Children's drawings as an interpretive response to a gamified narrative with augmented reality: the case of Towards the South Pole

Drawing is an ideal technique to understand children's responses to fictional narratives, including digital ones. In this case, a gamified narrative with augmented reality (AR), based on a picturebook, was designed and used in an intervention in 8 Early Childhood Education classrooms (N = 113), aimed at enhancing their literary competence. This paper analyses the visual responses of the participating students after the intervention, reflected in their drawings and complemented with individual interviews. The methodology is mixed: (a) qualitative, analysing the content of the drawings, and taking into account the narrative-interpretive and gamification dimensions, through an instrument designed ad hoc; (b) quantitative, through the statistical treatment of the collected data. The results show the predominance of informative and emotional responses, which reveal the understanding of the narrative. Most of the children draw the characters that sparked their interest and recreate key scenes from the story. Drawings emphasise the narrative aspects, and to a lesser extent refer to the game mechanics (challenges and rewards). Finally, it is confirmed that the gamified narrative with AR has the capacity to generate emotional responses and promote the immersion of students in the story and the game.