Abstract—Drawing is a sincere and explicative language that
children use to reflect their feelings, thoughts, perceptions and
observations. Children give clues about their inner world by
revealing their perceptions of external world in their drawings.
The purpose of this study is to do a semiological analysis of third
grade students' visual perceptions of war. The study was
carried out with phenomenological pattern. So, the target is to
make some inferences from students' drawings. 22 third grade
students in Elazig in Turkey participated in the study. After
providing them with crayons and papers, these students were
asked to draw pictures depicting war. After that, these
drawings were analyzed with phenomenological method by the
researchers. At the end of the analyses, students made a lot of
original, creative and effective drawings depicting war. In these
drawings, deep scars of wars taking place in Middle East, where
Turkey is geographically and historically close, can be seen.
Moreover, there are also some reflections of Turkey's struggle
against separatist terrorist organizations in those drawings. The
results of the study reveal that children's drawings indicate that
there is an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion in the country.
In terms of pedagogy, this inference can be made: Children's
perceptions and imaginations are shaped largely by topical
issues. Television, the internet and printed media are the
dominant factors for this shaping.
Index Terms—War, drawing, semiotics, visual perception.
The authors are with the Firat University Dept of Education, Elazığ,
Turkey (e-mail: yusal@firat.edu.tr, iaytac@firat.edu.tr,
iaytac23@hotmail.com).
Cite: Yelda Usal and İsmail Aytaç, "Semiological Analysis of Primary School Students Drawings for “War” Concept," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 7, no. 10, pp. 787-790, 2017.