44 TEACHERs COLLEGE COLUmbIA UNIvERsITy
Philosophical Dimensions of Drawing Instruction
Peirce’s own existential graphs (Sowa, 2010).
In an earlier paper (1992), I thought of the
semiotic approach merely as one among the other
philosophical foundations of drawing instruction.
Having now delved more deeply into the subject,
particularly the formulation by Peirce, it seems
more fitting to view semeiotics (Peirce’s spelling)
as an over-arching construct within which all other
methods may be situated and categorized. Doing so
is admittedly a daunting task, but one that promises
to be worthwhile for various reasons and for vari-
ous audiences. Art educators in pre-K-12 programs
may apply semiotics to help them plan curricula
that link drawing to other subject areas. Applied to
drawing courses in higher education, semiotics may
provide a conceptual framework and vocabulary
with which students could learn to “read” their own
and other people’s drawings more accurately and
sensitively, while helping teachers evaluate these
drawings more reasonably and objectively (Note
this issue in Fava, 2010)
For those outside the visual arts, semiotics may
help explain how drawing engages thinking of vari-
ous kinds, as applicable to various domains. This in
turn may help support a claim that drawing, framed
as “graphicacy,” (Norman and Seery, 2011), should
stand as an equal alongside literacy and numeracy
as common “languages” of creation, communica-
tion, and learning across subject areas and over a
life-span.
References
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Cornford, F.M. (1941). The Republic of Plato. Lon-
don: Oxford University Press.
Dewey, J. (1934). Art as Experience. New York: Put-
nam’s Sons.
Dewey, J. (1910). How we Think. Boston: D. C. Heath.
Edwards, B., (1989). Drawing on the Right Side of the
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Fava, M. (2010). “What is the role of observational
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Simmons, S. (1992). “Philosophical Models of
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Sowa, J. F. (2010). “Existential Graphs: MS 514 by
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