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.

In Widerberg’s and Munch’s Footsteps

Each of us has a unique view on the reality. Each individual’s view is connected to real events, thus how the reality affects us depends on many personal factors… on our senses, attention, imagination, interests, emotions, experiences... Education usually pays more attention to facts from the “real world” than to students’ perceptions of it (Robinson, 2016); fortunately, this is not the case in arts education.

My research builds on the claim that each person makes/constructs/negotiates personal understandings on the behalf of embodied experiences from past and present. Motivation for learning, creating or exploring, can come from experiencing some kind of similarity between a past and a present experience. Here are examples where famous paintings matched students’ personal experiences; in the first example the students were young pre-school children age 3-5; the second example is from early childhood teacher education.

In a research project, few years ago, I accompanied a group of children to a beach. The children played in the fine sand and shallow water.  Some of the teachers took pictures and I later selected photos to show to the children later in order to help them recall their experiences. The plan was to motivate the children to paint. For that purpose examples from a Norwegian painter Frans Widerberg were to be used as inspiration, however, while I was looking through an museum catalogue for Widerberg’s exhibition the children had recently visited, I saw extraordinary resemblance between the photos and the paintings. The motives as well as compositions were identical! I was amazed! When the paintings and the photos were shown to the children one after another on a big screen, it seemed like Widerberg painted the children that day – as if he was on the beach with us (see some of the paintings here: https://www.artsy.net/show/kunstverket-galleri-frans-widerberg ). The children’s experiences of the real world merged with their art experiences. This was magic! The children could instantly sense that art can mean something to them. They experienced that art can talk directly to them and were motivated to explore their own ways of expressing through this this wordless language. Additionally, their own experiences suddenly seemed more important to themselves … since thy seemed to be important to a painter who put them on canvas in powerful colors.

In another educational setting, where I was responsible for a group of teacher students (with minimal art experience), another famous Norwegian painter Edvard Munch was to inspire the students. Actually it was another way around: the students’ own activity of drawing was to be experienced first, and Munch’s paintings were to recall their personal experiences.

We are fortunate that our campus (University College of Southeast Norway, campus Vestfold) is situated close by Åsgårdstrand, a small city where Munch used to spend his summers. His summerhouse is still there, as well is the beach visible on many of his paintings (see https://www.artsy.net/artist/edvard-munch ). The students spent a day of drawing on the beach – just like that, without any introduction to Munch, however I had first told them about the project with children and Widerberg’s painting. I wanted them to experience the place with their own senses first. The drawing assignment was a form of slowing time, allowing focused attention, dwelling and engagement of senses. Their interest for Munch paintings evolved from the fact that they literally walked in Munch’s footsteps. Their feet touched the same sandy ground… though 100 years later. The new experience – the one from art – could resonate their own multisensory embodied experiences. The past and present experiences could meet in personal, emotionally loaded insights, meaningful because they concerned them, and were not only a piece of art history to be memorized.

Munch's summer house in Åsgårdstrand

http://www.munchshus.no/en/

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

https://www.artsy.net/artist/edvard-munch     
https://www.artsy.net/show/kunstverket-galleri-frans-widerberg

Teaching and Trust

Can teaching ever be neutral and objective? I don't thinks so. The way you look at your students, the way you make them feel - everything matters for their personal growth and emerging understanding. My colleagues Anne Lise Nordbø and Fatima Cruz and I studied our own teaching in a project where we asked our students (early childhood teacher education) to improvise in performative events with 0-2 year old children. We learned that trust was essential for our students' abilities to develope their improvisational skills. We tecahers first had to earn the students' trust, before they were able to embrase the challenges we exposed them to.

Our article "Trust me, you will learn something! - Challenge and confidence in teaching improvisation" is now published in the book "Education as Jazz: Interdisciplinary Sketches on a New Metaphor", edited by Marina Santi and Eleonora Zorzi.
http://www.cambridgescholars.com/education-as-jazz

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.

Observations in Spain

When my students and I took a five-day trip to Spain this April, we experiences quite a lot. It was a cultural journey as well as an educational journey… educational in so many ways. We learned much about each other and learned how to attune to the group full of individual differences. We also had a chance to learn a bit about Spanish primary school education through observations of teaching. The school in Palencia that we visited focused on visual arts and integration of pupils with different disabilities, and was bi-lingual (which meant that two of the subjects were thought in English). Each of the students attended three school lessons, switching between the 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 grades, switching classrooms, teachers, languages (English/Spanish) and subjects. Some of classes were thought by Spanish teacher students in training.

One could wonder what one can learn from observation of a lesson in a foreign language. Oh, there was so much to be seen and understood; and if not understood, at least there is so much to wonder about; We observed the physical space, how the pupils were sitting, how the teachers interacted with them, how they got their attention, the way the lesson was organized as well as the level of pupils’ engagement. The most interesting issue that we later discussed was classroom leadership and how it appeared different from class to class, from teacher to teacher, from subject to subject. Even though the school’s overall guidelines were the same, each lesson was dependent on the specific teacher’s teaching style I relation to the specific group of pupils. The teaching seemed to be contextual and relational, and also influenced by our presence: In one of the classes the teacher decided to teach Norwegian geography and our presence was a motivating the lively third-graders.  

Another issues my students found interesting was the question of how much informal chatting and noise a teacher can accept. Some of the students experienced the classes as chaotic and fell sorry for the teachers, while other students assumed that the noise was a part of the pupils’ engagement and an expression for meaningful learning. It is, of course, impossible to say who “was right” and who “was wrong” but wondering about it facilitated a basis for reflections about own teacher role and motivated the students to imagine which kinds of teachers they aim to become.

 

The images show some of the ceiling in Burgos cathedral. 

 

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.”

Engagement in Teaching and Learning

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

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

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

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

Limited Experiences Delimit Imagination

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Bodies Communicate Attitudes

I am in Urbana again, a guest of University of Illionis and a Fulbright scholar. In 2010 I spent seven weeks here and really enjoyed the possibility to be a part of the large community of researchers where is always possible to find someone who shares my ideas about the arts, teaching and qualitative research. However, on my way to Urbana I found someone with similar interests even before I had sat my foot on the American ground. On the plane from Stockholm to Chicago I found myself sitting beside one of such people I had so much in common with! Strange coincidence, isn’t it?  We did not know about each other and before we could start our five-hours-long conversation a few other coincidences had to take place: that I placed a book I hoped to read in the pocket in from of me, that this was a book Walter Gershon (that’s my new friend’s name) recognized the book (Nachmanovitch, 1990: “Free play. Improvisation in Life and Art”), and that he did not hesitate to ask: Why are you reading that book? That is how the most interesting conversation started.

We spoke about learning in arts, we found out that we knew some of the same people and that we used much of the same literature. Somehow we begun to discuss body-language – possibly I started to talk about my horse, or Walter started to talk about his classroom interactions with teacher students. It really does not matter what we started to talk about first, in my body-mind all of my experiences, professional and private, suddenly merged; I suddenly realized how my recent interest in communication between humans and horses was relevant in understanding of communication between human.

Pay attention to how the horse trainer’s leg movement is copied by the horse. (The photography is owned by Heidi Lysdahl - the horse trainer).

Walter was talking about his experience how the inner attitude, respect and determination to lead a group of students easily gets perceived by the students; I was thinking about the course in horse-human communication that my horse and I recently attended, and how the teacher at the course (slightly intimidated by my horse’s inner strength and teenager attitude) stood still before she entered the space where the horse was running freely - She said she was working on her inner strength; Horses are extremely capable of detecting such inner strength and would adjust their attitudes accordingly. When we relate this to teacher training, a teacher student might think that it would be easy just to learn how to stand and by that control a class of young students – however this is not simple at all, particularly because it is not possible to fake. You really have to mean, end fell and know who you are and what you stand for. If you want to influence your student’s attitudes, you will first have to get to know yourself and work on your own attitudes.

Today (November 18th) I am giving a lecture that touches upon a similar issue: To be good teachers we have to know our attitudes about teaching and learning. To be good teachers of young children we need to know how they learn - And this is something we can learn from them. The title for my talk is “What Can Young Children Teach Us About Learning?”



The image of me and the horse is from Meg's Riding Academy in Homer, where I've been learning western riding style.    

A comment on the «donkey problem»

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

 

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

What Can a Donkey Teach Teacher Students?

A new study year has started at Vestfold University College. I was responsible to facilitate activities for app. 100 new students in the beginning of their early childhood teacher education on Tuesday August 27th. Wishing to give them a memorable start I planned an assignment which would challenge them to solve a real problem: design an aid that can enable a dumb donkey to communicate by sound. The problem solving activity demanded collaboration with people they had just met and establishing a good learning atmosphere was one of the aims of the group work. The assignment was also meant to function as an introduction to what it can mean to be a student and invitation to use all senses, imagination and the whole body in their learning and teaching.

The main goals were:
- To become aware of that each student’s attitude, humor, imagination, curiosity, emotions, knowledge and skills count as valuable sources in a collaborative learning processes
- To experience creativity in practice and how imagination contributes to learning
- To experience that learning is an challenging process that demands attention, persistence and investment of personal efforts; that some things can only be understood thorough engagement in an activity; that emotional attachment and genuine will to solve a problem (in this case motivated by empathy for the donkey) matters in learning;

The assignment had two main parts: First the students were asked to discuss a design of an aid for the donkey and had possibility to measure or test it. One group for instance tested the donkey’s ability to band it’s neck by putting apple pieces on the it’s back. The students were to make a drawing of the aid and explain on a poster how the aid would be used.

The second part of the assignment was to make a pedagogical plan that could be used to teach the donkey to use the aid. Such plan could be based on observation of the donkey, information about donkeys on internet, students own experiences from animal training or similar. The donkey was present during the three hours the students were working on the assignment, thus some of the students were much faster in finished the assignment - they still don’t know that assignment like this could last for days or months, depending on the level of going in-depth. One of my hopes was indeed to motivate the students to engage with assignments that their teachers plan in order to facilitate their learning. If they are eager to learn, refusing an assignment only because it seems silly is not an option. However silly (or call it creative or imaginative) it can lead to insights and experiences that could not be imagined in advance. If learning leads to new insights, how can we ever know in advance what we will come to understand? But being enriched with new experiences can last forever…

The event was covered by journalists from NRK (Norwegian national TV- channel) with a radio report, internet news and regional TV program Østafjells on august 27th (please rewind to 13 minutes and 30 seconds in the show). Though they focused mostly on the funny and cute sides of the event, the publicity was good for the new preschool teacher education, for me, and of course for donkeys.

Photo: Jan Gulliksen NRK

Pedagogical Improvisation

This spring I constantly got reminded how important ability to improvise is in teaching and life. Here, to improvise does not mean to uncritically do whatever comes to your mind (though sometimes it feels like that), but refers to the ability to attune to emerging challenges of constantly changing reality. Professional improvisation, like in teaching, is about activity that engages all knowledge, experiences and competences stored in one’s body; It is exactly because the knowledge is embodied and tacit that we can respond immediately and appropriately without having time to think… as if body acts by itself.
 
From April 18th to 27th my colleague Anne-Lise, a drama teacher and I conducted a project about pedagogical improvisation with our early childhood teacher students and a colleague from Spin, visiting professor of social psychology, Fatima Cruz. In the project pedagogical improvisation was present on two main levels: On one level the students were to prepare an improvisational theatre with 1-2 year old children; On the other level, Anne-Lise and I were improvising in our teaching and Fatima was observing us in action. In short, Anne-Lisa and I (drama and visual art teachers) gave student groups (3-4 students) some strange materials to explore. The quality “strange” means that the materials did not give the students any hints what could be done with them, but would challenge the students to wonder, discuss and explore the materials they had never seen before or had usually taken for granted. We wanted them to acquire a broad repertoire of experiences with the materials and of activities that could be done with the materials. We assumed that such repertoire would make it possible for them to respond immediately when children spontaneously entered the scene in the middle of students play. This assumption was probably made on the basis of our own experiences that two teachers from two disciplines had larger repertoire of ideas and responses.



The process of meeting the materials seem to be frustrating for the students, mostly because we demanded more and more engagement from them. We wanted them to “go into the materials” – we pushed them into the unknown, and this was probably both scary and irritating, and appeared meaningless: What was the point?

I’ll try to explain in short what the point was, but we have not finished with analysing the data and are working on an article that can give more answers; Out teacher responsibilities were to challenge the students to engage, be attentive and reflect about their experiences. If they were to expand their horizons, they had to meet challenges and not avoid them, and in order to meet the challenges they needed to be confident that they were doing “the right things”. Possibilities for successful pedagogical improvisation emerged in the overlapping between challenging the students and supporting them. In order to make them engage we had to push them, but in the same time show them that we care about them, that we are not mean. To be able to find out what the students needed exactly at the point they were in their process, Anne-Lise, Fatima and I continually discussed contemporary developments among the students and prepared our lectures and activities accordingly. Thought the intensive teaching period lasted for only five days, we were exhausted… That’s by the way one of the significant immediate findings: continual attention, reflection and pedagogical improvisation are exhausting.

A few days after the project, Anne-Lise and I, accompanied by our colleague Willy Aagre, participated at a conference at University of Padova in North Italy. The conference was called “Education as Jazz” and “International Jazz Day” (depends on how you read the creative logo).
The conference was initiated by Professor Marina Santi who, together with the colleagues, managed to prepare interesting, engaging and entertaining repertoire of lectures and musical performances.  Prof. Santi reviewed the conference with the following words: Jazz is applied as a generative metaphor in the educational field and everyday life. Jazz dimensions underline the significance of creativity, innovation, transgression, risk, transformation, adaptability, dialogue, listening, collaboration, openness and intercultural influence.'

My colleagues from Vestfold University College and I presented on the following themes:
- Anne Lise Nordbø: “The improvisation of skills or the improvisation of being together? A discourse about the concepts framing, chance and the complexities of embodied action”
- Willy Aagre: “Society meets the interests of children – The conditions for pedagogic improvisation in a progressive Norwegian school in the 1930s”
- Biljana C. Fredriksen: “The core of improvisation and invention: childhood preconditions for creative, meaningful lives”

 

The photo shows Prof. Marina Santi in dialogue with Jimmy Weinstein.

The conference carried on the themes and the debate from similar event in 2008 “Improvisation: between Technique and Spontaneity”, also organized by University of Padova. The conference from 2008 resulted in 2010 in the book “Improvisation: between technique and spontaneity” edited by Marina Santi. Another book is being planned on the basis of the 2013 conference.

Meaningful Lives for our Children?

My son was one year old when I started teaching early childhood teacher students. In the beginning of my carrier I was making efforts to develop a professional style of teaching according to curricula plans and other demands. As new in the business I thought that being professional depended on my “objectivity decisions, still, I experienced that my sense of motherhood was influencing my teacher choices; My mother-intuition made me pose the question: Would I like this student to be my son’s teacher? The intuition was some kind of continual evaluation of my students, not so much of their knowledge, but of their attitudes: Do they care about children, love them and want them to be happy? But they also have to be professional, for instance, in distinguishing between different kinds of children’s needs.
As parents, we wish best for our children - we want them to be happy and we often support them in what they want, believing that this will make them happy. But wants and needs are two different things (Noddings, 2003). Do we sometimes fulfil our children’s wants instead of their needs?

Relation between needs and wants is terribly confused in today’s word. This is a big issue which concerns schooling systems and many other sides of our societies, in short: We give our children too much of what they don’t need, and deprive them from what they do. We give them new cell phones, PC-games and other things which will satisfy their wants for a day or a week. We tell them that they are lucky for getting so much without any effort, and we feel kind, but getting much without obligations leaves them without possibility to engage and experience pride for some kind of achievement. However small, such pride could give them self-confidence and makes their life more meaningful. On the other hand, absence of commitment can demotivate their will to act and kill their initiative. How can we know what our children really need in order to have meaningful lives?

On January 31st I was invited by national “Parents’ association for preschool children” (FUB, Foreldreutvalget i barnehagen) and “Parents’ association for school children” (FUG, Foreldreutvalget i grunnskoleopplæringen) to give a lecture about my views on holistic learning. The parents’ associations have started a joined initiative they called “Whole child through education”. As I understand it, the initiative is a kind of disapproval to the present Norwegian education which, to larger extent than some years ago, focuses on measurable outcomes. If anyone can assume that quality of measurable results is equal to quality of life, parents can still sense when their children are not happy.
   
During the lecture I received a question from a concerned mother: What can parents do then their child has lost all initiative to act? I had to admit that the same question has been bothering me when I see how difficult it has become to motivate my son to do something else than sit close to a screen. To answer the question I gave an example of what I and my son did.

 

My study (se links to the right) has shown that diverse embodied activities and experiences with large varieties of physical environments, materials, things, animals etc. are essential for imaginative cognition (Efland, 2002) which connects intellectual, aesthetic, emotional and other sides of life in a holistic way. But children and youngsters do not know that they need diverse experiences. If they want to sit by a computer it is difficult to motivate them to do something else. If we try to press them to do something they don’t want, they would probably do it with hate, but not really engage, especially if what we want them to do has nothing to do with their interests.

I think that we have to be attentive in order to find the small sprouts of interest in our children. Then we should provide with further motivation, with something that can activate their body in diverse ways and engage their emotions. For instance, my son (15) for some reason likes donkeys, and I let him buy one for his own money. We didn’t have any place to keep it, but this challenge became another benefit: The donkey was bought in Serbia where my father could take care of it and this became an additional motivation for my son to visit his grandparents every holiday. Everyone is happy!

 

It also has to be mentioned that I bought a horse so that me and my son can experience all kinds of weather, landscapes, roads, cars and wild animals from our saddles. Owning a donkey constantly provides him with new challenges: how to clean the stable, how to make a Mexican style ribbon for the donkey’s forehead, how to teach the donkey to pull a cart and all other kinds of challenges which I believe he needs to engage, struggle with, master, feel needed and be happy.

Efland, A. D. (2002). Art and cognition: Integrating the visual arts in the curriculum. New York and London: Teachers College Press.

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

Article in Education Inquiry

I am proud to announce that my colleagues from Vestfold University College, and I, are responsible for the themed issue of  Education Inquiry that can be found here: http://www.use.umu.se/digitalAssets/103/103295_inquiry_vol3_nr3.pdf . The articles are based on our project where we have studied significance of space and materiality in early childhood education.

My article discusses teacher's responsibilities in providing materials and spaces for negotiation of meaning. It is based on Elliot Eisner's (2002) claim that by selecting materials, a visual art teacher can provide possibilities for certain forms of learning to take place, but cannot decide what can be learned. A few episodes with my own interaction with a three year old girl during our play with textiles are discussed in relation to the claim.


Eisner, E. W. (2002). The arts and the creation of mind. New Haven, Yale University Press.
Fredriksen, B. C. (2012). "Providing materials and spaces for the negotiation of meaning in explorative play: Teachers’ responsibilities." Education Inquiry 3(3): 331-347.

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.

Tree Huts and Bending Nails

One of outdoor activities that my international students have been dealing with this spring was building of tree huts. The activity was a part of subject “art and crafts” with extended focus on experiential learning (the name of the course is Outdoor education and experiential learning); The main “products” of the project were not the huts themselves, but the students’ collaborative processes including all kinds of experiences that could possibly emerge: experiences with nature, tools, creative ideas, group discussions, design challenges, materials’ qualities … as well as luck of appropriate tools, materials or trees with desirable branches.

Three groups, with seven students each, had seven days to build three huts with a selection of recycled planks. Each groups had hand tools, like hammers and saws, rope for assembling with living trees and nails for assembling dead wood. The trees were not to be hurt by nails, but there was still much work to be done with hammers, which seemed to be unfamiliar tool for some of the students. It’s not that the students had never used hemmers before, but when the hut building demanded improved speed and quality of nailing, and the nails kept banding, the activity became a group challenge - actually a challenge each of the groups reported later. In their presentation of the building process the students recalled how they tried to understand why the nails banded: Was the metal too soft or the wood too hard? Was something wrong with the hammer? Was it about how long one held the nail before releasing it? They discussed the angle of hammer and way of hitting the nails’ head. They made suggestions and tested new ways of solving this apparently simple problem. But the long, annoying nails kept banding – at least for two of groups. The third group reported no problems with the long nails, however they found the short nails to be impossible. This made the nail mystery even more mysterious…

Activity of nailing involves wood, nails, hammer, hand and whole body that have to negotiate one with another. The easiest excuse for not succeeding in nailing would be to blame the quality of nails, hammers or even the wood, but this would not help you improve. It is only through facing the challenge that you can learn something and achieve mastery. Nails can band for many reasons, but if you are determined to continue, you can try noticing and reflecting about what you do with your body: there are many possible ways of grasping a hammer, using muscles, head positioning, directing eyes, banding back, supporting a nail… You will be surprise how much embodied knowledge is demanded from such a simple activity; You will be amazed by how much knowledge is already stored in your body.

Apart from the nail-problem the groups reported many other challenges that provided them with fresh experiences. Hundreds of practical and aesthetic choices had to be negotiated between the participants and each of them had something unique to contribute with. The fact they were exposed to heavy materials, heights and risky tools, made them develop collective responsibility for each other’s safety. Knowing that the project depended on each of them seemed to make them motivated, proud and emotionally attached, and to make their experiences meaningful and memorable.

Artistic Process as Pedagogical Text

The day I delivered the thesis (August 1st), I was back on the same teaching job I had before the PhD-study – however teaching is never the same. My main teaching responsibilities this fall are related to two groups of students: the one in a group of 18 undergraduate art and crafts students, the other is a group of 19 master degree students studying “pedagogical texts”. One might immediately wonder: What is a pedagogical text? Am I not an A&C teacher and how does my teaching relate to pedagogical texts? These questions are more than relevant at the point when both my students and I are searching for appropriate definitions of pedagogical text that can appropriately include arts-based approach to education.

In the broad definition of “text”, as used by the researchers at Vestfold University College, a pedagogical texts is any kind of physical object that can be used in a pedagogical purpose. This, of course, includes text books, but also art materials, costumes used in drama education, or accordion used in music education. But what about a dance floor and the classroom space – are they also “pedagogical text” - or are they rather pedagogical contexts? Could anything used by a teacher in pedagogical purpose become a pedagogical text – disregarding what the pedagogical goals are? For instance, if the purpose of education is to stimulate students’ imagination, could a fairy-tale as well as a non-figurative sculpture, become a pedagogical text?

Meeting the two groups of my students, I bring with me my experiences and unanswered questions from one group to another; The group of A&C students have been exploring three-dimensional materials and reflecting about their experiences from the creative work. Many found it difficult to assign words to their aesthetic choices and intuitive actions. To inspire their future work with research on own creative work, artist-researcher Grete Refsum was invited to present her artistic processes.

Listening to Grete Refsum I was thinking about how fantastic piece of pedagogical text her presentation was: It was a pedagogical text that seemed to have helped her structure her thoughts, past ideas, feeling and experiences in order to present them. On the other hand, her presentation was a well-functioning pedagogical text addressing the students and meeting them at the point they needed examples of well documented creative processes.

Grete presented her work with 17 pictures (part of the same art work) in chronological order: from the invitation to exhibit, exploration of the specific room shape and function, choices of the themes, materials, techniques, shapes, lines, compositions and so on. While she was talking and showing images, I got more aware of the complexity of her creative process – in fact I could identify at least four different processes that seemed to exist simultaneously, and interweave:
1. The process of studying the space, the physical contexts where her art would be exhibited; She seemed to have audience on her mind while she was planning.
2. The process of background research that supported her thematic choice of combining Western religion (Christianity) and Eastern (Kina) ideology and culture. This research would lead to her choices of symbols, materials, forms;
3. The process of exploring materials, techniques and practical possibilities of composing with the specific material combinations;
4. And the process of her traveling and collecting personal experiences one might think of as separated from her art, but in fact essential for it.

When I view Grete’s lecture as a pedagogical text, I wonder where did such pedagogical text start and end; The lecture would not be possible if she had not for years worked on her art project, if she did not experience, reflect, take choices… Additionally, the pedagogical goals developed during her and mine discussion before the lecture about what the students needed. At this point, when the students got an assignment to verbalize their experiences and seemed to struggle with it, Grete’s lecture hopefully meet them at the right moment where they had experienced some challenge, but still not become too frustrated. Grete’s lecture could possibly help them to extent the zone of their proximal development, instead of giving up. This is up to them to evaluate: What do you say, my students?

Relevant link: International Association for Research on Texbooks and Educational Media (IARTEM)