Inclusive Practice: researching the relationships between dyslexia, personality, and art students’ drawing ability.

This paper addresses the conference theme of inclusivity
from two standpoints. Firstly, involving collaboration
between researchers from fields including psychology,
educational study support and studio drawing practice,
which has revealed insights into students’ learning
difficulties in drawing, which are not easily accessible
through mono-disciplinary research practice. Secondly it
involves a proposal outlining a strategy for the teaching
of drawing which attempts to include students of varying
abilities in drawing, and to empower their practice
equally. The paper demonstrates the effectiveness of
an inclusive, cross-disciplinary approach to exploring
the relations between personality factors, perceptual
problems, visual memory and drawing skills in art
students who report difficulties producing accurate drawn
representations of their observational experiences. Results
indicate that whilst in general drawing ability seems not
to relate to dyslexia, higher drawing ability does appear
related to the personality measure of conscientiousness,
and also both to sex (in the biological sense, males
drawing better than females) and to gender (those who
perceive themselves as more masculine drawing better,
whether they are male or female). Poor drawers are less
good at accurately copying angles and proportions, and
their visual memory is less good. These findings inform a
proposed inclusive group teaching strategy for drawing
which attempts to address these weaknesses without hindering the progress of the more able student.

International conference on Inclusive Design held at Royal College of Art, London, UK. 5-8 April 2009