What Do Doodles Do? Arts-Based Inquiry in the Margins

From library books to bathroom stalls, children doodle everywhere. Yet, little attention has been paid to the practice of doodling in schools. Literature on the topic tends to focus on how doodling can be instrumentalized to serve disciplinary learning objectives. This visual essay thinks instead with “undisciplined’” doodling, as both a pedagogical gesture and a mode of artful inquiry. Drawing on a rich archive of my own childhood doodles and those shared with me by participants, I engaged in data collage, drawing games, and other playful modes of visual sense-making. These practices surfaced artful connections, bringing attention to the marginal and discounted ways young people dream, take up space, and evade the disciplining force of schooling. Ultimately, this visual inquiry is a provocation for qualitative inquirers to notice how the world shifts when we bring discounted, marginal, and undisciplined modes of expression to the center of the page.