Intersubjectivity, Interpretation and Improvisation

I’ve got a mail (from Norm Denzin) confirming that my submission to the The Sixth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry has been accepted. The congress will take place in Urbana-Campaign, Illinois, USA May 26-29. 2010… So I still have some time to prepare the presentation.

Here is the abstract that has been sent, with title: Intersubjectivity, Interpretation and Improvisation: How Three-Year-Old Students Challenge Researchers’ Competence

A PhD study of children’s meaning making during explorative play with sculpturing materials conducted by an art teacher/practitioner-researcher in a Norwegian early childhood center. The form of inquiry was inspired by A/R/Tography (Irwin 2004), involving video-recording of own activity with children. Children’s highly imaginative and multimodal forms of communication have challenged the researcher’s ability to create immediate and appropriate responses to the children’s creative verbal and non-verbal contributions. If we respect young children, value their way of living and want them to become self-confident individuals, research methods in early childhood education must respond to their expressive ways of democratic participation.



"Walking a log": I was hoping that he would sit on it, but the boy rather wanted to take it for a walk.

What did we do to make the boy happy?

This is what we did to help the boy in the book who kept crying (see the blog form November 24th ): What I did was to scan some pages form the book “Pekeboka mi” by Kari Grossmann, print them and paste on cardboard. The drawings were later cut form each other so that they could be moved and played with: the doll could be placed in the baby carriage on the same page… Or it could drive a car, as my little friend suggested!

Another thing I did was to digitally manipulate the drawing of the crying boy (I was waiting with tension to hear what Kari Grossmann would say about “spoiling” her work): I changed the boys crying face by opening his eyes and closing his mouth, washed the blood and put a plaster on his knee. And I waited to see what my friend would do…

What he did was first to cover the crying boy with the more satisfied duplicate. But then he tried some other ways to solve the problem: pated the crying boy, placed a plaster on his knee and even gave him some pears to help him forget his pain! I assume that all of his solutions were rooted in his own experience. This means that he knew perfectly well why his mother gave him a piece of chocolate the moment before she left the house…

Reading the book also initiated some new experiences. There were some drawings of fruits and vegetables. The first time we red the book together, my little friend suggested that the image on an anion represented an apple – so I went to the kitchen and fetched an anion to compare with the painted image. This was a week ago and he of course remembered that, and he remembered the anion’s taste. But what about a potato? It also had to be examined…