Imitating own Experiences

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

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

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

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

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

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.

I wish time was my friend...

Only a short notice to apologize for low frequency of contributions to this blog: I have received positive response from the book referee and am busy (or at least should be) with rewriting it. However, this time of years is also busy with exams and other teacher-related responsibilities.
So, you'll just have to be patient with me. A blog about pedagogical improvisation is just around the corner! While you are waiting, please relax, look at the world around you and explore some flowers or other wonderful beauties of the nature. I will do that too - when I get some time...

We all have something to learn from young children’s curiosity, attentiveness and sense of time...

Grasping with Body

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

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

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

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

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

Education Quality Equals Quality of Life?

In have earlier written about my concern for the direction of international trends in education (for instance in the blog from December 10th 2011). A few weeks ago I actually had a chance to express this concern to the Minster of Education and Research, Kristin Halvorsen, personally.

Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research invited arts teacher, arts professors and others to a seminar with purpose to discuss the future of the arts and culture education. The seminar took place on February 28th and lasted for three hours. A number of scholars were invited were invited to present short talks (10 minutes each) and the most areas and levels of education were covered: from pre-school to university education level, as well as some after-school programs. Among the invited speakers, Professor Anna-Lena Østern (the following image) and Professor Svein Sjøberg made the strongest impression on me.

The Minister was leading the conference herself and receiving critique with humble. One of the strongest comments was posed by Professor Sjøberg (the following image) who noted politicians’ major misunderstanding that international testing results can be a true evidence of educational quality; OECD, as they pronounce openly, is interested in general economic progress and not in evaluation of educational systems in relation their national, contextual purposes and quality values. Sjøberg’s words were especially powerful taking in consideration that the Minister’s opening words were that Norwegian students are getting better on international tests. During the seminar on of the speakers also noted that countries that had the highest test scores, also were the countries with the highest suicide rates. The Minister said that she was aware this correlation had already discussed the matter with some other countries.

At the end of the seminar some time was left for questions and comments. I managed to gather enough confidence, stand up and read the words I had written on the train earlier that day. This is what I said (here translated to English):

One of the headings in the invitation for this seminar was: Do we need en attitude change? I suggest that it is necessary to examine our attitudes towards position of arts and culture in education.
  
The international testing race builds on an idea that taking high education and getting a well-played job equals good life. But if that is the only quality we seek, our hunger for economic progress will prevent many from finding meaning in their lives. Education that gives priority to “objective knowledge” and neglects feelings, imagination and experiences, prevents possibilities for meaningful lives, because it is exactly emotions and engagement in own experiences that make life worth living.

The arts safeguard imagination (necessary for construction of personal meanings), provide possibilities for mastery, afford with context for contributing to the others with unique personal contributions, make true engagement possible and motivate imagination and explorative learning. I cannot understand how the value of arts can be neglected in education, though I can understand that it is frightening to question the direction international education is heading for. I believe that it is necessary to pose a question whether it is wise to follow the international trends even if we are aware that it is going in wrong direction.

Relevant links:
Invitation to the meeting (in Norwegian)     
Internet-TV with full coverage of the meeting (on the pages of Ministry of Education and Research)

Meaningful Lives for our Children?

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

Sock Success

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

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

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

 

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

A Cat’s Ecological Perception

One day I was sitting at my kitchen table, I discovered a pair of amber-colored eyes watching me from the other side of the kitchen window.An orange cat with tiger coat and white socks was lying in the bush. To protect itself from the cold it had curled its body in a ball shape with all fur sticking out as a hedgehog which made it look even larger, and I immediately wondered how it is possible for such a tubbyto balanceon the thin branches of the bush! And why did it do so? To get away from the cold snow on the ground… or was it just curious about what I was doing on the other side of the window.  

My next thought was about the absence of the birds which usually accompanied me for my breakfast, picking sunflowers from the bird-feeder hanging outside the same kitchen window. It took me a few seconds to realize that these two things were related: The cat was there exactly because of the birds, and the birds had hopefully realized that the cat was dangerously close and had to look for breakfast some other place.
 
In his theory of ecological perception, Gibson (1979) wrote how all organisms perceive affordances of their physical environments and act accordantly. Different substances and physical contexts afford us with different possibilities: the orange cat had definitely realized the affordances of the specific physical context that was frequently visited by tasty birds. It had realized that specific thin branches could hold its weight if it spread the weight across them. It was exactly the branches which I had cut a year earlier that made it possible to stay hidden and still have enough space to jump in the direction of the bird feeder.
How smart this cat is (!), I thought – I can imagine how even smarter it could be if it was hungry. Judging from its size it seemed like it performed bird catching only for fun… and I felt guilty: It was me who placed the bird feeder outside the window in order to watch the birds; It was me who changed the affordance of the bush and by doing so made it possible for the cat to catch birds form there. It was my responsibility if any of the birds got killed…

I started to think about all of the unexpected and yet unknown consequences of human interference with nature. Our rapid change of affordances of the Earth influences the life of organisms that we share our planet with. We have power and technology to interfere with nature in diverse ways. We have to be responsible...

Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception.Boston, Houghton Mifflin.

Old Blog in New Gown

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

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

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

When your colleagues are also your friends

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

  

Experience of Being a Father

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

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

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

 

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

Signed: Her dad”

Article in Education Inquiry

I am proud to announce that my colleagues from Vestfold University College, and I, are responsible for the themed issue of  Education Inquiry that can be found here: http://www.use.umu.se/digitalAssets/103/103295_inquiry_vol3_nr3.pdf . The articles are based on our project where we have studied significance of space and materiality in early childhood education.

My article discusses teacher's responsibilities in providing materials and spaces for negotiation of meaning. It is based on Elliot Eisner's (2002) claim that by selecting materials, a visual art teacher can provide possibilities for certain forms of learning to take place, but cannot decide what can be learned. A few episodes with my own interaction with a three year old girl during our play with textiles are discussed in relation to the claim.


Eisner, E. W. (2002). The arts and the creation of mind. New Haven, Yale University Press.
Fredriksen, B. C. (2012). "Providing materials and spaces for the negotiation of meaning in explorative play: Teachers’ responsibilities." Education Inquiry 3(3): 331-347.

Attention to the other

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

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

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

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

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

Metaphors in Rain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Against Seat Belts

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visitors from Spain

In April 2012 my university college received two visitors from University of Valladolid in Spain, Lucio and Fátima. Lucio Martinez-Alvarez teaches Physical Education at the Palencia School of Education. His main interest is the presence of body and movement through the whole curriculum. At Vestfold University College Lucio lectured at the teacher education program and for the international students of Outdoor Education and Experiential Learning. Lucio’s lectures resembled his passion to promote the importance of embodiment in education in general, not only in physical education, and awareness of how the school neglects the nature of human body; Through exclusion and instrumentalization of the body, the school in a sense also delimits students’ development. As Lucio sais, all teachers and all students have bodies – all the time! But how do we meet this unavoidable fact in education?
 
Fátima Cruz is Ph.D. Social Psychologist, professor at Department of Psychology at College of Education and at Faculty of Labour Science at the University of Valladolid. She teaches Psychology of work, Organizational Psychology, Community Development and Socio-Educational Intervention with Families. Fatima’s teaching and research interests are related to: gender perspective and women collective empowerment; gender and social issues in territorial development; social sustainability and community development projects; equity and study of social discrimination and social exclusion process; community development and social issues on sustainable forestry management; and qualitative methods and case study research.

Fátima gave a lecture to students of Social Science and Outdoor Education and Experiential Education students. The lecture dealt with many interviewing themes related to how we view sustainable development. She spoke about relations between diverse human factors, how people view each other, landscape and what it can offer, transport, gender, traditions and so on. Her lecture made me think about how connected everything is and how we humans mutually influence each other in such complex ways. It amazes me how Fátima manages to be attentive to so many dimensions in her trans-disciplinary, qualitative approach to understanding of such complex processes.

Besides meeting Fátima and Lucio professionally, I was fortunate to have them as guests in my home so that we had time for many interesting conversation, game-playing with my son, making food together, visiting places, taking pictures, walking the dog… And we became friends - though it seems that Fatima and I were meant to be friends all since we met for the first time in Urbana, Illinois at Robert Stake’s house. To start a conversation, I told Fatima that an old friend of mine had moved to Spain, I did not know exactly where, but Fatima did know because she happened to know my friend! – Isn’t that strange? When I later went to Spain to visit my friend, Fatima and I arranged to meet. And in October 2011, I spent a week as ERASMUS-exchange-teacher at University of Valladolid in Palencia. When our schools have now established ERASMUS agreements, and more of my colleagues are interested in Fatima’s and Lucio’s research, we have no reason for stop meeting each other and nurturing our friendship.

Tree Huts and Bending Nails

One of outdoor activities that my international students have been dealing with this spring was building of tree huts. The activity was a part of subject “art and crafts” with extended focus on experiential learning (the name of the course is Outdoor education and experiential learning); The main “products” of the project were not the huts themselves, but the students’ collaborative processes including all kinds of experiences that could possibly emerge: experiences with nature, tools, creative ideas, group discussions, design challenges, materials’ qualities … as well as luck of appropriate tools, materials or trees with desirable branches.

Three groups, with seven students each, had seven days to build three huts with a selection of recycled planks. Each groups had hand tools, like hammers and saws, rope for assembling with living trees and nails for assembling dead wood. The trees were not to be hurt by nails, but there was still much work to be done with hammers, which seemed to be unfamiliar tool for some of the students. It’s not that the students had never used hemmers before, but when the hut building demanded improved speed and quality of nailing, and the nails kept banding, the activity became a group challenge - actually a challenge each of the groups reported later. In their presentation of the building process the students recalled how they tried to understand why the nails banded: Was the metal too soft or the wood too hard? Was something wrong with the hammer? Was it about how long one held the nail before releasing it? They discussed the angle of hammer and way of hitting the nails’ head. They made suggestions and tested new ways of solving this apparently simple problem. But the long, annoying nails kept banding – at least for two of groups. The third group reported no problems with the long nails, however they found the short nails to be impossible. This made the nail mystery even more mysterious…

Activity of nailing involves wood, nails, hammer, hand and whole body that have to negotiate one with another. The easiest excuse for not succeeding in nailing would be to blame the quality of nails, hammers or even the wood, but this would not help you improve. It is only through facing the challenge that you can learn something and achieve mastery. Nails can band for many reasons, but if you are determined to continue, you can try noticing and reflecting about what you do with your body: there are many possible ways of grasping a hammer, using muscles, head positioning, directing eyes, banding back, supporting a nail… You will be surprise how much embodied knowledge is demanded from such a simple activity; You will be amazed by how much knowledge is already stored in your body.

Apart from the nail-problem the groups reported many other challenges that provided them with fresh experiences. Hundreds of practical and aesthetic choices had to be negotiated between the participants and each of them had something unique to contribute with. The fact they were exposed to heavy materials, heights and risky tools, made them develop collective responsibility for each other’s safety. Knowing that the project depended on each of them seemed to make them motivated, proud and emotionally attached, and to make their experiences meaningful and memorable.

NAEA Convention in New York

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

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

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

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

Desire for Ski Design

With a group of students who are taking a course of “Outdoor education and experiential education” (the course Vestfold University College offers in English each spring) I visited Norwegian ski museum in Morgedal in Telemark. My colleague who teaches physical education has been there before and also this time she arranged a presentation by a museum pedagogue. I had not been there before and did not know what to expect; I ended amazed by what I happened to experience.

The museum itself was interesting enough, but the museum pedagogue with her engagement and ability to connect with the group, helped us to imagine and connect with people from the past. One of such people was Sondre Norheim who considerably improved design of skis about 150 years ago.

Sondre’s family lived purely in a little cottage and did not own any land. They had to work hard in order to survive, and working and moving outdoors was not easy in winter time considering the large amounts of snow in the mountains of Telemark. Sondre wanted to move faster not only in order to fulfill his duties, but also to have fun beyond everyday occupations. He dreamt of speed, ski jumps, and easy maneuvers; He desired to draw curves in the snow while dancing across dunes. But skis of that time could not give him these pleasures.

In order to achieved what he wished for, Sondre had to redesign the skis, make them shorter, lighter, improve the lines and the way skis were attached to the foot. And in order to accomplish that, he had to understand how design qualities of these seemingly simple objects relate to different types of movements achieved through negotiations between human body, gravity and landscape; He had to understand snow and possibilities of own body, as well as to truly understand diverse qualities of wood. I assume that such kinds of understanding were not acquired by reading books, but through physical experience – “learning by doing”. Diverse qualities of natural materials (snow, wood, landscape and human body) gave him all kinds of resistances he needed in order to learn.

Referring to Dewey’s (1925) notion of “body-mind” and his intention to justify the importance of natural materials for learning (Dewey, 1956), as well as refereeing to my own experience with children and materials, I suggest:

“Natural materials offer diverse sensory experiences, multiple possibilities for exploration and transformation, motivation, ecological consciousness, and above all resistance. Through body-mind negotiation with natural materials a child [or an adult] can meet unexpected problems and experience what it is like to create unpredicted solutions” (Fredriksen, 2011 p.128).

In order to succeed, Sondre had to be engaged in negotiations between his hands, tools and wood and continuously remain aesthetically attentive to the material’s affordances and constrains. His motivation derived from his desires to dance in accordance with landscapes. However in order to succeed he also needed persistence in order to meet the challenges of not yet discovered design possibilities. Additionally, courage was needed in order to hold on his dreams even when people around thought he was crazy.

References:
Dewey, J. (1925) Experience and nature. Chicago: Open Court.
Dewey, J. (1956) The child and the curriculum. In J. Dewey (Ed.), The child and the curriculum & The school and society (pp. 31). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Fredriksen, B. C. (2011). Negotiating grasp: Embodied experience with three-dimensional materials and the negotiation of meaning in early childhood education. 50, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Oslo. (http://brage.bibsys.no/aho/handle/URN:NBN:no-bibsys_brage_25972 )

The Final Evidence

On January 27th I finally received written evidence that my dissertation has been successful conducted. A formal ceremony was carried out at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, with director in a long, black gown, music and speeches. Three former PhD students (one was absent) and about 60 master degree students that successfully finished their studies in 2011, received their diplomas.


The photographers have been Mona-Lisa Angell (the photo of me) and Lise Swensen (the photo of Målfrid Irene Hagen, me, Kjetil Nordby and director Karl Otto Ellefsen).