Look at me!

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

  

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

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

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

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

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

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

Engagement in Teaching and Learning

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

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

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

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

Researchers' Voices in Politics of Early Childhood Education

The 23rd EECERA (European Early Childhood Education and Care) conference was hosted by University of Tallinn in August 2013. I had never been in Estonia before and joined a sightseeing tour where I learned about Estonian’s passion for singing: They sing when they are happy; They sing when something is wrong – They even sing in revolt: it way through “Singing revolution” that when they won independence from Soviet occupation!

My imagination connects the experience from Tallinn sightseeing to my experiences from the conference; What I have on mind are the two keynote presentation which were as contrasting as the words “singing” and “revolution”; Encouraged by the historical fact that gathered voices can change a nation’s future, I was (and am) hoping that voices of qualitative researchers can influence political decisions in education. The voice of Kathy Sylva from University of Oxford discouraged and scared me. The voice of Nandita Chaudhary, from University of Delhi, gave me hope.
 
The two professors, both brilliant presenters, had quite difficult approaches to reality. Professor Sylva’s presentation “Quality in Early Childhood Education: Can it Be International?” introduced large scale quantitative studies she meant could give us general answers about the quality of early childhood worldwide. Though she did not explain what she means by “quality”, attentive listeners could sense that her quality definition was related to economy; She explained how she, long time ago, presented her research (conducted among children in one city) to UK government and was not convincing enough. So she decided to give the politicians what they wanted: she gathered with other researchers to conduct large international research project that would measure The quality in early childhood education. She now has powerful influence on the political decisions and has managed to convince governments of number of countries that early childhood education is important for a country’s future economy. She managed to influence politicians to invest more money in early childhood education, which is a good thing – but did not challenge politicians to consider that quality of a child’s life might not be possible to calculate as simple mathematical equation of what comes in and what comes out.

Professor Kathy Sylva believes that quality can be measured disregarding the local contexts. She earned policy makers trust by giving them what they wanted: large scale quantitative research results. But how can we be sure that what policy makers want is what children in future societies will need!? (Wants and needs are two different things, says  Noddings (2003)). Should understanding of quality in early childhood be restricted by politicians’ delimited imagination and will to consider that many truths can exist simultaneously?

 

Quantitative results are simpler to grasp, but reality is much more complex. When definition of quality is, by those in power, restricted to economy-related understanding, the definition itself supports their ignorance and superiority upon underprivileged, those whose voices are not strong or loud enough to promote other definitions of early childhood quality. 

Indian professor Nandita Chaudhary presented her views on early childhood quality from completely different angle than Professor Sylva. Reminding the conference participants that she comes from one of most populated countries of the world, in a gentle manner she made us (European early childhood representatives) feel ashamed of our preconceived superiority. She said something like this: “How can early childhood quality ever be universal when cultures, values and family relations are such diverse around the world?!” If we believe that the Western world possesses “the true measurement of quality” and we wish to expose the rest of the world to the same measurement, then we are taking part in yet another colonization. Professor Chaundhary’s voice was lonely and emotional, but in such powerful way expressed the necessity of considering local context in research.

Quantitative correlations can give us simple answers, but reality is not simple. To calculate what one can get for specific amount of money does not necessarily answers the question of what one needs or how the purchase will influence one’s future. Qualitative research teaches us that there are many answers to the same question and that understanding is contextual and dependent on many variables, for instance: who wants to understand. To be able to understand something better demands personal efforts, takes time and courage. Are politicians willing to do that? Are we willing… do we dare to understand more if things get more complicated when we suddenly understand how little we understood before?

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

Both images are from Tallinn, Estonia.

A comment on the «donkey problem»

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

 

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

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.

For my Colleagues (only?)

On December 1st I had honour to present my PhD-study to my closest colleagues who teach diverse disciplines at early childhood education programs at my university college (Vestfold University College). The presentation was based on the trial lecture (held on November 1st) where I was asked to comment on the on-going national revision of the early childhood teacher education.

The preparation for the trial lecture led to an understanding that the process of the revision is influenced by two parallel processes: making the early childhood education better adjusted to the early childhood practice, and the process of internationalizing Norwegian higher education. But this was not all: the important insight was that these two processes build on quite opposite ideologies. The largest problem though, the way I see it, is not that the two ideologies are impossible to unite, but that the people responsible for the revision do not seem to be aware of the ideologies! This ignorance has already led to number of conflicts, misunderstandings and tensions… and I cannot see any hope for “better” (whatever “better” or “higher quality” might mean) early childhood teacher education if the ideologies are not discussed!

Many of colleagues who listened to the presentation on December 1st seem to share my opinion that the insight about the opposing ideologies is important and should be discussed more. I am thankful for their support and I truly hope that teacher educators and leaders at Vestfold University College will find time for discussions before the new, national education program is to be implemented in our institution.

This is how I have illustrated the ideologies:

	Ideology behind Norwegian early childhood education	Ideology behind the international educational trends
	Embodied, pre-verbal competences	Knowledge as verbal-language-based
	Holistic, unity, embodied metaphor	Traditional, divided disciplines
	Complexity and contextualized understanding	Structure, generalizing and dis-contextualized testing
	Prolonged engagement, explorative play	Efficiency and economizing
	Self-motivation for learning	Knowledge externally defined
	Building identity on respect and will to contribute to others	Exclusion and focus on incompetence
	Imaginative cognition	Memorizing
	Quality of life – here and now	Quality related to international competition

Meeting the Audience

Who are you and why would you want to read my blog?

I can only imagine what could hold you attention on these lines, and can only try to satisfy your expectations. Thus, you are not one single person with unified needs… and I also have my wishes, agendas and power to choose which words to serve you. We, a writer and a reader, find ourselves in apparently simple relationship where you can click me away whenever you find the blog boring, annoying or uninteresting. On the other hand, this dialog is complex because I really need to connect with you (in my imagination) in order to write at all.

I attended InSEA’s 33rd world congress in Budapest June 27th to 30th. Listening to many presenters made me wonder how they imagined their audience when they prepared their talks: Who were the people at the conference? What could they find worth listening? Preparing my own (18 minutes’) talk I was concerned with how to be short enough, but still say enough that the audience would understand.

The presentation I found the most engaging, perfectly planned and carried out, was made by Sara Calcagnini from Leonardo DaVinci - National Museum of Science and Technology, in Milano. She spoke about symbiotic relationship between art and science.

Sara’s presentation started with relevant (and short enough) introduction including a self-ironic comment about her Italian English: she said this in a funny way, but saying that she was willing to humiliate herself for the sake of the message she wanted to share also had an strong, serious effect. With her honest and friendly appearance she quickly established contact with her audience and treated us with prudence and respect (at least this is what I experienced).

Sara was completely engaged in her talk, believing with her whole body that she had something important to say. The images can give impression of her rapid movements addressing the audience and how her body language undeniably expressed her wish to motive us. Constantly providing with new insights, her talk had escalating dramaturgy, finally culminating with a call for help. And her call touched me. I felt connected. I was her audience - she moved me and motivated me.

While I was thinking: “what a fantastic talk; what I fantastic person”, the first comment she received from the audience shocked me! The comment's irrelevance spoke of ignorance toward the important issues Sara addressed in her talk; She spoke about holistic understanding of our world and responsibility of global citizens. Don’t audience also have responsibility to contribute in constructive ways? Or remain silent…

I feel responsible that I did not stand up and give her my support. I am trying to convince myself that the majority of the audience felt like I did – but I don’t know. Was it possible that many of us did not grasp her powerfull message?!

I keep thinking about how important response from my audience is for me, both after a talk is over, but also before, and most of all while I am moving in front of them, trying to catch their eyes and looking for signs of acknowledgement, respect and interest.

We should not forget our audience, but they should also know how much they mean…

ECEC-research and Policymaking

May 18-th to 20-th, Norwegian Ministry of Education arranged the conference "Nordic Early Childhood Education and Care – Effects and Challenges - Research, Practice and Policy-making" in Oslo, providing arena for researchers and policymakers from Nordic countries to meet. The conference was opened by the Norwegian Minister of Education Kristin Halvorsen who presented the government’s intentions to invest in research in early childhood education and build closer relations between research and improvement of ECEC quality.


As one of the parallel presentations, my talk “Researching children’s embodied ways of learning” focused on children’s competences that are integrated in their embodiment – competences to sense, experience, wonder, explore and discover what objects (in this case 3D-materials and people) mean to them. The presented study was qualitative and the results were presenting through descriptions and absence of tables and numeric correlations.

I must admit that I was nervous during the preparation for the conference: I knew that my research results did not fit into the current discourse where verbal language learning is privileged, and I had a feeling that qualitative approach was not so welcomed. However, during the conference I learned that many different forms of separating quantitative and qualitative research were represented among the 70 politicians and researchers present at the conference; Some assumed that difference between quantitative and qualitative approach were defined by the methods used (for example, that interviewing is always about qualitative research) and others seemed to assume that the main difference is in the presentation of the results.

My own understanding, influenced by Robert Stake and Liora Bresler, is that what separates quantitative and qualitative inquiry is how we view the truth. This is an epistemological question foundational for how we see the world: If I believe that many different answers to the same questionare possible, in addition to my own answers – which certainly derives from my own advocacies and subjectivities - I would be curious about possible answers given by others; I would be aware of that my and their answers would be like pieces of puzzle that can complement one another; I would be aware that I do not know everything and that I am in some sense also wrong. On the other side, if I believe that there is only one right answer, and I own it, I might come in position to use this knowledge to gain power, to predict causal relations and to deny the complexity and contextuality of the “produced knowledge”; I might also overlook the certainty (not possibility!) that I am, in some ways, also wrong.

Listening to the presentations of causal explanations and economic efficiency in production of human’s academic skills (from birth to age 40) felt like a heavy stone in my stomach. What about ECEC quality the way the children’s themselves experience it? I do not think that three-year-olds care about how much they are going to earn by the age of 35 – but rather care about meaningfulness of their experiences, joyful play (which certainly includes learning), about being respected, belonging, being able to contribute…

However, if young children’s voices would ever be able to influence policy making, it is desperately needed that we, who wish to promote their experiences, make an effort to speak the type of languages that policymakes can understand ... though I fear that this will demand some kinds of compromising our integrity as qualitative researchers.

Not strong enough

The last chapter of my thesis is written and I should be happy. However, the last chapters were hard to write, not so much because I was tired, but because I was sad, almost depressed by the results of my study. The new insights are hard to bare and I feel helpless: There are so many layers of misunderstanding and power that prevent children from being seen as competent.

Young children are promoted as competent in Norwegian “Framework plan for the content and tasks of kindergartens” (Ministry of Education and Research, 2006) and other government documents. However it is not clear what children’s competences are. In my study I have come to conclusion that their competences are in their embodiment – they are experts in sensing, experiencing holistically, taking explorative actions; They are experts learning thought their bodies! Materials in their environment offer them different types of resistance and young children (3 year old) and even the smallest type of resistance (something we adults don’t even notice) can initiate their motivation to solve problems, find solutions, discover how to contribute to others and discover personal knowledge. I have observed the pure moments of knowledge construction - “micro-discoveries”, as I called them. Young children are true experts of imagination which helps them connect their past and present experiences – the essence of creativity and learning!

One can now wonder: This is great news – Why should I be sad about it? The problem is that embodiment is so little acknowledged in today’s educational system. Verbal types of knowledge have much higher status and power that the embodied. What counts is the number of words three year olds can pronounce – and the embodied experience loses the battle. This really does not have to be a battle, but as long as the linguistic forms of knowledge have such a powerful influence of our understanding of quality in education, the embodied forms of knowledge will be supressed. How can we then be able to truly respected for their competences?!

I took responsibility to promote young children’s experiences and woices, and there is not so much I can do. There is so much power against the young children: both because they are young (and age has authority), because they are non-verbal (and verbal has authority), because they are “inherently artful” (Dissanayake, 2007) (and school arts do not have any power), because they are practical (and theoretical has power) … I feel helpless. Can a single PhD-study have any chance in convincing policy making that there is a large need to reconsider what quality of young children’s education is? They should consider the children’s point of view!

Young children have no political power, they are not strong enough and have no voice of their own. I have promised them to promote their competences, but I fear that I am not strong either. I hope they would forgive me… but by the time they would be able to understand, it will already be too late…

The image of the baby with large weights is from http://drippet.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/baby.jpeg

Dissanayake, E. (2007). In the beginning: Pleistocene and infant aesthetics and 21st-century education in the arts. In Bresler, L. (Ed.), International Handbook of Research in Arts Education. Dordrecht: Springer.
Ministry of Education and Research. (2006). Framework plan for the content and tasks of kindergartens.

Interests Support Experience

Can you imagine three ten-year-old boys totally engaged in discussing textile qualities? They spent over 30 minutes in squeezing, lifting and stroking different types of off-white textile: This one is too light! This one is too shiny… too thick, too stiff… They used many words to describe a single quality: “When you jump, the pants are supposed to fly with you, but with a slights delay, and fall heavily down just a second after you’ve landed”.

In the discussions they recalled their visual experience of Prince of Persia’s pants from the Play Station game they’ve been playing. They desired to have pants just like that – and this was the purpose of our shopping trip that day. I promised to help them saw three pair of Prince-of-Persia-pants, but I was not competent enough to find the right materials. The boys knew exactly which specific qualities they needed from the off-white textile and ribbons for the vertical decorations on the sides. They had long discussions about the ribbon colors, width and pattern. And since the selection of ribbons was limited, they had to improvise by combining different ribbons side by side.

Their fascination with Prince of Persia made them wish to be like him – or at least, have something similar to what he had; Their decision to make the pants motivated their attention to the aesthetic qualities, and their interests seemed to intensify both their experience and reflection about visual experience from the game, and multisensory experience from the textile shop. Motivation was essential for the experience – and the experience was the source of motivation.

A few weeks ago my son (12) was refurnishing his room. He seem to be motivate by responsibility to chose the furniture, textiles, decorations and the color for the walls, and was attentive, careful and proud when he was stitching the pillows and hanging the paintings on the wall. He and his stepbrother (12) were even singing while they were screwing the furniture and painting the walls.

If motivation is essential for learning, education should build upon student’s interests for their world.

Documentation or Mapping - different points of view

Some time ago I was asked to give a talk about documentation in early childhood education. I was prepared to talk about documentation as a pedagogical tool for learning about own practice, but a week before the talk I got an e-mail saying something like this: “We are looking forward to hear you talk about mapping of children’s competence...” I got confused: What was I actually supposed to talk about?!

I made a call to the organizer of the seminar for about 300 practitioners, and was told that I had to say something about mapping because the purpose of the seminar was to start implementation of a new strategic plan for the community which, among other things, focused on mapping of children’s competence. So, I decided to talk about my understanding of the two phenomena: “competence mapping” and “pedagogical documentation” with hope that this would initiate discussion and reflection about ways to understand, and perform, the concepts.

From my studies with children I have experienced how easy it is to make quick judgement about their competence if we do not see ourselves as significant for the meaning making that takes place at the very moment. Meaning is made in a curtain context and communication with young children is highly intersubjective. Therefore can “results” of mapping lose their meaning when they are interpreted separated from the contexts; The “results” can be misleading and even set the child’s self-confidence, motivation, and understanding of social relations, at risk.

Dewey wrote that “life goes on in an environment; not merly in it but because of it, through interaction with it” (Dewey, 2005, p.12), (Environment is understood as both about physical and social.). People make meaning through intersubjective relations with each others in given contexts (Bruner, 1990, Bakhtin and Slaattelid, 2005), and communication contexts have enormous influence on what we say and how we say it (Halliday in Maagerø, 2005). It means that when we meet a child for mapping, even if we are highly careful not to show our expectations, the reason we meet in itself will influence the context and the child’s expectations, feelings and “the results”; Not to mention how our tone of voice, body language and choice of the words can practically decide what the child’s answer will be.

I believe that the largest difference between pedagogical documentation and competence mapping is in our way of seeing ourselves in relation to the “results”. Are we aware of that “results” sometimes say more about us and the pedagogical work a child has been exposed to, than about the child’s competence? If we see “results” as dependent of the child only, it would be so easy to blame the child and deny own responsibility! On the other hand, if our aim is to learn about own pedagogical practice, if we observe carefully and reflect about any kind of “results”, we might have a chance to improve our practice. And instead of comparing children to each other, we would have possibility to respect them as they are, with all their individualities and “personal signatures” (Eisner, 2002) they affects the world around them!

Dewey, J. (2005) Art as experience, New York, Berkley Publishing Group.
Eisner, E. W. (2002) The arts and the creation of mind, New Haven, Yale University Press.
Maagerø, E. (2005) Språket som mening: innføring i funksjonell lingvistikk for studenter og lærere, Oslo, Universitetsforl.

A young photographer’s point of view

When we observe children we can not do anything else but to suggest and assume – we can never know for sure what they think or for instance what they find interesting in their surroundings. Careful documentation of our observations can get us closer to knowing a bit more about the children, and “pedagogical documentation” (the way its has been practiced in the early childhood institutions in Reggio Emilia in Italy) can even take us to the level of self-reflection - necessary if we want to improve out pedagogical practice…
But what happens when children themselves make documentations? When we give them a camera they might probably act according to their understanding of the task (What are we supposed to do?) or they might imitate what they observed adult’s usually do with a camera. But they would probably also extent the task by their imagination, intuition and play.

The images shown here are made by a three years old girl. The selection of these five is made from a large number of images with different motives. I have chosen portraits because the most of the pictures showed people. Does this tells us what the girl believed people usually take pictures of – or can her choice of motives tell us about her relationship to the people she photographed? (The most of the portraits showed her mother :)

I find it interesting that there is a lot of action in the portraits: they are everything but boring - there is always something happening: the point of view is seldom neutral (of course limited by the size of her body); sometimes her fingers cover the part of the lance and the horizontal lines are not quite horizontal (because her hands are not steady); the compositions have diagonal lines … as if she knew how much action can be achieved by such lines..!

PS. All of the pictures people, including the photographer, have approved the use of the photos in this blog.

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.

The Role of Democracy in Children's Verbal and Visual Expression

The last ten years I have been teaching at the early childhood training programs at Faculty of Education at Vestfold University College, located in Tønsberg, approx. 100 km. South from Oslo - it’s here I “belong to”, and where my colleagues are. This is also the place where the project “Children’s Language Learning, and Learning through Language”, supported by Norwegian Research Council, is situated. I am one of nine teachers who are working on projects with different approaches to language in kindergarten.

Last Thursday, the 8-th of January, the “Language-project-group” had a seminar where we presented our projects and commented on each others. This was a fantastic opportunity to get high quality feed back from professors and assistant professors with unique competences with in different specialisations. There were so many interesting discussions going on in that room, linking out seven projects into each others, and producing loads of associations in my head – I was a bit afraid that it would explode. To lower “the pressure” I just have to write about my associations and thoughts and I am afraid that the seminar is going to inspire much of my writing that follows…
My colleagues Kristin R. Tholin and Turid T. Jansen are working on a project where they are trying to identify “democratic conversations in kindergarten”. They suggest that this might be a question of balance between teachers planning and her/his capacity to improvise, as well as the balance of power between the teacher and the children. Another colleague (my supervisor) Liv Gjems, spoke about the importance of “good conversations” between preschool teacher and children. In this occasion she quoted C. Snow and R. Hasan about importance of such conversations for children’s learning. Trying to identify what characterize “the good conversations”, Liv stated that “wondering questions” where a teacher really doesn’t know the answer, are essential for children’s learning through conversation. I asked myself a wondering question: What happens in the opposite situations, when a teacher knows the answer (which unfortunately often is the way one speaks to small children)?

I imagined myself in the position of a child, being asked a question where I am supposed to meet the expectations about the answer which is known to the other part - How meaningful is that? Does she/he care about my answer at all? Are we having a conversation or is this just demonstration of the others predominance and power? That is probably why such “false questions” are not as motivating and do not lead to a dialogue between teachers and their kindergarten students…? What is the point of answering, when the teacher doesn’t even care? Isn’t this disrespectable, and absolutely “not-democratic”?

As a teacher in Norwegian preschool subject “forming” (which means “form-making” – and should refer to “creative work with materials” or “arts and crafts”), I see a clear parallel between such “not democratic” conversations with children”, and “form-making” activities where a child is not asked to express himself/herself, but fulfil the teacher’s expectations. When a teacher knows the answer to her question, can be compared to when she asks a child to make something, but she already had decided how the product should look like. In both cases there is no room for the child’s personal expressions because the teacher has somehow “multimodaly” communicated that such “unexpected expressions” are not required - she has already decided what she wanted to hear or view!

The presented “issue of democracy” and respect of a child’s expression is an important argument in my project. We, teachers in creative arts, have for long been trying to argument that there is a difference between product-making and creative expression! The creative expression, which is the key for aesthetic learning process (that my project is all about) can not take place if a teacher doesn’t provide possibilities for it, both by preparing room, materials, tools, time… and by supporting conversations in “democratic contexts”. There is no aesthetic learning process, if there are no democratic conversations. And there are no democratic conversations if the teacher’s focus is on products, either the medium of expression is the verbal language or the visual form!

Through this reflection, I’ve just shared with you, I understand better how strongly pedagogical contexts are influenced by the balance of power in the multimodal communication discourse in kindergarten. I see, as well, that different media of communication can not be separated from each other in a multimodal communication contexts.