Inside the Fog

I finished my data collection three months ago, and since then I’ve been watching the videos from my interactions with young students (3-5), and I am constantly discovering something new. My embodied experience has made it possible for me to see “from the inside” and try to understand the complexity of children’s process of meaning making. But from the inside-position, like when standing in a foggy landscape, my sight might not reach too far: Our practitioner-researchers’ own lived experience can “cloud our vision against the very complexities we seek to capture, trapped as we are in socially derived constructions of the world we experience” (Brown and Jones, 2001, p.6).

Even though it can feel lonely researching inside closed contexts, it also feels quite safe and painless being inside the barely transparent “bubble” in the beginning. But as long as I have just my own eyes to see with … my own head to think with, and there is none there to help me sharpen my sight, I can (often unconsciously) overlook what I don’t want to see. Liora Bresler suggested once that I should let my colleagues take a look on my data with fresh sight and clear mind… oh, no, she probably did not say “clear mind” - but with their mind highly influenced by their professional focuses and personal understandings. And this is what I did:

• asked the children’s parents if my colleagues could watch the videos form my interactions with their children (two children by time)
• applied and got permission from Norwegian Social Science Data Service to show my data to my colleagues
• asked some of my closest colleagues to watch the videos with me and comment on them
• chose and edited some video-parts (the selections were made according to what I needed to get comments on, as well as according to my colleagues’ interest areas: drama, language, pedagogy, social science, qualitative research)
• placed a projector, a large screen and a camera to film the two events (This way I could later watch the collaboration meetings in order to note the feedback on my research, but one could also watch the events in order to learn form, and about, the improvisational style of meaning making that took place when many insightful people shared their thoughts.)

Liora Bresler says that collaborative, team research, involves improvisation and that it “emphasizes interdependent voices and diversity of perspectives within a connected group” (Bresler, 2006). My colleagues interpreted my data in variety of ways, helped me to see new details, and, what I found the most important, they questioned my ways of understanding. They could, of course, not see the way I could see… and I realized that my ways of seeing have also changed over the last months. The collaboration meetings made me more conscious about the process I’ve been through, and thought me that I will have to work hard to uncover the layers of my new embodied knowledge if I want others to see through the fog….

BRESLER, L. (2006) Embodies Narrative Inquiery: A Mehodology of Connection. Research Studies in Music Education, 27, 21-43.

BROWN, T. & JONES, L. (2001) Action research and postmodernism: congruence and critique, Buckingham, Open University Press.

Documentation or Mapping - different points of view

Some time ago I was asked to give a talk about documentation in early childhood education. I was prepared to talk about documentation as a pedagogical tool for learning about own practice, but a week before the talk I got an e-mail saying something like this: “We are looking forward to hear you talk about mapping of children’s competence...” I got confused: What was I actually supposed to talk about?!

I made a call to the organizer of the seminar for about 300 practitioners, and was told that I had to say something about mapping because the purpose of the seminar was to start implementation of a new strategic plan for the community which, among other things, focused on mapping of children’s competence. So, I decided to talk about my understanding of the two phenomena: “competence mapping” and “pedagogical documentation” with hope that this would initiate discussion and reflection about ways to understand, and perform, the concepts.

From my studies with children I have experienced how easy it is to make quick judgement about their competence if we do not see ourselves as significant for the meaning making that takes place at the very moment. Meaning is made in a curtain context and communication with young children is highly intersubjective. Therefore can “results” of mapping lose their meaning when they are interpreted separated from the contexts; The “results” can be misleading and even set the child’s self-confidence, motivation, and understanding of social relations, at risk.

Dewey wrote that “life goes on in an environment; not merly in it but because of it, through interaction with it” (Dewey, 2005, p.12), (Environment is understood as both about physical and social.). People make meaning through intersubjective relations with each others in given contexts (Bruner, 1990, Bakhtin and Slaattelid, 2005), and communication contexts have enormous influence on what we say and how we say it (Halliday in Maagerø, 2005). It means that when we meet a child for mapping, even if we are highly careful not to show our expectations, the reason we meet in itself will influence the context and the child’s expectations, feelings and “the results”; Not to mention how our tone of voice, body language and choice of the words can practically decide what the child’s answer will be.

I believe that the largest difference between pedagogical documentation and competence mapping is in our way of seeing ourselves in relation to the “results”. Are we aware of that “results” sometimes say more about us and the pedagogical work a child has been exposed to, than about the child’s competence? If we see “results” as dependent of the child only, it would be so easy to blame the child and deny own responsibility! On the other hand, if our aim is to learn about own pedagogical practice, if we observe carefully and reflect about any kind of “results”, we might have a chance to improve our practice. And instead of comparing children to each other, we would have possibility to respect them as they are, with all their individualities and “personal signatures” (Eisner, 2002) they affects the world around them!

Dewey, J. (2005) Art as experience, New York, Berkley Publishing Group.
Eisner, E. W. (2002) The arts and the creation of mind, New Haven, Yale University Press.
Maagerø, E. (2005) Språket som mening: innføring i funksjonell lingvistikk for studenter og lærere, Oslo, Universitetsforl.

3D-materials’ Resistance and Challenge

Long time ago I watched my son building with Lego-blocks. At that moment, building in height seemed to be one of the main challenges he faced and he was using whatever was possible to stack on the top of each other – even pigs and palms!

A week ago I experienced a massive sculpture carved in Norwegian stone Larvikitt by Martin Kuhn (in cooperation with Makoto Fujiwara) and placed as a part of the Norwegian peace monument in Sarajevo (Norsk Fredsmonument i Sarajevo). Can you imagine which kind of challenge it can be to re-shape the hard surface of the solid rock with you hands? - and to transport its 30 tons 1800 km away?

Today I analyse what “my” early childhood students did in contexts where they played with 3D-materials. What happened when the materials surprised them with their resistance? How eager were they to take action when the materials’ qualities challenged them?

Some of the children, when they discovered a new quality of a material, seemed to be curious and motivated to different kinds of activities towards the material (jumping on it, lifting it, crawling through…). But the materials’ resistance also initiated activities in their mind when they tried to understand – to make meaning of the new experiences.

Elliot Eisner wrote: “Constrains and affordances emerge in any selection of tasks and materials. These tasks and materials constitute what it is that the student will need to “get smart about”. Getting smart, in this context, means coming to know the potential of the materials in relation to the aims of project or problem; and since each material possesses unique qualities, each material requires the development of distinctive sensibilities and technical skills. (Eisner, p.72).”

With another words, our environment offers us possibilities and limitations to learn through interactions with it. The selection of 3D-materials for student activities in early childhood and schools will therefore also be “the selection of an array of forces that will influence how students will be challenged to think” (Eisner 2002, p. 72).

Eisner, E. W. (2002). The arts and the creation of mind. New Haven: Yale University Press.