Drawing as a Reflective Practice in Life-Long Learning

Drawings are a powerful tool for knowledge building and for representing thoughts and emotions during the course of life. Often limited to the world of childhood, drawing is not usually practiced in adult and higher education. This contribution introduces, thematizes and problematizes the use of drawing as a key skill for life-long learning. Drawing activates neurocognitive activities and can be regarded as an educational resource, aimed at observing and understanding oneself, the world and the other. Thus, under-stood, the experience of drawing can be rediscovered as an arto-graphic memory of an educational world, a communication tool capable of exploring meaning-making processes, capturing flexible and complex dynamics of living systems, power relations, as well as emotional and latent aspects of life-deep learning. This article connects drawings as a research and pedagogical tool with the teacher experience in multi-country projects, showing their capacity to make reflective practice visible in a distance learning scenario. A case example on how to use drawings to reflect on teaching practice will be described. More than 300 participants from an online European course reflected and created a metaphor, drawing a picture about resilience with a brief written explanation. Resilience pictures generated during such as reflective practice made visible connectedness and cooperative teaching at an international level.