapes and symbols, cartoons, and violence. Unrecognizable content was not considered. For drawings where more than one category were represented, the researchers assigned the drawing to the most dominant category depicted. After all the drawings were categorized, the researchers calculated frequencies and percentages.
Results showed that most of drawings were of nature (38.9%) and included such things as the sun, flowers, clouds, and trees. The next two highest categories were people and the [built] environment, with the environment including such things as phone, swing, house, and chair. Animals – a separate category from nature – was the fifth most frequent category. This category included butterfly, bird, dog, fish, and snake. Violence was the least drawn content.
These finding are generally consistent with other studies, where most objects drawn by children depict what they readily observe in their environment, particularly elements of nature and animals.
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