Something between

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


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


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


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

Seeing and saying – matter of communication context?

Kieran Egan wrote “we all begin as poets” (Egan, 2002) using imagination in making sense of our world. Young children often amaze us with their “poetic” expressions where their metaphors “sprawl” in different directions, connecting apparently unrelated things. These metaphors might not “carry the day” (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006, p.8), but they might still reflect the world as it has been experienced by each of them. On the other side, what they see or say is probably also influenced by the contexts of communication: expectation to others, and what they might expect from one. For instance, by saying something unexpected you might get attention, show yourself off, make someone laugh – or “test” him/her!



Researching with three-year-olds, I have observed how the tiniest new-experienced details can remind them of their earlier experiences; I observed how a rhythmic sound of hammering reminded a girl of her embodied experience: “That’s my heartbeat”, she said. But each communication context is unique and it’s not possible to state just one reason why somebody says something – it’s much more complicated than that (I have learned from Robert Stake (2010) that one should be cautious addressing causality – we can never know for sure why something happens). Here is an event that made me think about a boy’s choices of what to draw, what to see and what to say.

I was a visitor in an early childhood centre. The children did not know me and I tried to observe from distance. When the joint activity ended, a 3,5 years old boy found a seat at the table close to corner I was sitting, found a piece of paper and started to draw. While he was drawing he was frequently looking at me and talking loud about the dramatic actions taking place on the drawing: There was a bad guy and a good goy. The lines over the paper, together with the energetic hand movements and the sounds he made, were indicating the good guy’s shooting on the bad guy. Somehow in the middle of the action the boy said “I” and it came out that the good guy (a super-hero) was actually himself.


The boy explained that the god guy killed the bad guy. I felt sorry for the bad guy (Or may be I simply got intrigued by the boy’s invitation to interact with him? …Or I (pedagogically-thinking) wanted to make him reflect about the act of violence he had just performed?). So I started to talk to the boy: “Oh, poor bad guy! What will his parents say when they find out that he is dead?” And he replied: “They won’t care – they are in jail!”

While the boy was verbally and visually making his story, I sometimes looked around the room to see what was going on outside our narrow conversation context. Even though the boy beside me seemed to be deeply engaged with his drawing, each time I raised my head, he immediately looked at me saying: “Don’t go!” or “Please stay!”


“May be some doctors can help him to get back to life?”- I tried again, and the boy drew an ambulance (not recognizable symbol), but he concluded: “None can help him now. He is dead! Not even a million doctors can help him!” And the good guy kept shooting, which resulted in large amount of crossing lines on the paper, until the shooting-lines had covered (almost) all evidence that any guys ever were drawn on the sheet of paper. He realized that the drawing started to look like something else. “Look, there is a spider web!”, he said. “Yes”, I said, and I noticed a little circle between the web-lines: “And here is a spider!”- I said pointing at the circle.

The boy straightened his back and looked at me seriously – almost angry: “No! That’s not a spider! That’s my penis” he said and kept looking me strait in my eyes for a long moment – as if he was testing my reaction. I tried not to look surprised and to continue the conversation: “Oh, it’s not a spider…” – but I was shocked. The boy got back to his drawing and started to draw a large, round spider with many legs, while I was trying to understand what had just happened.

The circle (the penis) could have been there all the time as a part of the drawing beneath. But the boy’s drawing of humans did not have any details, and I don’t believe that the circle was ever drawn as a symbol for a penis. Did the boy said that just to get my attention? He did not want me to go and he seemed to know which words had shocking influence on people (He might have for example experienced that if his older brother used the same word to shock their parents?)

This event can of course be interpreted in many ways – some people would, may be, get concerned about the violence, or about the boy’s vocabulary. And I, I am amazed by the boy’s communication competence – he really managed to impress me, engage my attention for more than 15 minutes, and motivate me to reflect in order to increase my understanding.


About the drawings: The boy did not want me to take picture of the drawing: “Only our teachers are allowed to take pictures!”, he said. So, the drawings presented on this blog are my son's, when he was 4 years old.

Egan, K. (2002). We begin as poets. In L. Bresler & C. M. Thompson (Eds.), The arts in children's lives: context, culture, and curriculum (pp. 93-104). Boston: Kluwer Academic.
Kress, G., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading images: the grammar of visual design. London: Routledge.
Stake, R. E. (2010). Qualitative research: studying how things work. New York: Guilford Press.

Is this how I learn?

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Journal Publishing

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


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


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

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

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

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


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

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

Congress of Qualitative Inquiry

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

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

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

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

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

The Secret Life of my Brain

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Blurring Understanding

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

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


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

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


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

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



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


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

Case (for) Studies

I am so pleased with possibility to attend Dr. Robert Stake’s case-study course (Educational Psychology 499) on Thursday afternoons! Showing up in the middle (or the end) of the course, not being familiar with the contents of the course, I try to participate as much as I can. This does not mean that I constantly undertake activities observable from the outside, but apparently passive engagement can also move and re-furnish one’s thoughts and understandings.


Getting engaged is not difficult in Dr. Stake’s classes: with variety of teaching approaches, he provides his students with possibilities for meaningful engagement and reflection. The three hours on the April 29-th seemed to be prepared to make diverse experiences possible (including diverse food tastes during the break); As an example of a self-study-case, Mr. Stake read for us poetically written essay by Loren Eiseley; To start reflections about (im-)possibilities of generalisation in case studies, he told us a fresh story from his own life; And to initiate a session of interactive, collaborative meaning making, he invited me to presented a half-imagined case study. Almost like in a “psychodrama” I played my role and the other students asked questions and gave advise to help me get closer to the core of my (imagined and borrowed) study. Little did they know that they in the same time also provided feed back on my “real study”.


Robert Stake was present on my presentation a week ago, but when we meet for a lunch, we did not directly speak about my project. Among other things, we spoke about curricula and documentation in early childhood, and I learned of his friendship with Loris Malguzzi (the founder of Reggio Emilia educational philosophy). Attentive and polite as he is, Mr. Stake did not ask many questions, but prepared some books for me to borrow as an extension of our conversation.


When we talk to someone, or present something, we always make thousands choices. What I wrote here about my meetings with Robert Stake and the three hours from the case-study-course is just a narrow selection from my experiences… and my own experience is of course completely different from experiences of others that were present that day. But what happens if someone mistakes that through my blog (research report, or conference presentation) I intend to present a “truth”? Can I ever prevent others from misunderstanding, or even misusing my words if they suffer from chronic need to generalize? Yes, I can try to express my self clearly, but how clear is possible to be would still be limited because a texts (according to Bakhtin) is always dependent on at least to participants – in addition to the text’s physical conditions and format, the present contexts … and all of the previous contexts and experiences the participants carry with them.

Communication is complicated! Writing about complex processes (as children’s meaning making is) feels like trying to wind up treads which are all tied up. If I pool too hard, they will tie worse… or tear. I know that there is a possible choice to cut them in small pieces - but then I would be disconnecting them from their original contexts, and someone would probably accuse me for simplifying…. I really need help with this! … And I am secretly hoping that my conversations with Robert Stake and other wise people would somehow help me to get out of this knot…

Connections

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

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


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

The Bricks of Urbana-Champaign

This moment, and all my moments for the next five weeks, I’ll spend in the middle of the flat Illinois, in the twin-town Urbana-Champaign (or Champaign-Urbana). They say it’s so flat, that you can watch you cat run away for three days! Scenery without mountain tops might be difficult to orient in, but is perfect for cycling and skating on rollerblades. And there is enough space for everything: buildings, green parks and trees.

The University of Illinois, founded in 1867, was situated on the border between Urbana and Champaign, but now, when the towns have merged, the university area has become the heart of the twin-town, stretching across 2 km from North to South and 1,6 km from West to East, including the green open spaces between the buildings.

I noticed that many of the buildings are made of orange bricks. The same were also the old roads in Urbana. Usually in Norway, or other places in Europe, old roads are put together as mosaics of gray cubic stones – but here, the main units were bricks, the same as used for the buildings. My son and I discussed the colours and materials of the roads and houses whiles walking through Michigan avenue - interrupted only by the threes and the sounds of their green garments while dancing to the rhythm of the wind. Where would one find enough stone to builds a road in this land of fields and soil? Clay seems to be the most natural choice to build with. Without easy transportation, one had to use what was available. (This brings me to the core of my research project: Specific qualities of the materials in our close environment, afford us with possibilities … “for good or ill” (Gibson, 1979)).

I am a visiting student (of visiting scholar) at the University of Illinois, but I don’t think that I count as one of the 42 000 student at the university – or of the 17 000 graduate students (master- and phd- students). Anyway, I am happy to be here and have possibility to learn from, and with, many successful researchers, scholars, teachers and students!

NAEA’s Convention 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Church Dialogues

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

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

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

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

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

Inside the Fog

I finished my data collection three months ago, and since then I’ve been watching the videos from my interactions with young students (3-5), and I am constantly discovering something new. My embodied experience has made it possible for me to see “from the inside” and try to understand the complexity of children’s process of meaning making. But from the inside-position, like when standing in a foggy landscape, my sight might not reach too far: Our practitioner-researchers’ own lived experience can “cloud our vision against the very complexities we seek to capture, trapped as we are in socially derived constructions of the world we experience” (Brown and Jones, 2001, p.6).

Even though it can feel lonely researching inside closed contexts, it also feels quite safe and painless being inside the barely transparent “bubble” in the beginning. But as long as I have just my own eyes to see with … my own head to think with, and there is none there to help me sharpen my sight, I can (often unconsciously) overlook what I don’t want to see. Liora Bresler suggested once that I should let my colleagues take a look on my data with fresh sight and clear mind… oh, no, she probably did not say “clear mind” - but with their mind highly influenced by their professional focuses and personal understandings. And this is what I did:

• asked the children’s parents if my colleagues could watch the videos form my interactions with their children (two children by time)
• applied and got permission from Norwegian Social Science Data Service to show my data to my colleagues
• asked some of my closest colleagues to watch the videos with me and comment on them
• chose and edited some video-parts (the selections were made according to what I needed to get comments on, as well as according to my colleagues’ interest areas: drama, language, pedagogy, social science, qualitative research)
• placed a projector, a large screen and a camera to film the two events (This way I could later watch the collaboration meetings in order to note the feedback on my research, but one could also watch the events in order to learn form, and about, the improvisational style of meaning making that took place when many insightful people shared their thoughts.)

Liora Bresler says that collaborative, team research, involves improvisation and that it “emphasizes interdependent voices and diversity of perspectives within a connected group” (Bresler, 2006). My colleagues interpreted my data in variety of ways, helped me to see new details, and, what I found the most important, they questioned my ways of understanding. They could, of course, not see the way I could see… and I realized that my ways of seeing have also changed over the last months. The collaboration meetings made me more conscious about the process I’ve been through, and thought me that I will have to work hard to uncover the layers of my new embodied knowledge if I want others to see through the fog….

BRESLER, L. (2006) Embodies Narrative Inquiery: A Mehodology of Connection. Research Studies in Music Education, 27, 21-43.

BROWN, T. & JONES, L. (2001) Action research and postmodernism: congruence and critique, Buckingham, Open University Press.

Documentation or Mapping - different points of view

Some time ago I was asked to give a talk about documentation in early childhood education. I was prepared to talk about documentation as a pedagogical tool for learning about own practice, but a week before the talk I got an e-mail saying something like this: “We are looking forward to hear you talk about mapping of children’s competence...” I got confused: What was I actually supposed to talk about?!

I made a call to the organizer of the seminar for about 300 practitioners, and was told that I had to say something about mapping because the purpose of the seminar was to start implementation of a new strategic plan for the community which, among other things, focused on mapping of children’s competence. So, I decided to talk about my understanding of the two phenomena: “competence mapping” and “pedagogical documentation” with hope that this would initiate discussion and reflection about ways to understand, and perform, the concepts.

From my studies with children I have experienced how easy it is to make quick judgement about their competence if we do not see ourselves as significant for the meaning making that takes place at the very moment. Meaning is made in a curtain context and communication with young children is highly intersubjective. Therefore can “results” of mapping lose their meaning when they are interpreted separated from the contexts; The “results” can be misleading and even set the child’s self-confidence, motivation, and understanding of social relations, at risk.

Dewey wrote that “life goes on in an environment; not merly in it but because of it, through interaction with it” (Dewey, 2005, p.12), (Environment is understood as both about physical and social.). People make meaning through intersubjective relations with each others in given contexts (Bruner, 1990, Bakhtin and Slaattelid, 2005), and communication contexts have enormous influence on what we say and how we say it (Halliday in Maagerø, 2005). It means that when we meet a child for mapping, even if we are highly careful not to show our expectations, the reason we meet in itself will influence the context and the child’s expectations, feelings and “the results”; Not to mention how our tone of voice, body language and choice of the words can practically decide what the child’s answer will be.

I believe that the largest difference between pedagogical documentation and competence mapping is in our way of seeing ourselves in relation to the “results”. Are we aware of that “results” sometimes say more about us and the pedagogical work a child has been exposed to, than about the child’s competence? If we see “results” as dependent of the child only, it would be so easy to blame the child and deny own responsibility! On the other hand, if our aim is to learn about own pedagogical practice, if we observe carefully and reflect about any kind of “results”, we might have a chance to improve our practice. And instead of comparing children to each other, we would have possibility to respect them as they are, with all their individualities and “personal signatures” (Eisner, 2002) they affects the world around them!

Dewey, J. (2005) Art as experience, New York, Berkley Publishing Group.
Eisner, E. W. (2002) The arts and the creation of mind, New Haven, Yale University Press.
Maagerø, E. (2005) Språket som mening: innføring i funksjonell lingvistikk for studenter og lærere, Oslo, Universitetsforl.

3D-materials’ Resistance and Challenge

Long time ago I watched my son building with Lego-blocks. At that moment, building in height seemed to be one of the main challenges he faced and he was using whatever was possible to stack on the top of each other – even pigs and palms!

A week ago I experienced a massive sculpture carved in Norwegian stone Larvikitt by Martin Kuhn (in cooperation with Makoto Fujiwara) and placed as a part of the Norwegian peace monument in Sarajevo (Norsk Fredsmonument i Sarajevo). Can you imagine which kind of challenge it can be to re-shape the hard surface of the solid rock with you hands? - and to transport its 30 tons 1800 km away?

Today I analyse what “my” early childhood students did in contexts where they played with 3D-materials. What happened when the materials surprised them with their resistance? How eager were they to take action when the materials’ qualities challenged them?

Some of the children, when they discovered a new quality of a material, seemed to be curious and motivated to different kinds of activities towards the material (jumping on it, lifting it, crawling through…). But the materials’ resistance also initiated activities in their mind when they tried to understand – to make meaning of the new experiences.

Elliot Eisner wrote: “Constrains and affordances emerge in any selection of tasks and materials. These tasks and materials constitute what it is that the student will need to “get smart about”. Getting smart, in this context, means coming to know the potential of the materials in relation to the aims of project or problem; and since each material possesses unique qualities, each material requires the development of distinctive sensibilities and technical skills. (Eisner, p.72).”

With another words, our environment offers us possibilities and limitations to learn through interactions with it. The selection of 3D-materials for student activities in early childhood and schools will therefore also be “the selection of an array of forces that will influence how students will be challenged to think” (Eisner 2002, p. 72).

Eisner, E. W. (2002). The arts and the creation of mind. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Growing with hand crafts

Bascarsija is the old centre of Sarajevo (Bosnia Herzegovina) where people for centuries have been crafting metals, wool and leather. The community is still alive, but only a few people still live of weaving or hitting with a hammer. In one of the traditional shops I noticed two children playing around a table with large, heavy plate of lead. The plate was soft - hammer and other tool would easily leave marks on the strong but vulnerable surface. The plate’s specific quality provides the necessary support for forming copper, silver and even golden plates, each by individual unique design.

The children’s father told me that the craft is slowly dying out. He himself has learned the craft from his father and his father from his grandfather, and so on. The sounds and smells form his childhood have remained in his life. He doubts that he would ever choose this occupation without his experience from the childhood. The childhood experiences seem to have provided him with interest, appreciation, love… and will to continue… He told me that he still had much to learn about crafting plates and coffee cans, even though he has literally been learning by doing for the last 16 years.

I left the shop while the children were still playing, and entered a large open marked with thousands of scarves and carpets form India, Iran and Turkey: It was such a colourful sight, pleasant for eye and hand. The shop assistant spoke with devotion about materials’ qualities and origin, about different techniques and time it takes to make a single carpet in traditional hand craft. We ended (again) in talking about childhood: He was brought up in a village in Iran, surrounded by aunts and grandmothers who were constantly spinning wool, colouring, and weaving… I believe that his early experience of qualities had given him possibility to develop differentiated perception, aesthetic attention and passion to study arts history … and handle the textiles between hands.

You need an open mind

These days I am helping Norwegian criminal police with interpretation, during their work on a case of serious crime. And during the evenings I work on another form of interpretation: analyzing my conversations with children. No wonder my friends policemen and I often discuss communication. And when we talk about communication, I relate our talks to my conversations with children, and they relate them to interrogations with criminals and victims. It is incredible how many issues are the same.

Since our choices of words depend on the communication context, the purpose and the function of the conversation (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004), these two forms of interpretation: trying to make meaning out of conversations with children, and transfer of meaning to another language, will have to be different.

If I need to understand a sentence before I am able to transfer it to another language, it means that such transfer can never be completely neutral and independent of me. My voice and body language, as well as my cultural understanding will color the interpretations.

Listening seems to be a good way of learning how to improve own forms of communication. We asked a victim of war: What does it take to tell about humiliation one has been exposed to, even if shame is unbearable? He, an old man, told us that people of course are different, but for him it takes time to establish confidence in an empathic, kind person who wants to listen without prejudice. Like young children, he also seems to be highly sensitive to facial expressions, body language, eye contact and tone of voice. In the relation with the one who listens, he would look for respect, care and interest that could motivate him to share his terrible experience. To be able to tell, he would have to be confident that the person who listens is open-minded and will try to understand.

Bruner wrote that “open-mindedness is the keystone of what we call a democratic culture” (Bruner, 1990, p.30). Only when we are open-minded we can truly listen with empathy, see each person’s uniqueness and learn from each other.

Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar. London: Arnold.
Bruner, J. S. (1990) Acts of meaning, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.