Learning to Learn

I recently wrote an article about learning through first-hand-experience. The paper is to be presented at Design + Research + Society DRS2016 conference in Brighton in the end of June. It is available for reading here: http://www.drs2016.org/103

Here is the abstract: A child cannot be taught how to walk – it has to sense the balance of its body, the smoothness of the floor, the strength of its muscles, and respond appropriately. The author argues that the process of learning depends on embodied functions and subjective experiences of the one who is learning. This paper discusses the first-hand perspective in the process of material transformation. During such a process, the acting person has to be attentive and make innumerable adaptive choices. Examples from a doctoral study focusing on young children (3 year olds), illustrate how the children’s first-person experiences related to their learning. The author proposes that similar processes take place at all ages and that experience of learning through material transformation is an arena for learning how to learn. The paper initiates discussion about interactive relationships between the senses, attention, emotional engagement, responsibility, mastery, self-confidence and learning during material transformations.

What could a Serbian donkey teach Norwegian students?

Students of teacher education at University College of Southeast Norway were exposed to an extraordinary challenge when they were asked to help a donkey with her health troubles. Maza-donkey had traveled far away from home in Serbia, over seven mountains and seven seas, to a place in Norway where grass was greener… dangerously greener. The change of climate and food did not do her well, she got laminitis (horse disease caused by too much sugar and proteins in food) and she desperately needed help to keep her dissolving hooves dry during the long Norwegian winter.

The fall after Maza got sick I was responsible for visual art teaching in a wonderful group of 17 students of teacher education. Their excitement inspired me to come up with an idea that they could design a shelter for Maza. That would be a realistic problem for them to solve – with pedagogical capacity to engage them, make them learn though experience and get inspired how they could plan their future teaching of school children.

A large cage-like construction was occasionally standing just outside the art department. It was a rest from reconstruction of the building. It needed to be removed anyway, and we saw possibilities how to transform it into a castle for Maza - who we imagined was a donkey princess. The students designed square applications in water-proof textile to fill the windows in the metal frame. Maza herself inspired the designs: some of the motives were her hairy ears, happy tail and mystical cross on her back. The students that were inspired by a story about “princess Maza” gave her diamonds and other things a princess should have in her castle. Some students made landscapes to remind her of her beloved home county. One student even made an applique of Serbian national fruit plum, unaware of the fact that Maza once upon the time actually lived in a plum garden…

Maza taught the students about empathy and designing for specific purpose and needs. She taught them about the importance of imagination in learning and teaching, and how meaningfulness comes from feeling of being of value for someone else… event if (or exactly because?) that someone else is a little helpless donkey. There is so much mastery and joy in the experience that out efforts matter to someone. 

Thanks to Henning, Terje and Thomas who helped with transporting of the “cage-construction” from University College of Southeast Norway to the stables at Holt, Stokke, and to Marianne and Roger that allowed us to place it on their property.

This story has also been edited and published at the web-page of Norwegian embassy in Serbia:   http://www.norveska.org.rs/News_and_events/News-and-events1/What-could-a-Serbian-donkey-teach-Norwegian-students/#.Vsi3RWf2bIU

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.

Limited Experiences Delimit Imagination

There is a saying in Norwegian: “Possibilities are delimited only by your imagination”(«Det er bare fantasien som setter grenser») which keeps puzzling me; How can imagination be delimiting? I thought it was deliberating!? But on my second thought, our imagination is of course delimited to what we are able and willing to imagine… The more diverse experiences we’ve had, the more we can imagine. And opposite: some things are impossible to imagine if we possess a narrow spectre of experiences.

From: Valli, M., & Dessany, M. (2011).
Microworlds. London: Laurence King.

While waiting for a bus one of the really cold but sunny days in Illinois this winter (about 20 C degrees below zero), I met a girl who told me about her experience. She told me how she, back at home in Kenya, watched American movies and could not understand why people in the movies wore warm clothes when it was sunny. In her experience, if it was sunny, it had to be hot – she had never experience anything else and could not imagine that it could be both cold and sunny in the same time.

Another example that comes to my mind is when my son and I travelled from Norway to Serbia the summer he was seven. He wanted to play football in the middle of a sunny day. I told him to stay indoors and wait a few hours because it was too hot. He replied: “How can you suggest I should stay indoors – you are always saying: The sun is shining, go out and play. Why can’t I go out and play now?” I realized he was right, but what he did not understand was that temperature on a sunny day in Norway is about 20 C degrees lower than a sunny day in Serbia.
 

From: Valli, M., & Dessany, M. (2011). Microworlds. London: Laurence King.

What we are able to imagine, depends on out past experiences. When we are playful or deal with arts, our imagination “has license to fly”, said Elliot Eisner (Eisner, 2002). Still, our imagination has to be fed by diverse experiences in order fly; Imagination is a force that connects our experiences, finds relations, makes is possible to imagine something different than it is. Imagine a puzzle with 100 parts; If a few parts are missing, your imagination would be able put the puzzle together and complement the puzzle with imaginary pieces. But if only have a few puzzle pieces, the imagination will probably not be able to fill the empty spaces. Though, young children are, and have to be, skilful “pilots” of imagination particularly because they own only a few puzzle pieces (few experiences than adults) and in order to make their world hang together they have to have elastic imagination that stretches far; Young children’s imagination connects things that adults would seldom think as related.
 

From: Valli, M., & Dessany, M. (2011). Microworlds. London: Laurence King.

Here comes the question that has been bothering me: Can true mutual understanding ever be accomplished between people who lack similar experiences, and don’t trust their imagination? I’ve been struggling with this issue when I am trying to explain why and how arts are important for personal development. In the ears of people who have never dealt with arts, or have no positive experience with the arts, my words probably resonate something else than what I am trying to express. I frequently meet students whose experiences and imagination haven’t been acknowledged earlier in their lives. Being a teacher-educator for 15 years, I’ve figured out that my students first need to get some experiences with materials, with play and their own imagination before I can talk about these things in the way that they would understand. And when I ask them to play, some of them seem suspicious: Can they trust me? Do I really want them to be playful and not punish them for that later (if their products are not good enough)? We need to establish a trusting relationship in order to play and be imaginative, but we also need to acquire as many diverse experiences as possible.

The images are from: Valli, M., & Dessany, M. (2011). Microworlds. London: Laurence King. Eisner, E. W. (2002). The arts and the creation of mind. New Haven: Yale University Press.

 

Masters of Inclusion

My Norwegian friends ask me what I am doing in Urbana, Illinois, so far away from home? I have to admit that I’ve had a moment or two when I also wondered: What is the point of being a visiting scholar?

 

Prof. Stake's double office is always “open for business”.

Here comes a quick answer: I learn and experience so much, and do it in different ways than I can do at my home institution (Vestfold University College). The concentration of competence and knowledge gathered around the University of Illinois is overwhelming, and it is even more overwhelming when holders of such knowledge, prominent professors, want to share their wisdom with me. In a sophisticated way I learn about myself through their eyes. I feel included and it might be exactly this feeling that is the most important experience I will be bringing with me; Inclusion and curiosity about my research provide me with motivation, confidence and endurance needed to peruse research challenges I am dealing with.

Hug of inclusion: Comfortable between Prof. Liora Bresler and Prof. Michael Parsons on Liora's party December 7th.

Among the wise professor with long-life-research-carriers I feel like someone who has just learned how to walk and with stumbling steps tries to catch up. Still they invite me to accompany them for meetings with their old friends, for lunches, trips, and Halloween- and Thanksgiving dinners with their families; They trust me to present on their courses, to write research proposals with them, to borrow their books and offices, and give advice to their PhD-students. They share theatre and other experiences with me, and even organize parties for me, as Prof. Liora Bresler has been doing; Liora is a true master of inclusion! As well are Prof. Robert Stake and Prof. Walter Feinberg. I suppose their inclusive attitude, curiosity and care for others are subtle components of their wisdom.

 Prof. Robert Stake, Robert Louisell, Charles Secolsky, Klaus Witz and I drove to St. Louis to visit Prof. Louis Smith and his friend David Goodwin on December 3rd. 

 

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.

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.

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.

Among Books

The library at Vestfold University College approximately once a month welcomes students, teachers and other personnel to take a seat among the books and listen to a talk. Last week it was my turn. To present my PhD-study, I prepared a short introduction for those who had not heard about the study, and planned to focus on something different from what I earlier presented to my colleagues and students. My choice was to present the “Model of Negotiating Grasp”, discuss children’s competences and raise some questions about teachers’ responsibilities in providing conditions for children’s negotiation of meaning.

The concept “Negotiating Grasp” was constructed during my study. It draws connections between physical grasping with hands (and other parts of body) and mental (or rather body-minded) grasping, and connects embodiment and cognition similarly to Efland’s (2004) concept “imaginative cognition”. The “Model og Negotiating Grasp” is developed in my theses (Fredriksen, 2011). It is a kind of framework which helped me analyse processes of young children’s meaning negotiations, and which, according to my PhD-committee, also could be helpful for other teacher and educational researchers.

The last part of the library talk was related a sentence from Eisner’s (Eisner, 2002) book “The Arts and the Creation of Mind” where he says that teachers can, by choosing materials and tools, provide conditions for certain learning processes, but cannot decide what will be learned. If we consider that new understandings are negotiated between children, teachers, materials and tools (and not transmitted in “traditional way”), providing suitable physical conditions, materials, books, music etc. becomes one of the most important tasks of a teacher. Another important task if we want children (or learners of any age) to participate in their own knowledge negotiation, would be to truly believe that learners are capable of contributing with their experiences. It is first when we are open-minded that curricula can be given new life (as in “curricula-as-lived” (Irwin & Chalmers, 2007)) along with the processes of negotiation.

The thesis “Negotiating Grasp” can be down-loaded at http://brage.bibsys.no/aho/handle/URN:NBN:no-bibsys_brage_25972

References:
Efland, A. D. (2004) Art education as imaginative cognition. In E. W. Eisner & M. D. Day (Eds.), Handbook of research and policy in art education (pp. 751-773). Mahwah: National Art Education Association / Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Eisner, E. W. (2002) The arts and the creation of mind. New Haven: Yale University 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.
Irwin, R. L., & Chalmers, F. G. (2007) Experiencing visual and visualizing experience. In L. Bresler (Ed.), International handbook of research in arts education (pp. 179-193). Dordrecht: Springer.

Spaces for Emerging Questions

My visual art students are these days struggling to formulate research questions for the first time. They complain that they’ve been working for hours and still don’t have proper questions. My experience is that formulating a question can take weeks and months of reformulating, reading, reflecting, and possibly the most important: discussing with others - Discussions with colleagues with similar interests is, at least, what I find the most important for my emerging questions.
Last week I spent three days with my colleagues – our little community of knowledge with common interest in research on the importance of physical space and materiality in early childhood education. Our three-day-stay at a SPA hotel in Strømstad (Sweden, just on the other side of Oslo fjord) basically consisted of spending time in our rooms and writing, but we frequently met for short discussions and meals. All of us had a well-defined task to write an article for the same journal (Education Inquiry), and it was never difficult to find something to talk about. The conversations about one of the articles were always relevant for the other articles; When someone wondered about something, she/he was usually not alone; When some questions were posed, new questions aroused and engaged the participants in lively discussions.

Informal discussions during the meals contributed to further development of friendly atmosphere, mutual trust and confidence, and created spaces where any kind of question could be posed; Where any kind of question could be born from the synergies of disciplines, interests, knowledge, experiences - and the mutual, inter-subjective engagement.

Prolonged Engagement

Many of us are effective and productive, and we believe that we get more from life when we rush. When we hurry around we probably do get to see more glimpses of different places and people – and that’s fine, but are we able to experience the qualities of the moments as we live them (not only count them)?

I was thinking about life and what Stern (2004) says about present moment: that life is always lived in present here-and-now moment; that life is a constant flow of single moments – each of them experienced here-and-now. And each of them influencing future experiences and understandings – that is: if we are able of experiencing the moments we live.

I was thinking about art appreciation and what Armstrong (2000) says about prolonged engagement. There is always much more beyond the first glimpse of something.


I was thinking about research methods and how Bresler (2006) compares Armstrong’s perceptual contemplation to qualitative research: She says that we need to take the time we need to truly connect with what we are studying. Lingering caress is about achieving prolonged engagement with a studied phenomenon in order to grasp deeper understanding of it (Bresler, 2006). And even more, we can experience mutual absorption into the phenomenon we are studying (Bresler, 2006). It is through true engagement that our experiences can become lived, and that we can become to know something through our bodies.


Through prolonged presence inside a context, of for example interaction with children, we can happen to take part in production of “slow knowledge” (Clark 2010). Though, what happens between people is seldom experienced as slow or simple, but rather as complex systems where “multiple parts continuously and fluidly influence one another” (Thelen and Smith, 1994, p. 331) – that is exactly why it takes time to study processes, of for instance children’s meaning negotiation in order to grasp them holistically and contextually.

The images show Liora Bresler at Munch museum in Oslo http://www.munch.museum.no/?id=&mid=&lang=en . The second image has been manipulated to illustrate mutual absorption between Liora and Munch.

Armstrong, J. (2000). The intimate philosophy of art. London: Allen Lane The Pinguin Press.
Bresler, L. (2006). Toward connectedness: aesthetically based research. Studies in Art Education: A Journal of Issues and Research in Art Education, 48(1), 52-69.
Clark, A. (2010). Young children as protagonists and the role of participatory visual methods in engaging multiple perspectives. American Journal of Community Psychology, 46, 115-123.
Stern, D. N. (2004). The present moment in present moment in psychotherapy and everyday life. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company.
Thelen, E. & Smith, L. B. (1994). A dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action. Cambridge: MIT Press

Expression or Communication?

Some linguists told me that there is no “expression” - the purpose of everything we say is to communicate. I doubt: If I happened to scream when I got scared of something that was absolutely not dangerous, the sound could communicate my surprise and someone could come to see if I was OK. But the screaming sound could have been an immediate reaction (expression of surprising fear) and not a planned action to call for help, and it could be embarrassing if someone had heard it. What I want to say is that the scream was not intended to communicate but was an expression that urged from the inside. Such scream would be a kind of impulsive, intuitive, embodied expression, not planned to influence an addressee in specific way.

We can experience and interpret everything we hear, see, touch or smell – everything can communicate to us even if it was intended to communicate. And the other way around, what we do and how me move might be interpreted by others, however we sometimes do not have other intentions than to experience the sound of own voice or to re-experience a painting or a sculpture we are making. One might say that this also would be a form of communication between a person and the materials that are getting transformed in her/his hands. Such communication would be here-and-now-negotiation between the materials’ qualities and the person’s hand, voice, feelings, ideas…

A few days ago I observed a six year old girl. A was on the balcony and she did not see. She left her bicycle looking for something (possibly flowers) by the road, and started to sing. None was around – she was singing for herself. Then, she went back to her bicycle to ring the bell, making the music for her song. A year ago I experienced something similar when a video camera captured a five year old boy while he was alone in a room. He was hammering and the rhythm of the hammering sound seemed to remind him of a song he knew and he started to sing for himself: “I was made for loving you baby…”

We sometimes feel inner urge to jump, sing or cry. Young children often do what they feel, but they soon learn to supress our expressions as they socialize. I suppose the both of the children were singing exactly because none could hear them, and not with intention to communicate.
Yet in another occasion I observed a two year old boy; There was a party in the house and many saw that the fell and hit his cheek. Holding his hand over the wounded cheek, and not crying, he asked the people around where his mother was. They pointed and he followed the directions. When he few minutes later finally found his mother, he started to cry. His cry expressed that he was hurt, but it was also a form of communication he wanted to share only with his mother.

I do not have any answers about relations between communicating and expressing – but I keep wondering…

Targeting at Quintain

During the process of intensive writing of my thesis, I constantly think about guintain. Robert Stake (2006, 2010) taught me that in qualitative research one has to aim at a target which is not too narrow and not to broad – that is what quintain is about. If a researcher aims only to the centre of a target, then he/she probably already knows what is to be found (and might become narrow-sighted); On contrary, if a researcher aims in one direction, without delimiting the phenomenon he/she wants to understand, the study might become too complex and difficult to grasp. Quintain is just the right scope of a target.

I watch my son training with his bow. It is satisfying to hit the middle of the target, but it is also OK to hit the other colours. I learn from him. But while I am writing the thesis, I constantly have to remind myself what is in the central part and what is in the periphery, or even outside the board that holds the target: Children’s negotiation of meaning with 3D-materials’ affordances and resistance are in the middle of the quintain; Children’s embodied ways of interacting with their environments are also in the middle but stretch outside the centre; And children’s negotiation of meaning with their teachers’ and peers is like a transparent layer that covers the whole scope of my quintain and reaches far outside it. I have to firmly grasp my quintain in order not to get lost…

Stake, R. (2006). Multiple case study analysis. New York: The Guilford Press.
Stake, R. (2010). Qualitative research: studying how things work. New York: The Guilford Press.

Negotiating Grasp

From Sculpturing Words to Negotiating Grasp – the focus of my study has gradually moved closer to embodied forms of interacting with and knowing our world; I am not saying that linguistic form of knowing is not embodied, but that it is only one of the ways humans acquire understanding of their world and themselves. We all had bodies before we could talk (Egan, 1997).
The new name for my thesis is Negotiating Grasp, with intention to illustrate the importance of physical interaction with materials. I suggest, as Parsons (2007), that thought is embodied.

Negotiating Grasp is an ambiguous construction where the word negotiating can be understood as both a verb and an adjective. The term I have constructed illustrates the conjunction between, on one side, a child’s physical action of exploring 3D-materials (like a hand grasp), and on the other, the child’s mental grasping of new understandings (through micro-discoveries). The word grasp refers therefore both to a physical and cognitive grasp. When the word negotiating is understood as an adjective, both types of grasp are active processes that a child can negotiate through and between. However, if the word negotiating is understood as a verb, the concept illustrates an activity where, besides a child and 3D-materials also others can be involved in, for example teachers and peers. The concept negotiating grasp is meant to cover all of the mentioned interpretations, with hope to illustrate the complex relation between physical experience, cognition and social influences.

I have written about children’s play with 3D-materials in the article: Meaning making, democratic participation and art in early childhood education: Can inspiring objects structure dynamic curricula? published in International Journal of Education through Art, 2010 Volume 6 Number 3: http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-issue,id=1945/

Another article has been accepted to be published on http://www.formakademisk.org/index.php/formakademisk
This article is based on the PhD study and is titled: When past and new experiences meet: Negotiating meaning with 3-D materials in early childhood education

Egan, K. (1997). The educated mind: how cognitive tools shape our understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Parsons, M. (2007). Art and Metaphor, Body and Mind. In Bresler, L. (Ed.), International Handbook of Research in Arts education (pp. 533-542). Dordrecht: Springer.

Tikalalala and other first words

In order to share something verbally, we need to share understanding of what words refer to. When children learn words, they first have to realize that a specific composition of sounds can represent something that can be experienced, and then they need to connect these two together.

Sometimes a child invents more complex connection – like when my little neighbour pointed at me and said “wuff-wuff” when I was passing his window the other day, and he couldn’t even see my dog. What he probably meant was: There is the woman who always walks with a dog. And he was right – he had probably never seen me without the dog!
Many years ago, when my son was eight months old, he was looking at my face intensively and then smashed his open hand into my cheek simultaneously saying “mama”. And I knew he had just discovered the connection…

The word “mama”, consisting of two easy-pronounced sounds seems to be quite similar in many languages, while some other words are pretty unique and have short lifetime. Tikalalala is one such word, invented by a little boy and known only to him. It was probably functional to some extent, but when the boy couldn’t find his Tikalalala, cried and cried, whole family was engaged in searching for the Tikalalala. I was myself one of the cousins that happened to be in the house. The search was not an easy task, because no one except for the boy knew what Tikalalala was, and he was young (I guess about three) and not able to explain.

Children sometimes invent words they need for some specific purpose or in order to express their experiences. In the case of Tikalalala, the word’s rhythmical repetition of sounds might actually remind of the rhythmical movement of the object it refers to, and the sound it makes – while it’s original word does not have. However, the “proper word” was difficult to pronounce in this specific language “kljucevi”; No wonder the boy had to invent a unique word that also could connect him to his dear experiences with cars and car driving.

Caballo

Our mobile bodies move through the world collecting experiences from numberless variation of unique contexts. In the beginning, before we have had time to collect so many, maybe we have only four from meeting different cats, and many experiences from meeting the same horse. Here is how a six year old girl presents a horse – probably the Fjording she knows from her farm-preschool (Fjordings are strong and a bit round, and wear their mane strait up).

But what can one do when he desires to share an experience, but cannot draw nor have the right words to tell?

If a child’s learning of verbal language springs from her or his own experience – weather the experience is actual or imaginative, as Dewey suggested (Flanagan, 2006), then each of us have personal understanding of concepts – words are loaded with our feelings from the specific contexts where the concept was first conceived (Høigård, 2006). Here is how a two year old Spanish boy was constructing a new concept:
His “word” for a horse was not a set of sounds, but rather a short story that described his experience from meeting with a horse: He stretched his arm with open palm and said “pan, pan”. Then he made a “prprprprprpr…” sound by blowing between his lips, and simultaneously and quickly shaked his head.

To be able to understand his concept-under-construction one has to know that “pan” means bread, and to be able to imagine a little hand holding a piece of bread while bravely trying to stretch his tiny arm in order to keep his body as far as possible from the large horse mouth. The boy’s story described how he feed the horse and the sound and the head-shaking described what the horse did.
What a creative construction he initiated all by himself! And while he was telling people about the horse they often responded: “Sí! Caballo!” That is probably how he will learn to compress his embodied experiences in a few letters…

Flanagan, F. M. (2006). The greatest educators ever. London: Continuum.
Høigård, A. (2006). Barns språkutvikling: muntlig og skriftlig. Oslo: Universitetsforl.

NAEA’s Convention 2010

This year’s (American) National Art Education Association’s (NAEA) national convention took place in Baltimore, Maryland, USA from April 14-th to 18-th. Over 4000 art educators and researchers were gathered at the Baltimore Convention Center to learn from each other. The title of the convention connected art education and social justice. Together with the logo, showing a fist clenching around brushes, the conference title “Art Education and Social Justice” was a powerful message and invitation to make visible how art education can promote social justice, addressing not only art teachers and researchers, but also educational policy makers.

I attended many of the sessions carried out by the Early Childhood Art Educators interest group (ECAE): “Re-Centering the Child: Mindful Arts Practices in Early childhood” on Friday, “Living the vision: Early Childhood Art education in Troubling Times - The child’s right to Artistic expression” on Saturday and “Living the vision: Early Childhood Art education in Troubling Times - Art: essential for early learning” on Thursday. My own session also addressed children’s artistic activities as essential for early learning (meaning making).

The title of my presentation was “Reflection about Sculpturing Materials – Foundation for Development of Aesthetic Competence and Meaning Making”. In hope to be able to visualize the complex and merging processes that I experienced took place during my co-researchers’ (children 3-5) play with three-dimensional materials, I designed and presented a visual model. The model’s main parts were illustrating: 1) specifications of the contexts where children’s play with three-dimensional materials took place; 2) children’s experiencing activities; 3) materials possibilities; 4) materials limitations. (I don’t think I should say much more about this before publishing – and those who have asked me to use my model will unfortunately also have to wait).

One of the best things with attending a conference is that one can meet other researchers and practitioners, and can learn which kinds of interests and issues are emerging in the field. At least it was very important for me to experience that I was not alone in understanding children, arts and meaning making the way I do! I met others with familiar interests and realized that my project is somehow related to an emerging field that celebrates imagination, embodied meaning making, lived curricula, relational pedagogy and experience with materials:
- I listened to Charles Garoian’s fascinating presentation about embodied practice of art – exemplified through a practice narrative where 3D materials were even digested.
- I heard Linda Lewis say that possibilities for representation are inherent in materials.
- Rita Irwin showed me how we all have something to learn one from another.
- Alice Arnold remanded me about issues of globalization that influence cultural meanings, art and education.
- The winner of Manuel Barkan Award, Donal O’Donoghue, convinced me how relational acts of art are.
- Margaret Macintyre Latta emphasized how essential play is –something I completely agree with her on.
- I listened to Lars Lindstrøm, the winner of the 2010 USSEA Ziegfeld International Award, presenting a Scandinavian project about creativity.
- And I met Heidi Davis who shared many of my interests: sculpturing materials, meaning making and respect for children’s imaginative ways of knowing. It was a lucky coincidence that I met Heidi… again…!

Last time I met Heidi, it was in Vancouver July 2009. She presented a paper about young children and sculpture which I attended, we exchanged a coupe of words during the conference, and that was it. Almost a year later we met again. I had just missed her presentation, but she came to see mine. When we later met for a coffee, we both understood how familiar our projects are and that we should not rely on coincidence any more, but with own wish and will keep in touch!

There was another coincidence which I find even more peculiar… It is about my meeting with Maureen (or Marina, as her husband calls her), K-3 art educator (which means that she teaches 5-9 years old children). She was occasionally sitting beside me at the convention’s first general session (when Liora Bresler, and three other ladies, received NAEA’s Distinguished Fellow Award). When we started a conversation, she asked me where I had my accent from. I said: “From Norway, but probably also from my mother tongue, Serbian, as well.” She stared at me for a second and started to speak Serbian! She was American, but her husband was from the same million-people-city I originally come from. And as if this was not remarkable enough, after a few hours of talk later that day about teaching and other things, we found out that her husband attended the same middle and high school as I did, and lived in the neighbouring street… 30 years ago!

I do not want to sound superstitious, but how large were the statistical possibilities for meeting Heidi and Maureen? I am sure that all of us sometimes experience coincidences (or whatever we call them) - sometimes we don’t notice them, other times they even change our lives. A friend, practicing psychodrama, has often reminded me that only when we open our eyes we will be able to see... and when we open palms of our hands, we will be able to embrace new possibilities.

We sometimes need to clench our fists in order to hold directions toward our goals, but we also need to open our hands in order to welcome jet unimagined possibilities …