Creativity in Dealing with Complexity

To be able to state something, one has to make choices about themes, angles, words ... But how to explain the complexity of what my eyes have seen and my mind can imagine, when my mouth only can speak one word… - only one sound by time? And this linearity in talking (and writing) carries a risk for simplifying...

“Good qualitative research, like art, presents us with complex reality”, says Liora Bresler. “Bad research and art, I suggest, distort in the process of oversimplification, creating stereotypes and distancing us from the world” (Bresler 2006).

I believe that, when presenting my qualitative research, I should make clear when I am aware of the complexity of the world I am studying. But to be understood, I’ll have to structure and order my thoughts and reflections - and this structuring can, on the other hand, give an impression that I am minimizing the reality, and contradicting myself!? What about constantly switching between “the big picture” and the details? …between flow and structure? Which possibilities do I really have when pushing something complex into a linear form? This will require creative thinking…

In her visual presentation on the research seminar on the 26-th of March, Ninni Sandvik used images of a female ceramic figure photographed in different physical contexts, apparently not related to the content of her verbal presentation. The images had a powerful influence on my experience, understanding and reflections: I identified with the female figure and saw myself in different research roles according to different contexts it was placed in. Ninni’s presentation was an illustration how a researcher’s creativity can stimulate audience’s aesthetic experience and deeper understanding in dealing with complex reality.

Some years ago my students had a project about creativity. Their own creativity was expressed through the project presentation: They created an ironic performance about a pre school teacher who had, for 30 years, been giving children in her kindergarten the same assignment to make Santas of cardboard rolls (those you find in toilet paper). The play culminated when an oversized toilet-paper-roll-Santa visited the teacher in her dreams…

Ninni’s presentation took place at a research seminar about ethics in kindergarten research on the 25-th and 26-th of March in Tønsberg, Norway. On the 27-th of March I attended another seminar at the University of Stockholm in Sweden. Here, a group of PhD students, mostly art teachers (in different arts), discussed qualitative research in education, and creativity. Since we all, one way or another, seemed to have experienced creative process with own body, this common understanding made a foundation for our interesting discussions. We watched a TV-program about design process in a multidisciplinary group of people and we discussed a teacher’s role in stimulating, supporting and guiding students in their creativity. We could agree on importance of teacher’s support of students’ free fantasy, playfulness, unconventional and even crazy ideas. On the other side, a teacher should be a leader that can help with obtaining required knowledge, structuring the ideas, making decisions and timing. It seems to be a need for an elegant balance between fantasy and reality, complexity and structure, possibilities and choices. Freedom of thought allows creative ideas – structure helps the ideas to come into life.

Tacit knowledge in my feet

Some weeks ago I was invited to join a small group of people that share interest in dancing to folklore music from Balkan. Some of them have been dancing for 30 years - almost as many years as I have not been dancing…

They had collections of CD-s with mixture of melodies from Greece, Bulgaria, Romania …and those “new countries” from Balkan. I joined the circle and tried to follow the directions the ring was moving. But there was much more than directions to take care of: there were jumps with changing frequency, different steps, claps and even turning round and shouting. I tried the best I could at least not to move in opposite direction or crush with someone.

After about an hour, when another unfamiliar melody started, to my surprise I suddenly felt like I could dance - as if my feet suddenly understood what they were supposed to do! “It seems like I’ve learned something today”, I thought proudly. But when the next dance started I was as uncoordinated as I was at the beginning… What happened?

After a closer analyse of the music I was able to dance to (and reading on the CD-cover), I realized that the it was from Macedonia – which once was a part of my home country Yugoslavia. (Yugoslavia - which even non-existing still is the place I grew up, had friends of different nationalities and learned dances from different geographical parts – you can probably read the nostalgic tone between the lines…) I didn’t consciously recognize the music or the moves, but my body did. May be the knowledge was in my ears? Or it had been stored in my feet… for 28 years…

Complexity of Communication

My group of PhD-students at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design attended a course “Schoolarly Chritisism II” on the 9-th, 10-th and to 11-th of March. We prepared to present and critique a relevant PhD thesis to our fellow students/“opponents”, answer to their questions.

The thesis I presented was written by Marit Holm Hopperstad and is about children’s meaning-making through drawing in classroom settings. The drawings she peresented were results of inter-subjective, multimodal meaning-making because the children spoke to each other and negotiated meaning in each other drawings. Verbal and visual communication forms supported each other. (The goat drawings are form one of my kindergarten projects - made by the same boy before and after a close examination of the goat that had visited the kindergarten that day in 2005.)

The presentations were leaded by the professor Halina Dunin-Woyseth. With her broad competence in research, supervising and teaching she easily recognized what we needed to know more about, she gave us some “tools” for better understanding, and suggested relevant books. With her accommodating and recognizing way of communication, Halina made the discussions in to enjoyable, motivating sessions that stimulated my reflections and curiosity to learn more.

Some educational settings are more fruitful than others. – Why? Being a teacher on teacher education, I often ask this question... I believe that “successful communication” is important for learning. All those small smiles, acknowledging nodding and eye-contacts that are a part of a multimodal communication, are powerful signs of respect and interest that can make an educational setting flourishe. In opposite, if a teacher is authoritarian, uninterested or bored, his attitude might infect the students. In the cases where teacher and students are more equal and show respect to each other, the communication seem to be more fluent and productive (in educational terms).

Understanding is influenced by expectations to each other, activity in the communication contexts, relationship between the persons and their roles in the situation. (Here I refer to Michael Halliday’s functional linguistics, the way my colleague Eva Maagerø describes it in her book “Språket som mening” (2005) – Language as Meaning.)

To illustrate the point about expectations and roles, I’ll tell you about my personal experience, where cultural differences additionally complicated the communication. The example is from a kindergarten project where parents were invited to contribute in the activities with children. The man I’ll tell you about was a father to a four years old girl (besides being a father to five older children). They were refugees in Norway, but he had learned to speak Norwegian at worked at a pizza restaurant. In this communication context a group of 15 kindergarten children stood in form of him in the kitchen of his pizza restaurant, while he was showing them how to make Arabic bread. Four and five years old children were curiously watching him putting different ingredients into a large mixer he had placed between them on the floor. The children, usually energetic and loud, how were completely silent. We had agreed that he was to tell the children what he was doing, but he might have been a bit nervous, and remained silent himself. To help him start talking, I asked him: “What is that?” He stared at me for a second, and then fetched another ingredient. I got impatient and worried – didn’t he remember what we had talked about during our preparations for this activity? I repeated: “What’s that?!” He looked at me again and said: “What’s wrong with you!? You know what this is!!”



His answer made me instantly understand that I didn’t succeed in my indirect way of communication. I had taken it for granted that he knew that I didn’t ask him stupid questions to get answers for my self, but that I wanted him to tell the children. I took it for granted that his understanding of communication with children was the same and mine! I academic communication I’ll have to know better than to expect others to have the same position and understanding as I do…

In communication through written texts, and academic writing, the chances to fail are larger - I wouldn’t even be able to see the facial expressions on my reader’s faces, and wouldn’t even know if they fell a sleep whiled reading my theses! To prevent this I will have to imagine them and have them on my mind during my writing process...

Dealing with a multidisciplinary study, in my imagination I’ll have to create different audience from a variety of fields that I touch on to. This worries me! Will I succeed in addressing different fields of knowledge that obviously have different relationship to genres and ways of writing, language traditions, use of concepts etc… Will I be able to organize my article based thesis in a way that different articles, published in different journals in different fields, fit in the same thesis?

The critique of the thesis presented on the Schoolarly Chritisism II has shown me that there are many possible ways of writing an article based thesis. But there are also many limitations I should know about – at least I should know about my own limitations…

A Princess with Thousand Pockets

A friend of mine asked me to make a dress for her. I invited her to my house to discussed colours, materials and design for her dress. She made a drawing to show the design and details she wanted.

As you can see on the drawing, there are two round pockets in a darker textile, one on each side of the stomach. And where the stomach is, you can easily see through the dress –the stomach is the organic circular form with the spot that indicates navel. The other, larger form on the stomach outlines the third pocket which is to be placed there – on the stomach. The purpose of drawing the stomach was actually to show where the pocket should be placed. This pocket was, of course very important. As you know Cinderella had such a pocket on her dress for housework!

But Cindarella also had some nicer dresses when she became a princess… My friend suggested a collar with “royal design”, the one that goes strait up on the back of the neck – the type you often see on princesses and queens (at least princesses in fairytales used to wear them). So, we’ve got all in one: the same garment was a dress for housework and a ball dress. Wasn’t this really a wonderful idea for a functional design? Besides the three pockets, my friend wanted some more décor along the dress’ edge. She drew different forms, we discussed them and chose a repetition of the triangular form. At the image of the finished dress, you can see how these triangles are placed. But I must admit that she was not completely satisfied with my solution here. I had not realized that these triangles were supposed to be pockets! How stupid of me….

My imagination didn’t have a chance when compared with imagination of someone who is 4,5 year old…