GPS is a terrible teacher!

Those of us who assume that learning is a linear process, disconnected from senses, emotions and social interactions, tend to see knowledge as something that can be produced. “Industrial production of knowledge” (Robinson, 2016) is supposed to be effective and result in perfect products in shortest possible time. However, learners are usually humans, not machines.

To make it clear, I am not against machines. I use them all the time and I know that they can be helpful, but I deny being one. I am critical to the industrial production of knowledge and the illusion that learning can be “effective” with precise recipes for teaching. Neither students nor teachers should be compared to machines! Teachers have to be sensitive, attentive and flexible in order to meet each individual in specific contexts, care for them and appreciate their unique talents; Mutual trust has to be established between teachers and students, among other things because learning depends of emotions.

Thinking of analogies between learning and assembly line, and teachers as machines, makes me think about an incident where I trusted a digital device (a GPS with female voice), and when she betrayed me I learned something that makes is possible to empathize with students with bad experience from learning situations. I was on my way to Madrid airport and I followed the GPS’s instruction. The crowded, parallel and curvy lanes on the motorway kept my hands busy and my eyes focused on the road. I did not have time to look around, and I had to trust the GPS-voice. I thought I saw a sign for the airport. I was driving and driving and getting more confused with every minute. Why wasn’t I getting there? When the GPS sent me to circle around a roundabout, I knew something was wrong, but at that point, I had already lost my sense of direction and had no clue where I was. Like in step-by-step instructions (I remember a software course I once attended) I got lost if I misunderstood a tiny detail; There was no way back or possibility to find out where it went wrong. Blind following of instructions - turning off own thinking - can get one to quite unpleasant places. That is what I learned both from the from the GPS-incident, and from the software course. I learned to distrust and to get scared.

After circling around Madrid for one hour and 50 km in radius (I later found out that it was what the GPS was doing – sending me around Madrid because she did not like the address I had given her) I was desperately trying to get off the highway, but the moment I left one highway, I entered another one. There was no place to stop, no one to ask, no time to think. Caught in the traffic felt like being in a never-stopping carousel. The fear of being too late for the plane, mixed with all kinds of stress, discomfort and luck of confidence. I could not think clearly. I probably seemed quite foolish when I simply run of my car and stopped a taxi, hoping that the driver spoke English! The look on the taxi-driver’s face was unmistakably saying: “This woman is crazy”. Intelligence and madness can be quite contextual – we should be aware of that when we, teachers, stress, confuse or comfort our students.

In my view, trust and flexibility are necessary components of teaching and learning.


The GPS-incident has been haunting me for years. You might find my associations with teaching strange, but the emotional side of the experience has been so strong that it has really had impact on my understanding. Meaningfulness of what I learn comes to me when my understanding is connected to my our personal endeavors, choices and struggles – not when I am blindly following someone else’s instructions. Learning is a process of personal engagement!


We humans (teachers and learners alike) are sometimes slow, confused, scared and we sometimes act unreasonably, even stupid. We might not always be accountable, as we expect machines to be, but we are capable of contextual choices, improvisation and construction of meaning in the contexts where we are fully alive.


Robinson, K. (2016). Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That is Transforming Education. New York: Penguin Books.

Viking Inspired Clothes Design

I spent much of this summer on sawing. I do not complain: I am indeed happy that I accepted the invitation from Ethonopeia to take a part on an international fashion show on Zlatibor in Serbia. I’ve been designing clothes and sawing them much of my life, but seldom took time to create something which is truly my own design, without considering a costumer’s wishes. This was a wonderful experience.  

Me in the middle 

 

The garments are inspired by simple Viking clothes in natural materials and details from Oseberg boat … not necessarily noticeable, but transformed through my personal experiences with construction of replica of this famous Viking boat from Vestfold area. See the article at pages of Norwegian embassy in Belgrade.

Next show is in Belgrade September 25^th.  I still have some more to create  and am planning to write more about the design process.   

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. 

 

I wish time was my friend...

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

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

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.

Attuning Tools, Materials and Muscles

An incredible project of reconstructing a Viking ship is taking place in Tønsberg at the moment (see http://www.osebergvikingskip.no/eng/) and is expected to take another autumn, winter and spring. The original ship called Oseberg, made by Vikings around the year 820, and later berried in Tønsberg area, is today exhibited at the Viking museum in Oslo.

The same ship has been reconstructed before, but this time not only the ship is being copied, but the entire process of building it. The building process is shaped by knowledge about Vikings’ tools and techniques; knowledge about wood’s diverse qualities, as well as how it might have been affected by climate during the centuries of growing; knowledge about the ship’s lines, curves, joints, surface; hydrodynamic, waterproof and other qualities, and much more. In short, the reconstruction of the full size replica is a huge multidisciplinary project that calls on complex combinations of knowledge and expertise. Additionally, local knowledge is constantly being produces in here-and-now situations where physical work challenges craft-men and volunteers to master the tools and approach the materials (wood, iron or wool) in contextually appropriate manners. This means that they have to pay close attention to the exact qualities of the wood piece they have in hand, they have to adjust their movements according to the material, tool and muscles in their bodies… and to accomplish some kind of harmony between embodied knowledge, reflection and imagination in order to solve emerging problems - for instance: how to change axe’s angles when cutting across a 70 cm thick oak.

I am telling this from my personal experience. Usually I use saw to cut wood, but Vikings did not have saws. Cutting wood "the Viking-way" seemed easy when we were shown how to do it; doing it oneself was a quite different experience – I am sure it was also different experience for each of us (my three 13 years old companions and me) who volunteered that day.


I experienced how important it was to keep changing the angle of the blade in order to make a “V”-like shape (or rather “U”-shape, as learned through experience) through the wood; I experienced how loose I should hold around the handle in order to prevent hurting my wrists; which back muscles to engage; in which position to drop the axe; how to slide my hands along the handle in order to control to blade’s direction; how to find the right rhythm to provide the best efficiency, and so on… Each of the boys seemed to explore their own cutting technique, for instance banding and straitening knees in order to canalise power from feet up to the axe’s blade. They generally gave the most they had, claiming that they were not tired, but the following days, I’ve heard, the experience left some noticeable traces in their bodies – nothing permanent, but something to help them remember.

If cutting with an axe was our daily occupation, as it was for many Vikings, we would have to listen to our bodies much better – we would have to learn how to attune the bodies, tools and materials as perfectly as possibly. We would have to learn much, much more…

Moving the Bricks Around

I’ve got the feed-back on the thesis draft from my co-advisor (Liv Gjems) and reader (Ellen Marie Sæthre-McGuirk) – and you can imagine how I use my hours these days? Fortunately, I do not have to re-write too much or add some large parts, but rather take some bricks away, move them around and glue them better together. I also need to file the edges and smoothen out the surfaces, though my friend Nicola, with her native-English-competence, will be most responsible for the polishing.

The plan is to send Nicola the thesis before June 25-th and get it back from her around the middle of July; Then fix the lay-out and deliver the thesis around August the 1-st. The fact is that my time as PhD-student is over after the summer and I have to go back to teaching at Vestfold University College. But even if the study is over, I will still continue to blog on this page … possibly even more often… I already know about some interesting tasks waiting for me, but somehow I always hope that I will have more time after I am finished with what I am doing right now - Don’t you? Though, there is usually nothing wrong with being optimistic :)

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…

Constrains – natural necessity for growth?

We do understand how important communication and social interactions are for us humans. But why are we so social? Barbara Rogoff (2003) suggests that we are “biologically cultural” – social by nature. As newborn babies, we are dependent one on another - we need each other to survive. What else have we inherited from our mother nature?

What about getting stronger, smarter, more creative? Our muscles need resistance to get stronger, and our embodied mind needs challenge to act and think in new ways.

Look at the young tree here, supported carefully by my father’s hands. He supported the fast- growing tree with textile ribbons, but as non-professional gardener, he was learning from own mistakes: He realized that he had given the tree too much support. That is why it remained too weak and thin close to the ground. That part relaxed… and got spoiled… On the contrary, the tree became thicker and stronger around the highest point he supported it. Strange… or may be not? It was exactly at the highest point it was tied up, that the tree had to struggle against the wind. In the next turn my father had to tie it looser in order to make it fight the wind itself - if it would ever be able to stand on its own “feet”.

Through social interactions our ability to construct meaning is constantly challenged. Do meeting different contexts, different people, situations and problems help us to be more flexible, open-minded and creative? I believe so!

We are social beings, but each of us, physically separated one from another, experiences world through own body that moves around through numberless contexts. Our mobile and experiential bodies make therefore each of us unique. That is why, in the next turn, each of us has something different, special and unique to contribute with to the others.

PS. I am aware of that implementing nature into the socio-cultural understanding might be seen as “risky business”, but I do agree with the nicely written words at the web-page of International Journal of the Education and the Arts: “Nature connects everything in purposeful ways”.

Rogoff, Barbara (2003): The cultural nature of human development, Oxford University Press

Just how much resistance do we need?

Writing and reflecting about my study of children’s interplay with 3D materials, I get more and more astonished how important experiencing resistance seems to be for learning. We have all experienced (and learned) that some kinds of resistance are important in order to learn, get self-confidence, strength and motivation. But pushing someone too far beyond hers/his “Zone of proximal development” can in many ways be damaging. How can we know where someone’s Zone begins, and where it ends?
Without connection to my study, my son and I decided to get a budgie. When we went to a pet-shop we were told to keep only one bird if we wanted it to care about people and eventually learn to talk. So we bought only one. But we also bought a book that said something like: Never keep a budgie alone. Another bird is as important to it as the air it breaths (Birmelin). “Who should we trust, the book or the shop assistant” my son (12) asked? How would we know who was right? We had to get our own experience.

The little, green bird was very tame and quite. We let him fly around and gave him a variety of food. But he looked sad... My son and I discussed what we should do: Was it more important for us that he one day learned to speak, or that he was happy? How miserable did we have to make his life in order to get little amusement for ourselves? Just how far were we willing to push, press and stretch his Zone of proximal development? (Sorry for my stretching of Vygotsky’s term in applying it to the non-human world.)
The bird kept sitting on the same branch and did not eat. Was our amusement so important that we would let the bird pay with his life? “It was not!” – we agreed and bought our budgie a nice young friend. They might thank us for that in their bird-language, but who knows, one day they might still speak in duet in human language -?

Birmelin, Immanuel: Undulater, Cappelens kjæledyrbøker

Is this how I learn?

My body remembers how it felt to stand completely serious, dressed in white, in front of my laughing and shouting colleagues a week ago. Now they tell me: “Don’t worry - you’ll forget!”, but it is difficult to reverse the learning process - my thinking and feeling body was acquiring new insights while I was standing there… feeling stupid…


On Friday June 11-th my college department (education), where I’ve been working for 12 years, was arranging a summer party. Two drama teachers responsible for the party asked me to lead one of the parallel sessions. When we were preparing multidisciplinary teaching we used to brain-storm and create something together, but this time they had a ready made plan for me.

The beginning of the party was to consist of different events inviting 120 participants (university college teachers, professors and administrators) to engage and be playfully. According to the plan I was supposed to be a serious teacher and give the participants (40 by time) an assignment to work on. When I heard about the plan, my intuition warned me: this is not going to work. And I said: “This is not going to work because the people would be in “party-mood” - they would expect me to be funny! The serious context of my teaching-session will not fit to the rest of the party!” The two colleagues asked me not to be so negative, and I, though still uncomfortable, tried to be positive and creative in finding ways how to motivate the participants to imagine education in future and discuss their hopes for “better teaching”, other forms of classroom relations, “better” education contents etc.

This was the plan I had to follow:
I had 5 minutes to motivate them to imagine schools in future. They had 10 minutes to work in small groups discussing how their perfect school lesson could look like in future. One of them should then imagine being a student who attended “the perfect future lesson”. This person should then be interviewed about his/hers experience. The interviews would be filmed and three “best” would be shown on large screen later the same evening.

This is how I prepared:
If I was to motivate for creativity in the given circumstances, I had do something special – and I had only 5 minutes. I planed to share my own hopes for the future of education (inspired by Kieran Egan’s educational philosophy) and to present that through a performance. The minimalistic multimodal composition was inspired by the dance performance Momix I’d seen at the Krannert Center in Urbana-Champaign. I imagined the performance to be “clean” and peaceful (!) and I worked on my clothing, movements, words, the tone of my voice… and adjusting to speed of my talk to the visual presentation which was “living its own life”; The still image showing only large number 2020, would gradually, behind my back, start counting years in accelerating speed. There was a point about time…

This is what happened:
When the first group of participants, my colleagues, entered the room, they were dramatizing naughty student: being loud, falling from their chairs, interrupting me with odd questions… I tried to play my role, to perform, but there was no room for it... they could not even hear me. They did not seem interested, and I realized that I did not want to share anything with them under such conditions. I did not want people to laugh about something I find important! They were expected me to be funny and I was not prepared to be funny but serious; They were caught in the roles of “naughty students”, and I was stuck in my role of a strict teacher – though in addition to being serious I was also struggling to find a way out the most uncomfortable situation.

I cut my performance short and stepped out of my role telling them that I could not continue under the conditions – but I don’t think they could not hear me through the noise. Which measures could I take to make them listen? – they were not my students but my colleagues! I met one of the drama teachers at the door and told her that the plan was not working. She told me to improvise. I said: “I can’t do this two more times!” She said: “Of course you can!” And I had to repeat the humiliating act twice again during the following hour. However, I did not do the performance, but I said something without any affection and confidence. The third group of audience was quiet, but also got the boring non-sense introduction and experienced the worst possible “teaching” I could do. I felt like a puppet, pushed on the stage, acting according to somebody else’s choices.

This is what I learned:
I learned that I should not overlook the importance of people’s expectations to communication contexts. My colleagues had expectations to the session and to me, but they also had expectation to each other. I was not fulfilling their expectation, but they could still be funny one for another – and for some of them this seemed to become the most important task in the context.

I learned that my ways of communication are affected by my confidence in people I communicate with. The context where I did not feel taken seriously, was not the contexts where I could improvise in a good way.

I learned how my feelings are important in my learning. While I was standing there, I could have reasoned that my colleagues were not trying to be mean to me, but my embodied feelings were stronger than my reasoning. I was disappointed and sad. One of my colleagues approached me later that evening and asked me how I was. She said she felt sorry for me. Some others told me: “Don’t worry, you will soon forget it all”. Yes, I might forget what was said and done, but my embodied experience from the wounding event had influenced my attitude towards my colleagues: I don’t wish to share my thoughts with them!

So, is this new knowledge of any good? Was my experience as unique as the context, or do other people also react emotionally in similar situations? I do not intend to answer this question - I am just astonished by the extent of my affection from a single experience. How much could 3 x 20 minutes of social un-comfort change in a person? This makes me continue to wonder just how important social relations, communication contexts and feelings are for learning!

The images are details from a student studying Norwegian Folk Art at the “Telemark University College” at Rauland. I find Anne Grete Krogstad’s hand weaved “tjukkåkle” as an excellent example how traditional techniques can be applied in creative ways in new contexts.

Journal Publishing

Since I’ve decided to write an article based theses, I’ve been thinking about how to organize it. I think that the articles, deriving from the same material, should build upon each other, but should not ovelap too much; They should complement one another and show the empirical material from different points of view (?)


Like a path, my study cuts across different landscapes: early childhood education and early childhood teacher education, visual arts, language development, multimodality, imagination and creativity, learning through play, studies of learning environments, sculpture and three-dimensional materials, and arts-based qualitative methods of inquiry. Since it is hardly possible to find a journal that covers all of the areas, I plan to publish in different journals, addressing different audience. I will have to work on careful planning which contents to present in each of the articles, and which kind of narrator voice to apply. In order to do that, I should need to know what my current audience (for each of the journals) would need to know more about (what they are not familiar with) and what I should need to write much about (so that they will not get bored reading about something they already know). I should take a good look at the landscape and imagine my audience…


At the Sixth Congress of Qualitative Inquiry I attended panels where journal editors presented their work and gave advice to writers. Here is what I learned from them:

Some of the journals presented on June 28-th were not specialized for qualitative studies, while others would publish qualitative studies only – A writher should know which kind of journal his study would fit best into. Some journals were method journals (like for instance the Journal of Mixed Methods Research), that would not be relevant for publishing articles that present contents of a study. Readers of method journals would rather like reading which advantages the specific research methods had in order to understand the problem that has been studied.

Dorothy Becvar (Journal of Family and Therapy) said that she is devoted to the qualitative method and wants to make sure the method is well presented. Ron Chenail (Qualitative report) encouraged writers to write in first person and in active form (not “the informants were interviewed” but “I interviewed the informants”).

Ian Shaw, University of York (Qualitative Research Work) presented his applied qualitative research journal and explained that “applied research” is about “meaning worked out in particular contexts”. When one is preparing to publish in an international journal, the article should be written in a way that it speaks across the boundaries of different contexts. Before submitting one should ask the question: Would the theme be relevant for audience outside the specific contexts? (Some things migt be relevant, others not. One should be careful where and how to step...)


Harry Torrance (British Educational Research Journal) explained that one should know that growing journals would reject the most of the articles. Donna Mertens (Journal of Mixed Method Research) gave advice that writers should always refer to articles earlier written in the journal one wants to publish in (at least two references). One should also try to find out what the editor’s, and the board member’s, research and write about. She explained what one should do when receiving two different (or even opposite) feed-backs from board-members. This happens and can be confusing. The writer might take the position of one of the reviewers, but she/he would still have to respond to the requirements from both of the reviewers in order to get published.

Janice Morse gave an editor’s perspective on how to get qualitative research published. Her angle was to present usual rejection reasons and questions to be checked before submitting: Does the article fit to the mission of the journal? Have you writing who you are (student, researcher etc.)? Is the topic exciting for others? Do you write with confidence? Do you write with enthusiasm? Do you have too few, or too many, references? If the presented project is conducted together with others, did you make explicit how much of your study ovelap with other projects? (And make sure that the people you have collaborated with are mentioned.)

Congress of Qualitative Inquiry

The Sixth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry took place at the campus of University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign from May 26-th to 29-th. About 700 participants from around the world took part in large number of presentation, plenary and poster sessions. I will be writing more about the congress, but since I am publishing this blog on my way back to Norway, it will be just a short note about my own presentation on Friday May 28-th.

It is difficult to say much in short time: you have to present the contexts of your work so that your intentions would be understood, you have to say something relevant and important, you should say it in a way that makes the listeners interested, and you will have to sum up - or open up for further reflection. And all that in 12 minutes! Usually when I present I use many visual images. (This time the children’s parents had even allowed me to use films of their children.) But 12 minutes would be too short to sett up a projector, show the images and still have time to explain, discuss and tell about my lived experiences. I decided to write down what I should say, edit the paper again and again in order to make it shorter and more intense, and practice reading it in order to be able to look at audience while I was reading. Later, I was apologizing to Liora Bresler that I was reading while addressing the issue of multimodal communication and body language: “What a contradiction between the content and the form!” But Liora calmed me down: “That’s just how conference genre is!”

This is an image of me with Norwegian colleague Ingrid Grønsdal Arnesen outside the Union building.

And here is the abstract that can illustrate what I was talking about:
Intersubjectivity, Interpretation and Improvisation: How Three-Year-Old Students Challenge Researchers’ Competence

A PhD study of children’s meaning making during explorative play with sculpturing materials conducted by an art teacher/practitioner-researcher in a Norwegian early childhood center. The form of inquiry was inspired by A/R/Tography (Irwin 2004), involving video-recording of own activity with children. Children’s highly imaginative and multimodal forms of communication have challenged the researcher’s ability to create immediate and appropriate responses to the children’s creative verbal and non-verbal contributions. If we respect young children, value their way of living and want them to become self-confident individuals, research methods in early childhood education must respond to their expressive ways of democratic participation.

The Secret Life of my Brain

“Strange how brain sometimes work”, I wrote to my co-advisor to tell her how, during my preparing for presentation at the case study course, I suddenly understood how to solve a puzzle in writing something else. An hour later I receive an e-mail titled “Brain”. I smiled because I thought she was responding on my comment about the brain – but soon I realized that this mail was not from her. It was from Kurt Johannessen (2010), Norwegian performance artist and poet who from time to time sends inspiring words to the people on his mailing list. Here is the poem:

The Brain
In the year 4133 man discovered a new component in the brain.
It wasn’t clear whether the component had always been there,
or whether it had developed as a result of evolution.
It took many years for scientists to understand
the characteristics of this new discovery.
When they did finally solve the mystery,
everyone was astonished that they
hadn’t seen it earlier.

I thought how wonderful it was to receive exactly this poem, right now! In humoristic and complicating ways it described what I was just thinking about - It made me understand how complicated understanding can be. In the same time, I got curious about why receiving it made me so happy - ?

I used to collect napkins when I was a girl. May be I still am a collector? And this poem fitted perfectly to my collection of images, smells, words, experiences and sudden insights… Three months ago, in a plane magazine, I found an advertisement which amazed me. The text said: “Think before creating” and the image showed a textile brain. (The name of the photographer was not stated but the advertisement also said: “REDA – Finest fabrics made in Italy”.) Such collected “items” often inspire me even long time after they’ve been collected, and incredibly often make connections between themselves. I do not say that they do it without my interfering – I am sure that this process of connecting has something to do with my brain - or rather the unity Dewey called “body-mind”which is wirelessly connected to the world outside.


And here is what happened with the presentation I was preparing for the Robert Stake’s case study course: We were ten people in the room, some of whom I meet for the first time. I tried to be short, but felt like I was using too much time. I struggled with some words, and felt that I lost the structure I had planned… That is at least how I experienced the presentation from the inside of my body. And that is also why the feed-back I got from Terry Denny (who used to work with Robert Stake) was even more unexpected! What he told me after my presentation, and repeated it even more strongly when he approached me after the session, absolutely qualifies for my selection of extraordinary experiences! I have never before received such a strong encouragement to keep doing what I do! He said I have to write a book to describe how my understanding and learning from the 3-, 4- and 5-year-old co-researchers gradually unfolded during my interaction with them - or rather “intra-actions” as Hillevi Lenz Taguchi (2010) might have called this mutual influence between persons and their environments.

When I experience how strongly interactions with people influence my thoughts and feelings I am sure that trying to understand our brain has to include much more than “looking” inside it. As John Dewey wrote “the body-mind is not simply the acknowledgement of the sensory input that goes to the brain, but it is based upon the interaction of subject with a complex and challenging environment” (Davidson, 2004). We might never be able to understand all secrets of our brains, but being on our way to understand more is also something to celebrate, isn’t it?

The poem "Hjernen" / "The Brain" was first published in 1999 in the book "Nasefenomenet og andre hendingar" written by Kurt Johannessen, 1999.
In English: Kurt Johannessen (2010), translation by Gillian Carson: "Selected”. Zeth, Bergen http://www.zeth.no/boker2.shtml#selected

Davidson, J. (2004). Embodied Knowledge: Possibilities and Constrains in Art Education and Curriculum. In L. Bresler (Ed.), Knowing Bodies, Moving Minds: toward Embodies Teaching and Learning. Dorsrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Lenz Taguchi, H., Moss, P., & Dahlberg, G. (2010). Going beyond the theory: practice divide in early childhood education : introducing an intra-active pedagogy. London: Routledge.

Blurring Understanding

Understanding is certainly contextual. After a month in USA I frequently keep misunderstanding; Sometimes, of course, because of unfamiliar words, but mostly because I don’t know what people expect me to do. The first time I was buying a coffee I stood like a frozen when the shop-girl asked me: “How many creams?” I was so confused by the question’s grammatical inaccuracy of singularity/plurality of “cream”.

Sometimes I misunderstand because I read different “parts” (modalities) of communication in different, or even opposite ways. For example, I misunderstood a party invitation because in my mind I could not match the lay out of the invitation card with its contents. Knowing that there are many things I do not know does not really help much when others do not understand that I don’t understand. Then, I can tell you, it is not easy to buy a sandwich, take a buss or even cross a street. Fortunately, I have now learned how to cross a street! And even more: I have learned that crossing a street is a local phenomenon which I can not expect to be applicable other places in USA.


On my son’s way to Urbana Middle School, there are several crossroads with four “stop”- signs. Every driver stops his/hers car and waits. But how would they know who should drive when? From a perspective of a pedestrian on rollerblades, crossing a road is usually a risky business because possibility for braking is limited. That is why I decided to follow my son to and from the school. I soon found out how dependent the “four-stop-sign” driving is on multimodal communication; Drivers look at each other. They look at us pedestrians to establish eye contact. They smile, nod or wave to let us cross. I am sure they also do their interpretations of what they see: People with unsteady movements and they wait and wait for us to move over. And sometimes I and my son cross in front of them even if we intended to go another way – We do not want to disappoint the drivers who have showed such kindness and patience!

Things are for sure done differently in different parts of the world. Meeting people through University of Illinois, makes it possible for me to get in touch with people from different places in the world and learn a bit about Korea, South Africa, Bolivia… Each meeting seems to help me achieve a little bit more understanding about how one can view the world, and how limited my own understanding always will be. Cultures have for ages been formed by interactions between people, but also by climate, geography, flora and fauna, migrations, power difference… We all carry them with us multiple layers of oil paint: new layers every day… may be each time we share word with someone?


… May be oil paint is not a good metaphor – At least I feel that the lubrications are much more moister than oil pain, and get more easily absorbed into my body and become a part of my thinking… Drawing a line between my personal experience, and my striving to be a “good researcher”, I want to quote Robert Stake who wrote so wisely:

“It is an ethical responsibility for us as case researchers to identify affiliations and ideological commitments that might influence our interpretations – not only for the contracting parties but for the readers of reports, and, of course, for ourselves. But there is no way for us as evaluators to identify all relevant predispositions, or even know them” (Stake, 2006: 87).



Stake, R. E. (2006). Multiple case study analysis. New York: The Guilford Press.


All images show the same sculpture from The Millenium Park in Chicago.

Connections

On April 26-th, I presented my phd-project at the College of Education, University of Illinois. Liora Bresler was so kind to arrange the seminar and invite people from the education and other departments who might be interested in my study. Among the 12 people that arrived, some had their interests in early childhood (like Robert Stake, and Nancy Hertzog with her guests), some in education in general (as Walter Feinberg and Bekisizwe Ndimande), and some with interests in arts-based methods (as Liora Bresler). One person was a researcher in mathematics (Gloriana Gonzalez) but found familiarities with my project thought some of the theoretical framework we both use (Michael Halliday).

After my presentation, we had time for a few questions, but I am still in the process of meeting the people who were there, and I keep getting feed back from them. My conversations with wonderful, wise and kind Walter Feinberg have developed in many different directions, based on our life stories rather than narrowed to my study. It is amazing how many connections can be found between different worlds, lives or studies! Bekisizwe Ndimande was right when he said “There are always connections” to my question if my study had any significance for his study of education in South Africa.


Daniel Walsh (one of the writers of the book “Studying children in context”) has given me valuable feed back on my presentation, and has really challenged me to search for a better balance between complexity (which without doubt is there) and a narrow focus (which is certainly simplifying the complexity, but is necessary in order to understand). We can not understand everything in the same time – as much as we can not make a “theory of everything”.

Re-sculpturing My Dog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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