This presentation will discuss a "Drawing to Learn" experience based on a drawing workshop under the microscope. This workshop gathered Fine Arts and Biochemistry students from the University of Porto around biological samples prepared with the tano-ferric method by the Portuguese scientist Abel Salazar (1889-1946). We have reviewed the method of histological drawing that Abel Salazar developed as an observational tool to polarise attention and intertwined it with drawing activities to engage students in observing their own perception.

We aim to identify and explore observation and visualisation practices under the microscope in students with different backgrounds in art and STEM areas. By creating modes of interaction between student scientists and artists, we aimed to empower students to create their own visual representations instead of relying on their observation and study of pre-existing visual models.

Based on the histological drawing method described by Abel Salazar, Microscopic drawing is understood as a form of reasoning through the construction of a visual model that enables the translation of the visual-spatial content.

BACKGROUND

Although the practice of observation under the microscope is more common in scientific study and research routines, it reflects a shared commitment to artistic practice and research: the discovery of new visible worlds. With this expression – discovering a new visible world – the scientist Robert Hooke opened his essay Micrographia, initially published in 1665, where he presents microscopy as a new form of visual culture. Aware that two people observing the same sample can see different things, Hooke's notes still constitute an epistemological basis for microscopic representation today. Observing under a microscope involves making visual decisions that alter what is observed and open the way to knowledge of "true form".

After 1932, Abel Salazar developed a drawing process adjusted to the microscopic observation that is still a contemporary tool of learning through drawing, in tandem with biology learning skills (OCR, 2015): to draw is to engage ourselves in a continuous process of polarising and depolarising our attention.

More than an accurate record, drawing under the microscope is an epistemic stance on observation itself. To draw is to create an external visual model used to learn and make science (Quillin & Thomas, 2015, p.9). This visual model relates the object to the experience of observation. Like any representation, it is not neutral.

TOPICS OF DISCUSSION

Recent literature on drawing as a means of tacit communication between professors and students in learning microscopy has highlighted its benefits in overcoming resistance to absorbing new information quickly. The habit of drawing for colleagues and students is a natural and necessary consequence of joint observation under the microscope to learn to select and organise information. Drawing together becomes an alternative way of "talking to each other" (Lyon & Turland, 2020, p.7).

Microscopic observation suggests that there are different levels of cognitive engagement between the external visual models generated by students and the mental models that are formed in the student's mind (Ainsworth & Scheiter, 2021). Studies on the role of drawing in STEM areas highlight this interaction, as the brain naturally resorts to spatial information to encode other information, such as verbal or numeric, thus increasing memory and learning capacity (Quillin & Thomas, 2015; Tversky, 1999). Drawing a physical or visual model, such as a microscopic slide, can occur as a result of an already constituted mental model or as part of the cognitive tasks of selecting, organising and integrating information, which structures the learning process and the creation of mental models (Van Meter & Garner, 2005).

The workshops were developed within an action-research framework. They were based on individual observation exercises and interactive approaches to drawing, applying the CAP framework proposed by Ainsworth and Scheiter regarding drawing in STEM. We explore ways to defamiliarizing the technical image, such as the perception of negative spaces in the observation of the microscopic sample; blind drawing as a polarizer of attention.

While acknowledging its status as a scientific document, Abel Salazar's method of histological drawing mainly reflects an epistemic position: it works with the processes of selection, organisation and integration that occur in scientific observation when it is mediated by drawing. Recent literature on the generative impact of drawing on microscopy has confirmed the importance of creating external visual models to organise selected information into mental models, to develop cognitive engagement during learning and to demonstrate acquired knowledge, including misconceptions and doubts that students often do not expose directly. Abel Salazar's histological drawing method is distinguished by the emphasis given to the inductive experience of observation under the microscope rather than the purely deductive knowledge of the sample. In this way, it enhances the construction of mental models on specimens not yet studied. The construction of knowledge seems to accompany the observation process itself by reflecting the technique and observation protocols under the microscope in its movements of polarisation and depolarisation. However, if studies on the subject have demonstrated the advantages of integrating drawing activities in the study of microscopy and discussed the causes for its resistance in STEM learning, the construction and demonstration of drawing methods adapted to different scenarios of microscopic observation is still residual. In particular, when directed at contexts with a lack of formal drawing training or resistance caused by a lack of confidence and motivation.

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