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Drawing on drawings: Moving beyond text in health professions education research Cover

Drawing on drawings: Moving beyond text in health professions education research

By: Charlotte Rees  
Open Access
|Jun 2018

Figures & Tables

Table 1

Glossary of terms for types of drawings

Comics

Comics have been described as ‘graphic narratives’ or ‘graphic novels’, combining images with words to tell stories [7, 15]. Galman explained that ‘the comic book typically features the “muscled heroism of superheroes”, spectacular scenes, sound effects and exaggerated action’ [15, P. 200], thereby differentiating comics from ‘graphic novels’ (a sub-set of comics), which alternatively address political and autobiographical themes in more sedate and restrained ways

Mind maps

Like concept maps [28, 29], mind maps are: ‘graphic, schematic outcomes of learning activity, which aim to organize knowledge and clarify the learnt or investigated problem’ [8, P. 3]. Developed by Buzan & Buzan [30] mind maps are typically non-linear, tree-like structures with thick branches created from central concepts, moving to thinner branches for more peripheral concepts, and including more images than text [8]

Pictor technique

Originally developed in the context of family therapy [31], the Pictor technique involved giving clients blank arrow-shaped cards on which to write the names of family members and then to arrange the cards in ways reflecting how clients see family relationships [32]. The Pictor technique has been used more recently within the context of HPER employing interview-based methods to explore collaborative working, social support for medical educators and the impact of the clinical environment on students’ self-regulated learning [9, 32, 33]

Rich pictures

Rich pictures can be described as ‘pictorial representations that attempt to capture an individual’s perspective of a situation, including objects, ideas, people, character, feelings, conflicts and prejudices’ [34, P. 714–715]

Visual notation

Clare Kell developed a ‘novel notational system to capture, with paper and pencil in real time, the proxemics and kinesics of naturally occurring physiotherapy placement education interactions’ [35, P. 256]. The notation system involves the drawing of stick figures in real-time focusing on their use of space and movement (proxemics) and eye contact, gaze and paralanguage (kinesics) [36]

Infographics

The term infographics is a blend of the two words ‘information’ and ‘graphics’, so can be described as ‘information visualizations’ that are either the same or similar to existing forms of visual representations of data [37, P. 1]. They can be seen as a ‘knowledge assemblage’ including text, numbers, graphs, charts, drawings and so on [37]

Fig. 1

Pre-existing student comic from Green [7, P. 776] (reproduced with permission)

Fig. 2

Pre-existing student mind map from Janczukowicz & Rees [8, P. 6] (reproduced with permission)

Fig. 3

Participant Pictor chart from Berkhout et al. [9, P 273] (reproduced with permission)

Fig. 4

Participant rich picture from Cristancho et al. [10, P. 1543] (reproduced with permission)

Fig. 5

Researcher-generated visual notation of an experienced therapist helping a student identify physiotherapy work in the care of a semi-conscious patient from Kell [42, P. 363]

Fig. 6

Researcher-generated infographic of findings for Gordon et al. [12, 41] (reproduced with permission)

Language: English
Published on: Jun 7, 2018
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 1 issue per year

© 2018 Charlotte Rees, published by Bohn Stafleu van Loghum
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.