The Understanding of Human Anatomy Elicited from Drawings of Some Bangladeshi Village Women and Children

Abstract

This chapter is about conceptual development of a particular biological phenomenon. There has been research conducted on how learners build up an understanding of what is inside the human body. What the learners tell you or draw is their expressed mental model A number of studies have used drawings to elicit the understanding about phenomena because drawings are universal and are a useful too to elicit the understanding of learners of the inside of the human body, e.g. Reiss and Tunnicliffe, (1999), Cuthbert, (2000)Tunnicliffe and Reiss, 2001, Palov et al., (2007) The most studied organ in the human body is the skeleton e.g. studies by Carivita and Falchetti (2005), Guichard (1996). However, it is recognised that some subjects, particularly youngsters or adults with very limited writing and other literacy skills, in particular may have difficulty drawing an outline and in some research an outline of the human body shape has been used. An advantage of using drawings as an approach to discover the level of understanding about human anatomy is that drawings are universal whatever the spoken tongue, the age and educational background This study however was an investigation into the understanding of human organs and their arrangement of as understood by hitherto destitute country women at Sreepur Village in Bangladesh. We asked if they had attended school and, if at all, it had been for a minimum time in a primary school. Only 5% finish primary education in that country (2013). The women were provided with the outline of a human body and invited to indicate, by drawing, the internal organs in their approximate location. They were then asked from where they had acquired this knowledge. It was from peers and communities, not formal education. They understood the presence of the heart, bones and lungs and, unusually when compared with the Western data of learners, some knew about kidneys. Their knowledge reflects a public and utilitarian understanding of human anatomy. The sons of a few women were present in the village, attending the village school, and also drew. Some of the school children at the village completed drawings and interviews. Children who had had received education and the older children knew more organs than their mothers.