The Present Moment

Few days ago I observed fingers of a young girl: they were tirelessly moving, touching, puling, rotating or squeezing everything they came in contact with. Accompanying the fingers, her eyes and ears were attuned to the same sources of interest, and even though some of the 34 people around her could have interrupted her, she remained engaged in the same small details that had captured her attention. Her attention, activities, thoughts and senses seemed to be merging in the moments of experiencing, as Dewey (2005 [1934]) suggests experiences always are: compact “packages”of merging feelings, thoughts and senses. The girl was truly present in her own experiencing – totally engaged in the present moments as if nothing else existed.

Stern (2004) says that life is always lived in the present moment. It cannot be different. Unable to release ourselves from the constant flow of time (except in dreams and some other extraordinary events) we are unable to get back to exactly the same place in time; contexts are always new. Each moment is unique and unrepeatable. Each experience is unique, but only when we dare to live it… in the unique, present moment.

The images (still and in motion) are captured from exactly the same place, on days with no wind - amazing how the leaves were falling all by themselves. The fourth time I intended to take a photo, the trees were gone…



References:
Dewey, J. (2005 [1934]). Art as experience. New York: Berkley Publishing Group.
Stern, D. N. (2004). The present moment in psychotherapy and everyday life. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company.

For my Colleagues (only?)

On December 1st I had honour to present my PhD-study to my closest colleagues who teach diverse disciplines at early childhood education programs at my university college (Vestfold University College). The presentation was based on the trial lecture (held on November 1st) where I was asked to comment on the on-going national revision of the early childhood teacher education.

The preparation for the trial lecture led to an understanding that the process of the revision is influenced by two parallel processes: making the early childhood education better adjusted to the early childhood practice, and the process of internationalizing Norwegian higher education. But this was not all: the important insight was that these two processes build on quite opposite ideologies. The largest problem though, the way I see it, is not that the two ideologies are impossible to unite, but that the people responsible for the revision do not seem to be aware of the ideologies! This ignorance has already led to number of conflicts, misunderstandings and tensions… and I cannot see any hope for “better” (whatever “better” or “higher quality” might mean) early childhood teacher education if the ideologies are not discussed!

Many of colleagues who listened to the presentation on December 1st seem to share my opinion that the insight about the opposing ideologies is important and should be discussed more. I am thankful for their support and I truly hope that teacher educators and leaders at Vestfold University College will find time for discussions before the new, national education program is to be implemented in our institution.

This is how I have illustrated the ideologies:

	Ideology behind Norwegian early childhood education	Ideology behind the international educational trends
	Embodied, pre-verbal competences	Knowledge as verbal-language-based
	Holistic, unity, embodied metaphor	Traditional, divided disciplines
	Complexity and contextualized understanding	Structure, generalizing and dis-contextualized testing
	Prolonged engagement, explorative play	Efficiency and economizing
	Self-motivation for learning	Knowledge externally defined
	Building identity on respect and will to contribute to others	Exclusion and focus on incompetence
	Imaginative cognition	Memorizing
	Quality of life – here and now	Quality related to international competition

Spaces for Emerging Questions

My visual art students are these days struggling to formulate research questions for the first time. They complain that they’ve been working for hours and still don’t have proper questions. My experience is that formulating a question can take weeks and months of reformulating, reading, reflecting, and possibly the most important: discussing with others - Discussions with colleagues with similar interests is, at least, what I find the most important for my emerging questions.
Last week I spent three days with my colleagues – our little community of knowledge with common interest in research on the importance of physical space and materiality in early childhood education. Our three-day-stay at a SPA hotel in Strømstad (Sweden, just on the other side of Oslo fjord) basically consisted of spending time in our rooms and writing, but we frequently met for short discussions and meals. All of us had a well-defined task to write an article for the same journal (Education Inquiry), and it was never difficult to find something to talk about. The conversations about one of the articles were always relevant for the other articles; When someone wondered about something, she/he was usually not alone; When some questions were posed, new questions aroused and engaged the participants in lively discussions.

Informal discussions during the meals contributed to further development of friendly atmosphere, mutual trust and confidence, and created spaces where any kind of question could be posed; Where any kind of question could be born from the synergies of disciplines, interests, knowledge, experiences - and the mutual, inter-subjective engagement.

Crossing to the Other Side

I have for long been wondering how it would feel to get on the other side of the dissertation day – the other side seemed so distant that I found it difficult to imagine. However, the crossing itself reminded me of barefoot crossing of a mountain stream coming straight from a Norwegian glaciers: the chilliness of the first step took my breath away, the slippery stones threatened my balance, and the strong stream kept reminding me that one doubtful move could result in disappearing under the frozen lake just a few meters away.

The beginning of my trial lecture made me dizzy as if a strong stream tried to pull me down. I got scared when my vision became double, but tried to concentrate on my breathing while I was talking. Somehow I came to understand that I had to ignore the cold feet and with self-confidence quickly choose where to step in the direction I had envisioned. And after a while I could neither feel my feet nor the stream – at least I did not have to struggle against it. By the time the trial lecture was approved and the committee members had started to ask questions, I had already acquired enough self-confidence that their questions did not seem threatening, but challenging in a positive way. The stream metaphor suddenly changed its character… Instead of puling me down, the conversations fell more like mutual balancing of steps, like in an Argentinian tango: the dancers have to feel the weight and direction of the other one’s body in order to adjust own moves in the improvising activity of dancing.

I am grateful to the committee members prof. Michael Parsons, Marte Gulliksen and prof. Halina Dunin-Woyseth who had read my thesis so carefully and with their interesting questions made it possible for me to negotiate new meanings during the questioning session. I thank my family, friends and colleagues who were wonderful audience and made 01.11.11 to a fantastic, unforgettable day!

Preparing for the Trial (-lecture)

The last ten day have been spent in preparing for the dissertation on November 1st. The theme for my trial lecture was received on October 18th – quite interesting theme, but also challenging and highly relevant. The committee has asked me to compare my findings to some phenomenon of the on-going national revision of the Early Childhood Teacher Education. This is the theme:

"The model of Negotiating Grasp as basis for a discussion of the distinction in the new Framework plan for early childhood teacher education (Forskrift om rammeplan for BA barnehagelærerutdanning) between the knowledge areas 'Children's development, play and learning' and 'Art, culture and creativity.' "

Here are some relevant links to web pages of The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, where the dissertation is taking place:
http://www.aho.no/no/AHO/Aktuelt/Kalender/2011/Disputas-Biljana-C-Fredriksen/
http://www.aho.no/no/FoU/Publikasjoner/Avhandlinger/Sammendrag-PhD/Biljana-Culibrk-Fredriksen/
http://www.aho.no/Global/Dokumenter/Nyhetsvedlegg/program_disputas_BCF.pdf

My Sand Castle

It was the 4th of October and, for a few days, I had been expecting a mail from my dissertation committee. My step-son kept reminding me that a negative evaluation could still have some positive consequences and that I should think about them in order to prepare for the committee’s decision. The wise 13-year old was trying to prevent a large disappointment.

Instead of sitting and waiting at the internet café in Villarcayo, close to Nela village where my step-son, my son and a few friends were staying (the kids had one week off from school), we went to visit a place called San Vincent in Northern Spain. When we arrive to the beach, the sight was overwhelming; I’ve heard it was a nice place, but I did not expect to experience such a wonderful sight; The banded blue horizon reminded me that the Earth was round, and that it continued to spin around and around.

While I was walking across the beach I enjoyed every moment; This day was finally my summer holiday – even though it was October, I did not have any real summer while I was rushing to finish my thesis. This was the little brake I was wishing for, for so many days… a cloud-free day before a storm…

My dissertation was built like a sand castle: I was carefully arranging each sand grain, adding water and pressing the flextible material with my hands. I imagined that the castle would stand up as a solid construction, but I still wanted the traces from my hands to remin visible - and the castle to appear as trustworthily vulnerable product of thousands of choices I had to take.

On the way back to Nela I checked my e-mail in Villarcayo: The response was positive! My sand castle did survive the storm… and the committee had understood that the “castle-builder” (they did not call me that) had “invested much of both her mind and heart in the inquiry”.

In a few days I will be receiving a theme to prepare for the trial lecture to be held on November the 1st. Today, Sunday 16th, I am enjoying another relaxing day – I think I deserve it...

Artistic Process as Pedagogical Text

The day I delivered the thesis (August 1st), I was back on the same teaching job I had before the PhD-study – however teaching is never the same. My main teaching responsibilities this fall are related to two groups of students: the one in a group of 18 undergraduate art and crafts students, the other is a group of 19 master degree students studying “pedagogical texts”. One might immediately wonder: What is a pedagogical text? Am I not an A&C teacher and how does my teaching relate to pedagogical texts? These questions are more than relevant at the point when both my students and I are searching for appropriate definitions of pedagogical text that can appropriately include arts-based approach to education.

In the broad definition of “text”, as used by the researchers at Vestfold University College, a pedagogical texts is any kind of physical object that can be used in a pedagogical purpose. This, of course, includes text books, but also art materials, costumes used in drama education, or accordion used in music education. But what about a dance floor and the classroom space – are they also “pedagogical text” - or are they rather pedagogical contexts? Could anything used by a teacher in pedagogical purpose become a pedagogical text – disregarding what the pedagogical goals are? For instance, if the purpose of education is to stimulate students’ imagination, could a fairy-tale as well as a non-figurative sculpture, become a pedagogical text?

Meeting the two groups of my students, I bring with me my experiences and unanswered questions from one group to another; The group of A&C students have been exploring three-dimensional materials and reflecting about their experiences from the creative work. Many found it difficult to assign words to their aesthetic choices and intuitive actions. To inspire their future work with research on own creative work, artist-researcher Grete Refsum was invited to present her artistic processes.

Listening to Grete Refsum I was thinking about how fantastic piece of pedagogical text her presentation was: It was a pedagogical text that seemed to have helped her structure her thoughts, past ideas, feeling and experiences in order to present them. On the other hand, her presentation was a well-functioning pedagogical text addressing the students and meeting them at the point they needed examples of well documented creative processes.

Grete presented her work with 17 pictures (part of the same art work) in chronological order: from the invitation to exhibit, exploration of the specific room shape and function, choices of the themes, materials, techniques, shapes, lines, compositions and so on. While she was talking and showing images, I got more aware of the complexity of her creative process – in fact I could identify at least four different processes that seemed to exist simultaneously, and interweave:
1. The process of studying the space, the physical contexts where her art would be exhibited; She seemed to have audience on her mind while she was planning.
2. The process of background research that supported her thematic choice of combining Western religion (Christianity) and Eastern (Kina) ideology and culture. This research would lead to her choices of symbols, materials, forms;
3. The process of exploring materials, techniques and practical possibilities of composing with the specific material combinations;
4. And the process of her traveling and collecting personal experiences one might think of as separated from her art, but in fact essential for it.

When I view Grete’s lecture as a pedagogical text, I wonder where did such pedagogical text start and end; The lecture would not be possible if she had not for years worked on her art project, if she did not experience, reflect, take choices… Additionally, the pedagogical goals developed during her and mine discussion before the lecture about what the students needed. At this point, when the students got an assignment to verbalize their experiences and seemed to struggle with it, Grete’s lecture hopefully meet them at the right moment where they had experienced some challenge, but still not become too frustrated. Grete’s lecture could possibly help them to extent the zone of their proximal development, instead of giving up. This is up to them to evaluate: What do you say, my students?

Relevant link: International Association for Research on Texbooks and Educational Media (IARTEM)

Attuning Tools, Materials and Muscles

An incredible project of reconstructing a Viking ship is taking place in Tønsberg at the moment (see http://www.osebergvikingskip.no/eng/) and is expected to take another autumn, winter and spring. The original ship called Oseberg, made by Vikings around the year 820, and later berried in Tønsberg area, is today exhibited at the Viking museum in Oslo.

The same ship has been reconstructed before, but this time not only the ship is being copied, but the entire process of building it. The building process is shaped by knowledge about Vikings’ tools and techniques; knowledge about wood’s diverse qualities, as well as how it might have been affected by climate during the centuries of growing; knowledge about the ship’s lines, curves, joints, surface; hydrodynamic, waterproof and other qualities, and much more. In short, the reconstruction of the full size replica is a huge multidisciplinary project that calls on complex combinations of knowledge and expertise. Additionally, local knowledge is constantly being produces in here-and-now situations where physical work challenges craft-men and volunteers to master the tools and approach the materials (wood, iron or wool) in contextually appropriate manners. This means that they have to pay close attention to the exact qualities of the wood piece they have in hand, they have to adjust their movements according to the material, tool and muscles in their bodies… and to accomplish some kind of harmony between embodied knowledge, reflection and imagination in order to solve emerging problems - for instance: how to change axe’s angles when cutting across a 70 cm thick oak.

I am telling this from my personal experience. Usually I use saw to cut wood, but Vikings did not have saws. Cutting wood "the Viking-way" seemed easy when we were shown how to do it; doing it oneself was a quite different experience – I am sure it was also different experience for each of us (my three 13 years old companions and me) who volunteered that day.


I experienced how important it was to keep changing the angle of the blade in order to make a “V”-like shape (or rather “U”-shape, as learned through experience) through the wood; I experienced how loose I should hold around the handle in order to prevent hurting my wrists; which back muscles to engage; in which position to drop the axe; how to slide my hands along the handle in order to control to blade’s direction; how to find the right rhythm to provide the best efficiency, and so on… Each of the boys seemed to explore their own cutting technique, for instance banding and straitening knees in order to canalise power from feet up to the axe’s blade. They generally gave the most they had, claiming that they were not tired, but the following days, I’ve heard, the experience left some noticeable traces in their bodies – nothing permanent, but something to help them remember.

If cutting with an axe was our daily occupation, as it was for many Vikings, we would have to listen to our bodies much better – we would have to learn how to attune the bodies, tools and materials as perfectly as possibly. We would have to learn much, much more…

Objects' Affordances

With wide number of qualities, objects around us afford us with different possibilities. Some objects are designed to function in specific ways (like chairs or cars), while natural objects and materials do not have any pre-assigned meanings – it is up to each of us to interpret possibilities embedded in their forms.

Qualities of an object can remind us of something else, thus, as well-behaving adults we would seldom wear a bucket. To be able to see possibilities in objects that already have preserved pre-assigned functions one needs to release imagination – and have self-confidence.

Some objects, textures or shapes remind us of something we’ve earlier experienced. See for instance how 13-year old William found similarities between a round shape of a branch and a glass: He grasped the possibility in the material, imagined its possible function and carved a glass-holder. See also how he used old pants to make back-support on the chair he designed and crafted by himself.

Intersubjectivity of Grief

Intersubjectivity is an ability to “attune” to others, to communicate without words. Stern (2003) says that intersubjectivity develops from the earliest interactions between an infant and an adult when they share attention, intentions and emotional conditions. This means that babies can communicate long before they can talk – but it can also mean that ability to intersubjectively connect with others is integrated in each of us, though we might not be aware of it.

During my interactions with 3-5 years old children it became so obvious for me how intuitive and embodied communication between us was, and how easily young children sensed my feelings and attitudes.

After the terror on July 22nd, people in Norway started to gather in different ways, with and without flowers, candles and torches. Such gatherings were different from any other contexts we’ve experienced. I wonder how we knew how to behave in appropriate ways?

Once about 300 of us gathered in a theatre, we could observe a woman, hand in hand with a young man, entering the stage. When they stopped, she spoke to us while he remained silent - with grief on his face. They walked again towards a table with candles. We could now imagine what was going to happen, still none conducted us to rise simultaneously n the moment the candles were lightened; None told us to stand there in complete silence - but we all did. There were no prescriptions to follow – it was amazing how we attuned to each other’s movements, invisible gestures, breath, gaze… as if we were fishes in a stream. I don’t know how fishes do it, but I experienced intensive attention of all of my senses – I felt like a huge satellite dish antenna seeking to capture some signs from the surroundings, and my actions emerged from the inside before I had time to reflect about them - I was not thinking through verbal means of thinking, but through my body.

I guess we are all able to “match other people’s moods and emotions because of our ability to ‘read’ the form, the vitality, and the intensity of their movements” (Herskind, 2008, p. 280). However, when emotions are strong and shared, when the participants are attentive and the reason for their gathering exactly the urge to share with each other’s, our apparently hidden intersubjective abilities can surprise us with their intensity.

Herskind, M. (2008). Movement analysis and identification of learning processes. In T. Schilhab, M. Juelskjær & T. Moser (Eds.), Leraning bodies (pp. 269-283). Copenhagen: Danmarks Pædagogiske Universitetsforlag.
Stern, D. N. (2003). Spebarnets intersubjective verden [The Interpersonal World of the Infant] (Ø. Randers-Pehrson, Trans.). Oslo: Gyldendah Akademisk.

The images show a sea of flowers in Oslo and a gathering of 10 000 people in Tønsberg.

The Point of No Return

The thesis was finished on Sunday morning, the last day of my three-year long full-time study. It was printed late in the evening, copied five times on Monday morning and personally delivered to my advisor Martina Keitsch in Oslo in the noon. I suppose that three of the examples are on their way to committee members: Marte Gulliksen, Michael Parsons and Halina Dunin-Woyseth. How it goes from here, is not up to me any longer…

The thesis has been titled “Negotiating Grasp: Embodied Experience with Three-dimensional Materials and the Negotiation of Meaning in Early Childhood Education”. An article based on the thesis has been published in the digital journal FORMakademisk. The article presents a few examples of children’s interactions with 3D-materials and suggests that children’s creative ideas come from interactions between their past and present experiences.

Meeting the Audience

Who are you and why would you want to read my blog?

I can only imagine what could hold you attention on these lines, and can only try to satisfy your expectations. Thus, you are not one single person with unified needs… and I also have my wishes, agendas and power to choose which words to serve you. We, a writer and a reader, find ourselves in apparently simple relationship where you can click me away whenever you find the blog boring, annoying or uninteresting. On the other hand, this dialog is complex because I really need to connect with you (in my imagination) in order to write at all.

I attended InSEA’s 33rd world congress in Budapest June 27th to 30th. Listening to many presenters made me wonder how they imagined their audience when they prepared their talks: Who were the people at the conference? What could they find worth listening? Preparing my own (18 minutes’) talk I was concerned with how to be short enough, but still say enough that the audience would understand.

The presentation I found the most engaging, perfectly planned and carried out, was made by Sara Calcagnini from Leonardo DaVinci - National Museum of Science and Technology, in Milano. She spoke about symbiotic relationship between art and science.

Sara’s presentation started with relevant (and short enough) introduction including a self-ironic comment about her Italian English: she said this in a funny way, but saying that she was willing to humiliate herself for the sake of the message she wanted to share also had an strong, serious effect. With her honest and friendly appearance she quickly established contact with her audience and treated us with prudence and respect (at least this is what I experienced).

Sara was completely engaged in her talk, believing with her whole body that she had something important to say. The images can give impression of her rapid movements addressing the audience and how her body language undeniably expressed her wish to motive us. Constantly providing with new insights, her talk had escalating dramaturgy, finally culminating with a call for help. And her call touched me. I felt connected. I was her audience - she moved me and motivated me.

While I was thinking: “what a fantastic talk; what I fantastic person”, the first comment she received from the audience shocked me! The comment's irrelevance spoke of ignorance toward the important issues Sara addressed in her talk; She spoke about holistic understanding of our world and responsibility of global citizens. Don’t audience also have responsibility to contribute in constructive ways? Or remain silent…

I feel responsible that I did not stand up and give her my support. I am trying to convince myself that the majority of the audience felt like I did – but I don’t know. Was it possible that many of us did not grasp her powerfull message?!

I keep thinking about how important response from my audience is for me, both after a talk is over, but also before, and most of all while I am moving in front of them, trying to catch their eyes and looking for signs of acknowledgement, respect and interest.

We should not forget our audience, but they should also know how much they mean…

Prolonged Engagement

Many of us are effective and productive, and we believe that we get more from life when we rush. When we hurry around we probably do get to see more glimpses of different places and people – and that’s fine, but are we able to experience the qualities of the moments as we live them (not only count them)?

I was thinking about life and what Stern (2004) says about present moment: that life is always lived in present here-and-now moment; that life is a constant flow of single moments – each of them experienced here-and-now. And each of them influencing future experiences and understandings – that is: if we are able of experiencing the moments we live.

I was thinking about art appreciation and what Armstrong (2000) says about prolonged engagement. There is always much more beyond the first glimpse of something.


I was thinking about research methods and how Bresler (2006) compares Armstrong’s perceptual contemplation to qualitative research: She says that we need to take the time we need to truly connect with what we are studying. Lingering caress is about achieving prolonged engagement with a studied phenomenon in order to grasp deeper understanding of it (Bresler, 2006). And even more, we can experience mutual absorption into the phenomenon we are studying (Bresler, 2006). It is through true engagement that our experiences can become lived, and that we can become to know something through our bodies.


Through prolonged presence inside a context, of for example interaction with children, we can happen to take part in production of “slow knowledge” (Clark 2010). Though, what happens between people is seldom experienced as slow or simple, but rather as complex systems where “multiple parts continuously and fluidly influence one another” (Thelen and Smith, 1994, p. 331) – that is exactly why it takes time to study processes, of for instance children’s meaning negotiation in order to grasp them holistically and contextually.

The images show Liora Bresler at Munch museum in Oslo http://www.munch.museum.no/?id=&mid=&lang=en . The second image has been manipulated to illustrate mutual absorption between Liora and Munch.

Armstrong, J. (2000). The intimate philosophy of art. London: Allen Lane The Pinguin Press.
Bresler, L. (2006). Toward connectedness: aesthetically based research. Studies in Art Education: A Journal of Issues and Research in Art Education, 48(1), 52-69.
Clark, A. (2010). Young children as protagonists and the role of participatory visual methods in engaging multiple perspectives. American Journal of Community Psychology, 46, 115-123.
Stern, D. N. (2004). The present moment in present moment in psychotherapy and everyday life. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company.
Thelen, E. & Smith, L. B. (1994). A dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action. Cambridge: MIT Press

Moving the Bricks Around

I’ve got the feed-back on the thesis draft from my co-advisor (Liv Gjems) and reader (Ellen Marie Sæthre-McGuirk) – and you can imagine how I use my hours these days? Fortunately, I do not have to re-write too much or add some large parts, but rather take some bricks away, move them around and glue them better together. I also need to file the edges and smoothen out the surfaces, though my friend Nicola, with her native-English-competence, will be most responsible for the polishing.

The plan is to send Nicola the thesis before June 25-th and get it back from her around the middle of July; Then fix the lay-out and deliver the thesis around August the 1-st. The fact is that my time as PhD-student is over after the summer and I have to go back to teaching at Vestfold University College. But even if the study is over, I will still continue to blog on this page … possibly even more often… I already know about some interesting tasks waiting for me, but somehow I always hope that I will have more time after I am finished with what I am doing right now - Don’t you? Though, there is usually nothing wrong with being optimistic :)

ECEC-research and Policymaking

May 18-th to 20-th, Norwegian Ministry of Education arranged the conference "Nordic Early Childhood Education and Care – Effects and Challenges - Research, Practice and Policy-making" in Oslo, providing arena for researchers and policymakers from Nordic countries to meet. The conference was opened by the Norwegian Minister of Education Kristin Halvorsen who presented the government’s intentions to invest in research in early childhood education and build closer relations between research and improvement of ECEC quality.


As one of the parallel presentations, my talk “Researching children’s embodied ways of learning” focused on children’s competences that are integrated in their embodiment – competences to sense, experience, wonder, explore and discover what objects (in this case 3D-materials and people) mean to them. The presented study was qualitative and the results were presenting through descriptions and absence of tables and numeric correlations.

I must admit that I was nervous during the preparation for the conference: I knew that my research results did not fit into the current discourse where verbal language learning is privileged, and I had a feeling that qualitative approach was not so welcomed. However, during the conference I learned that many different forms of separating quantitative and qualitative research were represented among the 70 politicians and researchers present at the conference; Some assumed that difference between quantitative and qualitative approach were defined by the methods used (for example, that interviewing is always about qualitative research) and others seemed to assume that the main difference is in the presentation of the results.

My own understanding, influenced by Robert Stake and Liora Bresler, is that what separates quantitative and qualitative inquiry is how we view the truth. This is an epistemological question foundational for how we see the world: If I believe that many different answers to the same questionare possible, in addition to my own answers – which certainly derives from my own advocacies and subjectivities - I would be curious about possible answers given by others; I would be aware of that my and their answers would be like pieces of puzzle that can complement one another; I would be aware that I do not know everything and that I am in some sense also wrong. On the other side, if I believe that there is only one right answer, and I own it, I might come in position to use this knowledge to gain power, to predict causal relations and to deny the complexity and contextuality of the “produced knowledge”; I might also overlook the certainty (not possibility!) that I am, in some ways, also wrong.

Listening to the presentations of causal explanations and economic efficiency in production of human’s academic skills (from birth to age 40) felt like a heavy stone in my stomach. What about ECEC quality the way the children’s themselves experience it? I do not think that three-year-olds care about how much they are going to earn by the age of 35 – but rather care about meaningfulness of their experiences, joyful play (which certainly includes learning), about being respected, belonging, being able to contribute…

However, if young children’s voices would ever be able to influence policy making, it is desperately needed that we, who wish to promote their experiences, make an effort to speak the type of languages that policymakes can understand ... though I fear that this will demand some kinds of compromising our integrity as qualitative researchers.

Arts Teaching Conference in Larvik

The “Institute of arts, physical education and food” at Vestfold University College, arranged a conference about practical, aesthetic learning (PES: praktisk, estetisk, skapende) in Larvik on May 4-th and 5-th. As a member of the group responsible for preparing the conference, I was eager to experience the keynote presentations and parallel sessions, as well as curious if the conference composition and content would manage to engage the participants. The audience was interdisciplinary and came from Sweden, Denmark and Norway. This group of approximately 150 was a mixture of researchers in arts (music, drama, visual art and dance), teachers in schools and preschools, artists and other people interested in the arts and their value in education. Farris bad (the hotel where the most of participants stayed during the conference) also offered rich variety of embodied, aesthetic experiences.

The program included 3x30-minutes parallel sessions on both of the days. Apart from learning from each other the purpose of the conference was to build network and provide opportunities for people with common interests to meet. See the conference program. Hege Hansson leaded the program (both of us have embodied experience of standing on the main stage between the speakers).

Professor of philosophy Dorthe Jørgensen from University of Aarhus, was the first keynote speaker. Her presentation about “aesthetic thinking” made a brilliant introduction to the conference theme. Two preschool teachers (Veronika Lovise Wist and Anders Skog) presented their prize-winning projects with children, and the projects were commented by Grethe Bekkevold who was a member of the jury who selected the winner for the annual national prize. Tollef Thorsnes’ large three-dimensional installations in wood and flames made the specific ambient in the main conference room.

Professor Liora Bresler, from University of Illinois, was one of the keynote speakers. With her broad knowledge about the global position of the arts (she has for instance edited the “International handbook of research in arts education”, 2007), she spoke about the specific values of the arts and how they can contribute to education.

Hillevi Lenz Taguchi from Stockholm University, spoke about intra-active pedagogy and the importance of physical materials for children’s learning.

Merete Morken Andersen, writer and colleague from Vestfold University College, spoke about the process of creating as both an individual and collective process.

Donatella De Paoli, from Norwegian Business School (BI) approached the arts education from a unique angle addressing relations between arts teaching and society from an economist’s point of view. Turid Amundsen was responsible for practical arrangement long before the conference, and had responsibilities which often appear invisible if everything functions as it should. Geir Salvesen, the dean of the Faculty of Education at the Vestfold University College (and also a music teacher) opened and closed the conference… with hopes for continuing discussions and new possibilities to meet and promote the importance of the arts.