Using Drawings to Understand Undergraduates’ Perceptions of Civic Engagement Across Countries –: Ireland and Egypt

Freehand drawing is a visual representation technique sometimes employed to bypass cognitive verbal processing routes as part of a critical pedagogy. This allows students to produce clear, more critical, and inclusive images of their understanding of a topic regardless of their vocabulary. This chapter presents an interpretation of freehand drawings produced by final year degree students in response to the question: “What is Civic Engagement?” The students were pursuing the same degree, with some studying in an Irish and others in an Egyptian university. Having to explain civic engagement pictorially forced the students to distill the essence of civic engagement’s meaning to them and provided insights into how they perceived civic engagement and their roles in their societies. We offer this example as a model for other educators seeking alternative methods for teaching civic engagement and for creating a learning environment where students can develop their own capacity for critical self-reflection.