Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines

Volume 24, Issue 4, Summer 2005

Vygotskian Perspectives of Critical and Creative Thinking

Children’s Speech-Drawing
External Manifestations of Critical and Creative Thinking

Vygotsky (1997) coined the term speech-drawing to describe what he saw as the most significant moment in intellectual development, the moment when two psychological tools intersect each other. This paper resurrects the utilization of speech-drawing as a methodological tool to investigate children’s thinking. Specifically, this paper will examine children’s drawings of make-believe houses and the private speech, or spontaneous self-directed speech, children produccd while drawing. These instances of speech-drawing will be utilized to illuminate critical and creative thinking from a Vygotskian perspective. The future use of speech-drawing, as a promising methodological tool to study children’s thought processes, will also be presented and discussed.