Engaging Students in the Classroom: How Do I Know What I Think Until I See What I Draw

Recognizing the world into which our students will emerge upon graduation, a world characterized by constant change, and our belief in the need to develop our students as “critical beings” (Barnett, 1997) and as “citizens capable of governing” (Giroux, 1997: 259), we embrace a critical pedagogy that is not just about theory (Dehler, Welsh & Lewis, 2004), but can also be implemented experientially in the classroom through the use of freehand drawing. With this as context, our aim in the classroom is to create a learning space where our students develop their capacity for critical self-reflection. As such, we use freehand drawing to: (a) facilitate our ability to “see” how we understand a topic and to “see” that there are multiple ways of understanding; (b) question and challenge theories, orthodoxies and truths considered common; (c) identify and scrutinize what are often tacit assumptions; and (d) ponder other possibilities.