Negotiating Grasp

From Sculpturing Words to Negotiating Grasp – the focus of my study has gradually moved closer to embodied forms of interacting with and knowing our world; I am not saying that linguistic form of knowing is not embodied, but that it is only one of the ways humans acquire understanding of their world and themselves. We all had bodies before we could talk (Egan, 1997).
The new name for my thesis is Negotiating Grasp, with intention to illustrate the importance of physical interaction with materials. I suggest, as Parsons (2007), that thought is embodied.

Negotiating Grasp is an ambiguous construction where the word negotiating can be understood as both a verb and an adjective. The term I have constructed illustrates the conjunction between, on one side, a child’s physical action of exploring 3D-materials (like a hand grasp), and on the other, the child’s mental grasping of new understandings (through micro-discoveries). The word grasp refers therefore both to a physical and cognitive grasp. When the word negotiating is understood as an adjective, both types of grasp are active processes that a child can negotiate through and between. However, if the word negotiating is understood as a verb, the concept illustrates an activity where, besides a child and 3D-materials also others can be involved in, for example teachers and peers. The concept negotiating grasp is meant to cover all of the mentioned interpretations, with hope to illustrate the complex relation between physical experience, cognition and social influences.

I have written about children’s play with 3D-materials in the article: Meaning making, democratic participation and art in early childhood education: Can inspiring objects structure dynamic curricula? published in International Journal of Education through Art, 2010 Volume 6 Number 3: http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-issue,id=1945/

Another article has been accepted to be published on http://www.formakademisk.org/index.php/formakademisk
This article is based on the PhD study and is titled: When past and new experiences meet: Negotiating meaning with 3-D materials in early childhood education

Egan, K. (1997). The educated mind: how cognitive tools shape our understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Parsons, M. (2007). Art and Metaphor, Body and Mind. In Bresler, L. (Ed.), International Handbook of Research in Arts education (pp. 533-542). Dordrecht: Springer.

Tikalalala and other first words

In order to share something verbally, we need to share understanding of what words refer to. When children learn words, they first have to realize that a specific composition of sounds can represent something that can be experienced, and then they need to connect these two together.

Sometimes a child invents more complex connection – like when my little neighbour pointed at me and said “wuff-wuff” when I was passing his window the other day, and he couldn’t even see my dog. What he probably meant was: There is the woman who always walks with a dog. And he was right – he had probably never seen me without the dog!
Many years ago, when my son was eight months old, he was looking at my face intensively and then smashed his open hand into my cheek simultaneously saying “mama”. And I knew he had just discovered the connection…

The word “mama”, consisting of two easy-pronounced sounds seems to be quite similar in many languages, while some other words are pretty unique and have short lifetime. Tikalalala is one such word, invented by a little boy and known only to him. It was probably functional to some extent, but when the boy couldn’t find his Tikalalala, cried and cried, whole family was engaged in searching for the Tikalalala. I was myself one of the cousins that happened to be in the house. The search was not an easy task, because no one except for the boy knew what Tikalalala was, and he was young (I guess about three) and not able to explain.

Children sometimes invent words they need for some specific purpose or in order to express their experiences. In the case of Tikalalala, the word’s rhythmical repetition of sounds might actually remind of the rhythmical movement of the object it refers to, and the sound it makes – while it’s original word does not have. However, the “proper word” was difficult to pronounce in this specific language “kljucevi”; No wonder the boy had to invent a unique word that also could connect him to his dear experiences with cars and car driving.