Defeating a blueberry

”Each thing organizes the space around it (…) each thing calls, gestures to their beings or battles them for our attention…”, says David Abram. In his text “Astonished by a stone: Art and the eloquence of matter” he writes about body’s ancient relation to nature, claiming that “our animal senses know no (…) passive reality; they perceive things only by interacting with them”.

I am sure that each of us has experienced how “things “catch our eye” and sometimes refuse to let go” (Abram 2007). Even if we do not remember the moments when textures, colours or forms spoke to us and invited us to listen, look and touch, I am sure that such moments were at least the part of our early childhood. If you do not remember the last time a stone or a blueberry spoke to you, here is how such meeting might look like;

Observing my two years old friend tells me about how forms with different surface, size, shape and mass invite his body to action. I can’t hear the voices the way he does, but I can notice the way he tunes his responses. This teaches me how much he (or his body) already knows about the physical world around him. Another thing I realize is how willing he is to extend the limits of his body. It seams like there is an interactive relation between the challenges that the forms provide him with, and his own choices that lead him to construct challenges he need…as if he was aware of Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development”!

He sees a rock of just right size: he tries to climb, but slides down. He tries again from another angle, explores different techniques and manages to get over the top.

He sees a round stone – quite the same size as a football. He tries to kick it – but it doesn’t move. He tries to lift it with his fingers grabbing around, but the weight of the stone pushes his fingers into the ground. He doesn’t understand why he can not lift the stone smaller that a football…and he learns about weight and different materials.

He picks and eats small blueberries, and discovers some really big ones. These, he doesn’t try to pick or lift. He doesn’t’ try to push them downhill (or my be he does but soon realizes that they are fixed to the ground because they are a part of the sculpture park “Sti for øye” - “Path for the eye”). The large round forms invite him to climb… and the polished surface to slide down again.

Writing about a stone, David Abram says: ”To my sensing and sentient body, the rock is first and foremost another body engaging in the world.” This might be similar to how the little boy experienced the stone, the rock and the blueberry sculpture, but he is not able to verbalize his experience. Fortunately our knowledge about the world is not limited to verbal language – there are many others modes of knowledge and thought (Eisner 2002). The boy’s new knowledge about texture, shape, volume and weight remains embodied in his muscles and veins…

Sculpture park "Sti for øye", Fossnes, Stokke South-East Norway
Eisner, Elliot (2002): The arts and the creation of mind, New Haven: Yale University Press
Abram, David (2007): Astonished by a stone: Art and the eloquence of matter. In Bresler L. Ed. International Handbook of Research in Arts Education

Children’s consent, or not?

The title of this year’s EECERA-conference (held in Strasbourg, August 26th-29th ) was Diversities in Early Childhood Education, and the theme involved many different kinds of diversity: language, social situation, disability, gender, and also methodological diversity in research with young children. My presentation was about diversity in children’s expressive languages (and merging of the languages during children’s play 3D materials), but I wish to write about something else here – some reflections about children’s consent in research.

I attended the parallel session “Qualitative research – revolutions of continuing tensions?” where one of the presentations was: “Children should be involved in research design: even in early years?” by Lorna Savage and Muriel Logan, form Stirling Institute of Education. Some of the addressed questions were how to involve “the competent child” in the research process and design, and “whether early years children have adequate skills and research training to be included in the design process”.

At the same time, one of my colleagues attended another presentation which was about children’s consent and “research contracts” in form of drawings. When we occasionally met that sunny afternoon, we exchanged our experiences form the presentations. This made me think about ethical challenges when I, as a researcher, see a child as both competent and fragile in the same time. I believe that we have to be attentive to the children’s voices (also when they are silent), but isn’t is something completely different to ask them a questions like: “Is it OK for you that I take pictures of you and put them on the internet?”? Can we expect a child to consider all consequences before giving us the answer? Probably not…

What scares me here is that it is possible to be superficial: ask a direct question, and later say that the child has been informed and has given her/his consent (one can even show a contract). But how ethical is it misuses the child’s impossibility to understand complex questions about research and ethics? We can’t be serious to believe that a four year old would understand what “research” means? The complexity of a question is not about how easy it is to give an answer (like in “yes-no questions”), but in the thick levels of consequences that lay behind.

Making a language of friendship

Do you believe in friendship at first sight?

In the following case such friendship can not be denied. It was really about sight (or touch, or smell – I don’t know) because it certainly was not was not about words!

Two girls age 4 and 5 met for the first time. They were from two distant countries, and one might say that they did not share any common language – but they must have had since it took them just a few minutes to become attached to each other. Full of happiness the four-year old was jumping and singing: “I’ve got a friend! I’ve got a friend!” She was looking forward to every minute she would spend together with her new friend.

Smiles and gestures, shells and pebbles, running and swimming were enough for the friendship to flourish in the beginning. Words were really not necessary, but they emerged with the girls’ wishes to share more. The youngest started to imitate the other girl’s language - not exactly the words, but the sounds and the melody of the Norwegian language. When her mother asked her: “What are you saying?”, she replied: “I don’t know, but you see that it works!”. After a while the other girl also started to adjust her words to what she experienced sounded like Serbian. Both seemed to try getting closer to the other one’s language – and it worked: the girls were talking in their strange language, nodding and smiling, and were completely overwhelmed when a familiar word occasionally was pronounced.

During the five days they spent together, I observed only one occasion where the “language of friendship” appeared to have some limitations: Some problems came about when one of them tried to explain rules of a game they wanted to play together. But it didn’t matter because they still had their language of body, action of play (like taking pictures of each other), and shared interests in objects – like shells and cameras!

Today they are thousands of kilometres apart from each other. I wonder how a telephone conversation between them would sound like(?) A video conversation would probably be much better – but even if visual it would still be inferior to a personal meeting; Interactions between children really are multisensory and dependent on their three-dimensional bodies in space, and all kinds of actions they can do together with or without physical objects like flowers, water, sand…

Imaginative Education at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver

The 7th International Conference on Imagination and Education was my second and at least as inspiring as the last summer’s! The keynote speaker Dr. Eleonor Dunckworth suggested in her plenary session that one should go where one can be found, and that is exactly what I did: I went to Vancouver “to be found” by those who share my interests in imaginative education, and see arts and imagination as sources of creativity and invention. And I found many kindred souls who share a vision that it is possible to “build a better world by thinking of the possible, not just the actual” – as the conference title suggested. (Read more about the conference)

I met Dr. Kieran Egan (se the photo below), the man with great ideas and the driving force behind the IERG and the conference on imagination and education. I appreciate that he chose to come to my presentation also this year. I also appreciate that people spoke to me after my presentation –This is how I met Kerrie Bellisario from Lesley University in New York who spoke about arts-integration as “universal design for learning” for students of all ages, and arts, creativity and imagination as important part of “21 century skills”.

I met, and became a friend with, Liudmila Gusteva from Magnitogorsk State University situated on the river Ural, exactly at the border between Europe and Asia. She presented Leonid Zankov’s educational system directly related to his teacher’s (Vygotsky’s) work, and especially to “the zone of proximal development”. She invited me to the conference at her university in November this year (with submission September 10th ).

I met Marni Binder and Sally Kotsopoulos form the School of Early Childhood Education in Toronto, who share my interests in visual arts and teaching student how to foster children’s imagination, creativity and play. Fortunately, these two wonderful lades are also coming to the EECERA conference in France this August, where I hope to meet them again!

I met Prof. Gradir Cadral form Criciuma in Brazil who told us about the interesting concept of the Museum of Childhood – a museum without walls, where visiting children are involved in re-interpretation, “museumization” and creation of the exhibition objects.

And I met Heidi Davis form Indiana University who spoke warmly about sculpture as “playground for the imagination”, and Milena Droumeva from Simon Fraser University (SFU) who took us to a “sound walk” in the streets of avncouver, and many other most imaginative and inspiring people!

During the closing session, Mark Fettes form SFU expressed his hopes that imagination will be given a larger importance in upbringing and education around the world. He said: “imagination is re-emerging on the educational scene as a significant concept”. But his words also reminded us that “the lack of theoretical and philosophical coherence undermines its (imagination’s) impact in the field (education)” and in a way invited us to continue with research that can show why and how imagination is essential for learning and development.

Commercial - but still a unique experiencing

We have all seen pictures of a fantastic castle flowing in clouds, surrounded by fireworks!? I’ve just seen it for real, and I’ve experienced the Disneyland (in Los Angeles) with all of my senses: a sweet smell of syrup, unusual taste of a frozen banana, texture of a yellowish retro-decorated napkin, and sounds of old-fashioned music accompanied with the noise form crowded streets and the old-fashioned cars.

Apart form choosing to travel with an old car, one could choose between different kinds of high speed entertainment facilities which could give you un unique 3D (or even 4D) experience of insecurity and fear, either you are afraid of height or of crashing your space ship into a planet.

All kinds of entertainment (for more or less money) were there to surpass children’s expectations, but this special atmosphere also seems to waken adult’s playfulness – or at least made their ears grow large and round…

And when the evening comes, there is even more to bee seen: thousands of small coloured bulbs light up in the dark, shaping large three-dimensional fairytale characters (and the American eagle) in a parade accompanied by music and followed by fireworks - every night!

“Traces” that lead into children’s imagination and inspire teachers in pedagogical planning

I’ve been working on an article and presentation for the 7th International Conference on Imagination and Education. The conference theme is: Imagination - the Source of Creativity and Invention: build a better world by thinking of the possible, not just the actual. And here is what I will be talking about:

If we want students to participate actively in their own learning, they should be able to influence the methods and contexts of their learning. Student’s influence is meaningful and motivating, but challenges teachers in their work with pedagogical planning: How to plan, but still have enough space for students to create their own solutions and expressions? How open-ended a pedagogical situation can be, but still safely lead toward educational goals? I believe that a teacher should consider arranging of imaginative contexts, including careful choices of physical surroundings and artefacts to be used for inspiration.

The project I present here was carried out in a Norwegian kindergarten, with 3-5 years old children. To begin with, the main project theme was “water”, but the teachers and a researcher (teacher educator, teaching visual-arts) wanted children to influence the theme development. The first project day, storytelling was combined with nature experience, art experience and physical objects as “traces” to provoke children’s curiosity. Pedagogical documentation was used systematically in order to identify children’s interests. Inspiration for teacher’s further planning was often found in children’s verbal expressions – children had left their own traces! The theme “water” ended with “mermaids and monsters”, in the project where borders between reality and fantasy suddenly were dissolved…

Besides teacher’s imaginative usage of suitable artefacts, the respect and appreciation of children’s individual expressions had a significant importance for children’s motivation and joy of learning. This wouldn’t be possible if the teachers had a predisposed attitude towards children’s expressions.

Learning to walk – a matter of physical context?

Isn’t it quite human to be proud of own children? -Tell everyone about their first smile, the first word, the first step... especially if they are "early"! But what do we tell if our child is 15 months old and still not interesting in walking? What do we say when people try to comfort us because they assume that something must be wrong whit the child?

We’ve been thought to apply theories in order to understand, but the same theories can prevent us form understand the world in new ways. Take for example Piaget’s stage-theories: Even if his intentions were good (and the way we know him is a result of misunderstandings and misinterpretations (Sjøberg 1996)), his work has for decades resulted in testing and comparing children, disconnected form contexts. “When we separate considerations of individuals from their contexts (and each other), we tend to look for all explanations within individuals” (Graue and Walsh1998) – And this is exactly what happens when we think that something is wrong with a 15 months old that doesn’t walk.

Ten years ago, my son was 10 months old during a cold Norwegian winter. The house we rented at the time had wall-to-wall carpets. When my son crawled he must have experienced the resistance of his knees against the synthetic carpets, fiction and static electricity. On the other hand, the same carpets were good support for his small feet while he was toddling around. Walking was much more comfortable than crawling.

My friend’s son was 15 months in the winter of 2009. It was cold on the naked parquet flooring, and he wore warm woollen tights that covered his diaper and feet. The boy was easily sliding around on his buttocks. He would sometimes stand up, but just when there was something to hold on. I guess he had experienced how frictionless his feet were against the floor … which also was hard when hitting his falling body…

I am sure that the boy knew much about his environment (at least about the floors). If he could speak he could probably reel off much more adjectives about the floor that his mother could. Who dares to say that something was wrong with him because he didn’t walk? How can we ever forget to consider the importance of physical environment in a child’s development and learning?!

Sjøberg, S. (1996). Forstått og misforstått? -- Brukt og misbrukt? Jean Piaget 100 år - Revitalisering av an kritisert klassiker. Det utdanningsvitenskapelige fakultet, Universitetet i Oslo.

Graue, E. M. and D. J. Walsh (1998). Studying children in context: theories, methods and ethics. Thousand Oaks, California, Sage.

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.

A minute to "charge"

These days I really don’t have time to blog. I have two dead-lines in a few days, and it feels like I don’t have time for anything else. Yet, I have to breathe (in rhythmic repetitions that my body approves) and have to keep my eyes open. I should try to deny the sounds of the birds outside the window – but I can't. Even if my eyes are mostly busy with the screen, I still give them a minute (or two) to charge… through my aesthetic attention.

Here is what I observed during a minute of such attention: all of these flowers would fit in the category “pink orchid”, and still all of them are so different in size, shape, nuances, patterns, details…

“And so, we examine our dreams. What do we value mostly in ourselves? What do we want to become? We try to have a glimpse of the riches that life has to offer us: to hear more, see more, perceive more, feel more – an aesthetic experience which touches the subtleties and beauty beyond the simple boxes of numbers and other useful categories” (Bresler, L. 1991).

Fortunately, our senses do not just get numb by becoming a researcher. On contrary, we need them more than ever!

Reference: Stake, R., Bresler, L. and Mabry, L. (1991): Custom and Cherishing: The Arts in Elementary Schools, Urbana

A distant celebration

Happy birthday, Norway!

Last night I watched Eurovision Song Contest from my hotel in Stockholm and cheered on Alexander Rybak and his crew! What a fantastic event to start the national holiday by winning!!! I didn’t think that I would so much miss being in Norway. Thanks to the internet connection, I have possibility to take part in the celebration!

These days I am attending a course with Liora Bresler and other (Swedish) students. We have been discussing writing about lived experience in qualitative research, and different points of view. I am trying to imagine how it is to be my son today … trying to “recall his memories” through some old images I want to share with you. I wonder if it is possible (through some kind of empathic approach) to “re-experience” the lived experience of others - ?

They say that 17-th of May is children’s holiday! The day starts watching processions, or walking (in this case sitting in a carriage) in a school procession.

Children are supposed to look neat and tidy, and during the day get green grass-stains on their knees, sticky ice cream spots all over their body and wet hair, and have fun! And the weather is supposed to be very nice, sunny and warm, so that the children wouldn’t freeze after they have splashed water over each other. Joy and fun have to colour everything children do on this day! Enjoy the day!

Associations and inspirations

I got a new umbrella – nothing special, its even a cheap example, but each time I get the umbrella in the corner of my eye (it has to be just a gleam) I experience a sudden desire for a glass of cold, sweat, creamy coffee. How strange is that?!
After a couple of coffee brakes, while driving my car with the umbrella sticking under my bag on the front passenger seat, I understood that my eyes had registered something I consciously didn’t realize: the pattern of the umbrella textile had some kind of resemblance with a particular coffee package. The signals between the pattern and my feeling of coffee-thirst were instant that they either went strait through my brain, or somehow managed to avoid the places where my thinking was situated. The visual information went directly to my stomach. Other times it can be a different kind of "unconscious information" that initiates associations, or inspirations.

In her presentation on EECERA- conference in Stavanger (September 2008), Hillevi Lanz Taguchi showed an example of a child’s play with clay, and mentioned how the material “communicated with the child”. I believe that materials can “speak back” - they give resistance and offer a variety of qualities. I know they do – I’ve experienced that many times.

Here is an example of a textile that gave me associations to old letters, envelopes, stamps… The textile has inspired the details for two garments I made. The process of making required precision, and challenged my “aesthetic attention” in making choices of additional materials: I even used some string because of its origin, colour and associations to binding a parcel. before posting.

What is an Aesthetic Learning Process?

Really: What is it? Since I attended a course "Aesthetic Learning Process in Kindergarten and School" last year at the University of Gothenburg, I’ve frequently been using the concept in conversations with my colleagues. But when a deeper discussion takes place, it seems lake we all have different understanding of what it means: What does the “learning” refer to? Is this about a learning process that has aesthetic qualities? And what does “aesthetic” actually mean?

I understand now that my choice to use the concept “aesthetic learning process” in the project Sculpturing Words will require many questions and answers. I’ll be short here though – just to reflect a bit after the PhD-seminars at AHO on the 21-rst and 24-th of April: I believe in merging between learning within fields traditionally called aesthetic (visual arts, dance, music, or drama), and learning through them. I know that for some art-teachers “education through arts” sounds like “misuse of arts” in intention to achieve some “more important” educational goals within other school subjects. These art-teachers are ready to fight for the importance of art education. But let us not fight or beat anyone, let us rather “join them”. (Don’t tell anyone, but my project Sculpturing Words is actually a kind of silent struggle to show that learning can take place during practical, creative activities where students are allowed to play, use their imagination and even have fun!)

The image shows a group of pre-school teacher students, performing a theatre play for their young audience. The students are showing a result of their aesthetic learning process where the product itself was the main motivation, but the learning was mostly related to the process within the group work, to the choices they had to take, to practicing the craft of performing, and of course to thir reflections.

I see similarities between “aesthetic learning process” and the concept “research by design” In both cases some kind of knowledge production is a part of the process. In both cases one has to take a lot of decisions and choices, experiment and explore, learn from own mistakes and from the reflections about the practice. In both cases one has to, in some way, be able to make the knowledge “compatible” for the others, either in order to be evaluated, or in other to present the knowledge so that others can learn in a more traditional way (by reading what has been written). But in the case of writing, we'll have to make one excuse: When children in kindergarten deal with “research by design” – someone else will have to write about the produced knowledge! ...I guess it will have to be me…

Re-sculpturing My Dog

Reading “Classroom Research in the Visual Arts (Colbert and Taunton 2002)” I found an interesting review of a research (May 1987) where students’ media-preferences in art education were studied. One of the conclusions was that “three-dimensional materials were more highly regarded than two-dimensional ones (Colbert and Taunton, 2002)”. The 164 third-grade students were asked about reasons for their choice of the materials. Their preferences were related to the qualities of the medium/materials, to “how the material was manipulated or what sensory qualities are stimulated, the generic pleasure derived from the material, the product outcomes form using of the material (Colbert and Taunton 2002) ”. “The flexibility of ideas or expressive potential of the material (Colbert and Taunton 2002)” was also important for the students’ choices, which I believe, means that the young students wished to express creatively since they appreciated materials with expressive potentials.

I believe that possibility to practice, and develop, creativity is very important in childhood (and in the life in general). In order to establish a creative way of dealing with the world around us, it is also important to get familiar with a variety of crafts, materials, tools and methods of making.

Creative work with different three-dimensional materials, requires different tools, techniques and methods. For instance, there are large differences between modelling (where you can both attach and take away parts of the material), construction (where you deal with assembly of different parts) and carving (where you take away what you don’t need). These different ways of making, also require different types of thinking. In carving, you really have to imagine the form hidden inside because the material that goes through you hands, through your tools like hammer and chisel (or a pair of scissors - ?) can’t be put back again - the point of your start, is “the point of no return”!

Every time I stand in front of my dog and prepare to give him a haircut, I think about sculpturing. Cutting a dog’s hair could be a creative act (if I didn’t aim for a dog show), but usually there are limitations that make this type of “sculpturing” different form carving in a block of stone: While a stone doesn’t have “inner limits”, beneath the fur, there is a living body of my best friend. The three-dimensional form I aim to find, hides between my Kerry Blue Terrier’s skin and bones, and the shape of his new-washed and new-brushed, typical silky-soft, blue fur.

Some other limitations to my creativity are given by international standards for the dog breed. When exhibiting a dog, it is, of course, the dog’s natural body that is the subject of the evaluation, but the way the dog is presented plays also an important role. A good haircut can make an equipage be an aesthetic experience. A haircut made by trained hands and eyes can emphasize just the write details and lines on the dog’s body. Through contrasts, one can for example make the neck appear longer, or the beck shorter, but the ability to make just the write choices with the scissors is a question of craft, aesthetic competence and practice.

As a not-professional dog groomer, I tried reading the standards for the breed in ordet to understand what I should do, but this required a curtain pre-understanding. What does “good proportions” and “well-balanced” actually mean ? During the last 12 years, I sometimes had opportunity to stand beside a master of Kerry grooming during the 4-5 hours that a Kerry haircut takes, observing and asking questions. Then at home I've been training and training ... and I am still an amateur. But the “zone of my proximal development” keeps challenging me, calling me to keep trying, training my eyes and hands, learning from my mistaking... the way a craft has to be learned…

Reference:
Cynthia Colbert and Martha Taunton (2002): Classroom Research in the Visual Arts, in
Handbook of research on teaching. V. Richardson. Washington, DC, American Educational Research Association

Experience Lost in Words - ?

On Friday the 3-rd of April, I had a day-long meeting with my colleague Ann-Hege Lorvik Waterhouse from Oslo University College, Faculty of Education. In our projects we both deal with young children (0-5 years old) and argue for the importance of children’s experience with the three dimensional world around them: I focus on children’s play with materials, and Ann-Hege on their experience with sculptures. Beside discussing different challenges in choice of research methods, genres of writing etc., our conversation touched on something I kept thinking about: What characterizes a child’s pre-linguistic experience? Are there significant differences in human experience before we are able to verbalize the experience, and after?

Kieran Egan speaks of humans as “creatures whose understanding of the world is profoundly shaped by our particular kind of bodies and senses” (Egan 2001). In the same article “The Cognitive Tools of Children’s Imagination” he writes that: ”…literacy has psychological costs as well as the more obvious benefits” (Egan 2001). I suggest that one such cost is that we, during the process of naming objects and qualities around us, somehow stop giving attention to our senses. Can our “mature” ability to name objects and categorize them in taxonomies hinder us in exploring details and qualities the way small children do when they experience an object for the first time? (See for example “Sharing a nacho”, published 14.02 on this blog page.)

Egan explains that young children first learn words that are opposites, and later fill the gap between the opposites. “Once they have formed an opposition, they can learn other terms along the continuum between such opposites.” I believe that learning the other terms is possible only if the environment offers a spectre of qualities, and if the people (pedagogues) in the child’s environment acknowledge the importance of such learning. As Elliot Eisner wrote ”… the ability to experience qualities requires more than their presence. Experience is a form of human achievement, and as such it depends upon an act of mind; qualitative experience depends on qualitative forms of inquiry” (Eisner, 1991)

Ann-Hege and I watched a video from the pedagogical context where two children explored different types of clay to value the best for their sculpturing. They had never played with any type of clay before. The materials in front of them had different (and surprising) visual and tactical qualities (some of the clay had been dried, some put in water, some shaped in geometric forms etc.) To begin with, the girl and the boy had problems with explaining their experiences, but they commonly used metaphors, songs and imaginative stories to describe the clays’ qualities. After the hour of exploring, the simple word “clay” they knew before the activity, would never again be enough to capture the diversity of qualities they had experienced.

Unfortunately, there are probably people who would turn up their nose at a lump of clay, call it “dirty clay” and leave it untouched…. if they one day found it on their office table…

References:
Egan, Kieran (2001): The Cognitive Tools of Children’s Imagination, paper presented at the Annual European Conference on Quality in Early Childhood Education, Netherlands
Eisner, Elliot (1991): The Enlightened Eye, New York: Macmillan Publishing Company

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.

Tacit knowledge in my feet

Some weeks ago I was invited to join a small group of people that share interest in dancing to folklore music from Balkan. Some of them have been dancing for 30 years - almost as many years as I have not been dancing…

They had collections of CD-s with mixture of melodies from Greece, Bulgaria, Romania …and those “new countries” from Balkan. I joined the circle and tried to follow the directions the ring was moving. But there was much more than directions to take care of: there were jumps with changing frequency, different steps, claps and even turning round and shouting. I tried the best I could at least not to move in opposite direction or crush with someone.

After about an hour, when another unfamiliar melody started, to my surprise I suddenly felt like I could dance - as if my feet suddenly understood what they were supposed to do! “It seems like I’ve learned something today”, I thought proudly. But when the next dance started I was as uncoordinated as I was at the beginning… What happened?

After a closer analyse of the music I was able to dance to (and reading on the CD-cover), I realized that the it was from Macedonia – which once was a part of my home country Yugoslavia. (Yugoslavia - which even non-existing still is the place I grew up, had friends of different nationalities and learned dances from different geographical parts – you can probably read the nostalgic tone between the lines…) I didn’t consciously recognize the music or the moves, but my body did. May be the knowledge was in my ears? Or it had been stored in my feet… for 28 years…

Complexity of Communication

My group of PhD-students at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design attended a course “Schoolarly Chritisism II” on the 9-th, 10-th and to 11-th of March. We prepared to present and critique a relevant PhD thesis to our fellow students/“opponents”, answer to their questions.

The thesis I presented was written by Marit Holm Hopperstad and is about children’s meaning-making through drawing in classroom settings. The drawings she peresented were results of inter-subjective, multimodal meaning-making because the children spoke to each other and negotiated meaning in each other drawings. Verbal and visual communication forms supported each other. (The goat drawings are form one of my kindergarten projects - made by the same boy before and after a close examination of the goat that had visited the kindergarten that day in 2005.)

The presentations were leaded by the professor Halina Dunin-Woyseth. With her broad competence in research, supervising and teaching she easily recognized what we needed to know more about, she gave us some “tools” for better understanding, and suggested relevant books. With her accommodating and recognizing way of communication, Halina made the discussions in to enjoyable, motivating sessions that stimulated my reflections and curiosity to learn more.

Some educational settings are more fruitful than others. – Why? Being a teacher on teacher education, I often ask this question... I believe that “successful communication” is important for learning. All those small smiles, acknowledging nodding and eye-contacts that are a part of a multimodal communication, are powerful signs of respect and interest that can make an educational setting flourishe. In opposite, if a teacher is authoritarian, uninterested or bored, his attitude might infect the students. In the cases where teacher and students are more equal and show respect to each other, the communication seem to be more fluent and productive (in educational terms).

Understanding is influenced by expectations to each other, activity in the communication contexts, relationship between the persons and their roles in the situation. (Here I refer to Michael Halliday’s functional linguistics, the way my colleague Eva Maagerø describes it in her book “Språket som mening” (2005) – Language as Meaning.)

To illustrate the point about expectations and roles, I’ll tell you about my personal experience, where cultural differences additionally complicated the communication. The example is from a kindergarten project where parents were invited to contribute in the activities with children. The man I’ll tell you about was a father to a four years old girl (besides being a father to five older children). They were refugees in Norway, but he had learned to speak Norwegian at worked at a pizza restaurant. In this communication context a group of 15 kindergarten children stood in form of him in the kitchen of his pizza restaurant, while he was showing them how to make Arabic bread. Four and five years old children were curiously watching him putting different ingredients into a large mixer he had placed between them on the floor. The children, usually energetic and loud, how were completely silent. We had agreed that he was to tell the children what he was doing, but he might have been a bit nervous, and remained silent himself. To help him start talking, I asked him: “What is that?” He stared at me for a second, and then fetched another ingredient. I got impatient and worried – didn’t he remember what we had talked about during our preparations for this activity? I repeated: “What’s that?!” He looked at me again and said: “What’s wrong with you!? You know what this is!!”



His answer made me instantly understand that I didn’t succeed in my indirect way of communication. I had taken it for granted that he knew that I didn’t ask him stupid questions to get answers for my self, but that I wanted him to tell the children. I took it for granted that his understanding of communication with children was the same and mine! I academic communication I’ll have to know better than to expect others to have the same position and understanding as I do…

In communication through written texts, and academic writing, the chances to fail are larger - I wouldn’t even be able to see the facial expressions on my reader’s faces, and wouldn’t even know if they fell a sleep whiled reading my theses! To prevent this I will have to imagine them and have them on my mind during my writing process...

Dealing with a multidisciplinary study, in my imagination I’ll have to create different audience from a variety of fields that I touch on to. This worries me! Will I succeed in addressing different fields of knowledge that obviously have different relationship to genres and ways of writing, language traditions, use of concepts etc… Will I be able to organize my article based thesis in a way that different articles, published in different journals in different fields, fit in the same thesis?

The critique of the thesis presented on the Schoolarly Chritisism II has shown me that there are many possible ways of writing an article based thesis. But there are also many limitations I should know about – at least I should know about my own limitations…