Teaching and Trust

Can teaching ever be neutral and objective? I don't thinks so. The way you look at your students, the way you make them feel - everything matters for their personal growth and emerging understanding. My colleagues Anne Lise Nordbø and Fatima Cruz and I studied our own teaching in a project where we asked our students (early childhood teacher education) to improvise in performative events with 0-2 year old children. We learned that trust was essential for our students' abilities to develope their improvisational skills. We tecahers first had to earn the students' trust, before they were able to embrase the challenges we exposed them to.

Our article "Trust me, you will learn something! - Challenge and confidence in teaching improvisation" is now published in the book "Education as Jazz: Interdisciplinary Sketches on a New Metaphor", edited by Marina Santi and Eleonora Zorzi.
http://www.cambridgescholars.com/education-as-jazz

Observations in Spain

When my students and I took a five-day trip to Spain this April, we experiences quite a lot. It was a cultural journey as well as an educational journey… educational in so many ways. We learned much about each other and learned how to attune to the group full of individual differences. We also had a chance to learn a bit about Spanish primary school education through observations of teaching. The school in Palencia that we visited focused on visual arts and integration of pupils with different disabilities, and was bi-lingual (which meant that two of the subjects were thought in English). Each of the students attended three school lessons, switching between the 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 grades, switching classrooms, teachers, languages (English/Spanish) and subjects. Some of classes were thought by Spanish teacher students in training.

One could wonder what one can learn from observation of a lesson in a foreign language. Oh, there was so much to be seen and understood; and if not understood, at least there is so much to wonder about; We observed the physical space, how the pupils were sitting, how the teachers interacted with them, how they got their attention, the way the lesson was organized as well as the level of pupils’ engagement. The most interesting issue that we later discussed was classroom leadership and how it appeared different from class to class, from teacher to teacher, from subject to subject. Even though the school’s overall guidelines were the same, each lesson was dependent on the specific teacher’s teaching style I relation to the specific group of pupils. The teaching seemed to be contextual and relational, and also influenced by our presence: In one of the classes the teacher decided to teach Norwegian geography and our presence was a motivating the lively third-graders.  

Another issues my students found interesting was the question of how much informal chatting and noise a teacher can accept. Some of the students experienced the classes as chaotic and fell sorry for the teachers, while other students assumed that the noise was a part of the pupils’ engagement and an expression for meaningful learning. It is, of course, impossible to say who “was right” and who “was wrong” but wondering about it facilitated a basis for reflections about own teacher role and motivated the students to imagine which kinds of teachers they aim to become.

 

The images show some of the ceiling in Burgos cathedral. 

 

Exploring Eggs and Avocadoes

I challenged two of my students to observe their own children’s encounters “new materials”. For those 10 and 9 months old babies most of materials were new; the trick was to choose materials that would not harm them during their multi-sensory explorations. The assignment requested that each child got chance to explore two similar but not identical materials/objects. This would provide opportunities for babies to acquire new experiences, recognize similarities and to be surprized. Here is a reconstruction of what the students wrote in their assignments.
 
One of the students gave her 10 months old girl a cooked, pealed egg first. The girl brought it directly to her mouth. The egg was smooth, slipped from her hands and rolled over the floor. She quickly followed by crawling, supporting her weight with one hand on the floor and catching the egg with the other. When she finally grabbed the egg, she grabbed it so hard that the egg went to pieces. She picked some of the pieces and started to put them in her mouth. Then she suddenly realized that the taste was unfamiliar and looked skeptically at her parents to check if it was safe. They were smiling, she sensed their encouragement and continued to eat, cluck out loud and enjoy.

The second experiment took place few days later. This time the girl was given a raw egg with shell. Her mouth opened the same moment she grabbed the egg with both hands and she went on rubbing the eggshell to her gums (a new tooth was on its way out). After some time she started to swing her arm. If she slipped the egg it would fly away: Her mother was watching nervously. To her surprise, the egg did not crack when it fell on the wooden floor for the first time; But it surprised the girl when it finally did: With her eyes wide open, she gave her mother a questioning look. She started to pick the eggshell, but the mother decided to remove it to prevent the girl from putting it is her mouth. This upset the girl, but she soon calmed down and started to play with egg content. She crawled around and with her hands extended the egg area on the floor. She was excited when a bubble suddenly appeared in the egg white, and tried to pick it up. She tried several times but each bubble busted. After about five minutes of bubble catching, she lay down on her stomach and started to lick the floor. The experiment ended when the mother evaluated that the floor was dangerously slippery for the girl.

The other child, nine months old boy, was given a peeled avocado to play with. It was slipping away as the boy was trying to catch it. He was crawling and chasing the avocado across the floor, but it repeatedly slipped between his fingers. After some time he seemed to realize that there was more resistance in avocado than he had expected. He sat up a kind of trap for the avocado and caught it between his legs. Now he could squeeze it much harder and longer without losing it. The squeezed substance colored his socks and trousers green and he could not any longer see where the avocado was hiding, so he began squeezing his own foot. The avocado had disappeared, only the big brown seed remained – however, the boy did not see any connection between the two such different shapes and material qualities. He continued playing with avocado remaining, smeared them on the floor and found it amusing to crawl over the slippery surface.

For the second experiment, the boy was given an unpeeled avocado. He did not seem to recognize the object; The difference between the two avocados was probably too large: both the color and the consistency were different. This avocado was explored by rolling. At some point, the boy tried to squeeze it, but soon realized that it did not lead anywhere. He tried biting and tasting, but lost interest when he did not find much he could do with the object.

During their active interactions with the objects / materials the children discovered materials’ specific qualities. The materials offered different affordances and different types of resistance, and challenged different forms of physical and mental activities. What is this - and what can I do with it? Some properties were more interesting than others were. The boy’s mother comments that soft materials might be more fun to explore - her son played much longer with the soft avocado.

Both of the mothers noted how important intersubjective communication with their children was for making the material exploration possible at all. The boy’s mother wrote: “He was so aware of my reactions to his activities; He stopped his activities, looked at me and waited for an encouraging smile before he continued. He knew that he was usually not allowed to spill and smear things on the floor and he needed a "confirmation" that it was OK to do that this time.”

Look at me!

Few years ago I took part in a multidisciplinary, multicultural project in an early childhood and care institution (ECEC) close to a refugee centre. Half of the children group did not speak Norwegian. The project aimed to collaboration and integration of children and their parents in the new community. We wanted to do something that did not rely on verbal language, some kind of activities both children and their parents could participate in and exchange cultural knowledge and experiences. As teacher of visual arts I suggested that some kind of material, common in all parts of the world, could be good foundation to build content and curricula (since materials can structure curricula (Fredriksen 2010)). With some inspiration from the children and corn field landscapes in the ECEC’s surroundings, the choice fell on material: flour. This was no usual art material, but can you imagine how many different tasty things could be made of it? We invited parents to show their baking / cooking skills from different cultures ... but that's another story. The story to be told here is about little Adi, who turned three on the first project day. Wearing his special birthday suit, together with his mother he stood speechless in the doorway and watched the kids playing on the floor with toy tractors full of flour, and flour-dusty clothes.

  

Adi was a quiet boy, so quiet we thought he could not speak a word. He did not even make any sounds. Ones he hit his forehead on the edge of a table, he held his hand on the painful spot, but did not cry or make ​​any sound.

When we, a week later, visited a farm with old-fashioned mill and stone own, Adi made a loaf of bread and marked it with special sign. When the bread came out of the own, he recognized it and pointed with smile, but still no sound. On our way back home, he fell asleep sitting in the back seat in heart-warming embrace with his bread.

I will never forget what happened the morning after. When Adi arrived to the ECEC with his mother, she hugged and kissed everyone she came over. With joyful tears and broken English she managed to convey that Adi had told her everything! He explained the whole process that started with crushing of grains between the millstones and ended with golden bread on his chest. Her joy was overwhelming, but our surprize that Adi could speak was even larger! We realized that Adi understood so much more than we had imagined: He had even understood that there was no point in communicating in the only language he knew! He had to be creative in exploring other ways of communication. 

Images from the project were printed and exhibited on the ECEC wall. When Adi few days later saw a picture of himself with his bread, his alternately pointed on the image and on his chest. He was tapping on the picture and looking around to get attention. He hoped that everyone could hear his silent shouting: LOOK AT ME!

Children need to be seen, heard and acknowledged, however silent they are! This requires attentive and caring adults -  kind of adults that are so engaged that they can see the invisible and hear the soundless. 

Fredriksen, B. C. (2010). Meaning making, democratic participation and art in early childhood education: Can inspiring objects structure dynamic curricula? International Journal of Education through Art, 6(3), 383-397.

Engagement in Teaching and Learning

For the last 10 years or so, I’ve been presenting my research on conferences in USA, France, Canada, England, Spain, Lithuania etc. but never in my birth country, Serbia. In Fall 2012 I got an e-mail from an teacher educator who occasionally found my articles on internet and realized that we had common research interests. At that point she only knew my second name (which is Norwegian) but when she found this blog she saw my first name and got excited – the name uncovered that I was Serbian. Her e-mail reached me while I was visiting my parents in Belgrade and we had a chance to connect. Nevena Hadzi Jovancic is an art professor at Teacher Education Faculty at Belgrade University. She invited me to give a talk at her faculty, which I finally did in spring 2014, more exactly April 15th.

I have to admit that I was curious how many people would show up the afternoon before Easter holiday, especially because the lecture was not required for the students, but I was positively surprised. The auditorium was fool of people, mostly students but also faculty members: teachers in mathematics, music, pedagogy and visual art. Next astonishment: No phones, no computers, nor hiding behind the screens - the student showed full attention. I could feel how this act of respect and trust that I was given strengthened my self-confidence. The expectations reflected in the faces of the audience made me even more engaged.

I told them how important eye contact end body language is for children and students of all ages - in the same time as my body verified my words. The communication was immediate and the positive energy was flowing back and forward: the audience was motivating me, so that I could motivate them back. So, when the applause broke loose, I must say that it was the audience that deserved at the least the half of the cheering. The applause sounded suspiciously similar to what you hear on rock concerts - a kind of applause a teacher only can dream of. Nevena later commented that she was afraid the students were about to light their lighters and phones to glow in the dark. And I felt like I was supposed to go back on stage and repeat one of my songs – though I did not sing that afternoon at all…

No wonder, after this experience meeting my students back in Norway was a bit disappointing. I don’t like to say this in public (though I am quite sure that these specific students will never bother to read my blog, even though I did ask them to do so). I have to make explicit that I am not saying that students in Belgrade are more engaged than students in Vestfold, but I am saying that some groups are more engaged than others; Some student groups develop to be more engaged and positive than others, and some groups unfortunately bring the worst in each other.
 
Something obviously happened during the hour “on the stage” on Belgrade university. On the other hand, some of my own students never gave me a chance to share with them my research, but with anger and disrespect stopped me before I started. After a few attempts I actually gave up. When their virtually asked “Why do we have to be here, when we would rather do something more fun? Why are you bothering us – listening and reflecting is so hard!”, I felt like drawing under a heavy wave of discouragement and disengagement. Why should I bother when they don’t? I know, I know… because I am responsible for the teaching. But I don’t believe that anyone can be thought if she/he does not want to be thought! What do you think?
  
One thing I am sure of is that teaching and learning are much more meaningful, fun and long-lasting if each student and teacher invests own share of positivity and respect, and responsibly contribute with whatever they can bring to the context. A friendly smile is a big contribution.

Hiding Just Enough

We sometimes hide, but want to be found. My niece Ana demonstrates how one can hide just enough. She does not want to vanish – so she does not cover all of her body with the duvet. She does not want to risk not being found. The two year old is begging to understand the game of hiding and the privilege of deciding where and how much one wants (and needs) to hide.

My game is different - actually it is not a game but serious business of research – but my imagination finds some similarities between Ana’s and my activities. While preparing for conducting qualitative interviews, I have been thinking about how to present myself. I fully respect my interviewees, I do not plan to be dishonest and would never do anything to harm them, but they do not have to know everything about me and my research. A trusting relationship is important. Interviewees needs to feel comfortable in order to uncover their believes, feeling, thoughts and ideas, but if the relationship become friend-like wouldn’t that make my interviewees tell me what they assume I want to hear? I think that there is nothing wrong with being friendly, curious, attentive and caring, but I should not tell them about my hopes and expectations.



I am not worried about my misinterpretations during the data analysis - I am more worried about that I can come to say and do during our “momentary meetings”(Aspelin, 2010). A facial expression that only takes a millisecond can decide further development of our conversations. I know myself: if I experience that someone is uncomfortable I can start bubbling in a supportive way in order to restore their confidence. My most important homework is to prepare to constrain my talking and I find this difficult particularly because I care about my interviewees and I feel responsible for their wellbeing, especially because I had invited them. (The one who invites is responsible for paying the bill, I suppose.)

 

Redrawing from talking is not a question of honesty, is it? What if I just hide a toe or my left shoulder as long as the rest of my body (including the heart) is fully present? Ana’s examples function as helpful instructions. Thanks Ana! - Your playful ways of approaching the world trigger my reflections about things you probably never thought about.

Aspelin, J. (2010). What really matters is 'between'. Understanding the focal point of education from an inter-human perpective. Education Inquiry, 1(2), 127-136.

A comment on the «donkey problem»

Few days ago I had a chance to meet early childhood practitioners in Drammen municipality and tell them about the donkey. Unfortunately they did not have a chance to meet the donkey “in person”, but I showed them images of the horse and the donkey and explained the horse’s anxious attempts to communicate by whinnied that was never responded by the donkey. And when the participants were asked similar question as the freshmen students the other day (how to help the donkey to communicate), quite different answers were given and some new questions emerged: Whose problem is it that the donkey could not boast? What if the donkey is just fine and enjoys being mute? Maybe it is the horse that needs help; the young horse needs to learn how to be more independent and self-confident! Some of the participants suggested that the horse needed a few sessions with a horse-whisperer.

 

Even though this discussion can seem a bit absurd, in it’s deeper and metaphoric meanings it raised important questions about power definition. How easy is it for us, superior adults, to take quick decisions and even with best intentions ignore children’s contributions? For early childhood practitioners reflections about own power should be on the daily menu. If nothing else from my three-hour teaching session in Dramman gets remembered, remembering the issues about the “donkey problem” might be enough. Thanks for reminding me! 

Imitating own Experiences

We can easily observe how young children imitate their parents and other adults. That is a natural way of learning, sometimes done intuitively, sometimes in admiration of adults’ actions (pretending to be adults), or simply because children’s experiences with close adults are the only experiences they have about people’s behaviour; In the beginning of their lives, children’s experiences from close surroundings are their only way to know the world.    

My niece Ana, now 21 months old, has a proud expression on her face when she finds a piece of paper on the floor (or something else she defines as trash) and self-initiatively throws it in the garbage can. I can imagine that she had observed similar garbage-throwing-actions done by her family members. And I know that she had also been assigned similar tasks by her father who realized her urge to pretend-play to be an adult. He would ask her to help him to through something and then applaud her. I am sure that his support motivated her initiative to gradually take action in her own hands and throw things without being asked (though she sometimes throws things that are not supposed to be thrown). Her enjoyment of mastering the garbage-throwing-skills is related to her father’s accept and support – and as a human being she strives for being accepter and loved and therefor tries to “do things right”.

I observed Ana putting bear puppets to sleep. She cuddled them carefully over their heads and said something that sounded like “sleep”. I imagined that this was how her parents treated her when she would go to sleep, and her mother later approved that they do; Ana’s own experience of being patted over her head made her believe that this is how everyone falls asleep - she does not know any other way. When she and I placed the bear puppets on the pillow, she was applying her passive experiences of being cuddled, but in this contextshe was the caretaker and the bears those who need her care.

The same gentle movement of her right hand is to be observed in the way she touches her cats and dogs. I was touched by the same tenderness of her little hand when she was cuddling a horse. The gentleness was not adjusted to the size of the horse, but was the only way of striking she knew, even though it could by the horse be perceived rather as tickling than supportive clapping.

The sum of Ana’s past experiences is the basis for her choices of actions in new situations. By time she will learn to adjust her hand movements and other actions according to the specificity of the animals, puppets, people and contexts. By time she will learn that contexts are never the same and that each specific context demands attention to itsuniqueness, and range of choices in order to meet the moment.

Grasping with Body

What a relief: Two days ago I finished writing a book and sent it off to a referee. Even though I know this is just a first phase and still much work left, it’s a wonderful feeling to have written all of the planned pages. The book has actually already been on sale for some time before it was written – it was a shock to discover that a few months ago, but it also stressed me up to hurry with writing. This is how the book is featured on the publisher’s web page: http://universitetsforlaget.no/nettbutikk/begripe-med-kroppen.html        
And this is what the text in Norwegian means, roughly: 

Book title: Grasping with Body: Children's Experiences as Basic for all Learning

The book provides a comprehensive view of young children's experiential learning, with focus on the body, emotions and imagination. It argues for holistic and interdisciplinary understanding of Learning and development. Practical examples form the author's play with 3-5 year old children show how the children’s past and present experiences during explorative play with materials contributed to their imaginative cognition. 

The book is based on the author’s doctoral research. The author highlights how a child's unique combination of personal experiences is connected to meaningfulness of the learning process. "Micro-discoveries", during which a child achieves the feeling of mastery in solving a small self-initiated problem, function as powerful motivation for creativity and learning, and enthusiasm to deal with new challenges.

The textbook is written for the new preschool teacher education program, starting in Norway from fall 2013, addressing specifically the two subject areas in the program: “Child development, play and learning” and “Art, culture and creativity”. The author hopes to motivate preschool teacher students’ critical reflection on their attitudes and teacher roles. The book is also useful for professionals in the early childhood education, primary school teachers, and others concerned with education and children.

Meaningful Lives for our Children?

My son was one year old when I started teaching early childhood teacher students. In the beginning of my carrier I was making efforts to develop a professional style of teaching according to curricula plans and other demands. As new in the business I thought that being professional depended on my “objectivity decisions, still, I experienced that my sense of motherhood was influencing my teacher choices; My mother-intuition made me pose the question: Would I like this student to be my son’s teacher? The intuition was some kind of continual evaluation of my students, not so much of their knowledge, but of their attitudes: Do they care about children, love them and want them to be happy? But they also have to be professional, for instance, in distinguishing between different kinds of children’s needs.
As parents, we wish best for our children - we want them to be happy and we often support them in what they want, believing that this will make them happy. But wants and needs are two different things (Noddings, 2003). Do we sometimes fulfil our children’s wants instead of their needs?

Relation between needs and wants is terribly confused in today’s word. This is a big issue which concerns schooling systems and many other sides of our societies, in short: We give our children too much of what they don’t need, and deprive them from what they do. We give them new cell phones, PC-games and other things which will satisfy their wants for a day or a week. We tell them that they are lucky for getting so much without any effort, and we feel kind, but getting much without obligations leaves them without possibility to engage and experience pride for some kind of achievement. However small, such pride could give them self-confidence and makes their life more meaningful. On the other hand, absence of commitment can demotivate their will to act and kill their initiative. How can we know what our children really need in order to have meaningful lives?

On January 31st I was invited by national “Parents’ association for preschool children” (FUB, Foreldreutvalget i barnehagen) and “Parents’ association for school children” (FUG, Foreldreutvalget i grunnskoleopplæringen) to give a lecture about my views on holistic learning. The parents’ associations have started a joined initiative they called “Whole child through education”. As I understand it, the initiative is a kind of disapproval to the present Norwegian education which, to larger extent than some years ago, focuses on measurable outcomes. If anyone can assume that quality of measurable results is equal to quality of life, parents can still sense when their children are not happy.
   
During the lecture I received a question from a concerned mother: What can parents do then their child has lost all initiative to act? I had to admit that the same question has been bothering me when I see how difficult it has become to motivate my son to do something else than sit close to a screen. To answer the question I gave an example of what I and my son did.

 

My study (se links to the right) has shown that diverse embodied activities and experiences with large varieties of physical environments, materials, things, animals etc. are essential for imaginative cognition (Efland, 2002) which connects intellectual, aesthetic, emotional and other sides of life in a holistic way. But children and youngsters do not know that they need diverse experiences. If they want to sit by a computer it is difficult to motivate them to do something else. If we try to press them to do something they don’t want, they would probably do it with hate, but not really engage, especially if what we want them to do has nothing to do with their interests.

I think that we have to be attentive in order to find the small sprouts of interest in our children. Then we should provide with further motivation, with something that can activate their body in diverse ways and engage their emotions. For instance, my son (15) for some reason likes donkeys, and I let him buy one for his own money. We didn’t have any place to keep it, but this challenge became another benefit: The donkey was bought in Serbia where my father could take care of it and this became an additional motivation for my son to visit his grandparents every holiday. Everyone is happy!

 

It also has to be mentioned that I bought a horse so that me and my son can experience all kinds of weather, landscapes, roads, cars and wild animals from our saddles. Owning a donkey constantly provides him with new challenges: how to clean the stable, how to make a Mexican style ribbon for the donkey’s forehead, how to teach the donkey to pull a cart and all other kinds of challenges which I believe he needs to engage, struggle with, master, feel needed and be happy.

Efland, A. D. (2002). Art and cognition: Integrating the visual arts in the curriculum. New York and London: Teachers College Press.

Noddings, N. (2003). Happiness and education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sock Success

We are hardly aware of the muscles we engage and coordinate in conducting simple daily tasks. However when one is about a year old, there are so many movements and actions that need to be synchronized and adjusted one to another in order to carry out apparently easy tasks as putting a sock on one’s foot. The movements additionally have to be adjusted to the specific sock’s qualities: size, thickness, elasticity, and so on.

My niece, 14 months old, has shown remarkable interest for putting on shoes, hats and socks. Probably by observing what other people do, she has caught some moves and managed to orchestrate the basic muscles in her fingers, hands, feet, legs and wherever else she has planned to fit a cloth item. Some of her moves are practiced to perfection while she is repeating them over and over again in exactly the same manner. Sure of yet another success, she conducts the sock activity quickly and with confidence (you really need to concentrate when watching the video). She puts her thumbs carefully in to a sock’s open part. Then she lifts her right foot (always right!) with great attention. From here things happen very quickly and the sock suddenly disappears under the right knee. And when she is done, she waits for applause or other kinds of social reward. She believes she is an expert.

Believing that socks are her area of expertise, her interest in socks has become even greater. I have observed her smile while she is pointing at socks in a picture book. She even finds comfort in holding one sock in each hand when she goes to sleep.

 

In my doctoral thesis “Negotiated grasp”, I described how children negotiate new meanings between: 1. their bodies (senses, muscles, physical activities, present and past experiences), 2. materials’ and objects’ affordances and resistance, and 3. Inter-subjective social interaction. I believe that the example of my niece sock-activity is a good illustration of a meaning negotiation process: Her first-hand activities with socks demand her attention toward the socks’ qualities as well as towards possibilities and constrains of own muscles and whole body. And when she succeeds, her self-achieved joy of mastery is additionally supported by social response. From this double reward she can experience that it pays off to be attentive and struggle in order to succeed. I believe that such an insight can support her positive attitude toward many other challenges in life.  

Old Blog in New Gown

Last month or so the text number 100 was posted here. Today’s short post is a kind of celebration, also marking the blogs fourth birthday. I think it deserves a little attention – a kind of meta-reflection.
 
Even though I do not write here as frequently as I wish to, it is amazing how keeping a blog in itself motivates my attentiveness and in deepens my curiosity. Knowing that many things around me might qualify for a post, actually makes me look for possible themes, observations and reflections I could write about. It sharpens my attention.

Some time ago I got a pleasant request to translate and customize some the posts from this blog for a Norwegian magazine for early childhood teachers called Barnehagefolk. They were especially interested in short stories about children. I was flattered!  Even though all Norwegians understand English, I am happy to make my stories more available for Norwegian audience. Selected texts from this blog are converting to columns on pages 6 and 7 four times a year. http://www.barnehageforum.no/magazine.aspx?magazineid=1

Writing in English (my third language) has been challenging and instructive, and when I decided to publish something in Norwegian (my second language) I fell like that was going to be really easy. But it is not. Writing in another language also means that audience will be different and this requires considering more than translating the words. A part for the column writing I’ve been busy with writing a textbook on the basis of my dissertation. The dissertation was written in English and the textbook in Norwegian, and there are many other considerable differences between the two. I get a bit impatient when I spend too much time at the same page – especially when I realized that the book is already on sale! Look here: http://www.universitetsforlaget.no/boker/boker_som_kommer/katalog?productId=70380756  A translation of the title would sound like this: “Grasping with Body: Children’s experiences as basic for all learning”. So, you should know what I am up to if I don’t show up at this blog so often…

When your colleagues are also your friends

Liora Bresler told me once that researchers need to belong to a community of knowledge; In order to maintain curiosity and self-confidence there is a need to keep in touch with colleagues with similar interests and ideas. She was right. My little community of about 12 researchers interested in physical space and materiality in preschools has been a place where I could feel at home. Though, one might pose a question if this feeling of belonging rather comes from our personal relations than from our professional interests (?) In any case I can’t imagine that having fun with colleagues can have negative influence on one’s work: Is there anything better than loving to spend time with your colleagues?

 

 

Our three-year-long project “Space and materiality in preschools”, supported by Norwegian research council, has come to an end (not because we have nothing more to research on, but because the money is used up). The end of the project was marked by two conferences at Vestfold University College (VUC): one small research conference on September 24., the other larger dissemination conference (in Norway 450 people means large conference) on September 25. for practitioners and pre-school teacher students. In addition to invited keynote speakers, Ellen Beate Sandseter who spoke about the importance of risky play for learning, and Randi Evenstad and Aslaug Andreassen Becher who spoke about preschool architecture in Norway, everyone form the VUC-project contributed with ten-minute-presentations of their research:

• Line Føsker (teacher educator in mathematics) studied children’s understanding of space from mathematician’s point of view;
• Eva Maagerø and Astrid Granly (Norwegian language) studied how walls in preschools communicate in multimodal ways;
• Solveig Nordtømme (pedagogy) has observed and analysed how preschool spaces inspire children’s interaction and play;
• Kari-Anne Jørgensen (outdoor education) is in the process of PhD study where she is interested in children’s experiences from outdoor-preschools and how their learning is related to landscapes and outdoor places;
• Nina Odegard (pedagogy) has been interested in children’s use of recycled materials; 
• Anne Lise Nordbø (drama) has studied how theatre stage can be transformed into stage for children’s play.
• Solveig Østrem (religion and ethics) has studied gender related issues in children’s outdoor and indoor play. 
• Hege Hansson (drama) explored how physical affordances of theatre stage can offer possibilities for children’s aesthetic experience and engagement;
• Heidi Kristin Olsen (librarian) has taken part in the project as project-librarian, contributing with her diverse competences in innovative ways;

My own presentation of children’s meaning negotiation during their explorative play with materials was given whole 45 minutes… though, time always seems to be too short when one is engaged in what he/she is talking about. It is more likely that the one who talks will forget about time than the one who listens. And it is less likely that the one who talks could suddenly lose interest and get bored than the one who listens. I think that we teachers should consider this fact when we want to engage our student in their own learning… but that is another blog, article… or something.
         
We have received positive response on our patchwork of presentations, performances and audience exercises. What do I mean by audience exercises? Since the conference theme is associated with space, activity and embodiment, our audience needed to be challenged in other ways that simply sitting and listening; Our project coordinator Thomas Moser, professor in physical education, seemed to be inspired by the affordances of the conference room (more precisely the chairs) and improvised an activity to engage the audience physically. This was a great success for the occasion! (…as long as none has reported any broken chares to the janitor…)

 

The organization of the conferences demanded some hard work, but was also a great fun. It was a bit sad too because the project has come to an end – but some of us united a few weeks later in a little village in Northern Spain to write together, discuss our articles, drink vine and even ride horses. And as I said: There is nothing better than when your colleagues are also you friends, and when positive energy from friendship generates all kinds of motivation and joy.

 

Our two professors, Thomas Moser and Gunvor Løkken, deserve many thanks for their motivation, constructive feed-backs and excellent leadership! Big thanks also go to Turid Amundsen for her work with organization of the conferences.

  

Experience of Being a Father

There is so much we can’t know before we experience it. We can read in books, people can try to explain, and we can believe that we have understood – but as long as things we hear about do not concern us - have nothing to do with our experiences, we might not feel an urge to know more about them. But when something (or someone) has become a part of our lives we suddenly have time to pay attention to details, be sincerely curious and engage emotionally… I am, kind of, trying to be general in my introduction here, but becoming a father can really not be compared to many other life experience; It concerns so many sides of being a human…This is how my brother describes his daughter. In the same time he also describes his discovery of what it means to be father:  

“Ana is an angel. I cannot believe how much a 10 months child can understand and how well she can communicate! Earlier I thought that so young children could not communicate at all, but now I see how wrong I was. She plays so well, both alone and with us, her parents, and she likes joking with us; She knows what "no" means, and shows respect to this word …not always, though. She sometimes even uses this word against us, when we do something that she does not want!

She understands that the remote control does something to TV and that a mobile telephone, for some reason unknown to her, is supposed to be held against the ear while talking in air. She can use words “mom” and “dad” and can even pronounce her own name.

 

She knows where her nose is, where her eyes are, and where "Ana's clever head" is. She can clap when she does something smart, and wave to people when they are leaving. She can crawl very fast when she wants to reach her dad’s Lego constructions, and she destroys them with laughter. She has become found of certain TV commercials and stops playing to turn to the TV when she recognizes the music. Ana is a miracle!

Signed: Her dad”

Attention to the other

If we are not alert to the changes in environments and contexts, we might fail to react in a proper way … like looking to wrong side when crossing a road in England, not being attentive can have fatal consequences.

This summer I had possibilities to observe a horse and a donkey. However, the two animals also had a chance to observe me and read my body language, and I’ve heard they are so good “readers”. Horses have extraordinary ability to interpret body language horses and humans and this kind of attention can save them from being eaten by predators. Attention seems to be a necessity of survival and a very early way of learning from the others.

My little niece, nine months old, is attentive to her surroundings. She touches and grabs what she can reach. Once she was in my arms, we were sitting on a floor and a cat was lying next to us. With her bare foot the girl was touching the cat’s tale. Knowing that this cat could suddenly jump and use his claws, I was alert to its movements. Unfortunately I was possibly too alert: when the cat lifted his head, I quickly moved the girl away, rotating my body about 20 cm to the right. Nothing else happened, the cat just looked at us, but my reaction really scared the girl. My body movement communicated danger and she detected that. I wanted to protect her, but scared her instead. She was screaming and could not calm down until her mother came from the other room.

This reminds me of something Stern (2003) wrote: how young children often observe their mother’s body language to find out if something is dangerous or not. Young children seem to learn through this kind of first-hand experience mediated through care-givers’ body language, and I felt bad because I did not want to teach my niece that cats are dangerous animals. I can of course not know how this experience could influenced her understanding, however, to comfort myself I imagine that she has learned about the importance of being attentive to body language of other beings.

  
Stern, D. N. (2003). Spebarnets intersubjective verden (Ø. Randers-Pehrson, Trans.). Oslo: Gyldendal Akademisk.

Metaphors in Rain

The ninth RaAM-conference “Researching and Applying Metaphors” took place in Lancaster 4-7 July 2012. Apart from a number of interesting lectures that addressed metaphors in different ways, I had a chance to experience the beauties of contrasts in English summer weather; It was exactly the pouring rain that made the sun rays appear so powerful, the grass so green and the air so clean.

Many of the presentations I attended dealt with multimodal metaphors, including sounds and voice qualities, gestures, motions and visual metaphors in films, advertisements and conversations. My colleague from Vestfold University College, Professor Norunn Askeland, presented metaphors that her master degree students used to describe their writing processes; Prof. Alan Cienki presented his research on gestures in students’ conversations, and Prof. Raymond Gibbs addressed the issue of creativity and metaphors in his analysis of Charlie Sheen’s ways to address his audience on TV and Youtube-videos.

When Prof. Masako K. Higara, in the last plenary session, spoke about frogs and cicadas in the haiku texts by Bashõ Matsuo, I was thinking how actions and sounds of these creatures has to be experienced in real life if we were to understand the metaphorical meanings of the haiku poems.

My own presentation addressed young children’s “embodied metaphors”, which certainly are not identical to “real” metaphors from adult’s world (as some from my audience commented after the presentation). But if we start talking about real and not real, many things from childhood would not even qualify to be compared with adult’s things; one would not know what to compare them with since adult’s world is divided and structured in different areas and fields, while everything fuses in children’s holistic world. However, that we find children’s reasoning, experiencing and interacting difficult to understand, should not make them less important. And we should not view children as some kind of aliens that are not able to explain what they think; We have all been children and our childhood experiences, however unarticulated, will keep influencing our later ways of reasoning.

Through my paper “Creation of metaphors: Young children’s embodied metaphors and imaginative cognition” I tried to exemplify the processes of young children’s connections of past and present experiences. By doing that they become to understand that some things in the world are similar, but always dependent on the uniqueness of the contexts; Through imaginative connections of experiences, they seem to negotiate personal meanings as well as explore possibilities to communicate in understandable ways. As for instance, when the Spanish boy (see http://sculpturingwords.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/our-mobile-bodies-move-though-world.html ) created his first multimodal expression for a horse, he later had to nuance and recreate the expression if he wanted to be understood by those who were not present in the context of his first horse-experience; To communicate we have to constrain our personal holistic experiences and make them shareable with others, but if we supress our individual experiences too much, some personal meanings might get lost.

Verbal language provides possibilities for sharing of common experiences, thoughts etc., but each of us has a unique combination of experiences and individual pre-dispositions to feel, perceive, imagine, create… Verbal language provides structures for organizing common understanding, but can also delimit individual experiences (Stern, 2003). Metaphors seem to make it possible to preserve at least some part of the holistic experiences. Children’s embodied metaphors are dynamic features that are supporting constant modifying of the existing version of their present understanding (Snodgrass and Coyne, 1992), and supporting their search for appropriate ways to communicate with others.

References:
Snodgrass, A., & Coyne, R. (1992). Models, metaphors and the hermeneutics of designing. Design Issues, 9(1), 56-74.
Stern, D. N. (1998). The interpersonal world of the infant: a view from psychoanalysis and developmental psychology. London: Karnac.

Against Seat Belts

On one of my plane trips I happened to sit beside a two year old girl and her mother, more precisely: I was sitting by the window and the girl was sitting (or supposed to sit) between her mother and me. It took some time before the plane was ready to take off, and the girl had enough time to explore the foldable table, her toys, colourful crayons and books. The time seemed to pass very slowly and the air was hot hotter inside the plane. Fearing for the girl’s reaction to the unavoidable seat-belt-tying, the girl’s mother was waiting as long as possible before she finally had to attach the belt around the girl. The girl protested. The mother then tried to place the girl on her lap and use the special seat belt, but the girl kept protesting more and more loudly. 

The mother desperately tried to talk to the girl and get her attention while she was struggling to hold her on her lap. The girl seemed to engage all of her muscles in order to get free. She was expressing her discomfort through loud screams and cry, and was persistent in her resistance to sitting.

Only a half meter away, I could not avoid noticing the desperate struggle of the mother, and looks from the people with their well-behaving children. I could not avoid hearing the girl’s cry, which was louder than the plane engines, “ear-hurting” …. and heart-braking. During these long minutes I kept switching my points of view: an irritated passenger, desperate mother and frustrated girl.

I observed the stressed flight attendants and glances of people who were sending toys in hope to calm the girl down. I tried to imagine the mother’s experience: feeling sorry for her child, feeling guilty for disturbing the passengers as well as for being so hard with her daughter; I observed the girl: she was like in trance and did not seem to pay any attention to other people and things, but her own embodied experience. That her mother did not respond to her wishes seemed to make her not only sad, but devastated. What possibly hurt her most was that she could not understand why she had to be tied down – and there was no way to explain in way that could make sense to her.

I felt compassion for both the girl and her mother, and in the second the girl’s eyes met mine I weaved to her to come and sit on my lap. I don’t think she could hear me through her screams and sighs, but she somehow understood my body-language or the facial expressions and accepted my offer. Her mother helped her over to my lap at the moment the plane was taking off, and the girl almost instantly fell asleep. Deep sighs remained for the following 30 minutes. The little body, soaked in sweat and tears, glued to my clothes… and to my heart.

The image: http://madsiers.com/tag/babies-on-a-plane/

NAEA Convention in New York

American National Art Education Association organized their 65th national convention i New York in beginning of March. I was glad to join the other 6999 participants. (Can you imagine 7000 people, all interested in art education, gathered at the same place at the same time?) The hotels Hilton and Sheraton, and the street between them, were crowded by teachers, artists, researchers….

I was happy that my presentation was accepted to be one of the 1000 parallel sessions, and honoured that about 20 people found their way to the basement of hotel Sheraton on March 3rd. Remarkably, two of them were my father- and mother in law who also live in Norway but happened to be in New York the same weekend – actually at the same hotel. How strange is that? Two years ago, when I attended NAEA conference in Baltimore I also experienced a strange coincidences: The first person I randomly mat at the conference, was Maureen, an art teacher K-4, who happen to speak my mother tongue and, as we later found out, was married to a man who grew up in the same neighbourhood in Zemun in Serbia where I grew up!

I appreciate that Maureen, as well as Ana, came to my presentation in New York. Ana Marjanovic-Shane is Assistant Professor of Education at Chestnut Hill College. I had never met Ana before, but we exchanged a few mails about six months ago regarding the book “Vygotsky and Creativity” which she coedited.

Ana teaches and researches within psychology and seems to share my interest in art, creativity and negotiation of meaning. Additionally, we share the same mother though none of us has used it in everyday life for the last 20 years or so. During the lunch with Maureen and Ana, I experienced how difficult it was to have a professional conversation in Serbian because my vocabulary had become too narrow for the knowledge I acquired in adolthood. One the other side, Maureen amazed me with her competence in Serbian which she has learned from her husband.

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!