Experiment with unequal weekly drawing time in grades four and five where natural development plateaus¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 3 claims (3 for) · 2 studies (1 causal, 1 associational), q2 · 0 of 2 report an effect size · 3 claims rest on one study

Description¶

An administrative recommendation arising from the observed plateau in drawing development after grade three. The author asks why a system with several sections in the fourth and fifth grades should not "assign one section thirty minutes weekly for drawing, another sixty, another ninety, another one hundred twenty," with testing at the beginning and end of a half year or year to determine each group's progress. If less time produces equal results, the surplus time could go to subjects where added time yields rapid progress.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Multiple parallel sections in the same grades
• Adequate testing at the beginning and end of a half year or a year to determine each group's progress

Constraints¶

• The recommendation applies to grades four and five, where natural development seems less marked than in earlier or later grades

Target Learners¶

• Pupils in grades four and five of elementary school

Target Learning Goals¶

• Efficient allocation of instructional time for drawing during the developmental plateau

Claims¶

• Children's drawing development shows a long plateau after grade three, consistent with earlier studies reporting non-development from ages nine or ten to adolescence [+W]
• Learning-curve plateaus were caused by learners' failure to overcome specific difficulties at critical stages, not by the order in which habits developed [+W]
• New adaptations in skill learning were made unintentionally and required intense, carefully applied effort under favorable conditions [+W]

Related Strategies¶

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Childs, H. G. (1915). Measurement of the drawing ability of two thousand one hundred and seventy-seven children in Indiana city school systems by a supplemented Thorndike scale. The Journal of Educational Psychology, 6(7), 391-408. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0075575