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

Practical Explorations of Research Methods

The new early childhood teacher education program in Norway is in its third year for the first time. New graduates, with a brand new profession name “barnehagelærer”, are expected in Spring 2016, after they pass a number of exams; Among the obligatory exams there is an bachelor-degree-assignment to be carried out for the first time as a part of the new national program. The novelty may, in fact, be more exciting for the university teachers who are teaching at the program for the first rime, than for the students (who preferably attend the program only once and have nothing to compare it with). As one of the teachers, I am curious and a bit anxious about the outcomes of the program: would the changes we have been working so hard on pay off in form of more self-confident, attentive, caring, responsible early childhood teachers in close future?

 

In their bachelor-degree-assignment students are supposed to conduct a small research project and experience a role of a researcher. They can use a wide range of methods that are applicable to problem questions of their choice, possibly including collecting data in early childhood settings. I believe that a researcher is responsible not only for the way one conducts the research and how one treats subjects in her/his research, but also responsible for the choices of problems one wishes to address. Would the young unexperienced students be modest and reflected enough to pose appropriate questions that can fit the scope of their assignments? Will they be respectful and careful enough when they meet early childhood teachers, children or parents? Will they be able to recognize the influence of their values and attitudes on their conclusions and on people they meet? If not, I dread that their projects can do more harm than positive contribution to the practice field. 

I recently had a chance to introduce research methods to a group of third year students, and since I believe that theory is often difficult to understand prior to experience, my lecture stated with a small exploratory assignment. In order to illustrate how many choices have to be taken in an research process I gave the student groups of 4-5 students different objects and questions to discuss: One group, for instance, got a pile of Lego blocks of different sizes, shapes and colors and were told to find “the average block”; another group was given three different kinds of grapes and were to decide which type tasted best; yet another group was given a shoe to analyze in order to make a story what had happened with the shoe. (The specific shoe had, in fact, received an extraordinary treatment last summer when the shoe soles fell off under the feet of an unexperienced young friend I inited to a dangerous mountain trip.) 

It was interesting and surprising to see how the students went on in solving their assignments. None of them did it the way I expected, which made it even more interesting. The group which was given a bag of strange dried fruits (something I bought on an exotic marked and had no idea what it was) was supposed to find the fruit piece that had “the best quality”. I hoped the question would intrigue them to, among other things, discuss the notion of quality and how it can be uncovered. They did do so, but the definition they came up with was quite a surprise: Their definition of fruit quality did not concern the shape, size, smell, color, dryness or something that could be of importance for something eatable; they instead tested which of the fruits had the best bouncing quality. Just like that, my students’ creativity disclosed my delimiting expectations! But, of course, I though: if the fruits were considered as objects for play, one could assign new meanings to them disregarding of their original function. The student’s playful attitude made them apprize the qualities invisible for those who would focus on the objects’ original functions. Not knowing is a gift to open-mindedness.

Exploring Eggs and Avocadoes

I challenged two of my students to observe their own children’s encounters “new materials”. For those 10 and 9 months old babies most of materials were new; the trick was to choose materials that would not harm them during their multi-sensory explorations. The assignment requested that each child got chance to explore two similar but not identical materials/objects. This would provide opportunities for babies to acquire new experiences, recognize similarities and to be surprized. Here is a reconstruction of what the students wrote in their assignments.
 
One of the students gave her 10 months old girl a cooked, pealed egg first. The girl brought it directly to her mouth. The egg was smooth, slipped from her hands and rolled over the floor. She quickly followed by crawling, supporting her weight with one hand on the floor and catching the egg with the other. When she finally grabbed the egg, she grabbed it so hard that the egg went to pieces. She picked some of the pieces and started to put them in her mouth. Then she suddenly realized that the taste was unfamiliar and looked skeptically at her parents to check if it was safe. They were smiling, she sensed their encouragement and continued to eat, cluck out loud and enjoy.

The second experiment took place few days later. This time the girl was given a raw egg with shell. Her mouth opened the same moment she grabbed the egg with both hands and she went on rubbing the eggshell to her gums (a new tooth was on its way out). After some time she started to swing her arm. If she slipped the egg it would fly away: Her mother was watching nervously. To her surprise, the egg did not crack when it fell on the wooden floor for the first time; But it surprised the girl when it finally did: With her eyes wide open, she gave her mother a questioning look. She started to pick the eggshell, but the mother decided to remove it to prevent the girl from putting it is her mouth. This upset the girl, but she soon calmed down and started to play with egg content. She crawled around and with her hands extended the egg area on the floor. She was excited when a bubble suddenly appeared in the egg white, and tried to pick it up. She tried several times but each bubble busted. After about five minutes of bubble catching, she lay down on her stomach and started to lick the floor. The experiment ended when the mother evaluated that the floor was dangerously slippery for the girl.

The other child, nine months old boy, was given a peeled avocado to play with. It was slipping away as the boy was trying to catch it. He was crawling and chasing the avocado across the floor, but it repeatedly slipped between his fingers. After some time he seemed to realize that there was more resistance in avocado than he had expected. He sat up a kind of trap for the avocado and caught it between his legs. Now he could squeeze it much harder and longer without losing it. The squeezed substance colored his socks and trousers green and he could not any longer see where the avocado was hiding, so he began squeezing his own foot. The avocado had disappeared, only the big brown seed remained – however, the boy did not see any connection between the two such different shapes and material qualities. He continued playing with avocado remaining, smeared them on the floor and found it amusing to crawl over the slippery surface.

For the second experiment, the boy was given an unpeeled avocado. He did not seem to recognize the object; The difference between the two avocados was probably too large: both the color and the consistency were different. This avocado was explored by rolling. At some point, the boy tried to squeeze it, but soon realized that it did not lead anywhere. He tried biting and tasting, but lost interest when he did not find much he could do with the object.

During their active interactions with the objects / materials the children discovered materials’ specific qualities. The materials offered different affordances and different types of resistance, and challenged different forms of physical and mental activities. What is this - and what can I do with it? Some properties were more interesting than others were. The boy’s mother comments that soft materials might be more fun to explore - her son played much longer with the soft avocado.

Both of the mothers noted how important intersubjective communication with their children was for making the material exploration possible at all. The boy’s mother wrote: “He was so aware of my reactions to his activities; He stopped his activities, looked at me and waited for an encouraging smile before he continued. He knew that he was usually not allowed to spill and smear things on the floor and he needed a "confirmation" that it was OK to do that this time.”

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.  

Objects' Affordances

With wide number of qualities, objects around us afford us with different possibilities. Some objects are designed to function in specific ways (like chairs or cars), while natural objects and materials do not have any pre-assigned meanings – it is up to each of us to interpret possibilities embedded in their forms.

Qualities of an object can remind us of something else, thus, as well-behaving adults we would seldom wear a bucket. To be able to see possibilities in objects that already have preserved pre-assigned functions one needs to release imagination – and have self-confidence.

Some objects, textures or shapes remind us of something we’ve earlier experienced. See for instance how 13-year old William found similarities between a round shape of a branch and a glass: He grasped the possibility in the material, imagined its possible function and carved a glass-holder. See also how he used old pants to make back-support on the chair he designed and crafted by himself.

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.

Jump with care!

All our sense organs are part of the same body. The body carries them around and allows them to experience spaces from different places and in motion. Although the senses are located in the body, they can reach far out, forming a transparent sphere that merges with the physical environment outside the body’s topological form.


“Intimacy” is an art exhibition where visitors are allowed to experience sculpture and installation form the inside – where all our senses are welcomed. Instead of “Do not touch!” the signs say “This art object is fragile – handle with care”. We are invited to experience the softness, porosity, smells, elasticity and infinity of the large, abstract art objects created by Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto.

Moving through, sinking in, and sliding over the artworks make the multisensory experience rich and strong. The exhibition is full of surprises for example when – one experience that something looks very different than it feels. However, some surprises are difficult to explain! One of my the strongest experiences form the exhibition was when I faced an art work which filled a large room, but was mostly invisible for me – just for me! That was somehow scary. When I had some time to reflect about the feeling, I realized that the large horizontal, two-dimensional part of the art work was placed exactly in the same height as my eyes. That was why I could see only the forms above and under the horizontal line in front of my eyes.

A number of research projects in Norway deal with children’s experience of space in early childhood education. One of the projects is located at my school - Vestfold University College: The research project about ECEC space and materiality http://barnehagerom.wordpress.com/ OECD-rapport presents research in early childhood space as important and emerging, especially emphasising the Nordic tradition where also outside spaces are seen as important for children’s learning (OECD, 2006).

OECD. (2006). Starting Strong II: Early Childhood Education and Care: OECD Publishing.

The Craft of Aircraft Construction

One day I visited my little friend (three years and two months old), he met me at the door: “I am making aircrafts for my best friend”, he said. I was curious: “Making aircrafts?!” He picked two small folded pieces of paper from the floor and showed them to me.

I noticed another “aircraft” on the floor. It looked like a folded A4 page on the right way to become a functioning aircraft that might be able to fly around the room. But when I pointed to it, the boy was serious: “That one is not good at all!” implying that the two in his hands were much better. I was wondering which kind of criteria he had for quality of his work? He obviously had an idea that was leading his creative construction. He was though, still not satisfied with the two small forms.
“They were not ready jet”, he said.
“What do you need to complete them?”
“I need tape”, he replied.

He got some tape from his mother, but the construction problem was not easy to solve - not even with the tape - or maybe it was exactly the tape that leaded to new challenges: One had to take it off from the scroll, cut a piece, prevent it from curling, take it off from fingers, and finally places it around an aircraft. Quite complicated task for a three year old – but it is exactly the resistance in the material that made him try out, repeat, explore other possibilities - and learn. Without resistance from our environment we would not get to know about it, nor about ourselves, as Dewey (1934/29005) wrote.

The boy kept trying. His endurance seemed to come from missing and love for his friend who has been away from the preschool for days. The aircrafts were to become welcome-back-presents for his best friend. The boy had probably learned that you can make something for those you love. And here he was, expressing his feelings through creative work. His motivation to fight the sticky tape toward his goal, seem to have derived from his feelings, and his judgement of quality derived possibly from his empathy (Which kind of aircrafts would my friend like?).

Dewey, J. ([1934] 2005), Art as Experience, New York: Berkley Publishing Group.

Oh… It’s alive!

My little friend (three years old) got a hand puppet – a soft, white kitten. I put it on my hand and showed him. “Oh… It’s alive!”, he said. He was talking to the cat and cuddeling it kindly. Did he think it was a real kitten?

When the kitten stopped moving, pretending it was asleep, he said: “You have to move your fingers!” – He obviously knew the kitten was not moving by itself. But he absolutely did not want to put his own hand inside it and handle it himself… as if this would spoil his ability to imagine that the kitten was real. As long as someone else was handling it, the textile puppet and the real kitten could co-exist in the same time. In children’s play, there are no contradictions between reality and fantasy (Vygotsky, 2004), but rather synergy: The hand inside was activating the puppet’s movements, and the boy's experience of the movements was supporting his imagination.



Vygotsky, L. S. (2004). Imagination and Creativity in Childhood. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology 42(1), 7-97. Retrieved from http://mesharpe.metapress.com/link.asp?id=265tnearjknc0220

Experiencing Environments

How does your home environment influence you feelings? Do you care if the floor is wooden - or just looks like wood? Or do you prefer polished, shiny surfaces? (Guggenheim museum in Bilbao)


Once upon a time, no other than natural materials were available; People used what their surroundings afforded them with: they ate meet they could catch, made clothes of fur and straw, built shelters of mud, or snow.


My friends fell in love with a 200 years old house in a little village in Northern Spain. (They did not tell me exactly that they “fell in live”, but I guess they did – Where would they otherwise find so much motivation and energy for the reconstruction that has been going on for years?) As far as possible they’ve been using the same natural materials the house was built with: mostly stone and wood, not to forget the roof tiles made by hand and shaped over a thigh. The old wooden posts and the rock walls, full of calcium and fossils, witness the time without machines. Shaped by bare hands and simple tools, the surfaces and lines in the house echo shapes from nature. The absence of geometry gives a special feeling … like going back in time … (Experience it by yourself! http://manzanela.com/en/manzanela.php )

Back in time people used what was available – today we use what we can afford. Compared to the speed of tree’s growing, artificial materials are produced much faster – no wonder natural materials are more expensive! But what is best for the global environment: to use (probably also misuse) the natural resources, or to produce unnatural materials (and waist)? Are we saving trees by using unnatural materials, or is the damage we make much larger? Which thoughts will they make about our time when they in 1000 years discover rests of linoleum with wood imitations?

The last three images are from the new building of Vestfold University College, where natural and human-made materials are "composed" in thrilling contrasts.

Something between

Summertime: travelling, sunbathing and meeting people. This summer I had a chance to observe a Norwegian boy (almost three years old) meeting new friends in Croatia. Those meetings were usually not initiated by greetings or other forms of verbal interactions, but by nonverbal communication concerning something of mutual interest: a ball, sunglasses or beach toys. The interactions often started when one child kept watching, following or imitating another – and after a while (sometimes sooner, sometimes later) they both took turns in copying each other’s actions.


One day the Norwegian boy (let me call him Morten) got his first pair of sunglasses. During the day he was experimenting with how to wear them, and in the evening he met another boy, about the same age, also wearing sunglasses. The other boy was moving over the market place on his little bicycle, and Morten started to chase him around trying to establish contact. And when their eyes met through the dark plastic, the question “How to wear sunglasses?” seem to be the main issue in their non-verbal communication. They both mirrored each other’s actions and tried new and surprising ways of wearing sunglasses. The sunglasses became the objects or joint interest – something they could gather around and use as tools for their communication.


Another time, there was a ball on the beach. A ball is something you can throw and fetch - a toy perfect for scaring. Morten simply started to throw the ball to a few years older boy, and the boy replayed. Being taller, the older boy could stand in deeper water, while Morten was carefully not leaving the shallow water. When he realized that the ball landed in too deep water, Morten asked the older boy (in Norwegian) to get it – and the boy understood his body language. Morten seem to be proud to have an older and more competent friend to play with, and the six years old boy seemed to enjoy being more competent.


Besides sand, shells and stones, beach toys are also good for sharing… especially if one child has something the other child doesn’t. Using their earlier experience from play with similar objects, each child had something of his/hers own to contribute with, and they showed each other what they could do with the objects. They become confident in each other by copying and repeating each others actions. The activities of scaring and doing something together become essential, making verbal language unnecessary.

Church Dialogues

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

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

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

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

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

But the boy in the book kept crying!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Facial expressions of symbol-using beings

Have you ever experienced how demanding it is to explain what you mean in a language you can’t speak? Speaking in our mother tongue seems so easy and is often taken for granted, but when we experience how difficult it can be to find a foreign word that matches what we want to say, and to pronounce it in a way that others can understand what the word is supposed to refer to, then we might understand how complex this process of “finding words” can be. And when one is so young that this is his first and only language, he really does not have any other choice than to use all of his competences, and use them with creativity…

“What makes human action distinctive is the capacity of people not only to understand the world symbolically but also to understand themselves and others as symbolic and symbol-using beings” (Rock 2001). Let me explain this with a short story from the life of my two years old friend.

He and I were watching fishes in an aquarium at my home. The boy turned to me and said a word. I understood that he addressed me with intentions to share something … may be he asked me something (he had an “asking expression” on his face), but I didn’t understand the word he had pronounced. The next second, he grabbed the plastic box with fish food and repeated the word “mise” (he was speaking Norwegian), but this time he pointed at the box with his tiny forefinger and looked strait into my eyes with his face close to mine. I guessed that he wanted to say “spise” (which means “eat”) and that his question was: “Can I feed the fishes?” But first after I had answered “Yes”, and big smile occurred on his face, I was sure that I had understood his a-half-word-question!

So, what actually happened here? The little boy used different forms of communication: words, body language, tone of voice and facial expression. He obviously understood that he and I were “symbol-using beings”! When one symbol didn’t function alone, he supported it with another: pointing to the physical food box - which again was a kind of symbol (food box was symbolizing the action of eating). Wasn’t that creative!? His motivation to solve the communication problems seems to lay in his desire to feed the fish.

What I find the most amazing is the way he understood that I didn’t understand his word! I believe that this is an evidence of his extreme ability to read facial expressions!

According to Ellen Dissanayake, humans have during evolution developed the ability to communicate through facial expressions in order to become enculturated in their social group, and survive – just imagine how helpless a fragile infant would be without care from its “pack”. Babies are born wanting specific kinds of interactions (Dissanayake 2007). And it is not the adults who teach them to respond but “rather infants teach us (…) they reward us so that we want to keep entertaining them” (Dissanayake 2007, p.788). It seems like my little friend has been doing a lot of successful teaching and entertaining – and has become an expert of body language. And now he uses this language competence in order to learn other languages.

Dissanayake, E. (2007). In the beginning: Pleistocene and infant aesthetics and 21st-century education in the arts. In L. Bresler. International Handbook of Research in Arts Education, Dordrecht, Springer

Rock, P. (2001). Symbolic Interactionism and Ethnography. In P. Atkinson. Handbook of ethnography. London, Sage: XVIII, 507 s.

Defeating a blueberry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Associations and inspirations

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

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

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