Ten-year-olds in Estonia and Sweden draw what makes them happy: a research story

ABSTRACT

The article describes a research journey of using drawings as part of a questionnaire for 10-year-olds. I first describe the research project and how the children’s drawings became part of it. Then I provide results of analysis of children’s drawings in my own research. The sample consisted of 406 children, aged 9–10, from Sweden and Estonia. The drawings ‘What makes you happy?’ were analysed thematically. I follow with an overview of other research that has utilised children’s drawings and reflect on some methodological drawbacks of using children’s drawings and how to overcome them.

KEYWORDS:

• Drawings
• Sweden
• Estonia
• ultimate questions
• research methods

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The research project is conducted by Södertörn University, The School of Historical and Contemporary Studies in cooperation with University of Tartu and University of Helsinki. See: http://www.sh.se/p3/ext/content.nsf/aget?openagent&key=projekt_page_eng_1383834365104.

2. One-third of the population in Estonia speaks Russian as the first language. Their religious affiliation and attitudes to religion differ remarkably from Estonian-speaking population. Russian speaking population report religion to be more important to them than Estonians do and being Orthodox is seen as part of national identity for many, while Estonians tend not to affiliate with religion and if they do, they mainly affiliate to Lutheranism (see, e.g., Statics Estonia 2011, Kozyrev & Schihalejev, 2008, Schihalejev 2009) In addition to Estonian-medium schools there are also schools that use Russian as the main language of instruction. Students attending these schools may had difficulties in answering questionnaires in Estonian, so they had the option of questionnaires in Russian.

3. Behind my decision was a study by Hämäläinen, Kraav and Bizajeva (2002) on what teenagers think about the values their parents want to teach them. Young people in Estonia believed that, principally, their parents wanted them to have a sense of duty, good marks and good manners. The young people thought that their parents’ lowest priority would for them to be happy. As a mother and as someone who interacts professionally with young people, I found this troubling. Perhaps adults ask children too often about the duties, school achievements and too seldom about what makes them happy – at least in Estonia.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Östersjöstiftelsen.

Notes on contributors

Olga Schihalejev

Olga Schihalejev is an associated professor of Religious Education at Tartu University. Her main fields of interest include contextuality of young people's attitudes in relation to religion; RE didactics; teacher strategies in relation to their biographies; and values education in school context. She has worked as a teacher of RE and has written several teaching-learning resources.