Seeing and saying – matter of communication context?

Kieran Egan wrote “we all begin as poets” (Egan, 2002) using imagination in making sense of our world. Young children often amaze us with their “poetic” expressions where their metaphors “sprawl” in different directions, connecting apparently unrelated things. These metaphors might not “carry the day” (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006, p.8), but they might still reflect the world as it has been experienced by each of them. On the other side, what they see or say is probably also influenced by the contexts of communication: expectation to others, and what they might expect from one. For instance, by saying something unexpected you might get attention, show yourself off, make someone laugh – or “test” him/her!



Researching with three-year-olds, I have observed how the tiniest new-experienced details can remind them of their earlier experiences; I observed how a rhythmic sound of hammering reminded a girl of her embodied experience: “That’s my heartbeat”, she said. But each communication context is unique and it’s not possible to state just one reason why somebody says something – it’s much more complicated than that (I have learned from Robert Stake (2010) that one should be cautious addressing causality – we can never know for sure why something happens). Here is an event that made me think about a boy’s choices of what to draw, what to see and what to say.

I was a visitor in an early childhood centre. The children did not know me and I tried to observe from distance. When the joint activity ended, a 3,5 years old boy found a seat at the table close to corner I was sitting, found a piece of paper and started to draw. While he was drawing he was frequently looking at me and talking loud about the dramatic actions taking place on the drawing: There was a bad guy and a good goy. The lines over the paper, together with the energetic hand movements and the sounds he made, were indicating the good guy’s shooting on the bad guy. Somehow in the middle of the action the boy said “I” and it came out that the good guy (a super-hero) was actually himself.


The boy explained that the god guy killed the bad guy. I felt sorry for the bad guy (Or may be I simply got intrigued by the boy’s invitation to interact with him? …Or I (pedagogically-thinking) wanted to make him reflect about the act of violence he had just performed?). So I started to talk to the boy: “Oh, poor bad guy! What will his parents say when they find out that he is dead?” And he replied: “They won’t care – they are in jail!”

While the boy was verbally and visually making his story, I sometimes looked around the room to see what was going on outside our narrow conversation context. Even though the boy beside me seemed to be deeply engaged with his drawing, each time I raised my head, he immediately looked at me saying: “Don’t go!” or “Please stay!”


“May be some doctors can help him to get back to life?”- I tried again, and the boy drew an ambulance (not recognizable symbol), but he concluded: “None can help him now. He is dead! Not even a million doctors can help him!” And the good guy kept shooting, which resulted in large amount of crossing lines on the paper, until the shooting-lines had covered (almost) all evidence that any guys ever were drawn on the sheet of paper. He realized that the drawing started to look like something else. “Look, there is a spider web!”, he said. “Yes”, I said, and I noticed a little circle between the web-lines: “And here is a spider!”- I said pointing at the circle.

The boy straightened his back and looked at me seriously – almost angry: “No! That’s not a spider! That’s my penis” he said and kept looking me strait in my eyes for a long moment – as if he was testing my reaction. I tried not to look surprised and to continue the conversation: “Oh, it’s not a spider…” – but I was shocked. The boy got back to his drawing and started to draw a large, round spider with many legs, while I was trying to understand what had just happened.

The circle (the penis) could have been there all the time as a part of the drawing beneath. But the boy’s drawing of humans did not have any details, and I don’t believe that the circle was ever drawn as a symbol for a penis. Did the boy said that just to get my attention? He did not want me to go and he seemed to know which words had shocking influence on people (He might have for example experienced that if his older brother used the same word to shock their parents?)

This event can of course be interpreted in many ways – some people would, may be, get concerned about the violence, or about the boy’s vocabulary. And I, I am amazed by the boy’s communication competence – he really managed to impress me, engage my attention for more than 15 minutes, and motivate me to reflect in order to increase my understanding.


About the drawings: The boy did not want me to take picture of the drawing: “Only our teachers are allowed to take pictures!”, he said. So, the drawings presented on this blog are my son's, when he was 4 years old.

Egan, K. (2002). We begin as poets. In L. Bresler & C. M. Thompson (Eds.), The arts in children's lives: context, culture, and curriculum (pp. 93-104). Boston: Kluwer Academic.
Kress, G., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading images: the grammar of visual design. London: Routledge.
Stake, R. E. (2010). Qualitative research: studying how things work. New York: Guilford Press.

Blurring Understanding

Understanding is certainly contextual. After a month in USA I frequently keep misunderstanding; Sometimes, of course, because of unfamiliar words, but mostly because I don’t know what people expect me to do. The first time I was buying a coffee I stood like a frozen when the shop-girl asked me: “How many creams?” I was so confused by the question’s grammatical inaccuracy of singularity/plurality of “cream”.

Sometimes I misunderstand because I read different “parts” (modalities) of communication in different, or even opposite ways. For example, I misunderstood a party invitation because in my mind I could not match the lay out of the invitation card with its contents. Knowing that there are many things I do not know does not really help much when others do not understand that I don’t understand. Then, I can tell you, it is not easy to buy a sandwich, take a buss or even cross a street. Fortunately, I have now learned how to cross a street! And even more: I have learned that crossing a street is a local phenomenon which I can not expect to be applicable other places in USA.


On my son’s way to Urbana Middle School, there are several crossroads with four “stop”- signs. Every driver stops his/hers car and waits. But how would they know who should drive when? From a perspective of a pedestrian on rollerblades, crossing a road is usually a risky business because possibility for braking is limited. That is why I decided to follow my son to and from the school. I soon found out how dependent the “four-stop-sign” driving is on multimodal communication; Drivers look at each other. They look at us pedestrians to establish eye contact. They smile, nod or wave to let us cross. I am sure they also do their interpretations of what they see: People with unsteady movements and they wait and wait for us to move over. And sometimes I and my son cross in front of them even if we intended to go another way – We do not want to disappoint the drivers who have showed such kindness and patience!

Things are for sure done differently in different parts of the world. Meeting people through University of Illinois, makes it possible for me to get in touch with people from different places in the world and learn a bit about Korea, South Africa, Bolivia… Each meeting seems to help me achieve a little bit more understanding about how one can view the world, and how limited my own understanding always will be. Cultures have for ages been formed by interactions between people, but also by climate, geography, flora and fauna, migrations, power difference… We all carry them with us multiple layers of oil paint: new layers every day… may be each time we share word with someone?


… May be oil paint is not a good metaphor – At least I feel that the lubrications are much more moister than oil pain, and get more easily absorbed into my body and become a part of my thinking… Drawing a line between my personal experience, and my striving to be a “good researcher”, I want to quote Robert Stake who wrote so wisely:

“It is an ethical responsibility for us as case researchers to identify affiliations and ideological commitments that might influence our interpretations – not only for the contracting parties but for the readers of reports, and, of course, for ourselves. But there is no way for us as evaluators to identify all relevant predispositions, or even know them” (Stake, 2006: 87).



Stake, R. E. (2006). Multiple case study analysis. New York: The Guilford Press.


All images show the same sculpture from The Millenium Park in Chicago.

Church Dialogues

My colleague and artist Tollef Thorsnes has recently, during the Easter holidays, had an art exhibition in Nøtterøy church. His thee-dimensional works in wood placed on the floors, walls and spaces between the columns, addressed the visitors in variety of ways: invited them to touch, to open and close, and children were even invited to make drawings and attach them to one of the art works; The observers were invited to actively take part in “creation of the art” – because the artist does not see his art as some ready made product that exists unaffected by the visitors’ body and mind. New “meanings are created and negotiated within a community”(Bruner, 1990: 11).

Bakhtin addresses art as a dialogic and interactive concept. He wrote that both art and creativity “must be understood in a dynamic relationship where self and other, work and world are intimately connected” (Haynes, 1995, p.21). An art work is “not a finished world but a range of possibilities, of potentials for interesting and unpredictable histories” (Haynes, 1995, p.12).

When experiencing the art in the church, each person brought his own understanding into the context, and different dimensions had different significance: For some of the visitors, the fact that exhibition was set up during the Easter had a significant importance for their experience and meaning making; For some others, the relation between the art objects and the church room was probably important; While for the children, I assume, the functional quality of the benches designed for them to sit while drawing (and knowing that their drawings would become a part of something larger) might have had a significant importance for their conceptualization of the exhibition and for their meaning makings.

We all bring our earlier experiences and pre-understanding with us to the new contexts. We ”act toward things on the basis of the meaning that these things have for them” (Blumer, 1969: 50), but this past experiences are “given new life and soul through having to meet a new situation” (Dewey, 2005: 63).

BLUMER, H. (1969) Symbolic interactionism: perspective and method, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice Hall.
BRUNER, J. S. (1990) Acts of meaning, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.
DEWEY, J. (2005) Art as experience, New York, Berkley Publishing Group.
HAYNES, D. J. (1995) Bakhtin and the visual arts, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

You need an open mind

These days I am helping Norwegian criminal police with interpretation, during their work on a case of serious crime. And during the evenings I work on another form of interpretation: analyzing my conversations with children. No wonder my friends policemen and I often discuss communication. And when we talk about communication, I relate our talks to my conversations with children, and they relate them to interrogations with criminals and victims. It is incredible how many issues are the same.

Since our choices of words depend on the communication context, the purpose and the function of the conversation (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004), these two forms of interpretation: trying to make meaning out of conversations with children, and transfer of meaning to another language, will have to be different.

If I need to understand a sentence before I am able to transfer it to another language, it means that such transfer can never be completely neutral and independent of me. My voice and body language, as well as my cultural understanding will color the interpretations.

Listening seems to be a good way of learning how to improve own forms of communication. We asked a victim of war: What does it take to tell about humiliation one has been exposed to, even if shame is unbearable? He, an old man, told us that people of course are different, but for him it takes time to establish confidence in an empathic, kind person who wants to listen without prejudice. Like young children, he also seems to be highly sensitive to facial expressions, body language, eye contact and tone of voice. In the relation with the one who listens, he would look for respect, care and interest that could motivate him to share his terrible experience. To be able to tell, he would have to be confident that the person who listens is open-minded and will try to understand.

Bruner wrote that “open-mindedness is the keystone of what we call a democratic culture” (Bruner, 1990, p.30). Only when we are open-minded we can truly listen with empathy, see each person’s uniqueness and learn from each other.

Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar. London: Arnold.
Bruner, J. S. (1990) Acts of meaning, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.

What did we do to make the boy happy?

This is what we did to help the boy in the book who kept crying (see the blog form November 24th ): What I did was to scan some pages form the book “Pekeboka mi” by Kari Grossmann, print them and paste on cardboard. The drawings were later cut form each other so that they could be moved and played with: the doll could be placed in the baby carriage on the same page… Or it could drive a car, as my little friend suggested!

Another thing I did was to digitally manipulate the drawing of the crying boy (I was waiting with tension to hear what Kari Grossmann would say about “spoiling” her work): I changed the boys crying face by opening his eyes and closing his mouth, washed the blood and put a plaster on his knee. And I waited to see what my friend would do…

What he did was first to cover the crying boy with the more satisfied duplicate. But then he tried some other ways to solve the problem: pated the crying boy, placed a plaster on his knee and even gave him some pears to help him forget his pain! I assume that all of his solutions were rooted in his own experience. This means that he knew perfectly well why his mother gave him a piece of chocolate the moment before she left the house…

Reading the book also initiated some new experiences. There were some drawings of fruits and vegetables. The first time we red the book together, my little friend suggested that the image on an anion represented an apple – so I went to the kitchen and fetched an anion to compare with the painted image. This was a week ago and he of course remembered that, and he remembered the anion’s taste. But what about a potato? It also had to be examined…

But the boy in the book kept crying!

My little friend, 2 years and 2 months old, chose a book he wanted to read. His mother and I set by his side. It was a picture book where illustrations on each page covered the same theme: play ground, domestic animals, birthday party etc. When reading the symbols on the pages showing food, the young reader pretended that he took the tiny spoon (the drawing of a spoon) between his fingers and brought it to his mouth: “Mmm… good” he said. Than his little hand carefully approached the egg (again: a drawing of an egg), picked it up and when he was just about to feed me, he warned me: “Egg – hot!” He seemed so sure that these drawings were symbols and not the real things, that he even made jokes about that. He was creating stories about the drown items and interacting with them: pushing the cars, lifting spoons, eating blueberries, bringing socks…

There were pages illustrating a visit to a doctor … and a boy in tears … with blood on his knee… The young reader seemed at first surprised, and then his face and body got more and more said while he was observing the drawing. It looked like the painted boy’s pain was slowly transmitted to the young reader’s body. The sad look on his face spoke of deep, deep empathy for the boy in the book.

I got uncomfortable (Was there any age limit for this book?) and tried desperately to find a way to realise my young friend from his (imagined) pain, while he was thinking - trying to find out how to help the boy in the book. Here is what he came up with: He banded over the book with his mouth almost on the page, and started shouting “Mammy! Mammy! Mammy!”. From the colour of his voice we understood that it was not his own mother he was calling, but the boy’s absent (not-illustrated) mother. The reader’s real mother was sitting beside him and understood what she was to do: She “jumped on her fingers” and ran to the boy with the bloody knee, wiped the blood, kissed him, held him in her arms … But the blood was still painted red…

The young reader, the same one who minutes ago made jokes about car symbols crashing into each other, suddenly had forgotten that the sad boy in the book wasn’t real. His mother and I hurried to go further in the book and read about something more present, but he kept finding the page again and again to see if the boy was still crying… And he was…

I was amazed by the enormous empathy of the two-year-old – he seemed to identify himself with the drawing, and suddenly could'n pretend any longer.

This happened yesterday, and I still feel like I should do something to make it up for him… - for the both of the boys! I think I will have to meet them soon again and bring with me some scissors, textiles, small plasters, glue…? We’ll see…

Here is the information about the book:
Grossmann, Kari (1999). Pekeboka mi. Oslo: Gyldendal Norske Forlag

Creativity in Dealing with Complexity

To be able to state something, one has to make choices about themes, angles, words ... But how to explain the complexity of what my eyes have seen and my mind can imagine, when my mouth only can speak one word… - only one sound by time? And this linearity in talking (and writing) carries a risk for simplifying...

“Good qualitative research, like art, presents us with complex reality”, says Liora Bresler. “Bad research and art, I suggest, distort in the process of oversimplification, creating stereotypes and distancing us from the world” (Bresler 2006).

I believe that, when presenting my qualitative research, I should make clear when I am aware of the complexity of the world I am studying. But to be understood, I’ll have to structure and order my thoughts and reflections - and this structuring can, on the other hand, give an impression that I am minimizing the reality, and contradicting myself!? What about constantly switching between “the big picture” and the details? …between flow and structure? Which possibilities do I really have when pushing something complex into a linear form? This will require creative thinking…

In her visual presentation on the research seminar on the 26-th of March, Ninni Sandvik used images of a female ceramic figure photographed in different physical contexts, apparently not related to the content of her verbal presentation. The images had a powerful influence on my experience, understanding and reflections: I identified with the female figure and saw myself in different research roles according to different contexts it was placed in. Ninni’s presentation was an illustration how a researcher’s creativity can stimulate audience’s aesthetic experience and deeper understanding in dealing with complex reality.

Some years ago my students had a project about creativity. Their own creativity was expressed through the project presentation: They created an ironic performance about a pre school teacher who had, for 30 years, been giving children in her kindergarten the same assignment to make Santas of cardboard rolls (those you find in toilet paper). The play culminated when an oversized toilet-paper-roll-Santa visited the teacher in her dreams…

Ninni’s presentation took place at a research seminar about ethics in kindergarten research on the 25-th and 26-th of March in Tønsberg, Norway. On the 27-th of March I attended another seminar at the University of Stockholm in Sweden. Here, a group of PhD students, mostly art teachers (in different arts), discussed qualitative research in education, and creativity. Since we all, one way or another, seemed to have experienced creative process with own body, this common understanding made a foundation for our interesting discussions. We watched a TV-program about design process in a multidisciplinary group of people and we discussed a teacher’s role in stimulating, supporting and guiding students in their creativity. We could agree on importance of teacher’s support of students’ free fantasy, playfulness, unconventional and even crazy ideas. On the other side, a teacher should be a leader that can help with obtaining required knowledge, structuring the ideas, making decisions and timing. It seems to be a need for an elegant balance between fantasy and reality, complexity and structure, possibilities and choices. Freedom of thought allows creative ideas – structure helps the ideas to come into life.

Multimodal Communication through Books

I get exited when I find an interesting book, which also is important for my study! (Or is it interesting because it seems important?) Usually the book is from a library. I make notes in it with a pencil, make copies of the most important pages and erase the notes before returning to the library. But reading the copies is never the same!

During the copying the difference between left and right pages gets also erased, the numbers of pages have changed drastically, as well as the thickness and size of the book. My intuition doesn’t work any more in finding the most important quotations: I feel lost! Often I also lose my interest and excitement when all pages are the same A4-size, the paper sheets have the same white nuance and the same quality, and the colours form the front pages are gone…

One might think that communication through written texts doesn’t have much to offer – that it is objective and static – the letters and words are printed, and pages don’t really change much (when compared to digital pages). But, again if compared to a screen, books have their smell, thickness and weight, smoothness and consistency of covers, texture of quality of paper that influence the sounds the book makes when changing the pages. They are, after all, physical three dimensional objects that influence my senses and communicate in multimodal ways. This communication somehow gets personal - even before considering the contents of the book!

May be I should consider taking photographs rather than taking copies? A photo could at least preserve the illusion of three dimensionality…

Sharing a Nacho

One evening when friends were gathered around a table, I observed a 14 months old boy experimenting with corn nachos. He was sitting on his mother’s lap. A bowl with nachos and glasses filled with water were on the table (besides other things that are not important for what was going to happen).

The boy took a nacho and dipped it in his mother’s water glass, then he put it in his mouth and sucked. When he took another piece from the bowl, a woman that sat beside him caught his eye, and bended towards his hand asking him if she could get some. The boy first stretched his arm towards the woman’s mouth, but suddenly changed his mind and started to dip the nacho in the water. Now he held the nacho with both hands, each forefinger pressing against the thumb, pulling the nacho in opposite directions. His fingers slid along the moist surface. He repeated the dipping and pulling, again and again. The more he dipped, more slippery the nacho became. After a while he seemed to get annoyed, his fingers “got angry” and, to the boy’s big surprise, the nacho ended in small pieces on the table. There was a moment of silence – as he was just waken and needed a few seconds to “absorb” what had happened. Then he slowly and with confidence took one of the pieces, again stretched his arm towards the woman, and put the nacho piece in her mouth.

Observing the scene I wondered if he was used to tearing bread and had experience with dipping it in water. His mother approved that he did, but this was the first time he had tried with something else than bread. The nacho had un unfamiliar consistency – it was not possible to tear like a piece of bread! This surprised the boy – he didn’t know much about breaking by bending. The unexpected event of crushing the nacho gave him a new experience – and possibility to fulfil his intension to share!

What can I learn from this event? I believe that the child’s experience, gained through the experiment, wouldn’t be possible if the “materials” (nachos and water) were not on the table, or in a reachable distance. I also believe that the communication context was of a decisive important for motivating the boy’s actions (and learning?): an adult addressed him with a question and an inquiry.

It is also interesting to reflect about if the boy understood the words in the question, or he rather understood the woman’s body language (bending towards his hand with her mouth opened). I believe it was the combination of body language, setting around the table (for purpose of eating), and all the other dimensions in this multimodal communication context. Different “languages” support each other!

(The shown images are from an attempt to reconstruct the actual event - which was not possible to recunstruct entirely because the boy now (two months later) knew how to break a nacho easily.)