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.

Hiding Just Enough

We sometimes hide, but want to be found. My niece Ana demonstrates how one can hide just enough. She does not want to vanish – so she does not cover all of her body with the duvet. She does not want to risk not being found. The two year old is begging to understand the game of hiding and the privilege of deciding where and how much one wants (and needs) to hide.

My game is different - actually it is not a game but serious business of research – but my imagination finds some similarities between Ana’s and my activities. While preparing for conducting qualitative interviews, I have been thinking about how to present myself. I fully respect my interviewees, I do not plan to be dishonest and would never do anything to harm them, but they do not have to know everything about me and my research. A trusting relationship is important. Interviewees needs to feel comfortable in order to uncover their believes, feeling, thoughts and ideas, but if the relationship become friend-like wouldn’t that make my interviewees tell me what they assume I want to hear? I think that there is nothing wrong with being friendly, curious, attentive and caring, but I should not tell them about my hopes and expectations.



I am not worried about my misinterpretations during the data analysis - I am more worried about that I can come to say and do during our “momentary meetings”(Aspelin, 2010). A facial expression that only takes a millisecond can decide further development of our conversations. I know myself: if I experience that someone is uncomfortable I can start bubbling in a supportive way in order to restore their confidence. My most important homework is to prepare to constrain my talking and I find this difficult particularly because I care about my interviewees and I feel responsible for their wellbeing, especially because I had invited them. (The one who invites is responsible for paying the bill, I suppose.)

 

Redrawing from talking is not a question of honesty, is it? What if I just hide a toe or my left shoulder as long as the rest of my body (including the heart) is fully present? Ana’s examples function as helpful instructions. Thanks Ana! - Your playful ways of approaching the world trigger my reflections about things you probably never thought about.

Aspelin, J. (2010). What really matters is 'between'. Understanding the focal point of education from an inter-human perpective. Education Inquiry, 1(2), 127-136.

Researchers' Voices in Politics of Early Childhood Education

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

Both images are from Tallinn, Estonia.

Visitors from Spain

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

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

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

Prolonged Engagement

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

ECEC-research and Policymaking

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


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

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

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

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

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

Targeting at Quintain

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

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

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

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.

Co-researching with children

I’ve been writing assignments for my PhD-courses, lately … and thinking much about methodology…

The project “Sculpturing Words” is based on the socio-cultural perspective on learning. In pedagogical settings in kindergarten, there is a mutual influence between a child as a competent individual and “democratic participant”, and professional kindergarten personnel. Construction of meaning, that takes place during communication in kindergarten, is essential for learning (Carlsson and Pramling Samuelson 2006). Learning is a result of inter-subjective processes. “Operating from a socio-constructivist perspective, the educators act as careful observers and co-autors of children’s experience” (Piazza 2007). In the same time the children are co-researcher in the process of mutual learning.

Regarding the methodological choices for my project, I wish to undertake a role of a preschool teacher and carry out activities with kindergarten children. This method, where roles of a teacher and a researcher merge, reminds of action research, more specifically intervention (Bjørnsrud2005) - or rather inter-action-research ? As a teacher, I will communicate with the children in order to stimulate their reflections. My own multimodal expressions will influence the inter-subjective meaning making that takes place in the context. Seen form a role of a researcher, such communication can also be seen as a form of inter-view method (Kvale and Brinkmann 2009).

Both a good teacher and a good inter-viewer have to listen carefully, with respect and curiosity, to a child’s different forms of expression. Genuine listening also requires immediate reflections, interpretations and reactions form the teacher/researcher. I am aware of that my feed-back to the children will influence the process of their learning. In the same time the child’s expressions will be an integrated part of the research process – the child becomes a co-researcher in the process of mutual learning…

Bjørnsrud, H. (2005). Rom for aksjonsforskning - om tilpasset opplæring, inkludering og læreplanarbeid. Oslo, Gyldendal akademisk.

Carlsson, M. A. and I. Pramling Samuelsson (2006). "Lekende lærende barn." Barnehagefolk 1/2006: 66-79.

Kvale, S. and S. Brinkmann (2009). Interviews: learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing. Los Angeles, Calif., Sage.

Piazza, G. (2007). "On the wave of creativity: Children, expressive language and thechnology." International Journal of Education through Art Volume 3(Number 2): p.103-121.

Creativity in Dealing with Complexity

To be able to state something, one has to make choices about themes, angles, words ... But how to explain the complexity of what my eyes have seen and my mind can imagine, when my mouth only can speak one word… - only one sound by time? And this linearity in talking (and writing) carries a risk for simplifying...

“Good qualitative research, like art, presents us with complex reality”, says Liora Bresler. “Bad research and art, I suggest, distort in the process of oversimplification, creating stereotypes and distancing us from the world” (Bresler 2006).

I believe that, when presenting my qualitative research, I should make clear when I am aware of the complexity of the world I am studying. But to be understood, I’ll have to structure and order my thoughts and reflections - and this structuring can, on the other hand, give an impression that I am minimizing the reality, and contradicting myself!? What about constantly switching between “the big picture” and the details? …between flow and structure? Which possibilities do I really have when pushing something complex into a linear form? This will require creative thinking…

In her visual presentation on the research seminar on the 26-th of March, Ninni Sandvik used images of a female ceramic figure photographed in different physical contexts, apparently not related to the content of her verbal presentation. The images had a powerful influence on my experience, understanding and reflections: I identified with the female figure and saw myself in different research roles according to different contexts it was placed in. Ninni’s presentation was an illustration how a researcher’s creativity can stimulate audience’s aesthetic experience and deeper understanding in dealing with complex reality.

Some years ago my students had a project about creativity. Their own creativity was expressed through the project presentation: They created an ironic performance about a pre school teacher who had, for 30 years, been giving children in her kindergarten the same assignment to make Santas of cardboard rolls (those you find in toilet paper). The play culminated when an oversized toilet-paper-roll-Santa visited the teacher in her dreams…

Ninni’s presentation took place at a research seminar about ethics in kindergarten research on the 25-th and 26-th of March in Tønsberg, Norway. On the 27-th of March I attended another seminar at the University of Stockholm in Sweden. Here, a group of PhD students, mostly art teachers (in different arts), discussed qualitative research in education, and creativity. Since we all, one way or another, seemed to have experienced creative process with own body, this common understanding made a foundation for our interesting discussions. We watched a TV-program about design process in a multidisciplinary group of people and we discussed a teacher’s role in stimulating, supporting and guiding students in their creativity. We could agree on importance of teacher’s support of students’ free fantasy, playfulness, unconventional and even crazy ideas. On the other side, a teacher should be a leader that can help with obtaining required knowledge, structuring the ideas, making decisions and timing. It seems to be a need for an elegant balance between fantasy and reality, complexity and structure, possibilities and choices. Freedom of thought allows creative ideas – structure helps the ideas to come into life.

Arts and Education

Last week I attended the first part of the course Aesthetic-Based Qualitative Research, at the Stockholm University, held by the visiting professor Liora Breslar.

We were app. 20 people attending the course, almost all of us in some way involved with art education: dance, music, drama or visual arts, and some are practicing artists. We didn't know each other, but we were all there to learn, eather students at master level, or at PhD level. I've never before enjoyed a course so much, and I wonder: What made these three days so special?

The main theme was qualitative research in art education, but the issue of artistic qualities in teaching was also mentioned... or rather shown through the Liora's teaching method.

Preparing for the course, I read the first two chapters of "Number Our Days", written by Barbara Myerhoff, that Liora had suggested. I was sitting on a bus, reading... and crying, and I immediately understood that the three days with Liora Bresler would be special. The text I was reading was from a case of antropological study, written in a poetic way, but still educating, meaningful and full of wisdom. I thought: "Some researchers are artists, able to present their work in artistic ways." And there are also teachers who transform their lessons into compositions, combining planning and improvisation, or sometimes, "guided by aesthetic principles with a dramatic structure" such teachers manage to "create(-d) a meaningful artistic lesson" (to quote Liora Bresler the way she described Joe Herbert, a teacher she observed in a school in Danville - Bresler 1991) May be it was Liora's expressive way of communication that created the context for my unique experience during her lectures?

In the begynning of the class Liora asked us to pay attention to what was happening in the room - to be observers involved in a kind of micro qualitative research. This first day of the course we sat in an auditorium (the second day we were at the Moderna Museet - The Museum of Modern Art, and the third day we sat in a circle formation in a drama room at the university). Thinking about teaching as art, and knowing that Liora also is a musician, I paid attention to her voice, ways of addressing us, her body language, gestures... - multimodal communication. I noticed the rhythm of her movements: slowly walking from side to side in front of us, establishing eye contacts, and involving everyone. "It was comfortable to be included", I thought: "this way she gathers the group". At the end of the day we were asked to present our observations: Liora wanted to exemplify relations between description, interpretation and evaluation in qualitative research.

When I started to articulate my observations of Liora's rhythmical walking, a methaphor of a dog shepherding it's sheep (us, students) came out of my mouth. I immediately thought: "Oh...how could I say something like this? I actually called professor a dog!!" Later on, when we were interpreting the "shepherding attitude", I tried to shade my metaphor: "May be the metaphor is not that good", I said. "You really do not use your authority, like a shepherd would do with it's sheep. May be your movements were more like (using a methaphor from dog training again) when a dog doesn't want to come, and you run away to get it's attention?" But it was not possible to make the said unsaid. On the other hand, it seemed that Liora liked the image of a shepherd - she mentioned it a couple of times during the day: "Sometimes I even have to bite to get attention", she smiled.

Today, a week later, I believe that the way of communication at the course was of an essencial importance for my positive experience: We were invited to take part. We were laughing, having fun - and we were equal in "democratic conversations" (see my blog from the 9-th of January). We all had something to learn from each others, and something to contribute with. We were taken seriously (but, though, not in a serious way). Liora's appreciation of our contributions was honest, we all reflected together and Liora didn't hide that she was learning form us! The teaching and the respect were mutual.

I've just read an artilcle about written by Mary Fawcett and Penny Hay, abouth a project with Reggio Emilia approach in UK (Fawcett & Hay 2004), where some of findings were that respect for a child's multiple ways of expression builds it's confidence, and is a motivating force in their problem solving, cerativity and learning. We are not that different form children, after all :)


The pictured sculptures are a part of the oudoor installation PARADISE, made by Niki De Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely, placed outside the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.