Developing Cognitive Imagination through Narrative Visualization in Pre‑Service Primary School Teacher Education

This study explores how cognitive imagination is developed through narrative visualization in pre-service primary teacher education. Situated in the course Drawing Materials and Expression, the study examined five pre-service primary teachers who constructed self-narratives and transformed them into multimodal visual stories. A multimodal qualitative case study design was employed, drawing on students’ narrative visualization works, embedded written texts, visual sequences, material expression, observation notes, and interview data. The analysis focused on how participants reorganized lived experience, transformed emotions into sensory and symbolic forms, adopted alternative perspectives, and connected artistic expression to future pedagogical practice. Four major findings emerged. First, participants reconstructed personal experiences into relational narratives of belonging, vulnerability, self-acceptance, and return. Second, they visualized inner emotions through color, texture, symbol, scale, space, and page sequence, which supported metacognitive awareness and emotional regulation. Third, the use of objects, animals, fictional characters, and imagined worlds enabled participants to view experience from alternative perspectives and construct possible worlds. Fourth, participants developed pedagogical imagination by considering how narrative visualization could support children’s emotional understanding, empathy, self-expression, and creative confidence in elementary art education. The study concludes that narrative visualization is not merely an art-making activity but a cognitive and pedagogical process through which pre-service teachers reinterpret experience, regulate emotion, imagine other perspectives, and coordinate multiple expressive modes. These findings suggest that narrative visualization can serve as a meaningful approach for developing reflective, multimodal, relational, and pedagogical imagination in primary teacher education.