Jump with care!

All our sense organs are part of the same body. The body carries them around and allows them to experience spaces from different places and in motion. Although the senses are located in the body, they can reach far out, forming a transparent sphere that merges with the physical environment outside the body’s topological form.


“Intimacy” is an art exhibition where visitors are allowed to experience sculpture and installation form the inside – where all our senses are welcomed. Instead of “Do not touch!” the signs say “This art object is fragile – handle with care”. We are invited to experience the softness, porosity, smells, elasticity and infinity of the large, abstract art objects created by Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto.

Moving through, sinking in, and sliding over the artworks make the multisensory experience rich and strong. The exhibition is full of surprises for example when – one experience that something looks very different than it feels. However, some surprises are difficult to explain! One of my the strongest experiences form the exhibition was when I faced an art work which filled a large room, but was mostly invisible for me – just for me! That was somehow scary. When I had some time to reflect about the feeling, I realized that the large horizontal, two-dimensional part of the art work was placed exactly in the same height as my eyes. That was why I could see only the forms above and under the horizontal line in front of my eyes.

A number of research projects in Norway deal with children’s experience of space in early childhood education. One of the projects is located at my school - Vestfold University College: The research project about ECEC space and materiality http://barnehagerom.wordpress.com/ OECD-rapport presents research in early childhood space as important and emerging, especially emphasising the Nordic tradition where also outside spaces are seen as important for children’s learning (OECD, 2006).

OECD. (2006). Starting Strong II: Early Childhood Education and Care: OECD Publishing.

The Craft of Aircraft Construction

One day I visited my little friend (three years and two months old), he met me at the door: “I am making aircrafts for my best friend”, he said. I was curious: “Making aircrafts?!” He picked two small folded pieces of paper from the floor and showed them to me.

I noticed another “aircraft” on the floor. It looked like a folded A4 page on the right way to become a functioning aircraft that might be able to fly around the room. But when I pointed to it, the boy was serious: “That one is not good at all!” implying that the two in his hands were much better. I was wondering which kind of criteria he had for quality of his work? He obviously had an idea that was leading his creative construction. He was though, still not satisfied with the two small forms.
“They were not ready jet”, he said.
“What do you need to complete them?”
“I need tape”, he replied.

He got some tape from his mother, but the construction problem was not easy to solve - not even with the tape - or maybe it was exactly the tape that leaded to new challenges: One had to take it off from the scroll, cut a piece, prevent it from curling, take it off from fingers, and finally places it around an aircraft. Quite complicated task for a three year old – but it is exactly the resistance in the material that made him try out, repeat, explore other possibilities - and learn. Without resistance from our environment we would not get to know about it, nor about ourselves, as Dewey (1934/29005) wrote.

The boy kept trying. His endurance seemed to come from missing and love for his friend who has been away from the preschool for days. The aircrafts were to become welcome-back-presents for his best friend. The boy had probably learned that you can make something for those you love. And here he was, expressing his feelings through creative work. His motivation to fight the sticky tape toward his goal, seem to have derived from his feelings, and his judgement of quality derived possibly from his empathy (Which kind of aircrafts would my friend like?).

Dewey, J. ([1934] 2005), Art as Experience, New York: Berkley Publishing Group.

Constrains – natural necessity for growth?

We do understand how important communication and social interactions are for us humans. But why are we so social? Barbara Rogoff (2003) suggests that we are “biologically cultural” – social by nature. As newborn babies, we are dependent one on another - we need each other to survive. What else have we inherited from our mother nature?

What about getting stronger, smarter, more creative? Our muscles need resistance to get stronger, and our embodied mind needs challenge to act and think in new ways.

Look at the young tree here, supported carefully by my father’s hands. He supported the fast- growing tree with textile ribbons, but as non-professional gardener, he was learning from own mistakes: He realized that he had given the tree too much support. That is why it remained too weak and thin close to the ground. That part relaxed… and got spoiled… On the contrary, the tree became thicker and stronger around the highest point he supported it. Strange… or may be not? It was exactly at the highest point it was tied up, that the tree had to struggle against the wind. In the next turn my father had to tie it looser in order to make it fight the wind itself - if it would ever be able to stand on its own “feet”.

Through social interactions our ability to construct meaning is constantly challenged. Do meeting different contexts, different people, situations and problems help us to be more flexible, open-minded and creative? I believe so!

We are social beings, but each of us, physically separated one from another, experiences world through own body that moves around through numberless contexts. Our mobile and experiential bodies make therefore each of us unique. That is why, in the next turn, each of us has something different, special and unique to contribute with to the others.

PS. I am aware of that implementing nature into the socio-cultural understanding might be seen as “risky business”, but I do agree with the nicely written words at the web-page of International Journal of the Education and the Arts: “Nature connects everything in purposeful ways”.

Rogoff, Barbara (2003): The cultural nature of human development, Oxford University Press

Just how much resistance do we need?

Writing and reflecting about my study of children’s interplay with 3D materials, I get more and more astonished how important experiencing resistance seems to be for learning. We have all experienced (and learned) that some kinds of resistance are important in order to learn, get self-confidence, strength and motivation. But pushing someone too far beyond hers/his “Zone of proximal development” can in many ways be damaging. How can we know where someone’s Zone begins, and where it ends?
Without connection to my study, my son and I decided to get a budgie. When we went to a pet-shop we were told to keep only one bird if we wanted it to care about people and eventually learn to talk. So we bought only one. But we also bought a book that said something like: Never keep a budgie alone. Another bird is as important to it as the air it breaths (Birmelin). “Who should we trust, the book or the shop assistant” my son (12) asked? How would we know who was right? We had to get our own experience.

The little, green bird was very tame and quite. We let him fly around and gave him a variety of food. But he looked sad... My son and I discussed what we should do: Was it more important for us that he one day learned to speak, or that he was happy? How miserable did we have to make his life in order to get little amusement for ourselves? Just how far were we willing to push, press and stretch his Zone of proximal development? (Sorry for my stretching of Vygotsky’s term in applying it to the non-human world.)
The bird kept sitting on the same branch and did not eat. Was our amusement so important that we would let the bird pay with his life? “It was not!” – we agreed and bought our budgie a nice young friend. They might thank us for that in their bird-language, but who knows, one day they might still speak in duet in human language -?

Birmelin, Immanuel: Undulater, Cappelens kjæledyrbøker

Oh… It’s alive!

My little friend (three years old) got a hand puppet – a soft, white kitten. I put it on my hand and showed him. “Oh… It’s alive!”, he said. He was talking to the cat and cuddeling it kindly. Did he think it was a real kitten?

When the kitten stopped moving, pretending it was asleep, he said: “You have to move your fingers!” – He obviously knew the kitten was not moving by itself. But he absolutely did not want to put his own hand inside it and handle it himself… as if this would spoil his ability to imagine that the kitten was real. As long as someone else was handling it, the textile puppet and the real kitten could co-exist in the same time. In children’s play, there are no contradictions between reality and fantasy (Vygotsky, 2004), but rather synergy: The hand inside was activating the puppet’s movements, and the boy's experience of the movements was supporting his imagination.



Vygotsky, L. S. (2004). Imagination and Creativity in Childhood. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology 42(1), 7-97. Retrieved from http://mesharpe.metapress.com/link.asp?id=265tnearjknc0220

Experiencing Environments

How does your home environment influence you feelings? Do you care if the floor is wooden - or just looks like wood? Or do you prefer polished, shiny surfaces? (Guggenheim museum in Bilbao)


Once upon a time, no other than natural materials were available; People used what their surroundings afforded them with: they ate meet they could catch, made clothes of fur and straw, built shelters of mud, or snow.


My friends fell in love with a 200 years old house in a little village in Northern Spain. (They did not tell me exactly that they “fell in live”, but I guess they did – Where would they otherwise find so much motivation and energy for the reconstruction that has been going on for years?) As far as possible they’ve been using the same natural materials the house was built with: mostly stone and wood, not to forget the roof tiles made by hand and shaped over a thigh. The old wooden posts and the rock walls, full of calcium and fossils, witness the time without machines. Shaped by bare hands and simple tools, the surfaces and lines in the house echo shapes from nature. The absence of geometry gives a special feeling … like going back in time … (Experience it by yourself! http://manzanela.com/en/manzanela.php )

Back in time people used what was available – today we use what we can afford. Compared to the speed of tree’s growing, artificial materials are produced much faster – no wonder natural materials are more expensive! But what is best for the global environment: to use (probably also misuse) the natural resources, or to produce unnatural materials (and waist)? Are we saving trees by using unnatural materials, or is the damage we make much larger? Which thoughts will they make about our time when they in 1000 years discover rests of linoleum with wood imitations?

The last three images are from the new building of Vestfold University College, where natural and human-made materials are "composed" in thrilling contrasts.

Interests Support Experience

Can you imagine three ten-year-old boys totally engaged in discussing textile qualities? They spent over 30 minutes in squeezing, lifting and stroking different types of off-white textile: This one is too light! This one is too shiny… too thick, too stiff… They used many words to describe a single quality: “When you jump, the pants are supposed to fly with you, but with a slights delay, and fall heavily down just a second after you’ve landed”.

In the discussions they recalled their visual experience of Prince of Persia’s pants from the Play Station game they’ve been playing. They desired to have pants just like that – and this was the purpose of our shopping trip that day. I promised to help them saw three pair of Prince-of-Persia-pants, but I was not competent enough to find the right materials. The boys knew exactly which specific qualities they needed from the off-white textile and ribbons for the vertical decorations on the sides. They had long discussions about the ribbon colors, width and pattern. And since the selection of ribbons was limited, they had to improvise by combining different ribbons side by side.

Their fascination with Prince of Persia made them wish to be like him – or at least, have something similar to what he had; Their decision to make the pants motivated their attention to the aesthetic qualities, and their interests seemed to intensify both their experience and reflection about visual experience from the game, and multisensory experience from the textile shop. Motivation was essential for the experience – and the experience was the source of motivation.

A few weeks ago my son (12) was refurnishing his room. He seem to be motivate by responsibility to chose the furniture, textiles, decorations and the color for the walls, and was attentive, careful and proud when he was stitching the pillows and hanging the paintings on the wall. He and his stepbrother (12) were even singing while they were screwing the furniture and painting the walls.

If motivation is essential for learning, education should build upon student’s interests for their world.

The Research Days

”Forskningsdagene” (the Research Days) is an annual arrangement at Norwegian universities and university collages – it is a festival that celebrate research. During the 5-6 days open presentations are held for students, employees, practitioners, and everybody who is interested to hear about (and experience) different research projects. This year’s theme was “Veien til viten” (“The way toward knowing”), which was appropriate for presentations of different research inquiries, as well as projects about educational.

At the Vestfold University College, September 28-th 2011 was dedicated to research in arts – more precisely, to research on “aesthetic learning process”. Judging by the number of books recently published, this concept seems to be emerging in Scandinavia, but it is still new and interpreted in different ways. My short interpretation is that “aesthetic learning process” is the process of meaning making that takes place when embodied forms of learning are appreciated.

The projects presented on September 28-th were about music making and performing, theatre for those who have just learned to walk (1-2 years old), relations between different modalities in art, creating links between traditional techniques and new contexts, knitting design, search for a fiddler’s music lost in time, testing own taste, students’ explorative design with spoons ...

I also had a chance to present my project, focusing on similarities between my own, and young children’s way toward knowing; When I was studying with 3-5 years old, their engagement with 3-D materials was as important for their learning as my engagement with them was for mine. Answering the question about ways toward knowing, I suggested that our knowledge streams through our nerve-, muscle- and blood- systems and integrates our embodied experience, mind and feelings.

All presented and exhibited project are a part of a larger umbrella project called “PES”. The “PES” gathers colleagues that teach and research in different disciplines at out teacher-education programs, and focuses on practice- , aesthetic-, and design-based approach to learning. The same interdisciplinary milieu is arranging a Scandinavian conference about “Aesthetic Learning Process” in May 2011. Welcome to send your paper proposals! http://www.hive.no/laereprosesser-konferanse/

The images:
Pål Runsjø plays inside an art instalation;
Pål Runsjø, Olav Ness, Stein Storsve, Geir Salvesen and Knut Høydal play music written by Jacob Olsen

Without experience – How would you know?

I told my son (12) that he should not bite his nails, and he replayed: “But if I did not bite them, how would I know that the thumb nail is the thickest, hardiest and tears differently than the other nails?”

He was right: How would he know without experience?
We tend to understand thought as something opposite to what is directly perceived (Dewey, 2009). Michael Parsons suggests that thought itself is embodied (Parsons, 2007). I do not doubt that experience is essential for our understanding of the world and ourselves … it is just so seldom that we use words to mediate, explain, share, reflect about our embodied experiences.

Marte Gulliksen connects her experiences, thoughts and feelings in poetic descriptions of her embodied interactions with a three-dimensional material. In her master thesis – conducted as “research by design”- she wrote about her experience acquired through interactions with piece of wood she was carving. She observes her hands, tools and materials both from the inside of her body, and form the outside: with her eyes, nose, ears. And she tells us (and herself) about her intimate meeting with the material being shaped:
”The wood needs a long period of intense persuasion to accept my ideas, but when the shapes are found at last, the knife follows the fibres as if they had a secret agreement as to where they were heading. The knife follows the directions of the fibres. When they meet, the fibres and the knife, they unite like rivers connect, meet gliding down through shallow valleys” (Gulliksen, 2001)
Can writing about our experience help us to understand better? And what can we achieve by reflecting about the connections between thought, feelings and an experience? I believe more that we can imagine! But as far as our “tacit knowledge” and embodied experience remain unspoken, I fear they will remain a non-issue in discussions about learning.

I don’t have an image of Marte’s wood-work. The images presented here show two small sculptures that have been through hands of two male artists: “The Heart” has been cut on the lathe, re-constructed and polished by Tollef Thorsnes. Another piece of wood has many times been turned around in Mikael Nilsson’s palms; The shape of a horse that was hidden inside, slowly made itself recognizable through the artist’s touch (more than through his sight) and motivated his further actions with the knife. (I can tell this because I observed Mikael while he was making other small sculptures at the Slöjd conference in Linköping, in August 2010.)

Dewey, J. (2009). How We Think. Available from Digireads.com

Gulliksen, M. (2001). The Creative Meeting - A discussion over the Aesthetic Elements in the Creative Process. In C. Nygren-Landgärds & J. Peltonen (Eds.), Visioner om slöjd och slöjdpedagogik: visions on sloyd and sloyd education (pp. 55-64). Vasa: NordFo.

Parsons, M. (2007). Art and Metaphor, Body and Mind. In L. Bresler (Ed.), International Handbook of Research in Arts education (pp. 533-542). Dordrecht Springer.

Experiencing tools

A few weeks ago, at the slöjd (handcraft) conference in Sweden, I heard of a research project about how young students learn to cat “strait” with a saw. If you don’t think cutting a piece of wood is knowledge, just try to imagine a child finding out how to hold a saw for the first time, how hard to push and press, how to adjust the rhythm of movements to the own breathing, length of the arms and sprawling elbows. The task is actually quite complicated if we take in consideration that different types of wood, with different levels of moisture and structure, would respond differently, and that also the tools’ qualities would demand variations in strength, time, precision, patience... Yes, it seems easy to use a saw when you have done it before. When you know how to do it, the knowledge suddenly seems to be hidden, your earlier struggles forgotten, and the complexity of the task somehow becomes invisible… the knowledge becomes tacit…

My little friend, 2,5 years old, was taking part in constructing garden furniture from ready-made parts, no sawing was involved. Still there was much to learn. First we found out which parts should be screwed together, and then the construction was mostly about screwing the parts together with a little tool. Before I knew about it, he had observed the activity of my hands. I was holding the tool between my forefinger and the middle finger while I was twisting it around. He did not have to do it that way, I showed him other easier ways, but he did not want to give up trying to do it just the way I did. His fingers were working hard, the eyes were concentrated, the tool resisted – but he was fighting.

What he had achieved through his endurance and experience (through the coordination between his different senses and body functions, through his fight with the tool, through the experience of being an asset in the social context etc.) can not be compared to the number of screws he managed to fix. The invisible results were much more valuable than the visible! But seeing the screws disappearing in the white painted wood, was certainly also an experience that enriched his self-confidence, joy and motivation.

Slöjd - Learning through hands

On August 17-th and 18-th a “slöjd” conference took place in Linköping, Sweden. “Slöjd” is, among other things, a Swedish school discipline where students deal with handcraft with wood, metal and textile. In Norway the term “sløyd” is usually understood as woodwork and it is an integrated part of discipline “Arts and crafts”.

The conference was eleventh in the range of slöjd -conferences arranged each second year at the University of Linköping where people interested in slöjd: teachers, craftsmen, artists and researchers, gather to listen to the lectures, discuss at the workshops, view and experience at the exhibitions.

The theme of this year’s conference was “Slöjd – creating, keeping and extending boundaries”. Different types of boundaries were discussed, from preserving old techniques and design on one side, to dissolution of the boundaries of school-slöjd and merging with art, on the other; Here is the conference program: http://www.trippus.se/eventus/userfiles/17691.pdf . Marléne Johansson reminded us that slöjd is both ancient, modern and “cool”. Otto von Buch showed interesting examples of intersection between sköjd and contemporary arts. In his presentation, he focused on extension of aesthetic boundaries as for example in mutual influence between old techniques and modern design, while Lars-Erik Björklund spoke about tacit knowledge, the importance of experience, and relations between brain and embodied activities.

The participants at the conference were people who appreciated dealing with tools and materials: With their own hands they knew how valuable tacit knowledge was for them and their students. However, in a recent survey in Sweden, where students’ and their parents’ were asked to evaluate the importance of school disciplines, slöjd got almost the lowest ranking (Illum & Johansson, 2009). Teachers asked how this was possible when they frequently experience that their students enjoy the slöjd classes so much? I sensed the participants’ urge to convince school administrators, politicians and parents that human body is capable of learning in many different ways…. But what could they say? What should they say to explain and justify the importance of creating, crafting and experiencing with three-dimensional materials?

The fate of school-slöjd is in many ways dictated by contemporary educational philosophy, politics and values in the society. How much is learning by doing, learning through experience, senses and body valued in schools today? Possibilities for such learning are also bounded by teachers’, students’ and parents’ own expectations. Such expectations, which sometimes draw back to one’s own primary school education, can grow into harmful attitudes if one doesn’t start questioning them….

What can be done to raise the status of slöjd in the society? “We need more research!”, has been said many times during the conference.

Illum, B., & Johansson, M. (2009). Vad är tillräckligt mjukt? – kulturell socialisering och lärande i skolans slöjdpraktik. FORMakademisk, 2(1), 69-82. Retrieved from http://www.formakademisk.org/index.php/formakademisk/article/view/31/26

Mercedes in pajamas

Sorry for not writing sooner – I have been busy with writing articles, and that’s what I should be doing most the last year of my phd-study. But I also have to find some time for small observations. Besides my “properly conducted” data collection, my little friend, soon three years old, has constantly been supplying me with fresh puzzles to keep my mind busy. As my co-researcher, he has been reminding me that young children are complexity experts, capable of combining feelings, memories, experiences and imagination into poetic metaphors.

I have earlier on this blog written about children’s metaphors. This metaphor is brand new: In South Europe, where summers are hotter and longer, plants and houses are different than in Norway. The cars are much the same, but they are driven and parked differently. One hot day my little friend told me there was a car wearing pajamas. It was a Mercedes (we could see the symbol on the wheel). Why dress a Mercedes in pajamas? I would say to protect it from the sun.

My little friend, not unlike other boys, is found of cars: he likes playing with them, watching them and parking them on his pillow against his ear when he goes to sleep. He could reel of a number of reasons why the car was dressed in a light, soft, cotton garment:

• The car was parked, was asleep – of course it was wearing pajamas!
• He (the car) was put to sleep in the middle of the day - of course it had to cover his head and eyes not to get disturbed by other cars, people and the sun.

But why didn’t my friend suggest that the car was wearing a jacket or a hat? I think it was because he recognized the white, cotton flannel with specific soft texture someone had used to tailor a dress – sorry: pajamas for the car.

As someone who appreciates tailoring, dress-design and textiles, I was glad to hear how much embodied knowledge my little friend (my little poet) had about textile qualities!

Something between

Summertime: travelling, sunbathing and meeting people. This summer I had a chance to observe a Norwegian boy (almost three years old) meeting new friends in Croatia. Those meetings were usually not initiated by greetings or other forms of verbal interactions, but by nonverbal communication concerning something of mutual interest: a ball, sunglasses or beach toys. The interactions often started when one child kept watching, following or imitating another – and after a while (sometimes sooner, sometimes later) they both took turns in copying each other’s actions.


One day the Norwegian boy (let me call him Morten) got his first pair of sunglasses. During the day he was experimenting with how to wear them, and in the evening he met another boy, about the same age, also wearing sunglasses. The other boy was moving over the market place on his little bicycle, and Morten started to chase him around trying to establish contact. And when their eyes met through the dark plastic, the question “How to wear sunglasses?” seem to be the main issue in their non-verbal communication. They both mirrored each other’s actions and tried new and surprising ways of wearing sunglasses. The sunglasses became the objects or joint interest – something they could gather around and use as tools for their communication.


Another time, there was a ball on the beach. A ball is something you can throw and fetch - a toy perfect for scaring. Morten simply started to throw the ball to a few years older boy, and the boy replayed. Being taller, the older boy could stand in deeper water, while Morten was carefully not leaving the shallow water. When he realized that the ball landed in too deep water, Morten asked the older boy (in Norwegian) to get it – and the boy understood his body language. Morten seem to be proud to have an older and more competent friend to play with, and the six years old boy seemed to enjoy being more competent.


Besides sand, shells and stones, beach toys are also good for sharing… especially if one child has something the other child doesn’t. Using their earlier experience from play with similar objects, each child had something of his/hers own to contribute with, and they showed each other what they could do with the objects. They become confident in each other by copying and repeating each others actions. The activities of scaring and doing something together become essential, making verbal language unnecessary.

Seeing and saying – matter of communication context?

Kieran Egan wrote “we all begin as poets” (Egan, 2002) using imagination in making sense of our world. Young children often amaze us with their “poetic” expressions where their metaphors “sprawl” in different directions, connecting apparently unrelated things. These metaphors might not “carry the day” (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006, p.8), but they might still reflect the world as it has been experienced by each of them. On the other side, what they see or say is probably also influenced by the contexts of communication: expectation to others, and what they might expect from one. For instance, by saying something unexpected you might get attention, show yourself off, make someone laugh – or “test” him/her!



Researching with three-year-olds, I have observed how the tiniest new-experienced details can remind them of their earlier experiences; I observed how a rhythmic sound of hammering reminded a girl of her embodied experience: “That’s my heartbeat”, she said. But each communication context is unique and it’s not possible to state just one reason why somebody says something – it’s much more complicated than that (I have learned from Robert Stake (2010) that one should be cautious addressing causality – we can never know for sure why something happens). Here is an event that made me think about a boy’s choices of what to draw, what to see and what to say.

I was a visitor in an early childhood centre. The children did not know me and I tried to observe from distance. When the joint activity ended, a 3,5 years old boy found a seat at the table close to corner I was sitting, found a piece of paper and started to draw. While he was drawing he was frequently looking at me and talking loud about the dramatic actions taking place on the drawing: There was a bad guy and a good goy. The lines over the paper, together with the energetic hand movements and the sounds he made, were indicating the good guy’s shooting on the bad guy. Somehow in the middle of the action the boy said “I” and it came out that the good guy (a super-hero) was actually himself.


The boy explained that the god guy killed the bad guy. I felt sorry for the bad guy (Or may be I simply got intrigued by the boy’s invitation to interact with him? …Or I (pedagogically-thinking) wanted to make him reflect about the act of violence he had just performed?). So I started to talk to the boy: “Oh, poor bad guy! What will his parents say when they find out that he is dead?” And he replied: “They won’t care – they are in jail!”

While the boy was verbally and visually making his story, I sometimes looked around the room to see what was going on outside our narrow conversation context. Even though the boy beside me seemed to be deeply engaged with his drawing, each time I raised my head, he immediately looked at me saying: “Don’t go!” or “Please stay!”


“May be some doctors can help him to get back to life?”- I tried again, and the boy drew an ambulance (not recognizable symbol), but he concluded: “None can help him now. He is dead! Not even a million doctors can help him!” And the good guy kept shooting, which resulted in large amount of crossing lines on the paper, until the shooting-lines had covered (almost) all evidence that any guys ever were drawn on the sheet of paper. He realized that the drawing started to look like something else. “Look, there is a spider web!”, he said. “Yes”, I said, and I noticed a little circle between the web-lines: “And here is a spider!”- I said pointing at the circle.

The boy straightened his back and looked at me seriously – almost angry: “No! That’s not a spider! That’s my penis” he said and kept looking me strait in my eyes for a long moment – as if he was testing my reaction. I tried not to look surprised and to continue the conversation: “Oh, it’s not a spider…” – but I was shocked. The boy got back to his drawing and started to draw a large, round spider with many legs, while I was trying to understand what had just happened.

The circle (the penis) could have been there all the time as a part of the drawing beneath. But the boy’s drawing of humans did not have any details, and I don’t believe that the circle was ever drawn as a symbol for a penis. Did the boy said that just to get my attention? He did not want me to go and he seemed to know which words had shocking influence on people (He might have for example experienced that if his older brother used the same word to shock their parents?)

This event can of course be interpreted in many ways – some people would, may be, get concerned about the violence, or about the boy’s vocabulary. And I, I am amazed by the boy’s communication competence – he really managed to impress me, engage my attention for more than 15 minutes, and motivate me to reflect in order to increase my understanding.


About the drawings: The boy did not want me to take picture of the drawing: “Only our teachers are allowed to take pictures!”, he said. So, the drawings presented on this blog are my son's, when he was 4 years old.

Egan, K. (2002). We begin as poets. In L. Bresler & C. M. Thompson (Eds.), The arts in children's lives: context, culture, and curriculum (pp. 93-104). Boston: Kluwer Academic.
Kress, G., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading images: the grammar of visual design. London: Routledge.
Stake, R. E. (2010). Qualitative research: studying how things work. New York: Guilford Press.

Is this how I learn?

My body remembers how it felt to stand completely serious, dressed in white, in front of my laughing and shouting colleagues a week ago. Now they tell me: “Don’t worry - you’ll forget!”, but it is difficult to reverse the learning process - my thinking and feeling body was acquiring new insights while I was standing there… feeling stupid…


On Friday June 11-th my college department (education), where I’ve been working for 12 years, was arranging a summer party. Two drama teachers responsible for the party asked me to lead one of the parallel sessions. When we were preparing multidisciplinary teaching we used to brain-storm and create something together, but this time they had a ready made plan for me.

The beginning of the party was to consist of different events inviting 120 participants (university college teachers, professors and administrators) to engage and be playfully. According to the plan I was supposed to be a serious teacher and give the participants (40 by time) an assignment to work on. When I heard about the plan, my intuition warned me: this is not going to work. And I said: “This is not going to work because the people would be in “party-mood” - they would expect me to be funny! The serious context of my teaching-session will not fit to the rest of the party!” The two colleagues asked me not to be so negative, and I, though still uncomfortable, tried to be positive and creative in finding ways how to motivate the participants to imagine education in future and discuss their hopes for “better teaching”, other forms of classroom relations, “better” education contents etc.

This was the plan I had to follow:
I had 5 minutes to motivate them to imagine schools in future. They had 10 minutes to work in small groups discussing how their perfect school lesson could look like in future. One of them should then imagine being a student who attended “the perfect future lesson”. This person should then be interviewed about his/hers experience. The interviews would be filmed and three “best” would be shown on large screen later the same evening.

This is how I prepared:
If I was to motivate for creativity in the given circumstances, I had do something special – and I had only 5 minutes. I planed to share my own hopes for the future of education (inspired by Kieran Egan’s educational philosophy) and to present that through a performance. The minimalistic multimodal composition was inspired by the dance performance Momix I’d seen at the Krannert Center in Urbana-Champaign. I imagined the performance to be “clean” and peaceful (!) and I worked on my clothing, movements, words, the tone of my voice… and adjusting to speed of my talk to the visual presentation which was “living its own life”; The still image showing only large number 2020, would gradually, behind my back, start counting years in accelerating speed. There was a point about time…

This is what happened:
When the first group of participants, my colleagues, entered the room, they were dramatizing naughty student: being loud, falling from their chairs, interrupting me with odd questions… I tried to play my role, to perform, but there was no room for it... they could not even hear me. They did not seem interested, and I realized that I did not want to share anything with them under such conditions. I did not want people to laugh about something I find important! They were expected me to be funny and I was not prepared to be funny but serious; They were caught in the roles of “naughty students”, and I was stuck in my role of a strict teacher – though in addition to being serious I was also struggling to find a way out the most uncomfortable situation.

I cut my performance short and stepped out of my role telling them that I could not continue under the conditions – but I don’t think they could not hear me through the noise. Which measures could I take to make them listen? – they were not my students but my colleagues! I met one of the drama teachers at the door and told her that the plan was not working. She told me to improvise. I said: “I can’t do this two more times!” She said: “Of course you can!” And I had to repeat the humiliating act twice again during the following hour. However, I did not do the performance, but I said something without any affection and confidence. The third group of audience was quiet, but also got the boring non-sense introduction and experienced the worst possible “teaching” I could do. I felt like a puppet, pushed on the stage, acting according to somebody else’s choices.

This is what I learned:
I learned that I should not overlook the importance of people’s expectations to communication contexts. My colleagues had expectations to the session and to me, but they also had expectation to each other. I was not fulfilling their expectation, but they could still be funny one for another – and for some of them this seemed to become the most important task in the context.

I learned that my ways of communication are affected by my confidence in people I communicate with. The context where I did not feel taken seriously, was not the contexts where I could improvise in a good way.

I learned how my feelings are important in my learning. While I was standing there, I could have reasoned that my colleagues were not trying to be mean to me, but my embodied feelings were stronger than my reasoning. I was disappointed and sad. One of my colleagues approached me later that evening and asked me how I was. She said she felt sorry for me. Some others told me: “Don’t worry, you will soon forget it all”. Yes, I might forget what was said and done, but my embodied experience from the wounding event had influenced my attitude towards my colleagues: I don’t wish to share my thoughts with them!

So, is this new knowledge of any good? Was my experience as unique as the context, or do other people also react emotionally in similar situations? I do not intend to answer this question - I am just astonished by the extent of my affection from a single experience. How much could 3 x 20 minutes of social un-comfort change in a person? This makes me continue to wonder just how important social relations, communication contexts and feelings are for learning!

The images are details from a student studying Norwegian Folk Art at the “Telemark University College” at Rauland. I find Anne Grete Krogstad’s hand weaved “tjukkåkle” as an excellent example how traditional techniques can be applied in creative ways in new contexts.

Journal Publishing

Since I’ve decided to write an article based theses, I’ve been thinking about how to organize it. I think that the articles, deriving from the same material, should build upon each other, but should not ovelap too much; They should complement one another and show the empirical material from different points of view (?)


Like a path, my study cuts across different landscapes: early childhood education and early childhood teacher education, visual arts, language development, multimodality, imagination and creativity, learning through play, studies of learning environments, sculpture and three-dimensional materials, and arts-based qualitative methods of inquiry. Since it is hardly possible to find a journal that covers all of the areas, I plan to publish in different journals, addressing different audience. I will have to work on careful planning which contents to present in each of the articles, and which kind of narrator voice to apply. In order to do that, I should need to know what my current audience (for each of the journals) would need to know more about (what they are not familiar with) and what I should need to write much about (so that they will not get bored reading about something they already know). I should take a good look at the landscape and imagine my audience…


At the Sixth Congress of Qualitative Inquiry I attended panels where journal editors presented their work and gave advice to writers. Here is what I learned from them:

Some of the journals presented on June 28-th were not specialized for qualitative studies, while others would publish qualitative studies only – A writher should know which kind of journal his study would fit best into. Some journals were method journals (like for instance the Journal of Mixed Methods Research), that would not be relevant for publishing articles that present contents of a study. Readers of method journals would rather like reading which advantages the specific research methods had in order to understand the problem that has been studied.

Dorothy Becvar (Journal of Family and Therapy) said that she is devoted to the qualitative method and wants to make sure the method is well presented. Ron Chenail (Qualitative report) encouraged writers to write in first person and in active form (not “the informants were interviewed” but “I interviewed the informants”).

Ian Shaw, University of York (Qualitative Research Work) presented his applied qualitative research journal and explained that “applied research” is about “meaning worked out in particular contexts”. When one is preparing to publish in an international journal, the article should be written in a way that it speaks across the boundaries of different contexts. Before submitting one should ask the question: Would the theme be relevant for audience outside the specific contexts? (Some things migt be relevant, others not. One should be careful where and how to step...)


Harry Torrance (British Educational Research Journal) explained that one should know that growing journals would reject the most of the articles. Donna Mertens (Journal of Mixed Method Research) gave advice that writers should always refer to articles earlier written in the journal one wants to publish in (at least two references). One should also try to find out what the editor’s, and the board member’s, research and write about. She explained what one should do when receiving two different (or even opposite) feed-backs from board-members. This happens and can be confusing. The writer might take the position of one of the reviewers, but she/he would still have to respond to the requirements from both of the reviewers in order to get published.

Janice Morse gave an editor’s perspective on how to get qualitative research published. Her angle was to present usual rejection reasons and questions to be checked before submitting: Does the article fit to the mission of the journal? Have you writing who you are (student, researcher etc.)? Is the topic exciting for others? Do you write with confidence? Do you write with enthusiasm? Do you have too few, or too many, references? If the presented project is conducted together with others, did you make explicit how much of your study ovelap with other projects? (And make sure that the people you have collaborated with are mentioned.)

Congress of Qualitative Inquiry

The Sixth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry took place at the campus of University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign from May 26-th to 29-th. About 700 participants from around the world took part in large number of presentation, plenary and poster sessions. I will be writing more about the congress, but since I am publishing this blog on my way back to Norway, it will be just a short note about my own presentation on Friday May 28-th.

It is difficult to say much in short time: you have to present the contexts of your work so that your intentions would be understood, you have to say something relevant and important, you should say it in a way that makes the listeners interested, and you will have to sum up - or open up for further reflection. And all that in 12 minutes! Usually when I present I use many visual images. (This time the children’s parents had even allowed me to use films of their children.) But 12 minutes would be too short to sett up a projector, show the images and still have time to explain, discuss and tell about my lived experiences. I decided to write down what I should say, edit the paper again and again in order to make it shorter and more intense, and practice reading it in order to be able to look at audience while I was reading. Later, I was apologizing to Liora Bresler that I was reading while addressing the issue of multimodal communication and body language: “What a contradiction between the content and the form!” But Liora calmed me down: “That’s just how conference genre is!”

This is an image of me with Norwegian colleague Ingrid Grønsdal Arnesen outside the Union building.

And here is the abstract that can illustrate what I was talking about:
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.

The Secret Life of my Brain

“Strange how brain sometimes work”, I wrote to my co-advisor to tell her how, during my preparing for presentation at the case study course, I suddenly understood how to solve a puzzle in writing something else. An hour later I receive an e-mail titled “Brain”. I smiled because I thought she was responding on my comment about the brain – but soon I realized that this mail was not from her. It was from Kurt Johannessen (2010), Norwegian performance artist and poet who from time to time sends inspiring words to the people on his mailing list. Here is the poem:

The Brain
In the year 4133 man discovered a new component in the brain.
It wasn’t clear whether the component had always been there,
or whether it had developed as a result of evolution.
It took many years for scientists to understand
the characteristics of this new discovery.
When they did finally solve the mystery,
everyone was astonished that they
hadn’t seen it earlier.

I thought how wonderful it was to receive exactly this poem, right now! In humoristic and complicating ways it described what I was just thinking about - It made me understand how complicated understanding can be. In the same time, I got curious about why receiving it made me so happy - ?

I used to collect napkins when I was a girl. May be I still am a collector? And this poem fitted perfectly to my collection of images, smells, words, experiences and sudden insights… Three months ago, in a plane magazine, I found an advertisement which amazed me. The text said: “Think before creating” and the image showed a textile brain. (The name of the photographer was not stated but the advertisement also said: “REDA – Finest fabrics made in Italy”.) Such collected “items” often inspire me even long time after they’ve been collected, and incredibly often make connections between themselves. I do not say that they do it without my interfering – I am sure that this process of connecting has something to do with my brain - or rather the unity Dewey called “body-mind”which is wirelessly connected to the world outside.


And here is what happened with the presentation I was preparing for the Robert Stake’s case study course: We were ten people in the room, some of whom I meet for the first time. I tried to be short, but felt like I was using too much time. I struggled with some words, and felt that I lost the structure I had planned… That is at least how I experienced the presentation from the inside of my body. And that is also why the feed-back I got from Terry Denny (who used to work with Robert Stake) was even more unexpected! What he told me after my presentation, and repeated it even more strongly when he approached me after the session, absolutely qualifies for my selection of extraordinary experiences! I have never before received such a strong encouragement to keep doing what I do! He said I have to write a book to describe how my understanding and learning from the 3-, 4- and 5-year-old co-researchers gradually unfolded during my interaction with them - or rather “intra-actions” as Hillevi Lenz Taguchi (2010) might have called this mutual influence between persons and their environments.

When I experience how strongly interactions with people influence my thoughts and feelings I am sure that trying to understand our brain has to include much more than “looking” inside it. As John Dewey wrote “the body-mind is not simply the acknowledgement of the sensory input that goes to the brain, but it is based upon the interaction of subject with a complex and challenging environment” (Davidson, 2004). We might never be able to understand all secrets of our brains, but being on our way to understand more is also something to celebrate, isn’t it?

The poem "Hjernen" / "The Brain" was first published in 1999 in the book "Nasefenomenet og andre hendingar" written by Kurt Johannessen, 1999.
In English: Kurt Johannessen (2010), translation by Gillian Carson: "Selected”. Zeth, Bergen http://www.zeth.no/boker2.shtml#selected

Davidson, J. (2004). Embodied Knowledge: Possibilities and Constrains in Art Education and Curriculum. In L. Bresler (Ed.), Knowing Bodies, Moving Minds: toward Embodies Teaching and Learning. Dorsrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Lenz Taguchi, H., Moss, P., & Dahlberg, G. (2010). Going beyond the theory: practice divide in early childhood education : introducing an intra-active pedagogy. London: Routledge.