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A study regarding the spontaneous use of geometric shapes in young children’s drawings

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Abstract

The studies regarding how the comprehension of geometric shapes evolves in childhood are largely based on the assessment of children's responses during the course of tasks linked to the recognition, classification or explanation of prototypes and models. Little attention has been granted to the issue as to what extent the geometric shape turns out to be an expressive tool that young children spontaneously use in their pictorial productions and also, whether or not methodological research approaches aimed at the examination of unprompted usage of geometric shapes in childhood may be useful regarding the study of the development of geometric thinking. This evidence provided by this study is coherent with the assumption that before starting primary education, internal representation of closed curves, quadrilaterals and triangles should have been developed by a significant number of children and, more interestingly, that young children’s graphical expressivity appears liaised to their skill to depict two-dimensional geometric shapes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Barrio de Sarriena s/n, Leioa, 48490, Spain

    José Domingo Villarroel & Olga Sanz Ortega

Authors
  1. José Domingo Villarroel
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  2. Olga Sanz Ortega
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to José Domingo Villarroel.

Appendix

Appendix

Figure 2

Fig. 2
figure 2

Examples of pictorial elements taken from the drawings studied including their categorization

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Figure 3

Fig. 3
figure 3

A free drawing on the topic of plant life carried out by a 6 year old child. The picture is classified as completed pattern in the categories of Closed curves, Quadrilateral and Triangles

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Villarroel, J.D., Sanz Ortega, O. A study regarding the spontaneous use of geometric shapes in young children’s drawings. Educ Stud Math 94, 85–95 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-016-9718-3

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