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

What Can a Donkey Teach Teacher Students?

A new study year has started at Vestfold University College. I was responsible to facilitate activities for app. 100 new students in the beginning of their early childhood teacher education on Tuesday August 27th. Wishing to give them a memorable start I planned an assignment which would challenge them to solve a real problem: design an aid that can enable a dumb donkey to communicate by sound. The problem solving activity demanded collaboration with people they had just met and establishing a good learning atmosphere was one of the aims of the group work. The assignment was also meant to function as an introduction to what it can mean to be a student and invitation to use all senses, imagination and the whole body in their learning and teaching.

The main goals were:
- To become aware of that each student’s attitude, humor, imagination, curiosity, emotions, knowledge and skills count as valuable sources in a collaborative learning processes
- To experience creativity in practice and how imagination contributes to learning
- To experience that learning is an challenging process that demands attention, persistence and investment of personal efforts; that some things can only be understood thorough engagement in an activity; that emotional attachment and genuine will to solve a problem (in this case motivated by empathy for the donkey) matters in learning;

The assignment had two main parts: First the students were asked to discuss a design of an aid for the donkey and had possibility to measure or test it. One group for instance tested the donkey’s ability to band it’s neck by putting apple pieces on the it’s back. The students were to make a drawing of the aid and explain on a poster how the aid would be used.

The second part of the assignment was to make a pedagogical plan that could be used to teach the donkey to use the aid. Such plan could be based on observation of the donkey, information about donkeys on internet, students own experiences from animal training or similar. The donkey was present during the three hours the students were working on the assignment, thus some of the students were much faster in finished the assignment - they still don’t know that assignment like this could last for days or months, depending on the level of going in-depth. One of my hopes was indeed to motivate the students to engage with assignments that their teachers plan in order to facilitate their learning. If they are eager to learn, refusing an assignment only because it seems silly is not an option. However silly (or call it creative or imaginative) it can lead to insights and experiences that could not be imagined in advance. If learning leads to new insights, how can we ever know in advance what we will come to understand? But being enriched with new experiences can last forever…

The event was covered by journalists from NRK (Norwegian national TV- channel) with a radio report, internet news and regional TV program Østafjells on august 27th (please rewind to 13 minutes and 30 seconds in the show). Though they focused mostly on the funny and cute sides of the event, the publicity was good for the new preschool teacher education, for me, and of course for donkeys.

Photo: Jan Gulliksen NRK

Pedagogical Improvisation

This spring I constantly got reminded how important ability to improvise is in teaching and life. Here, to improvise does not mean to uncritically do whatever comes to your mind (though sometimes it feels like that), but refers to the ability to attune to emerging challenges of constantly changing reality. Professional improvisation, like in teaching, is about activity that engages all knowledge, experiences and competences stored in one’s body; It is exactly because the knowledge is embodied and tacit that we can respond immediately and appropriately without having time to think… as if body acts by itself.
 
From April 18th to 27th my colleague Anne-Lise, a drama teacher and I conducted a project about pedagogical improvisation with our early childhood teacher students and a colleague from Spin, visiting professor of social psychology, Fatima Cruz. In the project pedagogical improvisation was present on two main levels: On one level the students were to prepare an improvisational theatre with 1-2 year old children; On the other level, Anne-Lise and I were improvising in our teaching and Fatima was observing us in action. In short, Anne-Lisa and I (drama and visual art teachers) gave student groups (3-4 students) some strange materials to explore. The quality “strange” means that the materials did not give the students any hints what could be done with them, but would challenge the students to wonder, discuss and explore the materials they had never seen before or had usually taken for granted. We wanted them to acquire a broad repertoire of experiences with the materials and of activities that could be done with the materials. We assumed that such repertoire would make it possible for them to respond immediately when children spontaneously entered the scene in the middle of students play. This assumption was probably made on the basis of our own experiences that two teachers from two disciplines had larger repertoire of ideas and responses.



The process of meeting the materials seem to be frustrating for the students, mostly because we demanded more and more engagement from them. We wanted them to “go into the materials” – we pushed them into the unknown, and this was probably both scary and irritating, and appeared meaningless: What was the point?

I’ll try to explain in short what the point was, but we have not finished with analysing the data and are working on an article that can give more answers; Out teacher responsibilities were to challenge the students to engage, be attentive and reflect about their experiences. If they were to expand their horizons, they had to meet challenges and not avoid them, and in order to meet the challenges they needed to be confident that they were doing “the right things”. Possibilities for successful pedagogical improvisation emerged in the overlapping between challenging the students and supporting them. In order to make them engage we had to push them, but in the same time show them that we care about them, that we are not mean. To be able to find out what the students needed exactly at the point they were in their process, Anne-Lise, Fatima and I continually discussed contemporary developments among the students and prepared our lectures and activities accordingly. Thought the intensive teaching period lasted for only five days, we were exhausted… That’s by the way one of the significant immediate findings: continual attention, reflection and pedagogical improvisation are exhausting.

A few days after the project, Anne-Lise and I, accompanied by our colleague Willy Aagre, participated at a conference at University of Padova in North Italy. The conference was called “Education as Jazz” and “International Jazz Day” (depends on how you read the creative logo).
The conference was initiated by Professor Marina Santi who, together with the colleagues, managed to prepare interesting, engaging and entertaining repertoire of lectures and musical performances.  Prof. Santi reviewed the conference with the following words: Jazz is applied as a generative metaphor in the educational field and everyday life. Jazz dimensions underline the significance of creativity, innovation, transgression, risk, transformation, adaptability, dialogue, listening, collaboration, openness and intercultural influence.'

My colleagues from Vestfold University College and I presented on the following themes:
- Anne Lise Nordbø: “The improvisation of skills or the improvisation of being together? A discourse about the concepts framing, chance and the complexities of embodied action”
- Willy Aagre: “Society meets the interests of children – The conditions for pedagogic improvisation in a progressive Norwegian school in the 1930s”
- Biljana C. Fredriksen: “The core of improvisation and invention: childhood preconditions for creative, meaningful lives”

 

The photo shows Prof. Marina Santi in dialogue with Jimmy Weinstein.

The conference carried on the themes and the debate from similar event in 2008 “Improvisation: between Technique and Spontaneity”, also organized by University of Padova. The conference from 2008 resulted in 2010 in the book “Improvisation: between technique and spontaneity” edited by Marina Santi. Another book is being planned on the basis of the 2013 conference.

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.

  

Is this how I learn?

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inside the Fog

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

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

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

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

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

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

Intersubjectivity, Interpretation and Improvisation

I’ve got a mail (from Norm Denzin) confirming that my submission to the The Sixth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry has been accepted. The congress will take place in Urbana-Campaign, Illinois, USA May 26-29. 2010… So I still have some time to prepare the presentation.

Here is the abstract that has been sent, with title: Intersubjectivity, Interpretation and Improvisation: How Three-Year-Old Students Challenge Researchers’ Competence

A PhD study of children’s meaning making during explorative play with sculpturing materials conducted by an art teacher/practitioner-researcher in a Norwegian early childhood center. The form of inquiry was inspired by A/R/Tography (Irwin 2004), involving video-recording of own activity with children. Children’s highly imaginative and multimodal forms of communication have challenged the researcher’s ability to create immediate and appropriate responses to the children’s creative verbal and non-verbal contributions. If we respect young children, value their way of living and want them to become self-confident individuals, research methods in early childhood education must respond to their expressive ways of democratic participation.



"Walking a log": I was hoping that he would sit on it, but the boy rather wanted to take it for a walk.

Co-researching with children

I’ve been writing assignments for my PhD-courses, lately … and thinking much about methodology…

The project “Sculpturing Words” is based on the socio-cultural perspective on learning. In pedagogical settings in kindergarten, there is a mutual influence between a child as a competent individual and “democratic participant”, and professional kindergarten personnel. Construction of meaning, that takes place during communication in kindergarten, is essential for learning (Carlsson and Pramling Samuelson 2006). Learning is a result of inter-subjective processes. “Operating from a socio-constructivist perspective, the educators act as careful observers and co-autors of children’s experience” (Piazza 2007). In the same time the children are co-researcher in the process of mutual learning.

Regarding the methodological choices for my project, I wish to undertake a role of a preschool teacher and carry out activities with kindergarten children. This method, where roles of a teacher and a researcher merge, reminds of action research, more specifically intervention (Bjørnsrud2005) - or rather inter-action-research ? As a teacher, I will communicate with the children in order to stimulate their reflections. My own multimodal expressions will influence the inter-subjective meaning making that takes place in the context. Seen form a role of a researcher, such communication can also be seen as a form of inter-view method (Kvale and Brinkmann 2009).

Both a good teacher and a good inter-viewer have to listen carefully, with respect and curiosity, to a child’s different forms of expression. Genuine listening also requires immediate reflections, interpretations and reactions form the teacher/researcher. I am aware of that my feed-back to the children will influence the process of their learning. In the same time the child’s expressions will be an integrated part of the research process – the child becomes a co-researcher in the process of mutual learning…

Bjørnsrud, H. (2005). Rom for aksjonsforskning - om tilpasset opplæring, inkludering og læreplanarbeid. Oslo, Gyldendal akademisk.

Carlsson, M. A. and I. Pramling Samuelsson (2006). "Lekende lærende barn." Barnehagefolk 1/2006: 66-79.

Kvale, S. and S. Brinkmann (2009). Interviews: learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing. Los Angeles, Calif., Sage.

Piazza, G. (2007). "On the wave of creativity: Children, expressive language and thechnology." International Journal of Education through Art Volume 3(Number 2): p.103-121.