Orang Asli children’s drawing: a window to their minds

The importance of listening to children’s perception has been emphasized in a wide range of recent research using variety of strategies, including drawing. This paper explores the use of drawing as a strategy to engage with young children around the topic of their life in the forest. Originally there were 40 children taking part in the research, later only ten of them aged 9 to 12 were chosen as final participants. Children were asked to draw anything cross to their mind without restriction to any specific theme. Results of the study depicts for boys, their theme were concentrated on environment, deep forest, and house, fruit orchard in the forest, swimming in the river and hunting activities. Few boys attempted to draw other themes such as football match, car, and invasion of tractor into their village. The themes depicted by children were not much related to the themes present in any of the text books they use in the learning process. Children world views or prior knowledge therefore failed to support the learning process in the classroom suggesting that they may need more exposure to the outside world or they may need a special school curriculum.