The Environment as an Informal Curriculum: A multidimensional analysis of children’s drawings in Ghanaian basic schools

Sumaila Issah (2026)

Children’s drawings are recognized as non-verbal narratives that reflect their cognitive, emotional, and social worlds, shaped significantly by their environmental contexts. In Ghana, however, research has remained largely descriptive, cataloguing what children draw without deeply examining how their surroundings function as an informal multidimensional curriculum. This qualitative study addresses this gap through the analysis of spontaneous drawings of 16 children across four schools in northern and southern Ghana, alongside the perspectives of 10 key stakeholders, all totaling 26 participants. Through thematic and visual analysis, the study found that the children’s drawings represent four categories of realities. This includes the Common Reality of their immediate environments depicted through detailed renderings of local infrastructures like boreholes, classrooms and bicycles among others. The children’s drawings are also encoded with their Normative Realities, evidenced by consistent inclusions of religious attire, while Projected and Prophetic Realities emerge through aspirational elements such as aeroplanes and fishing boats, reflecting future hopes. Also, the study found pronounced regional variations in the children’s drawing between southern and Northern Ghanaian settings, underscoring the socio-ecological specificity of artistic content. The study concludes that the environment acts as a dynamic, multidimensional informal curriculum for children artistic development. It is imperative that teachers, parents, and cultural coordinators in Ghana, particularly within the studied contexts, actively collaborate to recognise, and intentionally leverage the child’s environmental milieu as a legitimate and vital curriculum for children artistic development.