Providing materials and spaces for the

Transcription

E D U C AT I O N
INQUIRY
Volume 3, No. 3, September 2012
CONTENT
Editorial
THEMATIC SECTION
Gunvor Løkken & Thomas Moser Space and materiality in early childhood pedagogy
– introductory notes
Solveig Nordtømme Place, space and materiality for pedagogy in a kindergarten
Biljana C. Fredriksen Providing materials and spaces for the negotiation of meaning
in explorative play: Teachers’ responsibilities
Anne Lise Nordbø Mind the gap! Creating a community between teacher-actors
and toddler-spectators in a performative event
Astrid Granly & Eva Maagerø Multimodal texts in kindergarten rooms
Nina Odegard When matter comes to matter – working pedagogically with junk materials
OPEN SECTION
Anna-Lena Østern Supervision by an artist creating a poetic universe as a reference
in the development of aesthetic approaches to pedagogical supervision
Göran Widding Keep a-knocking (but you can’t come in): The issue of passing by
the gatekeeper and gaining linguistic access to qualitative research fields
Eva Skåreus Disrupting the picture: Reflections on choices, resistance and
consequences in a pre-study
Kristiina Brunila From risk to resilience. The therapeutic ethos in youth education
Umeå School of Education
Umeå University
Sweden
E D U C AT I O N I NQ U I RY
Education Inquiry is an international on-line, peer-reviewed journal with free access in the field of
Educational Sciences and Teacher Education. It publishes original empirical and theoretical studies
from a wide variety of academic disciplines. As the name of the journal suggests, one of its aims is
to challenge established conventions and taken-for-granted perceptions within these fields.
Education Inquiry is looking for lucid and significant contributions to the understanding of
contextual, social, organizational and individual factors affecting teaching and learning, the links between these aspects, the nature and processes of education and training as well as research in and
on Teacher Education and Teacher Education policy. This includes research ranging from pre-school
education to higher education, and research on formal and informal settings. Education Inquiry
welcomes cross-disciplinary contributions and innovative perspectives. Of particularly interest are
studies that take as their starting point, education practice and subject teaching or didactics.
Education Inquiry welcomes research from a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches, and invites studies that make the nature and use of educational research the subject of inquiry.
Comparative and country-specific studies are also welcome.
Education Inquiry readers include educators, researchers, teachers and policy makers in various
cultural contexts.
Every issue of Education Inquiry publishes peer-reviewed articles in one, two or three different
sections. Open section: Articles sent in by authors as part of regular journal submissions and published after a blind review process. Thematic section: Articles reflecting the theme of a conference or
workshop and published after a blind review process. Invited section: Articles by researchers invited
by Education Inquiry to shed light on a specific theme or for a specific purpose and published after
a review process. Education Inquiry is a continuation of the Journal of Research in Teacher Education, which is
available in printed copies as well as electronic versions and free access at http://www.use.umu.se/
forskning/publikationer/lof/
Editors
Professor Nafsika Alexiadou, Umeå University, Sweden
Assistant Professor Linda Rönnberg, Umeå University, Sweden
The editorial board
Professor Marie Brennan, Victoria University, Australia
Professor Bernard Cornu, Directeur de la Formation – CNED, Directeur de CNED-EIFAD, France
Professor Per-Olof Erixon, Umeå University
Professor David Hamilton, Umeå University, Sweden
Professor Brian Hudson
Professor Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Professor Martin Lawn, University of Edinburgh, UK
Assistant Professor Eva Lindgren, Umeå University, Sweden
Professor Lisbeth Lundahl, Umeå University, Sweden
Assistant Professor Linda Rönnberg, Umeå University, Sweden
Professor Kirk Sullivan, Umeå University, Sweden
Associate Professor Manya Sundström, Umeå University, Sweden
Professor Gaby Weiner, University of Edinburgh, UK
Professor Pavel Zgaga, University of Ljubliana, S
lovenia
Language Editor
Murray Bales, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Guidelines for Submitting Articles
See Education Inquiry’s homepage: http://www.use.umu.se/english/research/educationinquiry
Send Manuscripts to: [email protected]
©2012 The Authors. ISSN online 2000-4508
Editorial
Nafsika Alexiadou & Linda Rönnberg, Editors
Every issue of Education Inquiry publishes peer-reviewed articles in one, two or three
different sections. In the Open section, articles are sent in by authors as part of regular
journal submissions and published after a blind review process. In the Thematic section, articles may reflect the theme of a conference or workshop and are published after
a blind review process. The Invited section feature articles by researchers invited by
Education Inquiry to shed light on a specific theme or for a specific purpose and they
are also published after a review process. This issue of Education Inquiry contains a
Thematic and an Open section.
Thematic section
The thematic section in this issue focuses on the physical environment of kindergartens and the ways in which children and teachers interact with it and make meaning
through these interactions. In the Introductory Notes, Gunvor Løkken and Thomas
Moser discuss in detail the concepts of ‘materiality’ and ‘space’ and present the ways
in which they are used within a research project that has generated the rich data
presented in the articles of the thematic section. Using a multitude of data collection
techniques that draw on ethnographic approaches to researching kindergarten cultures, the authors explore various aspects of pedagogy and meaning-making modes
through the use of materials and space, and the roles that actors (teachers and children) play within them.
In the first article, Solveig Nordtømme employs a socio-cultural theoretical approach to learning and understanding culture in her research of children’s play,
participation and exploration. In considering children as active agents who construct
their social space through interactions with the materials around them, she explores
the processes of personal and social identity creation.
In an arts-based study, Biljana Fredriksen researches the role of teachers in developing curricula as lived materials that instigate children’s learning. In this article,
materiality is approached through its relational quality and capacity to produce social
relations and social knowledge through the constant negotiation of meaning.
Anne Lise Nordbø looks at space through performance and the democratic potential of educating very young children via the use of drama and the interactions
involved in nonverbal communications between toddlers and performing adults. The
ideas of embodiment and inter-subjectivity are used to illustrate the capacity of using
performative events and drama pedagogy as effective and creative ways of enhancing
learning through action.
In the next article, Astrid Granly and Eva Maagerø encourage us to think of the
pedagogical potential of the multimodal text culture that exists in kindergartens in
297
Norway and beyond. Their research of three kindergartens uses video observations,
photographs, field notes, documents and interviews with teachers and children, which
are analysed through social semiotics and systemic functional linguistics. They argue
for a new understanding of semiotic resources (building designs, language and visual
images) as key pedagogic resources.
Finally, Nina Odegard gives a fresh perspective to our approach to ‘junk’ materials
through her research on the use and of recycled or rejected items that kindergarten
teachers use. Based on practitioner focus groups and text documentation, she argues
that junk materials provide opportunities to young children for both material and
discursive encounters that open up possibilities for creative action and empowerment.
Drawing on the ideas of “heterotopia” and “lines of flight”, junk materials provide
the space to children to name and define what they do, and frees them from the expectations of production that usually accompany more traditional construction play.
Open section
We have four papers in the open section. Anna-Lena Østern starts this section with an
exploration of the potential of artistic supervision as a pedagogical and collaborative
process. Drawing from micro ethnographic data that include video analysis, interviews
and logs, she presents the creative capacity of co-production through improvisation as
part of the supervision discourse and practice. Using multimodal theory, she stresses
the potential of various modes of expression to be equally significant for meaning
making and communication, and argues for such an approach to revitalise traditional
ideas about supervision sessions.
Our second article in this section deals with a well-known problem of accessing
research sites. Göran Widding starts with the assumption that access is not only an
issue of communication strategy, but is also a problem conceptually embedded in the
research design and practice. Thus, after reviewing the methodological literature on
“access as communication”, he applies consensus and conflict perspectives on access
through the work of Naomi Scheman and Jurgen Habermas. The discussion reveals
the highly complex nature of ‘gaining access’ to research sites, and aims to provide
a helpful guide that goes beyond the practical and obvious steps towards ensuring a
successful entry to the research field.
Eva Skåreus deals with a similar issue in her article on “choices, resistance and
consequences” during pilot studies. The author draws on her experiences of designing
a ‘pre-study’ involving student-teachers in Art and Media, around the topic of gender
and emotions in the “education practice of Art”. She reflects on the difficulties of obtaining willing participants for her research. The discussion around the researchers’
choices and the potential participant’s resistance is theorised through the application
of power and gender perspectives, and within the framework of the cultural politics of
emotions. The resulting discussion raises questions about the nature of the scientific
knowledge that is produced, and the power potential that underpins it.
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Finally, in her article on ‘therapeutic education in Finland’ Kristiina Brunila offers
a sharp critique of the rising phenomenon of the use of therapeutic interventions as
solutions to the problems faced by young adults on the margins of society. Using a
Foucauldian approach and rich empirical data, Brunila describes the process of “subjectification” where the subjects of the discourse (in this case disadvantaged young
people) end up adopting the discourses used by their ‘project workers’. The process
– when deemed successful – results in young people attributing their problems to
their own failure to engage with the system and take advantage of the opportunities
offered. This internalisation of problems deflects from any critical engagement with
ideas of social and economic problems having different roots and origins, and hence
requiring more radical solutions than a re-working of the ‘self ’.
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T H E M AT I C
SECTION
301
302
Education Inquiry
Vol. 3, No. 3, September 2012, pp. 303–315
EDU.
INQ.
Space and materiality in early
childhood pedagogy – introductory
notes
Gunvor Løkken* & Thomas Moser**
This issue of Education Inquiry includes a thematic section with five articles about
different aspects of the physical environment in Norwegian early childhood education
institutions (kindergartens). The contributions represent five out of nine sub-projects
in a research project entitled Kindergarten space – materiality, learning and meaning making – The importance of space for kindergarten’s pedagogical activities
conducted at Vestfold University College (VUC) funded by the Norwegian Research
Council (SHP-Strategic University College Programme). The authors are all members
of the Kindergarten Space Research group at VUC and the contributions are united
by an overall interest in exploring different dimensions of space and materiality in
kindergartens. The project was led by Professor Thomas Moser in cooperation with
Professor Gunvor Løkken and Associate Professor Solveig Østrem.
Space and materiality in Early Childhood Education and Care
(ECEC)
There is a growing consensus that the physical properties in early childhood education
and care institutions (ECEC institutions) can contribute essentially to children’s wellbeing, development, learning and growth. This assumption appears in educational
(Clark, 2010; Gulløv & Højlund, 2006; Krogstad, Hansen, Høyland & Moser, 2012;
Moser, 2007; Nordin-Hultman, 2004; Rasmussen, 2006), architectural (Buvik, 2004;
Dudek, 2005; Dudek, Baumann & Henz, 2007) and more geographical and socialscience oriented literature (Bjørklid, 2005; Spencer & Blades, 2006). Even if space
and materiality by no means are new topics in ECEC, as we know both from Fröbel
and Montessori, there still is a lack of research concerning the particular importance
and meaning of space in educational processes (Kampmann, 2006).
*Vestfold University College, Faculty of Education and the Humanities, Department of Pedagogy, Norway. E-mail: gunvor.
[email protected]. **Vestfold University College, Faculty of Education and the Humanities, Department of Practical, Physical
and Aestetic Education, Norway. E-mail: [email protected]
©Authors. ISSN 2000-4508, pp. 303–315
303
Gunvor Løkken & Thomas Moser
In our research group space is understood as the physical environment constituting
kindergartens as educational institutions, including indoor and outdoor areas, buildings, the architectural design of landscapes, buildings and rooms, fixed installations,
furniture and other removable artefacts, as well as elements that contribute to the
aesthetic design of the institutions (Krogstad, Hansen, Høyland & Moser, 2012). This
understanding also contains the term materiality. The concept of materiality refers to
the physical qualities of artefacts and elements of nature and thus partially overlaps
with the concept of space. Attention is directed particularly to the artefact’s nonsymbolic (i.e. material) meaning to human experience and action (Dante, 2005). Of
particular importance for the present project is the sensory and experiential attributes
of things, and thus the materiality impact on bodily (sensory motor) experiences.
On the other hand, use of the terms space and materiality is legitimised not only
by the physical properties; it contains more. The thought of space as a context for
education, well-being, learning and development (Moser, 2007), and people’s experience and use of the environment, adds an individual and subjective dimension to
the term that requires a complex approach embracing both material and meaning.
Also in architecture interest in the more functional and intentional aspects of
buildings has grown recently. For instance, the concept of the usability of buildings
describes the extent to which a physical environment can be used by individuals and
groups to achieve specified goals, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context
(Hansen, Blakstad & Knudsen, 2009). In this context, an interesting relation between an architectural and educational perspective on space appears: Focusing on
usability as a social construction that is related to users’ experience of buildings is
highly relevant for a subject-oriented educational perspective (Clark, 2010; NordinHultman, 2004).
Further, the individual and social meaning of artefacts or, more precisely, the
relation between humans and things as expressed in the conception of materiality,
and the impact of things on experience and action (Gulløv & Højlund, 2006; Kraglund, 2005; Kraglund & Otto, 2005), opens up the more complex understanding of
the physical environment as a multi-disciplinary juncture. The fact that the concept
of materiality was recently included even in post-modern theories (Barad, 2003;
Taguchi, 2010) can provide for the possibility of a better and deeper understanding
of children’s psychosocial processes in ECEC institutions and of how the physical
world is becoming an important structural context for the creation of meaning and
identity, belonging and autonomy. Space is experienced through the senses involving
the whole body. It is the body that creates and recreates space (e.g. Larsen, 2006)
and thereby also opens and limits experiential and action space for the individual
child, groups of children, individual staff and staff groups. Seeing the body in relation to space and materiality and accepting that individual and collective values
are expressed in things (Kraglund & Otto 2005) addresses educationally significant
issues like power and power relations (who controls, who is in charge of space and
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Space and materiality in early childhood pedagogy – introductory notes
things), gendering (which spaces and materials have gender-specific attraction and
affinity) and cultural inclusion/exclusion (are space and things fairly and equitable
accessible by all children?).
In general, an analytical distinction between a psychosocial and physical understanding of the physical environment (Kampmann, 2006) seems relevant and fruitful
for educational practice, especially if research approaches to space and materiality are
multidisciplinary and holistic and thereby may produce in-depth knowledge based
on empirical data from real life. In addition to the physical dimension, space as well
as materiality is always constituted through the action and meaning making of the
actors in the institutions and the organisation of educational activities in space and
time (Aasebø & Melhuus, 2005). Nordin-Hultman (2004) claims that kindergartens
may need more “action space” where children can find meaning in activities or play
of their own choice.
Thus, the overall purpose of our research was to investigate how individual, social
and physical spaces are related to each other, and how these relations may inhibit
and promote children’s expression, meaning making and learning.
An inquiry into place, space and materiality in Norwegian
ECEC institutions
The project Kindergarten space – materiality, learning and meaning making – The
importance of space for kindergarten’s pedagogical activities started in autumn
2009 and finished in summer 2012. The two main purposes of this research project
are: (1) to develop knowledge about the importance of educational relevant dimensions of kindergarten’s physical spaces and materials, how spaces are designed and
organised and what activities and learning these spaces are inviting to; and (2) to
develop knowledge and understanding of children’s active participation in giving
meaning to and creating kindergarten spaces and materials.
A total of 13 researchers from different academic disciplines contributed to the
project, including pedagogy, drama, mathematics, physical education, Norwegian
language, religion and ethics, and arts and craft. Five contributions from four disciplines are presented below, two from pedagogy (Nordtømme; Odegard) and one
each from drama (Nordbø), arts and crafts (Fredriksen) and Norwegian language
(Granly & Maagerø).
Methodologically, the projects are similar in that all of them apply qualitative
research methods and are conducted in one or a few institutions. Most of them use
some kind of visual documentation for generating the empirical material. One study
(Nordtømme) can be categorised as ethnographic by using observation (transcription
of field notes) and photos, while another study (Fredriksen) has some ethnographic
features but mainly represents an action research design. The latter also applies to
Nordbø’s case study. Both Fredriksen and Nordbø mainly use video footages supplemented by field notes. Fredriksen also carries out a computer-supported analysis
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of the material. Granly and Maagerø visited three kindergartens several times using
different methods for data generation, including visual documentation (photo and
video), interviews with staff and children, field notes and document analysis. The last
contribution (Odegard) applies discourse analysis and the deconstruction of transcribed conversations in focus groups of preschool teachers about their experiences
of pedagogical work with children and junk material.
Solveig Nordtømme’s study Place, space and materiality for pedagogy in a
kindergarten explores how kindergarten spaces and materiality can be vital to children’s exploration of participation. It also inquires how the physical environment
enables children to interact and position themselves in play and meaning making.
Nordtømme’s study is based on ethnographic fieldwork with two groups of 2- to
5-year-old children in two Norwegian kindergartens during a period of two months.
The methodological framework is based on a point of view that considers children as
body-subjects that seek meaning. Socio-cultural perspectives of learning and meaning
making and Bourdieu’s reflections on social fields and power relations also accompany
the study. The main findings of this study describe how children create meaning and
spaces both within and outside of pedagogically staged spaces, and how materiality
creates power relations and interplay with the actors.
Biljana C. Fredriksen’s article Providing materials and spaces for the negotiation
of meaning in explorative play: Teachers’ responsibilities is based on a qualitative, arts-based and cross-disciplinary study that aimed to understand how young
children (ages 3–5) negotiate meaning while playing with tangible materials. The
analysis shows that the qualities of the materials were important determinants of
the content of the children’s learning and that the teacher’s attitude to explorative
play was a precondition for their students’ taking part in negotiations of meaning. In
certain contexts, the teachers made materials available but focused on the process
rather than the outcomes. These contexts developed into spaces where the curricula
developed constantly through negotiations among the materials, the children and
the teacher. Fredriksen discusses the teacher’s role in providing physical and social
spaces for the negotiation of meaning and curriculum development. Addressing
the concepts of pedagogical improvisation, curricula-as-lived and intersubjectivity in instruction, this article interrogates the diverse competencies of the teacher
but focuses primarily on the visual arts teacher’s discipline-specific knowledge of
visual arts materials.
Anne Lise Nordbø‘s contribution Mind the gap! Creating community between
teacher-actors and toddler-spectators in a performative event is based on an inquiry
into the framing of artistic effects in space. It also addresses the interactions between
two-year-old children and adult performers. The aim of her study is to analyse staging
strategies for the benefit of interaction as a participatory and democratic learning
process. The empirical sources consist of video footage, observations and notes from
the actor-teachers who performed with the toddlers in two small groups. Nordbø
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discusses how the traditional communication gap between actor and audience can be
surmounted. The study is a crossover between performance art and drama pedagogy,
which Nordbø characterises as an interactive scenic playground. She discusses how
toddlers can be active participants in performance art by employing the materials.
She also discusses the actions used by skilled kindergarten teachers. Specifically,
these actions include clearly expressing expected intentions, bodily behaviours and
social interactions. The results of the study reveal the children’s sensory and embodied nonverbal contributions to performative meaning making as they interact
with both textiles and people, and thereby grow into a performative community. The
study reveals that the interactions of toddlers with performers challenge dramaturgy
and actors.
In the article Multimodal texts in kindergarten rooms, Astrid Granly and Eva
Maagerø provide an overview of the results of their project “The Kindergarten Room:
A Multimodal Pedagogical Text”. They investigate what the multimodal texts in
kindergarten represent and the extent to which they reflect and provide attributions
to the children’s activities. In addition, they studied whether texts on kindergarten
walls and floors can be called pedagogical texts, and whether these texts establish
a particular text culture. Their empirical material consists of video observations,
photographs, field notes, interviews with children and teachers national and local
documents collected in two of the kindergartens and photographs in the third. The
authors’ analytical approach is situated within the theoretical framework of Michael
Halliday’s social semiotics and systemic functional linguistics. A kindergarten room
is a composite design that spatially utilises the co-deployment of various semiotic
resources, such as architecture, language and visual images, and is thus viewed as
a multimodal text. The multimodal analysis is based on the work of Kress and van
Leeuwen. This study reveals a meaning potential and thus contributes to the body
of knowledge regarding the factors that influence the composition of kindergarten
rooms.
Nina Odegard’s contribution When matter comes to matter – Working pedagogically with junk materials reports from her study entitled “When matter comes to
matter: Recycled materials as a pedagogic idea”. The article is theoretically based on
an inter-disciplinary understanding of the concept of materiality. The study highlights
a number of theoretical-philosophical perspectives, discussed in relation to the findings. The findings are elicited by analysing conversations in a focus group of seven
people from preschool and school staff about their experiences of working with junk
materials together with children. The group conversations are based on photographs
and/or texts linked to the children’s encounter with junk materials. One of the findings is the clear expectations of defining or naming what children make when they
use junk materials to construct art works. The article forms a dialogue with Christina
MacRae (2011), revealing similar results.
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Theoretical approaches to the inquiry into place, space and
materiality
Which theoretical approaches are appropriate to the inquiry of space and materiality
in early childhood pedagogy? To analyse this question, in this section we take a closer
look at the theoretical perspectives that played a more active role in the five studies.
Nordtømme sets out from Fröbel’s pioneering view of space and materiality as being
vital to pedagogy. Space and materiality reflect ideas about children and child pedagogy. As we know, Fröbel materialised his view in play gifts (toys). Nordtømme makes
explicit how the concept of place, seen as the concrete location in which children’s
actions are displayed, underlies and corresponds to the concepts of space and materiality. The space of a certain place is created both physically by the visible architecture
of the concrete place, and socially by the (partly invisible) relations unfolding in such
a place. In accordance with several studies, e.g. Otto (2005), the materiality of play
materials, tools and toys is seen as socially interacting with humans, by providing
opportunities, power and limits for human action. As such, space, materiality and
social interaction are entwined. Accordingly, Nordtømme sees space and materiality
as invitational and inspirational to children’s activities and thus essential for children’s experiences, meaning making and positioning in play and interaction. The
physical and social space will change and transform according to children’s embodied
activity with concrete material in a specific place and situation. Children are doing
space through play. With reference to Lave and Wenger (2003), this view of space
and materiality links well with socio-cultural theories of situated participation and
learning. Embedded in narratives from observed social and material play practices,
Nordtømme highlights crucial ingredients in children’s processes of meaning making
and learning, power and positioning. Nordtømme argues that these processes also
concern the creation of personal, social and cultural identities. In other words, the
doing of space and materiality moves on several levels in children’s lives.
The pedagogical significance of situational interaction between space, materiality
and humans is made explicit in Fredriksen’s study as negotiation. Fredriksen focuses
on teachers’ responsibilities to provide materials and space for the negotiation of meaning in children’s explorative play, and especially on the unpredictability involved in
these processes. Fredriksen draws especially on aesthetically inspired theory, like that
of Bresler (1994; 2006) and Eisner (2002). These approaches argue for the ability of
materials to provoke students’ learning. The radical intersubjectivity of the studentteacher relationship (Aspelin, 2010) is seen as entwined with the teaching style as well
as the provoking materials. This also fits with the more general socio-cultural view of
the importance of acquiring knowledge through dialogic interaction (Bruner, 1990),
and through the continuous negotiation of meaning (Fredriksen, 2011) as speaking
bodies and body-minds (Dewey, 1925). With reference to Merleau-Ponty (1994) and
Shusterman (2008), Fredriksen asserts the role of the knowing body in these processes.
One consequence of these perspectives is that knowledge is constructed by negotiation
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rather than transferred from teacher to student. In this light, Fredriksen underlines
that the resistance of materials interacting with the human body that negotiates with
it turns out to be especially productive for the children’s ability to make meaning.
Enlightened by Aspelin (2010), Fredriksen’s conclusion is that what really matters is
between – materials and human beings as well as between humans.
Extending the concern with the importance of what happens between, Nordbø’s inquiry of the community between teacher-actors and toddler-spectators in a performative event is enlightened in particular by the theatre analytic theory of Fischer Lichte
(2008) and performance theory of Schechner (2006). As these approaches are viewed
to mind the gap between theatre performers and audience, Nordbø applies them to
reduce such a gap between teacher-actors and toddler observers of performances.
Interaction in this gap is linked to staging strategies, the actions of skilled practitioners (Molander, 2008) and educational democratic encounters (Biesta, 2006). What
Fischer-Lichte calls a feedback loop is the exchange that goes on when the audience
response is answered by teacher-actors, vocally, embodied or by some other expression. The loop can halt, break or continue in between actor, audience and event, and
thereby extend the response as well as inspire the dramaturgy. In such an exchange,
role reversals between observers and actors are included, depending on careful hearing
and listening and on presence in a particular place, seen as a space-time environment
(Power, 2008). In Nordbø’s study, feedback loop and role reversals are the active staging strategies that form the performance community of the space-time environment
of a scenic playground. This phenomenal space is linked in particular by the specific
material of a large piece of blue plastic.
The pervading characteristic of the three studies commented on so far is the
theoretical concern with how to understand what happens in between educational
processes, be it in the discipline of pedagogy (Nordtømme), visual art (Fredriksen)
or performance art (Nordbø). In these studies, the phenomenon of between is named
as social, dialogic and situational interaction, as participation, play practices and
meaning making, and as construction, negotiation and positioning. Further, what
happens between also concerns exchanges of feedback loops and role reversals,
seeing, hearing and answering, and presence in a space-time environment. Special
materials can also provoke and link relational learning processes and experiences.
Moreover, children’s active participation in processes of constructing what is going
on and of what is to come in peer play as well as in explorative play with teacherattended materials and teacher-staged performative events, points in the direction
of democratic experiences and practices. Certainly the three studies also confirm
the entwinement of place, space, materiality and human action. How should we
name this entwinement when it is pervaded and linked by the significance of what
happens between various elements as shown in actual studies? Could it perhaps be
a notion of betweening as ways of minding the gaps involved in doing place, space
and materiality in human life?
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If so, what would be the betweening of multimodal texts in kindergarten rooms, as inquired by Granly and Maagerø? In viewing kindergarten walls and floors as pedagogical
texts with a meaningful potential, the theoretical point of departure for this investigation is Halliday’s social semiotic and functional linguistic theory of the metafunctions
of language (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). The three metafunctions of such language
concern the representation by words of phenomena in the world, of communicative acts
and of text as coherent utterances. One betweening here is that language and context
dynamically interact with each other. Accordingly, the texts of the kindergarten walls
and floors communicate something to and about the daily life there, as well as about the
more general culture. To expand the representation by words to other text modalities,
Granly and Maagerø also include the notion of multimodality as developed by Kress
(2003) and the grammar of visual meaning making (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001,
2006). Writing, image, speech and space are all different modes of meaning. Texts
that include several modes are multimodal. The meaning of such texts relies upon the
relations between modalities. The grammar of visual meaning making suggests the
betweening of human meaning making in interaction with visual signs.
One concretisation of betweening as inquired in the study of Granly and Maagerø
is the interaction between the children and the texts on the walls, and the ways the
texts represented the children through e.g. photographs, paintings and drawings.
According to the theoretical enlightenment of the study, the walls of the kindergarten reveal a variety of modes, creating a rich multimodal context for the children.
The ideational metafunction of these texts is their organisation in clusters based on
a topic. However, the interpersonal function of the texts is only found infrequently
as an invitation to communication between the children. But this function is clearly
demonstrated when the children lead the researchers to texts that the children themselves find important. Moreover, although the texts on the wall are supposed to act as
documentation and information between kindergarten activities and the parents, few
parents demonstrate an interest in this. The conclusion of the study is that, although
there is a rich representation of multimodal texts in the kindergarten room, the texts
could be used more actively as pedagogical texts to enhance children’s learning processes and multimodal text competence.
Finally, in addressing kindergarten children’s work with junk materials?, Odegard’s
article forms a dialogue with McRae’s study on the same topic (2011). Odegard also
departs from Taguchi’s (2010) view of pedagogical documentation as being a material
discursive apparatus. In turn, this view is derived from Barad (2003) who understands
the documentation itself as an active agent in the production of discursive knowledge.
Barad claims that knowing comes from a direct material engagement with the world.
She also claims that language has gained excessive power over the inquiry of matter
in social research.
Similar to the theoretical stand taken in Nordtømme’s article, materiality and
meaning according to Odegard do not constitute separate elements, but forms
310
between and as mutually dependant on each other. Thus, the observed object cannot be separated from the subject observing it. Moreover, a situation cannot be
observed without seeing it in relation to the material. Inspired by McRae’s study,
the children in Odegard’s study were encouraged to work with junk materials
without having to name or define what they do. These ways of making the junk
material can be the work of (Foucault’s) heterotopia, of sites that bring many different things together, and therefore also the potential of leakages when it comes
to naming and definition. These lines of flight are important for being freed from
the conventional pedagogical thinking that the aim of material exploration is a
defined product. Odegard finds that lines of flight and leakages to new relationships are offered through the intense and empathetic relationship between material
things and ‘thinking’ simultaneously with human hands, senses and the brain. Junk
material constructions that resist labelling become the focus of interest as they
seem to open rather than close creative processes. In conclusion, Odegard claims
that the incompatibility of junk materials in the form of different sizes, colours,
shapes and textures, with their diversity and complexity, create more disparate
situations, challenges, meeting places and play experiences than predefined toys
and pedagogical material can do. This conclusion can be paralleled to Fredriksen’s
main conclusion that the resistance of certain materials turns out to be especially
productive to children’s meaning making.
By environmental consideration, the junk materials explored in Odegard’s study
are also rescued from being defined as rubbish. Instead, matter is given a new and
recycled life, between multiple relations.
Closing our editorial notes to let the following articles speak for themselves, we
still would like to raise the question of whether the five studies reported are studies of posthumanist performativity. One reason for asking this question is Barad’s
(2003) powerful influence on the material turn in early childhood research. Human
language and culture have been granted their own agency and historicity while matter is figured as passive and immutable, Barad says. We seem to have forgotten that
materiality itself is always already figured within a linguistic domain as its condition
of possibility. According to Barad, a posthumanist account questions the givenness
of the differential categories of “human” and “nonhuman”. Meaning is claimed not
as ideational but rather as specific material (re)configurings of the world. Discourse
is not what is said; it is that which constrains and enables what can be said. Concepts
and materiality are an intimate relationship. Matter is always an ongoing historicity,
not a fixed substance. Moreover, human bodies and human subjects do not pre-exist
as such but are part of the world in its open-ended becoming. “Human” is not a fixed
pregiven notion; human, like matter, matters through its performativity. And as such
in progress of betweening we would add.
Most of what is said in this briefly selected sketch of Barad’s (2003) posthumanist
view can be argued to fit into the perspectives and results of the following studies.
311
But posthumanist? Will that be the preferred label running through the inquiries of
kindergarten space and materiality? And, following McRae and Odegard, should the
present constructions be labelled at all?
However, we leave this questioning open-ended for the performativity of an answer
yet to come.
Thomas Moser is Professor in physical education/sports science in the Department of Practical,
Physical and Aesthetic Education at Vestfold University College. He is currently engaged in three
longitudinal projects that deal with various aspects of child development and learning in ECECinstitutions in Norway. His current research foci are quality in early childhood education as well
as space, body and movement in relation to learning and development.
Gunvor Løkken is professor in early childhood pedagogy at the Department of Pedagogy at Vestfold
University College. Her current research interests are methods of observation connected to the
phenomenology of perception and to sensory ethnography. These foci combine with theories of
relational aesthetics and the potential of what can be called sensory pedagogy.
312
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Education Inquiry
EDU.
INQ.
Place, space and materiality for
pedagogy in a kindergarten
Solveig Nordtømme*
Abstract
This study explores how kindergarten spaces and materiality can be vital for children’s exploration
of participation and how the physical environment enables children to interact and position themselves in play and meaning making. Methodologically this study is based on ethnographic fieldwork
with two groups of 2- to 5-year-old children in two Norwegian kindergartens. Place, space and
materiality are analysed through a theoretical framework based on socio-cultural perspectives of
learning and meaning making, aspects of power relations in play supported by Corsaro’s concept of
children’s power-sharing relations and Bourdieu’s reflections on social fields as fields of force. The
main findings of this study describe how kindergarten children create meaning and play within and
outside of pedagogically staged spaces, and how materiality creates power relations and interplay
with the actors involved.
Keywords: space, materiality, meaning-making, learning, power, kindergarten
Introduction
Places, spaces and materiality are significant for the everyday life of children in kindergarten. The physical context creates possibilities for participation and meaning
making that can be vital for children’s experience of life. On the other hand, place,
space and materiality are embedded with values and expectations that also open up
possibilities for exclusions. Recently, place, space and materiality have been increasingly acknowledged and considered (Buvik et al. 2004; Krogstad 2012; Moser, 2007;
Thorbergsen, 2007) because of the extensive expansion of kindergartens in Norway
over the last 15 years. On both national and international levels increasing attention
is being given to theoretical approaches that emphasise the meaning of interactions
between subject and materiality (Clark, 2010; Gulløv & Højlund, 2005; Kampmann,
2006; Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Otto, 2005; Palludan, 2009). The inspiration to study
space and materiality goes back to my years as a kindergarten teacher managing a
development project in kindergarten (Almedal, 2001), and the perspectives provided
by Kampmann according to children, space and spatiality (Kampmann, 2006).
This article is based on my studies on space, materiality and play in kindergarten
and ethnographic fieldwork in two Norwegian kindergartens. This study includes
*Vestfold University College, Faculty of Education and Humanities, Norway. E-mail: [email protected]
©Authors. ISSN 2000-4508, pp.317–333
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Solveig Nordtømme
a mapping of the physical environment and artefacts in kindergarten. Further, the
characteristics of spaces for joyful play and playful work are discussed. There have
been analyses of pedagogically staged places, analyses of spaces created by children
‘inbetween’, and hidden spaces where children seek privacy (Nordtømme, 2010,
2012). In this article I will use a small selection of my empirical data and discuss
the narratives that emerge in relation to these themes.
Kindergarten and kindergarten pedagogy
Kindergarten is used as a term for Norwegian pre-schools and points to a historical
and ideological link to the German pedagogue Friedrich Fröbel (1782–1852). The
Fröbel kindergarten was a place where children were allowed to play and develop as
a correction of the disciplinary childcare common at that time (Strand, 2009). Frobel
saw play as the highest expression of human development and underlined that play
was the free expression of a child’s soul. He considered space and materiality to be
vital for pedagogy and designed toys he called play gifts. The focus on play rather than
on academic learning reduced Fröbel’s standing among his contemporaries, and he
did not succeed in engaging male teachers to follow his pedagogy. Instead, Fröbel
turned to female intellectuals who enthusiastically took up the mission and made
kindergarten a global movement (Allen, 2006; Strand, 2009).
More than 175 years later, Fröbel’s legacy can be seen in the Norwegian kindergarten
practices based on the Kindergarten Act (Ministry of Education and Research, 2010)
and the Framework Plan, which state that “Play has intrinsic value and is an important part of child culture. Play is a universal human phenomenon, which children are
skilled at and enjoy”(Ministry of Education and Research, 2011) . In Norway, as in
most other Western countries, the focus on children’s learning has increased over the
last decade. The Anglo-Saxon influence, with its focus on the individual child’s range
of knowledge, skills and dispositions (Alvestad, 2009), presents an increasing challenge to traditional holistic pedagogy where play, interaction and children’s curiosity
and investigation are the cornerstones of the pedagogical approach.
Kindergarten as a term for preschool reflects a line in my own professional biography, as a female, from my first job as a student trainee in a kindergarten in the late
1970s to a kindergarten teacher in the early 1980s, and through my work as a kindergarten teacher over many years to my present role as a lecturer for kindergarten
teacher education.
Meaning making in place and space and through materiality
The concept of my study reflects my epistemological and ontological point of departure
that knowledge is created among subjects seeking meaning, participation and learning. I regard materiality as essential for children’s experiences and meaning making
and their position, interaction and play in their peer groups.
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Place, space and materiality for pedagogy in kindergarten
Both Merleau-Ponty (1962) and Dewey (1997) describe meaning making as essentially human. Dewey saw the human mind as a meaningmaking body, continuously
driven to make sense of its world (Dewey, 1997). Meaning and meaning making are
embodied in children’s actions and through dialogue and interactions with others.
Space and materiality influence interactions with children. Children respond differently if a room is pedagogically staged for physical activity, with mats, wall bars
and gymnastics rings, than if a room is filled with props and costumes for drama play.
Both space and materiality invite and inspire.
Kindergarten takes place somewhere, and I recognise place as a concept that corresponds to space and materiality as a concrete location and an important context
for what happens, as well as a concept that expresses belonging (Martinsen, 2005).
Kindergarten as a place is a significant outdoor meeting place in a neighbourhood. In
my point of view, kindergarten as a place of pedagogy, as expressed by Løvlie (2007),
is both concrete as a location and a place for relations, meaning making and belonging. Throughout this paper, place is considered to be an underlying meaning for the
concepts of space and materiality.
Space is both visual, like the physical environment created by architecture, and
invisible, like a social space (Bourdieu, 1998) that contains a sense of shared meaning
and feelings of belonging and is where the field of force emerges. Space represents
the idea of contemporary time and a flash of history in the way that architecture,
space structures and materiality reflect ideas about children, kindergarten and early
childhood care and education (Gulløv & Højlund, 2005). Spaces are not neutral. The
physical and social space presents a range of expectations for both children and adults
(Clark, 2010:179). Dialogue, experience, cooperation and shared meaning create a
sense of space which Lave and Wenger (1991) describe as a community of learners
and attach to the concept of “legitimate peripheral participation” and the situated
perspective of learning (Bourdieu, 1998; Lave & Wenger, 1991, 2003). Materiality
includes play materials, tools and toys, which are also called artefacts. However,
materiality brings in the notion of social interaction between artefacts and humans.
Materiality concerns how artefacts and things are a part of human actions and provide opportunities, power and limits (Otto, 2005). Space, materiality and physical
activity are closely connected. Children’s activities provide experiences of space and
materiality through their bodies, senses, relations, actions and position. Children are
doing space in the sense that children create activities and actions and interplay with
the artefacts. The space will change and transform according to children’s embodied
activity. One way of doing space is playing.
The aims of my study are to contribute to the research-based knowledge of kindergarten space and materiality, children’s play and meaning making, and to explore
what occurs when children are playing and doing space in a material context. My
study contains a number of research questions (Nordtømme, 2010, 2012), but for
this article the following questions guided my exploration of the themes:
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Solveig Nordtømme
How do kindergarten space and materiality influence children’s self-initiated play? How
do children position themselves as meaning makers and in power sharing positions?
When I was doing my fieldwork these research questions were in my mind and provided guidance for my selections of situations in the complex context. I was looking for
situations where meaning emerges in play and common activities, and how meaning,
participation and positions changes over time according to space and materiality. At
the same time, these questions were significant when I was starting the analytical
process. Equally significantly, the theoretical framework formed a basis for the construction of the thematic narratives.
Theoretical framework
To explore how children are doing space within play activities, I look at these issues
through situated, socio-cultural perspectives of learning. Socio-cultural perspectives
offer multiple aspects to understand learning and meaning making and emphasise
the historical, cultural and relational conditions for learning (Säljö, 2001). The perspectives I draw on do not try to explain what learning is but how contexts including
place, space and materiality interact in children’s learning, meaning making and
identity processes. Learning is explained as an integration of mind and body, situated
in social practice and created through participation (Gjems, 2009; Lave & Wenger,
1991; Säljö, 2001). In these learning processes, children create and recreate identity,
membership and interpersonal relationships. This situated perspective emphasises the
interdependency of the subject and the world, the interplay of the activity, meaning
and learning, and the dialectic relationship between the social world and the subject.
Learning and meaning making are embedded in social and material practices.
Dewey has described the concept of situation as “a universe of experience” (in
Løvlie, 2007:33). Løvlie points to materiality, attunement and situation to explore
the “pedagogy of place” (Løvlie, 2007). Everyday life in kindergarten can indeed be a
universe of experiences for children that are both engaging and challenging. Children
play an active role in constructing a social context and practice; attunement, as a type
of atmosphere (Løvlie, 2007), is part of this construction. Whether the atmosphere
expresses good feelings and engagement or whether it is an uncomfortable atmosphere
depends on the relationships created in the interplay of subjects, space and materiality. Studies of kindergarten environments (Gulløv & Højlund, 2005) support these
perspectives by focusing on space as embedded by politics, ideology and history and
by illustrating how structures, including furnishings, the placement of equipment or
closed doors, create power relations.
Every relation and situation, as play and meaning making, carries power relations
and power structures. These positions involve participation, communication and negotiation to take control and initiative. Corsaro (2005, 2009) describes this as a central
theme in peer cultures, the culture created by children in kindergarten, as follows:
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“Children make persistent efforts to gain control of their lives and to share that control with each other” (Corsaro, 2009:302). Children’s intention to participate and to
gain control inhabits power relations. Corsaro points out that “peer culture is a matter
of neither simple imitation, nor of direct appropriation of the adult world”(Corsaro,
2009, p. 301). Children’s power-sharing positions are seen in relation to adults, and
to challenge adult’s authority. How children seek control and achieve positions create
a sense of power, which is woven into everyday situations.
Bourdieu’s theories and concepts such as capital, habitus and field are used to
point out power relations on macro levels in society. He emphasises the role of practice and embodiment and argues that the social nature of a human being creates the
need to understand the social space (Bourdieu, 1998). The social space has material
and symbolic power, is constantly changing over time and enables the actors to move
into different positions.
The concept of field draws attention to a type of social pattern in the social space
and describes it as a set of meaningful relationships, a structure that gives meaning to
the participants’ perceptions of the social world (Thoresen, 2007). The field is generated and upheld through the common interests of social agents and institutions. In
the field, there is inequality and, at the same time, there is mutual dependence. These
contradictory elements make the field a social field of force. The field of force both
influences the participants and positions them in a game about what to decide, who
to define, what is at stake and who is to define the roles (Strand, 2009).
Even though Bourdieu’s concepts are used to analyse macro levels, and the use
of these terms on micro levels may create the risk of simplification, the theme field
of force and the concepts of social agents, inequality and mutual independence add
to Corsaro’s focus on children’s power sharing as they seek autonomy from rules
and adults as authorities. Bourdieu’s concept may contribute to a more investigative
gaze being directed at different power processes within play, and possibly revealing
children’s access to positions within play situations.
Methodology
My ethnographic fieldwork in two Norwegian kindergartens was chosen because
their staff were interested in how to organise the physical environment. One of the
kindergarten buildings had recently been enlarged to double the amount of children;
the other one was located in an old school building. Both kindergartens were public
and situated in the central, eastern part of Norway, both lying just outside a minor
city. The kindergartens had a capacity of 120 children aged 1 to 5, and I was doing
my fieldwork in groups of 2- to 5-year-old children. In each kindergarten children
from 2 to 5 years were split into smaller groups of 18 boys and girls. The area those
kindergartens were situated in were middle class areas, mainly involving children with
Norwegian as their first language, and less than 10% with children with Norwegian
as their second language.
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As I was focusing on children’s indoor, self-initiated play, I was doing my fieldwork in
the early morning and sometimes in the late afternoon when they had finished their
outdoor play. I sought to explore the connections between place, space, and children’s
meaning making in social practice and play, to construct ethnographic knowledge
more than universal and general knowledge (Gupta, 1997).
The choice of an ethnographic approach is based on my professional background,
my theoretical approach and the epistemological understanding that knowledge is
situated and created in the encounters between people. Exploring how children experience place, space and materiality and how they interact and play requires a presence.
My presence will never make me completely understand children’s experiences, but it
will give me experiences in activities that engage children, their positioning and their
social practice in a kindergarten community and according to space and materiality.
My earlier occupation as a kindergarten teacher allows me to enter every day
kindergarten life easily and relate to the children, the kindergarten teachers and the
parents. Nevertheless, every kindergarten is unique as a pedagogical, social and cultural field, in which I was an outsider. I had to relate to each kindergarten with their
children, employees and parents with engagement, sensitivity and respect.
I performed as an active participant observer by joining groups of children and
having small spontaneous conversations with children and employees. In play situations, I participated when children invited me, or I observed close to the play. The
improvisational element in children’s play reinforces the importance of participant
observation as a method. My playing participation shifted by being given a role in a
play, helping with dressing, organising a queue in front of a trampoline, and observing
a play situation from the corner. As Emerson, Fretz and Shaw point out, the ethnographer’s presence in a setting inevitably has implications and some consequences for
what is taking place, since the fieldworker must necessarily interact with and hence
have some impact on those studied (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995, p. 3). Regardless
of which positions I took as a partner, an observer or active participant (Hasse, 2003)
the children were influenced by my participation.
The parents of the children explicitly approved my research in their children’s
kindergarten, but equally important was the children’s here-and-now approval of
my participation. When children were hesitant about my participation, or disliked
my video recording or photographing, I respected that and let them continue in
their activity without my attention. Both invitations from children and refusals were
recorded in my field notes.
My ethnographic writing sometimes occurred during observations, and often a
short time after my participation. My memory was supported by photos and video
recordings so I could extend my notes with more details. The field notes are my descriptions of experiences and observations, and will never be a ‘correct’ description
of reality. The field notes are a piece of my lived experience as an observer and as a
researcher, and turn into written text according to my history, my sensitivity to pro-
322
cesses in daily kindergarten life and to my academic point of departure (Emerson et
al., 1995). The field notes, photos and video recordings are my selections and my way
of framing what I recognise as meaningful in the complex kindergarten day, and this
certainly leaves out other possibly significant events.
My field notes are thoroughly transcribed into continuous text. The multiple methods gave me a wide range of research data to identify thematic narratives (Emerson
et al., 1995) by studying excerpts, looking for connections and disconnections. I have
moved back and forth between special events in the field notes and concepts and topics in my theoretical approach. The ethnographers Gulløv and Høilund (2003) say
that the challenge in such a research approach is to balance being close to the field
with a necessary distance. Altering between theoretical concepts and ethnographic
text, while looking for possible themes, distinctions and interconnections (Emerson
et al., 1995) is my way of dealing with closeness and distance.
In the analytical processes dealing with the ethnographic texts and theoretical concepts, I will highlight two themes which are central in the data material. The themes
are doing space, materiality and participation, and power relations in play. The
first theme is presented by one excerpt, the other one by two, with all of them being
written as narratives. After each narrative I will discuss the excerpts in the light of the
theoretical approach. This method of analysis is based on the theoretical concepts I
have presented, and the method is like a wave that consists of the presented theoretical concepts and issues that emerged through my work with the narratives.
Presentation of the narratives
In the following section, doing place, space and materiality by playing is exemplified
by one narrative and power relations and play by two. The explorative approach includes the presumption that children’s engagement involves meaning and meaning
making. The main purpose of the analysis is to examine the factors that contribute
to engaging children in doing space.
Narrative 1: Doing space, materiality and participation
The situation for this narrative takes place in the main room for one of the groups
of 18 children. At this time, the children are allowed to use the kindergarten space
as they want, they can shift between different groups and no arranged pedagogical
activity is taking place.
The room is well-lit, with two windows on one of the long sides. The walls are decorated with documentation from the children’s work with a project called “Engineers
in the future”, which includes photos and the children’s own drawings. The walls also
display photos of the group members, photos of their favourite activities at home
and a big birthday calendar. The room is furnished with two tables and chairs on one
side of the room and a round carpet on the other side, which invites children to play
on the floor. Between the two windows are shelves with drawers containing paper,
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Solveig Nordtømme
crayons and building materials such as railroads. On the other long side of the room
are shelves with a drawer for each child to keep their ongoing paintings and other
products. The narrative below is constructed from field notes dated 11 April 2010.
There are fourteen children and two adults in the room when I enter. One of the teachers
is sitting beside the table; the other is on the floor building train tracks with six children.
They put more and more tracks together, and the track acquires a large range. Some of
the children are busy with an advanced bridge construction with support from the teacher.
Two children are sitting on the shelf, carefully studying what is going on.
The three youngest children have placed a chair beside the other shelf. From the chair,
they climb up on the shelf, sit for a few seconds and look out over the room. Then one child
rose and moved to the end of the shelf, climbed down on the chair and jumped down on the
floor, the other two followed. This route and this movement were repeated several times.
Three girls are sitting next to the children playing with the train tracks. The girls are playing with some small figurines. They talk together in character and play with the figures.
Two of the youngest children who have climbed the shelf have moved out on the floor. They
have brought a small blanket and sing “The bear is sleeping”, walking around and singing
loudly. The third one took a break, sat on the teacher’s knee for a few minutes and then
joined the small group again.
The atmosphere in the room is concentrated and at the same time relaxed, although there
are many sounds in the room! The children are centred on the floor, where three parallel
plays are in progress. The play with the train tracks takes more and more space, and the
two children playing “The bear is sleeping” move in small circles over the floor. The three
girls playing with the figurines are pushed a little bit, and turn their backs to the ongoing train-tracks play. Then, one girl rises from the floor to walk over to a drawer, taking
out some string. She brings the string back to the two other girls and puts the string on
the floor in a circle. The three girls go into the string circle and continue to play with the
small figurines.
The three separate simultaneously plays continue for about 10 minutes. The group of traintrack builders changes when the bridge construction comes to a standstill. One of the boys
from the observer position jumps down and picks up a significant block to strengthen the
construction. The two former bridge constructors and the other boy from the shelf take
observer positions from the floor, on the periphery of the play. Inside the string circle, the
three girls play with the figurines, which are small dolls. The string circle was an effective
border to the ongoing simultaneous plays. Even the three youngest who were playing “The
bear is sleeping” didn’t cross the line.
Materiality, participation and positions
The complex play situation allows multiple perspectives on what is going on. First, I
will look upon it in the perspective of materiality. The train track material interplays
with the children in different ways. The boys and the teacher are reassembling the
trains, fitting tracks together and constructing a bridge. The train tracks created an
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agency that interplays with the children and the adult as they are challenged in assembling different tracks and investigating how the tracks can fit together in different
train networks.
The shelf was obviously a significant part of the materiality by offering children
an out-look point. In relation to the train track play, the position of the two boys on
the shelf allowed them to ‘read the map’ both in terms of when to join and how to
participate.
The three youngest children used the shelf in a similar way. They were climbing and
unified in a bodily activity. When reaching the top of the shelf, they carefully walked
behind one another and made room for one another. The shelf was their lookout point
on the other children’s play.
Access to a variety of play materials makes children move into positions, either
to join a more central position or to protect ongoing play and positions. One of the
boys watching the train track constructions knew exactly which block to offer for the
construction, and with this knowledge he immediately became part of the play. The
other boy grabbed an artefact and with it he moved into position, gaining access to
the play material and putting him in a better position to start playing.
When the three youngest changed their activity from climbing on the shelf, using
it as an outlook point, to play “The bear is sleeping” on the floor, they moved from a
peripheral position to a closer position by using a blanket to hide underneath.
Regarding the girls with the figurines, their play fantasies with the figurines held
their playgroup together, and they continued to play despite the increasing disturbances from the other two groups. They apparently did notice the narrowing of their
space but did not correct the other children. They placed a long, thin string on the
floor, which made a weak border with the other groups. With this border the play
was protected and apparently created an unspoken agreement among the children
to not cross that line.
The materiality provides opportunities that lead the attention to the significant variation of the play material. Traditional play materials such as train tracks and figurines
are very well accomplished by flexible materials like blanket and string. In this play
situation the flexible materials are used to move into positions and to protect the play.
According to Lave and Wengers’ (1991) theory of situated learning and their concept
of “legitimate peripheral participant”, the position and movement described above can
be understood as the children’s way of participating. In a community of learners (Lave
& Wenger, 2003), newcomers are included in common activities by participating on
the periphery. In this case, both the boys looking at the train track play and the three
youngest children created a small group in a shared activity, while they observed the
older children’s play at the same time. And they used their experiences as peripheral
participants to gain more central positions.
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Solveig Nordtømme
Place and space
Space is both concrete by its installations and artefacts and social by the feeling of
belonging, of force and shared meaning. The furnishings offer different levels for
the children to enter. In this situation, I see the different levels as being significant
for allowing the children to participate in different ways. Palludan’s anthropological
study (2009) in a school context in Barcelona shows how materiality interplays and
choreographs everyday school life. Palludan’s study shows that older children become
objectives for younger children when they observe how older children behave, how
they care for each other and how they fight. When the physical space offers different
levels to play and interact, it also gives children opportunities to overlook, to study
their peers’ play and to participate in different positions or tempos.
In the narrative, the children announced their existence and belonging to the
group by doing space in different ways. When they move positions they were given
tacit consent by not being shoved away. When the girls with the small figurines
found that their space for their play was shrinking, they put up a border against
the other groups. The youngest children apparently recognised this border and
respected it.
The play situation as a whole expresses engagement and intensity while also
creating a sense of a field of force. The shifting positions for the children create a
force balance which allows the play to carry on. The concept of attunement (Løvlie,
2007) gives an expression of the atmosphere which is relational and located between the participants. In my field notes, I described the situation as concentrated
but relaxed.
Bourdieu (1998) describes the field of force as a matter of inequality and mutual
dependence. The inequality in the play situation can be seen as the different access to
play and play materials, and the mutual dependence relies on the sense of belonging
to a group and being accepted as a participant in the community of practice (Lave &
Wenger, 1991). The attunement (Løvlie, 2007) is the experience of the concentration
among the children, and simultaneously a feeling of fragility, that something could
very easily disturb this situation, which corresponds to Bourdieu’s descriptions of
field (1998) that something is at stake.
The two teachers’ participation, I will argue, was a significant part of the whole
situation. The teachers were materialised as body subjects into the space and represent
values and power to support the children in their meaning making and play. They
balanced and completed the force of field. The ‘pedagogy of place’ is confirmed by the
interaction between the children and the teacher who was playing and the teacher
sitting by the table, open for children to come to.
The following narratives are chosen to highlight the theme power relations in play.
The two narratives show how power relations can be explored in micro situations.
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Narrative 2: Who is playing?
The first situation takes place in a small playroom. In this room there is an area for
toy cars and construction materials, and on the floor there is a carpet with a drawing of streets and traffic lights. Beside this carpet is a construction made of wooden
blocks. The narrative below is based on photos and field notes from 18 April 2010.
I am sitting on the floor in a small playroom when Tore enters and heads for the car carpet
and the constructing materials. He invites me to play with him and get small cars from
the shelf and wooden blocks from a box. He gives me a car, and we both start driving the
cars around on the carpet. He stops his car by the block construction and puts another
block on the construction. He drives his car carefully on this construction. He asks me “Who
built this construction?” I tell him that I don’t know, but I think it is OK that he plays with
it. He makes a new arrangement and new gateways in between and on the top. He drives
his cars carefully, and he watches my car’s movement as well. Tore seems worried and he
asks me “Could it be Marius who built this before?” I tell him that I don’t know, because it
was built before I entered the room. He lies down on his stomach and continues to drive
the cars carefully around the constructions. The door opens and a boy and a girl enter the
room. Tore rises up and leaves the play and the room immediately.
Materiality, participation and power relations
The wooden blocks and the cars seemed to inspire Tore to play. He very quickly invited me to come and play with him, and he supported me with a car. He studied the
construction and seemed to planning an expansion. The materiality engaged him and
urged him on to play. However, something held him back from fully accomplishing
his play. He continuously asked me who had made the constructions, and thereby
signalled that he was risking causing trouble with the original builder if he were to
come back. Perhaps I was invited as a co-player who could protect Tore from being
attacked.
In this narrative, I interpret the situation as showing that something invisible is
going on. Maybe Marius, who Tore assumed had made the constructions, was playing there after all. And maybe Marius was acting as an invisible agent keeping other
playmates away from his playing materials. Too much tension, or too little, can create
an attunement of disengagement.
The children’s positions in the play area made structures while they were present,
and this position could also be obtained when they were absent. To challenge these
positions, Tore would need some type of capital, according to Bourdieu’s concept.
Using Bourdieu’s description of social and cultural capital (1998) as elements in the
force of field, we can imagine that children’s capital in the kindergarten field often
relies on muscular strength, age and size. In this playing situation, Tore could obviously not rely on his capital to maintain his playing position. He did not trust my
participation to protect him or give him enough ‘capital’ to obtain the position and
fully engage in the play.
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Narrative 3: Identity and power relations in hidden spaces
This room was called “the pillow room” and appeared to be deprived. The room had
no curtains, no decorations on the walls and no furniture. The only play materials
were the big curtains. The walls were in bad disrepair. When this situation occurred,
there are three children playing: a girl and two boys. The narrative is constructed
from field notes, photos and a transcription of video recordings from 25 March 2010.
I knock on the door and I am welcomed inside. The children had put all the cushions on
the floor and were pretending they were on the ocean. They tell each other stories about a
mermaid and share a fantasy in which they swim around with this mermaid. I sit down on
one of the pads, and the children continue their pretend play and swim around me. After
a while, Anne stops to ask me, “What do you actually do in this kindergarten?” I tell her
that I want to see what they are doing in this room and how they use it. Anne then looks
around the room and points at a plank mounted in the window to protect children from
reaching the windowpane. “The plank is there so that we do not climb on the windowsill,”
she says. She pauses, looking gravely at me and says, “You know, Anders manages to
climb out the window anyway. He just put his foot on the water pipe there”. She points to
the tube at the radiator and rises. She shows how he put his foot on the radiator pipe and
knee against the wall and takes a good hold of the water pipes so he can push himself up
on the windowsill. Her voice is proud and full of admiration when she shows and tells me.
The two other children in the room are watching. Erik says, “I will not do it, but I do know
how Anders does it”, and then also he goes over to the window and shows me where Anders
put his foot and takes a grip with his hands so that he can climb up on the windowsill. He
says “This is a magical room where we can be very strong! There is magic powder in the
wall!” All three children show me by licking a finger and putting it into the hole in the wall
to get white plaster to stick to the finger. This is the magic powder that makes them strong!
Space and meaning making
The first part of the narrative is about meaningful fantasy interplay among peers. I
could imagine that I was out on an ocean because of the children’s play and because
the small room gave a sense of being in a pool. I felt that I was treated as an installation, which made the children’s swimming a little more challenging and turned
the swimming into a sort of moving pattern. Whether my presence interrupted the
fantasy interplay or whether the fantasy play came to an end is difficult to decide by
myself. However, when Anne turned to me and asked “What do you actually do in
this kindergarten?” the two boys stopped playing and started listening immediately.
The engagement was shared, which made the situation and the attunement like a
“universe of experience”, to use Dewey’s expression (Løvlie, 2007:33). The space
materialised an ocean universe in an interplay with these children. The children created their own culture.
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Power sharing relations and belonging
The engagement continued when the children changed the subject and content. Again,
I will see this in terms of the field of force where the tension in the situation brings the
actors into a power-sharing position (Corsaro, 2005; Wenger, 1998). When children
are doing space, they explore the possibilities of the space and the materiality. This
room was basically in disrepair, with no decorations or documentation on the walls;
the window had no curtains, and the surface of the walls was in poor shape, but the
content the children put into it was overwhelmingly rich.
At the same time, we learn about power and positions of power among the children. To be strong, to be a good climber, and to dare to break the rules set by adults
provides a strong position within the group of children. Meaning making and learning
create identity processes among the participants (Lave & Wenger, 2003). By telling
about another peer doing some extraordinary activities, challenging the roles, and
finding a sense of magic inside this space, the children turned the room into a place
of belonging where their own culture was primary and in which they resisted the official kindergarten culture.
Kindergarten seems to be “criss-crossed with invisible string which links the children to different objects, places within the space” (Clark, 2010). Children seem to
express their belonging to a place by personal markers in the space. The hole in the
wall, which could represent a lack of maintenance to adults, holds a magic meaning
for these children.
The space where this narrative took place would generally be considered dilapidated
and not representative of typical standards for a kindergarten. However, the children
showed how space could be given meaning and significance separate from adult logic.
The magic arose from the children’s imaginations and strings.
Concluding thoughts on doing place, space and materiality in
kindergarten pedagogy
The starting point of this study was to explore how place, space and materiality interacted with children in play and how these interactions influence children’s everyday
life in kindergarten. Doing space became a concept that highlighted the embodiment
of doing and children’s agency towards space and materiality.
Although there is increasing interest in space and materiality as a physical environment in pedagogy, place, space and materiality exist independent of attention and
may be at risk of being overlooked and taken for granted.
The pedagogy formed by Fridrich Fröbel in the 17th century underlined that
play, space and materiality are central. The growing focus on learning and skills
in kindergarten (Alvestad, 2009; OECD, 2006) may turn kindergarten pedagogy
into more formal and school-look-alike pedagogy if we do not pay attention to the
significant processes going on among children in play situations in kindergarten.
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Solveig Nordtømme
Children’s experience of participation, and negotiation by being a member of a community of learners (Lave & Wenger, 1991), is vital to their construction of identity
and knowledge.
By viewing the kindergarten as a place of pedagogy (Løvlie, 2007) where playing
situations can be a “universe of experience”, and by using the situated perspective (Lave
& Wenger, 1991; Säljö, 2001), in addition to the concept of field of force (Bourdieu,
1998; Wilken, 2006) and a cultural approach to materiality (Otto, 2005), I have explored the interplay between materiality and the subjects needed to provide tension
or an attunement (Løvlie, 2007) that inspires children to engage and participate.
Something has to be on stage (Bourdieu, 1998). In every play situation and meaning
making activity, the concentration, tension and attunement seem to create possibilities for disruption and conflict. The kindergarten teachers play a significant role by
challenging or moderating as a materialised body subject, either by being an active
participant in play or by participating as an installation. They carry values and qualities that balance the power relations or inequality among the children in the situation
and become a type of guarantor of mutual dependencies.
The ethnographic approach of my work is closed connected to my theoretical
approach where the situated perspective on learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Säljö,
2001) and meaning making communicate with the way I conducted my ethnographic
fieldwork. I was familiar with kindergartens as pedagogical institutions, but I was a
newcomer in each kindergarten, and participated and learned by shifting positions
and participation.
Place, space and materiality interact with children and adults, and reflect ideas,
values and expectations. These expectations are often invisible, although they create
practice and rules that influence daily life in kindergarten. Engaging kindergarten
teachers are vital, teachers with shifting positions, sometimes as an active player,
sometimes as a materialised subject body open for children, but withdrawn from the
centre of the play.
By using narratives from my fieldwork, I have taken a close look at play situations in relation to space and materiality and analysed these situations to reveal new
perspectives and findings according to the research questions. Self-initiated play in
kindergarten demands different types of materiality. Every space in kindergarten
should contain both flexible and firm materials. From the first narrative, I will argue
that the flexible materials supported the children in creating a new possibility by
either entering or protecting the play.
In the physical sense of space, the variety of levels in the playroom allowed the children to seek community from different positions. By having an overview, studying the
play before entering, or taking a break and withdrawing to another level, the children
were able to shift positions and still belong to the play group or maintain a sense of
community. When kindergarten spaces have installations that provide children with
opportunities to move on different levels, the children use the installation as a way
330
of doing space, but also to gain meaning and to position themselves in the activity.
The personal marks that children put on a kindergarten (Clark, 2010) transform the
kindergarten into a place of belonging and a place of meaning making. For children,
the marks can be an expression of gaining control and achieving autonomy from
adults (Corsaro, 2009). These personally marked places are often in-between or hidden from the teachers’ access. The marks can be seen as interplay and create fantasies
that enlarge the children’s existential experiences, such as with the story of the magic
powder and the illegal climbing up to the window.
I sought to explore connections between place, space, and children’s meaning
making in social practice. Sometimes, these connections may remain hidden to
adults. Sometimes, the force in play situations among children remains disregarded
because it seems to be invisible. Therefore, taking a close look through participation
and observation can reveal certain hidden connections.
Solveig Nordtømme is Associate Professor in Education at Vestfold University College, Faculty
of Humanities and Education Sciences where she teaches Pedagogy. Her research focuses is on
children in Kindergarten.
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Solveig Nordtømme
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Education Inquiry
EDU.
INQ.
Providing materials and spaces
for the negotiation of meaning in
explorative play:
Teachers’ responsibilities
Biljana C. Fredriksen*
Abstract
This article aims to illustrate how both physical and social factors influence possibilities for children’s learning (meaning negotiation) in visual art contexts in early childhood education. The
main discussion relates to teacher’s responsibilities in providing physical and social contexts for
such meaning negotiations. The processes I wish to illustrate are complex and, in order to make
them comprehensible within the scope of this article, only a few examples with interactions with
the same girl, the same materials and the same teacher are chosen from a qualitative, arts-based
study in a single Norwegian preschool. The purpose of the study was to understand how young
children (aged 3–5) negotiate meanings while playing with tangible materials. The study showed
that both the materials’ qualities and the teacher’s attitude to explorative play with the materials
were important determinants of the content of the children’s learning. In the presented examples,
the teacher made materials available but did not pre-define the products that should be made. This
allowed the girl to explore the possibilities and challenges that emerged from her experiences of the
materials and tools. In line with the contemporary understanding that young children have right to
contribute to curricula, as is required by the Norwegian Kindergarten Act, this article exemplifies
the teacher’s responsibilities for providing for children’s contributions and for facilitating spaces
for the negotiation of meaning between materials, children and teachers.
Keywords: visual arts, early childhood education, materials, intersubjectivity, meaning negotiation
Introduction and theory
Aims of the article
According to Eisner (2002), by selecting materials for students’ activities a visual art
teacher can provide possibilities for certain forms of learning to take place, but cannot
decide what can be learned1. This article shows examples of how a teacher’s choice
*Vestfold University College, Norway, www.hive.no. E-mail: [email protected]
©Authors. ISSN 2000-4508, pp. 335–352
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Biljana C. Fredriksen
of materials, as well as her understanding that she could not control what would be
learned, provided a three-year-old girl with certain possibilities to learn through her
experience with the materials.
It is usually assumed that planning a lesson should include determining the educational goals a teacher wants her/his students to achieve. However, it will seldom be
possible for a teacher to pre-determine everything that might be learned, at least if we
believe that teaching and learning are dependent on both what teachers and students
bring to the contexts, as we do in a socio-cultural understanding of learning. Assuming
that learning is not a one-way process, but a process of the mutual construction of
meaning between teachers and students (Bruner, 1990), as well as between teachers,
students and physical objects/materials (Lenz Taguchi, Moss, & Dahlberg, 2009),
demands that the contributions of teachers, students and objects/materials are taken
into account in pedagogical planning. If students are expected to take an active part
in their learning, their contributions will influence the unfolding of the lesson and it
will be impossible for the teacher to predict exactly what might happen. In addition,
if the students are young children who, according to Egan (2007), have outstanding
imagination, the unfolding of a lesson could be extraordinarily unpredictable. On the
basis of my own planning and conducting of visual art activities with young children,
this article suggests that a renewed understanding of the roles, responsibilities and
attitudes of visual art teachers is needed in Norwegian early childhood, as well as in
other contexts where children are seen as active contributors to the process of their
learning.
In the Nordic kindergarten tradition, young children are seen as active co-constructors of knowledge (OECD, 2006). Under the Norwegian Kindergarten Act children
are expected to contribute to the contexts of their preschools and their teachers are
obliged to provide the conditions for such contributions (Ministry of Education and
Research, 2005). This article suggests that the teacher’s choices of materials for children’s explorative play can both structure curricula (Fredriksen, 2010) and provide
spaces for children’s individual contributions, but only when the teacher’s attitude
allows such contributions.
In visual arts education, preparing a lesson usually includes planning the activities, materials, tools and types of products. Children are sometimes expected to copy
products in an “imitative teaching style” (Bresler, 1994). Copying products can help
them learn about certain techniques or aesthetic features, but copying is different
from creating something from one’s own ideas and experiences. In contrast, an “expansive teacher style”, which is a “complex procedure drawing on the communication
of sophisticated adult knowledge while respecting the child’s current experience and
interpretations” (Bresler, 1994, p. 101), does not rigidly pre-define children’s product
outcomes. As a visual art teacher who promotes an expansive teacher style, I consider
both the process and the product to be mutually supportive and dependent on each
another (Dahlberg & Moss, 2010). In this article I wish to focus on the process of
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Providing materials and spaces for the negotiation of meaning in explorative play
interactions between myself and a three-year-old girl where our joint attention was
on hands-on activities with textiles.
When Elliot Eisner (2002), one of the most significant advocates of art education,
argues that teachers’ choices of art materials can influence their students’ learning options, he claims that art materials with specific qualities have the capacity to
provoke certain types of learning. The possibilities for learning depend on various
attributes, including each student’s experiences, interests, imagination and competencies. However, this argument does not suggest that it is only the qualities of the
materials and the students’ capacities that affect the learning process, and that the
teacher’s role is insignificant. On the contrary, all three are important and exist in a
close relationship, similar to Aspelin’s (2010) description of the close relationship
between teacher and student as “radical intersubjectivity”. That the relationship is
close in this context means that children’s learning process depends on immediate
intersubjective communication along with the process, in addition to the quality of
the physical context that was provided by the teacher prior to the interaction (Fredriksen, 2010, 2011a).This type of social and physical context is referred to here as a
‘space for the negotiation of meaning’.
This article applies the concept “meaning negotiation” to diverse embodied activities during which personal meanings emerge and become expressed. By applying the
concept of the negotiation of meaning, I argue that educational contexts are complex
unities in which the negotiation of meaning depends on both physical contexts, the
learners’ and the teachers’ “body-minds” (Dewey, 1925) (e.g., how they interact,
use bodies in physical space, interact with physical objects, engage emotionally and
imaginatively, and so on). When we view human body-minds as holistic, cognition
is not separated from experience or imagination (e.g., as described in the theory of
integrated cognition (Efland, 2002)). The negotiation of meaning is an active process
where a child (or an adult) physically treats a material by pressing, grasping, lifting or
pulling, in a social context. During such an experiencing process, children’s present
experiences can remind them of their past experiences and embodied knowledge.
Further on, connections between their past and present experiences often result in
the expressing of new and imaginative ideas, especially if some kind of problem was
experienced during the material interactions (Fredriksen, 2011a). According to Dewey
(2005 [1934]), the process of physical interaction is accompanied by and closely related
to an inner “cognitive” process, although here cognition is understood as “imaginative
cognition” (Efland, 2002) and not as an explicitly mental activity disconnected from
experience, imagination or emotions.
This article is based on previous doctoral research in which young children’s newly
acquired understandings were found to be negotiated among three influences: the
properties of the sculpting materials; the children’s individual capacities (e.g., imagination, past experiences, interests and attention); and the teacher’s professional
and personal abilities (Fredriksen, 2011a). Presenting a few examples from doctoral
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research in which I acted as the visual arts teacher of preschool children (ranging from
3–5 years old), I aim to illustrate mainly two responsibilities of a teacher in providing
space for the negotiation of meaning: the selection of materials and an open-ended
attitude to children’s explorative play. More precisely, the article focuses on: a) how I
chose materials with specific qualities; and b) how I facilitated one girl’s open-ended
exploration during her immediate, unpredictable interactions with the materials and
myself. I am aware of that such a double focus might appear unnecessary and confusing, although I consider the two issues to be interwoven and mutually dependent. To
illustrate this and narrow the focus of the article, vignettes with the same child (Eva,
3 years old), the same teacher (myself) and the same materials (textiles) are selected
from a number of relevant vignettes.
The assumption that knowledge is not simply transferred from teacher to students
but is negotiated among participants, objects, materials and spaces (Lenz Taguchi
et al. 2009) significantly complicates our understanding of educational planning. If
learning is influenced by the sum of the teacher’s and students’ previously acquired
attributes, such as their understandings, attitudes, feelings, interests, experiences
and imagination, as well as the qualities of the physical environment (including
materials), a curriculum that is planned before a lesson cannot be considered as
final; instead, curricula must be understood as a constantly changing process called
“curricula-as-lived” (Irwin & Chalmers, 2007). From this perspective, it is impossible
to clearly separate the three phenomena that simultaneously influence each another
in educational contexts.
Both in the Scandinavian preschool model, and in the Reggio Emilia model which
has inspired preschools in many countries, “there is child-centeredness endeavouring
to make children’s experiences, hypotheses, and ideas visible in preschools” (Sommer, Pramling Samuelsson, & Hundeide, 2010). The Reggio Emilia teaching style,
which is similar to the “expansive teacher style” (Bresler, 1994), has been developed
according to the local, political and cultural conditions in Northern Italy. However,
when Norwegian preschool teachers are required to implement children’s experiences, hypotheses and ideas into curricula, they have to develop appropriate ways to
do this in the local conditions. With a focus on children’s contributions to curricula,
new questions about the teacher’s role emerge: What is the role of the teacher in allowing children’s active contribution to curricula? The emerging child-centeredness
raises questions about the practice of pedagogical planning and teaching in different
disciplines: What does it mean to view a child as competent in a concrete visual art
education context? This article sheds light on a few of the challenges that concern the
role of the teacher in contemporary early childhood education.
The impact of materials on the process of negotiating meaning
When Dewey (1925) writes about the unity of body and mind, he emphasises the
importance of embodied experience in the learning process. In line with Dewey and
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Gibson (1979), Howes (2005) more recently extends the body-mind concept to the
“body-mind-environment” by arguing that the qualities of students’ physical environments influence their learning processes. Human body-minds merge with their
physical environments (Merleau-Ponty, 1994 [1945]). In addition, literature on the
experiential dimension of learning views human-environment interactions as unavoidable (Stelter, 2008). Shusterman (2008) proposes that we can only know the world
through our bodies and that young children exhibit a notable interest in knowing the
world by exploring through the senses available in their bodies. In the context of this
article (and the study it builds on), the tangible and visual qualities of materials and
tools are especially relevant.
Young children appear to be tireless in their interactions with their environments
as they constantly and curiously explore both their physical surroundings and the
possibilities of their bodies (Merleau-Ponty, 1994 [1945]). In this study, children’s
encounters with the capacities and constraints of materials are considered extremely
important for their new understandings. Experiencing diverse material qualities provides children with the opportunity to refine their aesthetic attention which is, among
other things, essential to concept differentiation and cognition (Eisner, 2002; Smith,
1982). My research found that the resistance of materials is especially important to a
child’s ability to negotiate meaning (Fredriksen, 2011a). If a child uses a material and
experiences something that does not work as expected, this new insight can trigger
the child’s imaginative connection between their past and new experiences (Dewey,
2005 [1934]), motivate creative problem solving (Fredriksen, 2011b) and allow the
child to leave a “personal signature” on the problem solution (Eisner, 2002). Examples involving Eva will show how she negotiated with materials and tools, and how
she imagined problem solutions in her own personal ways.
The impact of the teacher’s attitude on the process of
negotiating meaning
According to Dewey (1916, 1956, 2005 [1934]), experiences are holistic unities influenced by emotional, material, aesthetic and social qualities. In educational contexts, a
child’s experience will be influenced by a teacher, for instance by the power dynamics
that always exists between an adult and a child (Clark, 2010). When the “expansive
role” of an art teacher is practiced, the teacher respects the children’s choices and
becomes a co-constructor of their knowledge (Bresler, 1994). Such a relationship between a teacher and a child can be described as a “‘pedagogy of listening’, where the
learner develops theories, shapes them with others, redevelops them in a pedagogy
that emphasises the importance of relationships, listening (…) and avoiding predetermined results” (Dahlberg & Moss, 2010, p. xvii).
This article examines the way the teacher’s visual arts competence and “listening
attitude” toward young students influence two simultaneous and mutually dependent
processes: 1) the teacher’s improvisation process; and 2) the process of one child’s
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negotiation of meaning. Improvisation is understood here as a quick shifting of direction in educational practice (Dewey, 1938) which requires a high level of professional and discipline-specific competence from the teacher (Eisner, 2002). Rather
than following a direction that a teacher had outlined for her/his students prior to a
lesson, the children’s learning processes emerge in complex, nonlinear ways, as described in the A/R/T-ographic methods of teaching and research (Irwin et al., 2006).
The concept of A/R/T-ography will be explained in the methods section, although it
should be mentioned here that the letters A, R and T denote artist, researcher and
teacher, which are three roles adopted by a single person (i.e., an A/R/T-ographer)
who teaches and conducts research at the same time.
In a discussion of Buber, Aspelin (2010) writes about the interhuman relationship
between a teacher and a student (in my case, the student is a young child), which is
a fragile and floating event that can neither be expected nor created: “it is an ontological reality”; a “basic existential condition”; a meeting “between two persons who
recognise each other as unique” (Aspelin, 2010, p. 131). Aspelin (2010) suggests that
the interhuman, immediate and unpredictable meeting between a teacher and a student affects the teaching process and that the focus of education (and educational
research) should be directed toward such “momentary meetings”. Such “momentary
meetings” demand that a teacher (or a researcher) “stands in the fullness of life, in
the midst of the world of living relations and shared situations” (Van Manen, 1997, p.
32). This article presents two momentary meetings as experienced from within their
contexts by the author of this text.
Methods
This article is based on a qualitative, interactionist doctoral study with children ranging from 3–5 years old in an average Norwegian early childhood education and care
(ECEC) institution. Throughout the autumn of 2009, I visited the ECEC institution
three times a week. Sometimes I observed the children, and at other times I acted as
an early childhood teacher. The data were collected from my own interactions with
the children; the ECEC teachers employed at the institution were not significantly
involved. Further, because the study focused on momentary meetings the characteristics of the ECEC institution did not significantly affect the results of the study.
The research design was developed according to a large number of ethical challenges and considerations, both related to the ECEC teachers and the children. For
instance, the choice not to observe the teachers in action but conduct the activities
with the children myself was taken because the teachers were not comfortable. In
addition, the fact that I interacted with the children made me (and not the ECEC
teachers) ethically responsible for all kinds of expressions (words, facial expressions
etc.) that could influence the children’s experiences. In the momentary meetings,
ethical considerations could not be separated from the pedagogical choices and the
interhuman relations.
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I prepared and conducted nine educational contexts, each of which included two
children. Each educational context lasted for approximately one hour and could be
assigned to the area of visual arts education because we were addressing sculpting
materials. However, unlike a typical visual arts lesson, these educational contexts
were not directed at the production of objects. Both the teaching and research activities primarily focused on the unfolding processes of the children’s explorations of
materials and the unpredictable, ever-changing relationships among the participants
(Aspelin, 2010).
The methods used in this study were chosen in accordance with its purpose, which
was to develop an understanding of the processes through which young children negotiated meaning. The study did not aim to measure the children or compare them.
Instead, this study focused on the strategies the children used to negotiate meaning.
Both during the data collection and the analysing process each child was viewed as a
competent individual with a unique background and unique experiences, as requested
in the Norwegian Framework Plan (Ministry of Education and Research, 2006) and
suggested by Clark (2010), Bresler (1994), Dahlberg and Moss (Dahlberg & Moss,
2005, 2010) and others.
When I positioned myself within the educational contexts I could obtain a closer
perspective on the children’s experiences and better grasp their processes. Interacting
with the children myself, I acted as an A/R/T-ographer by combining my roles as an
artist, researcher and teacher (Irwin & De Cosson, 2004; Springgay, Irwin, & Kind,
2008). In this type of arts-based qualitative inquiry, the researcher’s subjectivities
are welcomed and considered as tools for understanding complex realities (Stake,
2010). The interactionist position (Järvinen & Mik-Meyer, 2005) allowed me to
study my experiences in living with the children and to thereby access the complex
processes through which the children negotiated meaning (Van Manen, 1997). That
is, I experienced the way my attention, attitudes and assumptions were challenged
during my immediate meetings with the children.
During the period of data collection, I was mainly engaged in three types of activities. First, I observed the children’s activities indoors and outdoors, especially when
they played with sand, sticks, blocks and similar materials. Second, on the basis of
these observations and my discussions with the ECEC teachers, I planned educational contexts with suitable sculpting materials. Third, I conducted nine educational
contexts (cases) which were filmed with a fixed video camera and later analysed with
NVivo software.
The video data were first analysed in the manner of multiple case study analyses
where the similarities and differences among cases are investigated (Stake, 2006)
and a number of themes and issues emerge. The second phase of the analytical process consisted of a contextual analysis of a few selected events. The short events (or
momentary meetings) were presented in the form of vignettes and analysed in the
manner of arts-based educational research (Barone & Eisner, 2006; Bresler, 2006a,
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2006b; Eisner, 1991; Finley, 2005, 2008). Similarly, two brief events are selected
for this article.
Presentation of the data
The events presented here are taken from the same case where two three-year-old
girls played with textiles. The first vignette comes from an observation prior to the
educational context and explains my choice of materials for the educational context
with the same girls.
The other vignette presents an event that occurred during my interactions with the
girls in the educational context. Among many similar events, the two interactions with
the same girl, Eva, are selected for this article because they have much in common with
other events involving three-year-old children. However, my interactions with Eva were
especially intense, probably because I struggled to understand her speech; I had to be
extremely attentive when listening to her words and had to immediately interpret her
speech to act in accordance with the momentary contexts. This is probably why my
experiences of interactions with Eva were extraordinarily intensive and memorable,
and I find them suitable for this article that addresses my roles in interhuman, immediate and unpredictable meetings with the child (Aspelin, 2010).
Observation that led to the choice of materials
On one of my early visits to the ECEC, I observed two girls who I called Marit and Eva.
Marit was pushing a doll carriage and struggling to walk in the adult-sized high-heeled
shoes she was wearing. I addressed her:
“Lovely shoes, but do they fit you?”
“Yes, they do!” she replied.
I was a little surprised by her answer but tried to understand. Perhaps the shoes fit
her in a different way rather than being the right size?
“Oh, yes…they match the colours on your dress very well,” I suggested.
Marit immediately stopped the carriage, lifted one foot closer to her checked dress
(orange, red, pink and violet) and started to compare the colours with the shoe until
she found the same shade of pink.
I was sitting on the floor while I was talking to Marit and I barely noticed when another girl, Eva, approached me with a book in her hands. She simply sat on my lap
and opened the book:
“Can you read to me?”, she said.
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I started to read and point at the illustrations. There was a picture of a pirate. She said
something about the pirate, but I did not understand her. Somewhat embarrassed
that I did not understand, I tried to continue the conversation:
“He has the same jumper as yours!”, I said.
Eva pulled her jumper down to the page and confirmed:
“Yes, it is the same!” “And he has the same trousers as yours!”, she added.
She was right: my jeans were the same colour as the pirate’s trousers.
This observation gave me the idea of arranging an educational context in which the
two girls and I could explore textiles. From the girls’ perspectives, colour appeared
to be the most significant quality of the textiles. To help them become more attentive to the colour nuances and other qualities of the textiles, I decided to introduce
diverse textile qualities but in the same colour – all could be placed within the same
colour category (pink) but had many different shades and nuances. Further, to provide them with the opportunity to acquire diverse sensory experiences and refine
their aesthetic attention (Eisner, 2002), I chose textiles with diverse fabric qualities,
surface textures, thicknesses, elasticity, and transparency as well as textiles that had
been manufactured in different ways (e.g., woven, felted, knitted and chemically
shaped). Exposing the girls to a large variety within one visual category, but with a
small variation, could challenge the differentiation of their senses, which could also
provide a basis for their concept differentiation (Eisner, 2006). However, because
the negotiation of meaning would depend on the girls’ past and present experiences,
I could not know in advance which textile qualities would have a significant influence
on their processes of negotiating meaning.
Eva’s crown
One of the activities that developed during the educational context was the tearing
of the textiles. This activity emerged from the girls’ attempt to pull off small protruding dots from a felted, woollen textile. The girls observed that the dots were “stuck
to the textile” and impossible to pull off and Marit declared that she was “clever at
taking them of”. At this point, I found two pairs of scissors in my bag and gave them
to the girls. Even with scissors, they struggled to take the dots off and they started to
combine cutting and pulling as if they wanted to tear the textile. I then introduced a
thin cotton textile which was woven and easy to tear.
When Eva tore the textile for the first time she pulled hard with both arms without
any help from me. She was excited and her joy of mastering was expressed through
laughing with her whole body. After successfully tearing the cotton textile, the girls
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continued to explore other textiles’ ability to be torn. During the activity of stretching
and pulling they could discover that different textiles yield different types of resistance. The following event occurred approximately half an hour after the girls had
started to tear textiles:
With scissors in her hands, Eva wanted to cut a piece of paper-like textile to make
a crown for herself. I observed that the piece she was holding was the last piece of that
textile large enough to be used for her crown, but she insisted on cutting it herself. I
suggested the direction she could cut to avoid spoiling the only remaining piece, but
she had already made up her mind about where to cut, and she continued to cut with
confidence. When she was finished, she said proudly:
“I made it!”
Intending to transform the textile piece into a tubular shape, she used masking tape
and managed to create a form similar to a crown. But the tube came out very small,
about doll-sized. When she realised that the crown was too small for her head, she
suggested she could take another piece of the same textile and try to make a large tube
out of it. I knew that none of the remaining pieces were large enough for a crown that
would fit her head but, instead of telling her that, I took the largest piece of textile
and tried to wrap it around her head. We could both see that the piece was too short
for a crown. She looked disappointed but soon had a new idea:
“That there – we can make it! We can make it!!” she said happily while pointing at the
measuring tape.
I used the measuring tape to measure the distance around her head and then I
measured the textile. I compared the two lengths in front of her and explained to her
that the measured length around her head was longer than the textile, which meant
the textile was too short. Eva now took the measuring tape into her own hands and
started to stretch it:
“We can stretch!” she suggested, as if stretching the measuring tape could help us solve the
problem of the too-short piece of textile.
I was afraid that Eva would be sad or angry when she realised that all pieces of that
textile were too small. She was silent and seemed worried for a few minutes, but
later had an idea to tape a few textile pieces together so that she could finally make
a crown for herself.
Analysis and Discussion
The first vignette shows my interactions with the girls before I knew they would be
joining me in an educational context. It was actually this observation that inspired my
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imagination and contributed to my choice of pink textiles for the educational context
with them. One could say that they indirectly contributed to the future content of their
curriculum; however, the exact choice of the materials’ qualities was my responsibility. It was through the momentary meeting with the girls that I experienced their
acceptance and invitation to interaction. At the same time, my questions about the
shoes and the colours seemed to be interesting for them, which further contributed
to the establishment of our positive contact.
The first meeting between myself and the girls, presented in the first vignette, was
not planned but occasional. The second vignette is from the educational context where
the physical space, materials and tools were prepared for activities with textiles. When
the girls entered the room, the textiles were not all visible at once. Instead, the textiles
were hidden under the table and presented to the girls when I assumed the timing
was correct. The scissors were introduced when Marit mentioned them. Similarly, I
quickly grabbed a suitable textile from under the table when I sensed that the girls
needed a textile appropriate for tearing. From my experience with dress design I knew
that felted wool was impossible to tear, and I wanted the girls to experience mastery
during the activity of tearing, which was new to them. It was possibly the merging of
my roles of a teacher, researcher and artist (in my position as A/R/T-ographer) that
allowed the immediate choices of appropriate textiles (Irwin & De Cosson, 2004) when
quick decisions had to be made during the improvisation process (Eisner, 2002) in
the momentary meeting (Aspelin, 2010).
The girls were not exposed to all of the materials at once. They had time to pay
attention to each textile’s specific qualities and, after a while, experience the diversity
of qualities by treating them with their hands, wrapping them around their bodies,
pulling, stretching, cutting… Having more textiles under the table, I could always
renew their motivation by surprising them with something that could draw their
attention. On one hand, I controlled the materials and could decide which materials
to introduce. On the other, I was flexible in introducing the materials I evaluated to
be suitable in the specific moment. In this sense, my attention to the girls and the
listening attitude (Dahlberg & Moss, 2010; Vecchi, 2010), which determined my
choice of suitable materials and tools, was both a means of controlling the pedagogical situation and an expression of respect for the children’s needs and choices.
As the provider of materials, I became a co-constructor of their knowledge (Bresler,
1994), but I could not determine exactly what would be learned in the context (Eisner, 2002). The girls’ new understandings about how to pull when tearing, how
much muscle power different textiles demanded, how textiles have diverse qualities
concerning their texture, elasticity, thickness, transparency and so on, were negotiated through their physical activities but also through our interhuman relations
(Aspelin, 2010). From my body language they could understand that I did not wish
to constrain their interest to explore the materials. The fact that I let them tear and
cut the textiles by themselves seemed to signal that their ideas were welcomed, and
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during the educational context they seemed to become more and more self-confident
about their own mastering.
Curricula-as-lived emerged within the space for meaning negotiation which was
delimited by my choice of materials and tools, but was still open-ended because I had
not pre-decided the activities or outcomes. Curricula-as-lived developed in accordance with the unpredictability of the immediate meetings (Aspelin, 2010) between
the girls, the materials, tools and me.
When I was planning the educational context I could not know that we would
tear the textiles. The girls contributed to the activities by pulling the textiles, which
I interpreted as possible development of the curricula-as-lived. Exploring textiles’
elasticity and strength was during the momentary meeting defined as visual art curricula. The tearing activity that derived from our mutual interpretations became of the
most important activities of the educational context. I suggest that Eva’s ideas about
solving later measuring problems were closely related to her experiences during the
tearing activities – I will soon explain why I believe this.
At one point, the girls had the idea to make crowns for themselves. It is impossible
to know where this idea came from, although during the educational contexts birthdays
and princesses were mentioned a few times, and in Norwegian pre-schools birthdays
are often celebrated by making a crown for the child who has a birthday. I suppose that
making a crown was an activity the girls were familiar with and which corresponded
with the pink textiles and dressing up, which was also one of their activities.
When Eva started to make her crown, her crown-making process uncovered a
number of emerging problems that needed to be solved: how to cut with scissors,
where to cut, how to join with tape, how to make a tube and so on. First of all, she
had to face the challenge of choosing an appropriate textile for the crown. During the
educational context Eva had lifted, stretched, torn and covered her body with different textiles and experienced their affordances. Indeed, I suppose that Eva’s choice of
the stiff textile was not a coincidence, but the result of her new knowledge about this
material’s affordance to stand upright – no other textile from the selection was able
to be formed into a tube that could stand on its own; the other textiles she had tried
on her head took on the form of her head, and this was not an appropriate design
for a crown. In fact, I suggest that the idea to make a crown derived exactly from
the affordances of the paper-like textile. Eva’s past experiences from crown-making
activities in her preschool merged with her new experiences of the pink, paper-like
textile. The past and new experiences met in a new idea (Dewey, 2005 [1934]) with
her personal signature (Eisner, 2002). I supposed that the idea to make crowns was
motivated by the girls’ associations about princesses and birthdays that developed
during the play with the pink textiles.
Another challenge for Eva was holding the scissors and cutting straight, which she
conducted with great patience and precision. Unfortunately, this was not good enough
– she cut the textile in the wrong place. When she realised the textile was too short,
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her imaginative cognition seemed to provide her with a number of possible solutions.
I can of course not know what was taking place in her body-mind, but I interpret her
ideas in relation to her activities and expressions I observed during the educational
context. Studying the video footage, I can see clear connections between Eva’s physical
activities with the textiles and her suggestions about how to make the textile longer.
Her embodied explorations of the materials supported her inner processes (Dewey,
2005 [1934]; Shusterman, 2008).
When Eva discovered that the textile was too short, she first suggested we should
use the measuring tape to measure the textile. This idea implies that the activity of
measuring had a meaning for her. This is possibly something she understood when
the girls had earlier in the educational context argued about a textile they both
wanted, and I measured it in order to cut it into equal pieces for each of the girls. By
the time Eva suggested measuring, she had obviously understood that measuring is
an important activity which can solve some problems; however, her suggestion to
measure came too late, after the textile had already been cut. The measuring could
not help us at this point.
Then she proposed that we stretch the measuring tape. However naïve, this suggestion signifies the engagement of her imaginative cognition (Efland, 2004). During
the educational context, she had experienced the elasticity of diverse textiles. Many
of them were flexible which made it possible to lengthen them by stretching.
Eva did not understand precisely how measuring should be performed but she
tried to negotiate own understanding about the relations between the circumference
of her head, the length of the measuring tape, and the length of the textile. When we
consider that the girl was only three years old, we can imagine how complicated this
mathematical understanding could have been for her. Her idea that the measuring
tape could be stretched was a reasonable suggestion that indicated her experience that
some textiles can be made longer by stretching. Although she mistakenly suggested
stretching the measuring tape and not the textile, I suppose that this idea was a result
of her meaning negotiations during her physical treatment of the textiles. Her bodymind merged with her physical environment (Merleau-Ponty, 1994 [1945]) and her
negotiation of meaning emerged in the momentary meeting where she had a chance
to experience, try and fail.
The difficulties with the length of the textile, instead of demotivating her, actually seemed to initiate her further struggle to achieve what she wanted (a crown for
herself). And when some of the solutions to make the textile longer did not work,
her imaginative connections between past and present experiences did not stop, but
she continued to negotiate new possibilities, for instance how to assembly the textile
pieces… but that is another story.
When Eva and Marit decided to make crowns, the character of the activities changed
from play with the materials to the production of crowns. I had prepared to focus
on the process, and when the girls started to make crowns I felt insecure about how
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much to help them with the number of emerging challenges. When Eva was cutting
the textile, I struggled not to interfere and help her too much. I wanted her to make
own decisions about the crown and learn through her experiences. Thus, I experienced
how difficult it was to resist helping her: it would have been much easier for both
of us if I had taken her scissors and shown her how ‘things should be done’ but, if I
had done so, I would have prevented her from learning from her own experiences.
In addition, I would have shown her that I knew better and by doing so suppressed
her feeling of being competent.
From my (i.e., the teacher’s) point of view, one of the most significant problems
in Eva’s crown making was the size of the textile. It was indeed Eva’s decision to cut
it that made it too small. I warned her of this possibility, but when I realised how
determined she was to cut it her own way, I let her do so. Nonetheless, I had a difficult time watching her ‘destroy’ the last piece of textile that was long enough. I was
afraid she would be sad if she had cut the textile and then realise afterwards that she
might not be able to make a crown.
Giving children time to explore, face challenges and solve problems should be an
easy pedagogical task. I am therefore surprised how hard it was for me to carry out
such a simple task of not helping too much. During my interaction with Eva, I had
to restrain myself from intervening, while I remained attentive and supportive, as
practised in flexible purposing (Dewey, 1938) and improvisation (Eisner, 2002). As a
tool in the interactionist (Järvinen & Mik-Meyer, 2005) and A/R/T-ographic research
(Irwin & De Cosson, 2004; Springgay et al., 2008), my subjective, emotional engagement helped me become aware of my preconceptions that, for instance, wasted material and time should be avoided and that it is more effective (or socially acceptable?)
to help children with practical tasks than to let them do things themselves. However,
when I abstained from helping Eva, she was able to feel competent: by letting her do
things herself I showed her that I respected her choices and that she was competent
because she did not need my help. Letting her cut as she wished required me to relinquish some of my power (Clark, 2010), but doing so also allowed her to face a number
of challenges and learn through her experience. Fortunately, instead of making her
angry (although she looked worried for a minute), cutting her own way seemed to
make her more self-confident; when she suggested that we use the measuring tape,
she expressed her confidence by shouting: “We can make it! We can make it!”
Conclusions
This article is based on Eisner’s suggestion that a teacher can, by selecting materials,
make certain kinds of learning possible, but cannot decide what will be learned (Eisner, 2002). Through practical examples from one girl’s interaction with pink textiles,
with another girl and myself, I tried to illustrate the complexity of process of meaning
negotiation and make visible how both the qualities of the materials and of the interhuman relations simultaneously conditioned which meanings could be negotiated.
348
During my interactions with Eva, I experienced how her experiences depended on my
discipline-specific knowledge, attitudes and ability to listen. We were intersubjectively
connected – she could grasp my attitudes from my body language, words and facial
expressions. As a teacher and researcher, I needed to be attentive to the emerging
events and unselfishly apply all of my imagination and competencies in response to
the momentary meetings (Aspelin, 2010; Bresler, 2006a). Through my “lived experience” (Van Manen, 1997) as an A/R/T-ographer, I came to understand how I needed
to balance my responsibilities, power, imagination and diverse competencies in order
to provide for challenging and meaningful spaces for Eva’s negotiations of meaning.
Selecting materials with suitable affordances and constraints is one of the main
tasks of a visual art teacher (Eisner, 2002). A visual art teacher needs to apply their
discipline-specific knowledge about materials, tools and techniques prior to lessons,
although when the materials are chosen they can provide a framework within which
curricula can be negotiated (Fredriksen, 2010). Apart from choosing materials, this
article suggests that teachers need to facilitate spaces for open-ended curricula where
new meaning can be negotiated according to each student’s personal combination
of experiences. If children are to negotiate personal meanings, teachers must allow
open-ended explorations of materials instead of making models for the children to
copy (Danko-McGhee & Slutsky, 2009). Perhaps most importantly, children’s imaginative suggestions must be respected. When Eva was encouraged to experience and
interpret the materials in individual ways, she could sense that she was recognised
as a unique individual. According to Aspelin (2010), such recognition in interhuman
relations is essential to education: “What really matters [in educational research] is
between, in a lived relation, and nowhere else” (Aspelin, 2010, p. 132). This article
has provided examples that demonstrate the ways in which it matters.
Notes
1 The concept of learning will later be compared with the concept of meaning negotiation. To avoid confusion, the concept of
learning will be applied at this point, also because Eisner uses that concept.
Biljana C. Fredriksen is associate professor in visual arts at Vestfold University College in Norway.
She has been working with education of preschool teacher students and over the years conducted a
number of projects with young children. Her special interests are materials for sculpting, pedagogy
of listening, experiential learning and arts-based research methodology.
349
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Education Inquiry
EDU.
INQ.
Mind the gap!
Creating a community between teacher-actors
and toddler-spectators in a performative event
Anne Lise Nordbø*
Abstract
This article is based on an inquiry into the framing of artistic effects in space and addresses the
interactions between two-year-old children and adult performers. I discuss how the traditional communication gap between actor and audience can be surmounted. My study is a crossover between
performance art and drama pedagogy, which I describe as an interactive scenic playground. I will
discuss how toddlers can be active participants in performance art by employing the materials and
actions used by skilled kindergarten teachers. Specifically, these include clearly expressing expected
intentions, bodily behaviours and social interactions. The interactions of toddlers with performers
challenge dramaturgy and actors. The aim of this study is to analyse staging strategies for the benefit
of interaction as a participatory and democratic learning process. My empirical sources consist of
video footage, observations and notes from the actor-teacher group that performed with the toddlers in two small groups. My results include the sensory and embodied nonverbal contributions
of toddlers to performative meaning making as they interacted with both textiles and people and
developed into a community.
Keywords: drama, scenic playground, performance event, kindergarten, materiality, space
Introduction
The main purpose of this article is to investigate the aesthetic interactions between
toddlers and adult performers and to discuss how toddlers respond to the staging
strategies of adult performers. In what I refer to as a scenic playground, which can
be described as a crossover between performative events and drama pedagogy, I investigate how children learn about interaction through action. The scenic playground
which I created during the course of my study is presented in this article as an example of such staging strategies. This scenic playground consists of actors, textiles,
several objects and movements as expressive effects, and toddlers who contribute to
the expression by interacting with the material and the actors. Kindergarten space,
materiality and meaning making are observed in this article from the perspective of
*Vestfold University College, Faculty of humaniora and educational science, Institute of practical and
aesthetic subjects, Norway, www.hive.no. E-mail: [email protected]
©Authors. ISSN 2000-4508, pp. 353–370
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performance art and drama pedagogy. The term “space” is used synonymously with
“stage” as a common space in which performers and spectators interact. In the title,
mind the gap refers to the common separation between actors and spectators and
the stage and the audience in theatre. Staging strategies, which attempt to ‘mind’ or
bridge the gap between performers and spectators and thus create interaction, are
found in performance events. The scenic playground is an example of the use of such
a staging strategy to encourage the interaction of toddler spectators to interact with
the performance. The opportunity to influence events on stage can stimulate a child´s
perception of participating in the world, particularly with regard to being seen and
heard among other people.
The embodiment of ideas in theatre and drama is manifested through space, material and body in combination with movement, light, sound and speech. During this
study, I sought to identify the ways in which some of these elements can be used in
staging strategies for young children. Central to the study is my search for concepts by
which I understand the action and interaction that occurred in the scenic playground.
The gap between performer and audience, which is significant when interaction is
an aim in theatre performance events, has been analysed by researchers such as the
German theatre analyst Erika Fisher-Lichte (2008).
In this study: How children learn about interaction through nonverbal co-acting
with actors and aesthetic effects in space, I have investigated how toddlers can be
offered an opportunity for performative expression as means to allow co-play in interaction with adult performers. How can performative actions structure toddlers´
participation, interaction and urge to express themselves (and the form of this expression)?
My research questions are as follows: 1) how can a scenic playground be shaped
or designed to ensure that adult actors can prepare a foundation for interaction with
two-year-old children?; and 2) how can the performance space and performative actions provide a foundation for interaction between adults and two-year-old children,
in which the children can actually participate? The purpose of this case study was to
investigate how toddlers respond to interactional staging strategies that are designed
to encourage them to influence the actions and dramaturgy of the performance.
A brief story about the ‘experiment’ of a scenic playground
The scenic playground space was a 70 m2 flat floor. The scenography was long
transparent fabrics of textile and plastic, and a few objects. Most of the materials
were out of reach and sight for the toddlers as the presentation started. Only the two
actor-teachers´ bodies, lying on the floor among light sources and three transparent
coloured textiles hanging from the roof, were visible.
The kind of play in the scenic playground was mimic, copying, and simulating
an ‘illusory world’ of colours of transparent textiles, lights, adults (actor-teachers)
who did not talk or make sounds but moved their bodies and the textiles in familiar
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and unfamiliar ways. Later more textiles, and a few objects, were introduced and all
materials were handled in familiar and unfamiliar ways by the actor-teachers. All the
materials were made accessible for the toddlers to touch, grab and handle.
When I conducted the actor-teachers´ performative expressions in the scenic
playground, I did not prepare in accordance with the concepts and theory I apply in
the analysis in this article. My study started by creating a scenic expression together
with the actor-teachers, based on actors´ improvisations investigating the handling
of textiles in a stage-like space, aiming at engaging toddlers in co-play. My source
of inspiration for the rehearsal of the actors´ scenic expression was inspired by
Grotowski´s and Barba´s writings and performances, with a special point of interest being the actors´ physical presence on stage in order to correspond to toddlers´
embodied behaviour. I was also inspired by Boal’s interactive forum theatre where
audiences are co-actors and “spect-actors”. So I conducted the ‘experiment’ of the
scenic playground inspired by embodied action and audience participation, and also
by performances for children under the age of three, specifically those conducted by
Blixrud (2010), and Hovik (Hovik, 2011a, 2011b), which focus on interaction.
In the content analysis of the video footage, I noticed that the process of actions
and expressions called for concepts to understand this cross-over between child play
and performance. I had conducted an aesthetic frame which offered certain limitations of space, materials and actions, and the results showed interaction which I
characterised as both performative and social. When I observed how the toddlers
– children who did not have performative skills or knowledge of staging strategies
– contributed to the event, I searched for possible explanations of the relations between the ‘real’ and ‘fictional’ and the social elements of performativity in the event.
Performance theory offered concepts and explanations of the ‘social’: relations between
‘real’ and ‘fictional’, the community and the ‘in-between’-social-and-performativeevent that had occurred in the scenic playground. My aim is to apply the idea of a
scenic playground to early childhood education.
Theory
Performativity and its relation to play and drama pedagogy
Creating a cross-over between performativity and children´s play may question to
what extent concepts of performative events can be compatible with pedagogical
drama and children´s play. However, according to Richard Schechner ( 2006), play
is complex to define. Play is “at the heart of performance, it is looser, more permissive
and flexible than ritual, not ‘real’ or ‘serious’, and it can be revised”.
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/…/, if it is wrong to fence children´s play off from adult play; if playing need be neither
voluntary or fun; if play is characterized both by flow – losing oneself in play – and reflexivity – the awareness that one is playing; if ethological and semiotic studies show that play´s
functions include learning, regulating hierarchy, exploration, creativity, and communication;
if psychoanalysis links playing with fantasy, dreaming, and the expression of desires; if the
‘in between’ and ‘as if’ time-space of playing is the source of cultural activities including arts,
sciences, and religions ... can we ever really understand something so complex? (Schechner,
2006, p. 91).
“In between” play and performativity in the scenic playground may be categorised as
“liminoid”. Victor Turner characterises arts and recreational activities in our modern
and postmodern societies as a replacement of ritual, a voluntary art form “liminoid”,
a space which is open to all possibilities (Schechner, 2006, p. 67). Social actions like a
demonstration or rehearsed performative actions like performance art are both liminoid. In a liminoid experience a person can enter a community (as an actor, or citizen)
and, after some time, re-enter ordinary life. Schechner calls it “transportations”, which
can bring temporary change, or experiences of not being me but not-not me either.
The toddler-actors´ play in the scenic playground was not based on performativityskills but may be determined a liminoid experience, entering a performative community for a limited amount of time.
In my discussion I will approach play as: flow, reflexive action, power reversal
and liminoid performative, conceptualised by performative and educational theory.
Interaction
Toddler audiences tend to bridge the gap between the stage and themselves as the
audience most likely because of their lack of knowledge regarding traditional gap
conventions in theatre. Toddler audiences tend to seek interaction, and a scenic
playground was an intention to meet that tendency in toddlers.
The gap between performer and audience, which is significant when interaction is an
aim in theatre performance events, has been analysed by researchers such as the German
theatre analyst Erika Fisher-Lichte (2008), building on the works of Schechner and Turner.
Staging strategies have developed which address this gap between performer and audience.
As an event that is created in interaction with an audience, theatre differs from a work
of art that is created and staged before being performed to the audience. The performative turn began in the 1960s, after which performative events have been performed
in a number of different ways. The gap between actor and audience is a major challenge in theatre in general, and experimentation with this gap is attempted in many
performative events. In this study, I investigate the interactive actions of toddlers and
adult actor-teachers in the scenic playground by treating it as a performative event.
Because my aim in this research is to discuss how the gap between actors and observers in performances for young children can be reduced and to transfer my findings
in the scenic playground to drama pedagogy in kindergartens, I also seek to conceive
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a plan of action, participation and democracy in learning processes. In this article,
interaction is understood as a theatre concept that is linked to staging strategies; as a
concept that is linked to the actions of skilled practitioners, as shown in the reading
of Donald Schön by the philosopher Bengt Molander (2008) (Molander, 2008); and
as a concept that is linked to action in educational democratic encounters, as stated
by Gert J.J. Biesta (2006).
Three of Fischer-Lichte´s concepts of performative events (i.e., feedback loop, role
reversal and performative community) are useful tools for understanding interaction processes.
Feedback loop
Feedback loops occur when either an actor or an audience member performs an action
that requires a response by the other, and this action-response sequence subsequently
continues to loop between them. Thus, the audience member´s response influences the
actor’s response and actions and the dramaturgy of the event. Fischer-Lichte (2008)
states that this loop is a fundamentally new method of including audience members
as participants: “The feedback loop as a self-referential, autopoietic system, enabling
a fundamentally open, unpredictable process emerged as the defining principle in
theatrical work” (p. 59).
Feedback loops are not created in a presentation; rather, such loops are created in
the form of an exchange in which the audience response is answered by actor-teachers.
Such responses may be vocal or embodied or may assume another form of expression.
A feedback loop can halt, break or continue in changed expressions. An audience
response can assume the form of vocal actions, gestures, facial expressions, touch or
movement. Depending on the staging strategies and the actual audience members attending an event, the actions that are performed by the audience can involve variation
in both the extent of interaction and the influence on the dramaturgy and expression
of the performance event.
Role reversal
Fischer-Lichte (2008) describes role reversal as an interaction in which audience
members respond visually by entering the stage, as was observed in the scenic playground for this study. In such interactions, an actor may become an observer while
an audience member becomes an actor, or both individuals may become actors and/
or observers. Staging strategies for performative events employ feedback loops and
role reversal in a manner that can cause a performance to either continue or cease.
Fischer-Lichte states that seeing and hearing are crucial to setting role reversals in
motion: “The spectator is transformed into an actor even before role reversal occurs.
The opposition between acting and observing collapses” (2008, p. 59).
Role reversal is a complicated endeavour using staging strategies for adult audiences, with the exception of Boal´s “forum theatre” (2008). However, in the scenic
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playground, role reversal was easy to establish due to the toddlers´ embodied ways
of being, which Gunvor Løkken (Løkken, 2000, 2004) described by applying Maurice
Merleau-Ponty´s theory (1962) of the phenomenology of the body to her study of toddler peer culture in Norwegian kindergartens. As the toddlers absorbed the expressions
of the performative event with their senses, they sent and received feedback and were
transformed from observers to actors in role reversals.
Performance Community
In this study, the use of a feedback loop and role reversal as active staging strategies caused the scenic playground to become a performance community.
According to Fischer-Lichte (2008), the development of a performative community can occur as a result of feedback loops and role reversals. This reciprocal relationship of influence through the feedback loop identifies transformation as a fundamental category of the aesthetics of the performative.
Fischer-Lichte states as follows: “These short-lived, transient theatrical communities of actors and spectators/…/ highlight the fusion of the aesthetic and the social”.
Staging strategies exert some influence, but feedback loops between actual people
are of the utmost importance.
Embodiment
My conception of embodiment stems from the reading of Fischer-Lichte (2008) and
Løkken as well as my own reading of Merleau-Ponty´s phenomenology of the body
(1962). In Fischer-Lichte´s reading, embodiment is linked to the development of
staging the body.
Merleau-Ponty thus cleared the path for a new application of the term ‘embodiment’ as it is
used today in cultural anthropology, cognitive sciences, and theatre studies. Merleau-Ponty´s
contribution to philosophy is comparable to Grotowski´s to theatre. /…/ Grotowski created
the conditions for a redefinition of the embodiment concept. Here embodying denotes the
emergence of something that exists only as body (2008, p. 83).
Theatrical perspectives of framing bodies in space emphasise the “lived experience”
in Merleau-Ponty´s philosophy and embodied action as our means of “being in the
world”. These interpretations are supplemented by Løkken´s interpretation of the
toddler body in social interaction. According to Merleau-Ponty, we experience the
world through our bodies. Meaning is not produced by a transcendental or constituting consciousness but rather is created by a “body subject” that engages in actions. In
other words, we perceive the world through our knowledge of the manner in which
our bodies move within the world.
Touch is a way of being embodied. Although uncommon in performances in Western
cultures, touch is a common method by which toddlers interact with other people.
According to Fisher-Lichte, adult performative events that attempt to use touch in
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feedback loops often fail; thus, there exists a major difference between how adult
and toddler audiences respond to performative events. For adult audiences, being
touched by an actor can be offending or misinterpreted. As Fischer-Lichte discusses,
a lack of community with regard to habits, interpretations, rituals and beliefs among
audience members is a challenge for staging strategies in interactive performance
events. However, the toddlers in my material appeared to demonstrate this sense
of embodiment, including in situations in which they were touched and did touch
other people. Because toddlers are unfamiliar with cultural codes, beliefs and rituals
as staging strategies, they responded to the actual performative expressions in the
scenic playground with presence.
Presence
The theatrical concept of presence is often an assumed attribute of an actor based on
theatrical skills. In this study, the presence of actor-teachers stemmed from both their
theatrical skill and their professional skill as early childhood teachers. According to
the English theatre analyst Cormac Power (2008), staging theatre is a way of showing
presence and non-presence in the same performance. Power (2008, p. 3) explains as
follows: “To be present in a particular place is to be simultaneous with a particular
space-time environment”. Embodied presence, which manifests in the scenic playground as a performative event encompassing materials and bodily movement, is a
frame in which presence is materialised in actions. If the presence of actor-teachers
was theatrical at some moments, was akin to a teacher’s presence at other moments,
and was perhaps even described as a social or ‘private’ presence at other times (which
may be interpreted as non-presence), then this performative event was in accordance
with Power´s view of theatrical presence and non-presence. Powers suggests that no
performance creates an expression of complete presence because the speciality of
theatre is the actors (and staging strategies) alternating between presence and nonpresence. Power states that Derrida´s critique of theatrical presence, which analyses
Artaud´s theatre vision, is a tool for theatre creators to use theatre to make audiences
aware of presence and non-presence. This tool appears to be a type of ‘alibi’ for the
role of a non-professional actor in the scenic playground as both an actor and a teacher
alternating between social and performative acts, which emphasise the presence and
non-presence (in a theatrical sense) cited by Power. Professionals can to a larger extent
control the staging of presence and non-presence. And of course, distraction and nonpresence are common elements of both toddler behaviour and adult behaviour, but a
lack of life experience, imagination, curiosity and other factors provide toddlers with
a more investigative and experimental embodied presence. When toddlers explore
their environments, they are situated and embodied within these environments; as
Power explains, their experiences are “simultaneous with a particular space-time
environment”. A toddler´s presence is not linked to theatrical skills; rather, to separate a toddler’s presence from the presence of actor-teachers or professional actors,
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one may posit the existence of both a theatrical and social presence. Alternatively, a
toddler’s presence may involve engaging in a present state of action.
In this research analysis, I apply Fischer-Lichte´s concepts (2008) of the feedback loop, role reversal, performative community, embodiment and presence
to assess how children interact and express themselves in the scenic playground
(i.e., their strategies of minding the gaps between stage and audience and between
performer and spectator). Also the concept liminoid (Schechner, 2006) is commented on. Subsequently, I will briefly analyse the community event in the scenic
playground by applying the concepts of action in the theory of Molander (2008)
and the theory of community in democratic education proposed by Biesta (2006).
I will discuss these theories and data in relation to a narrative that I call The Blue
Material, with a focus on a performative community.
Methods
This qualitative empirical case study entitled: How children learn about interaction
through nonverbal co-acting with actors and aesthetic effects in space, was conducted
in an installation called the scenic playground designed as a crossover between performance art and drama pedagogy. The management of a private company of four
kindergartens volunteered to participate in the study and offered two skilled early
childhood teachers, who were previously my students, with experience in educational
drama and practice to participate as actor-teachers. The sample of 10 children was
randomly selected by the kindergarten staff in the two kindergarten sections that were
not the regular workplaces of these teachers. The space for the scenic playground was
chosen at the discretion of Vestfold University College.
The ethical standard was accepted by the Norwegian Social Science Data Services
(NSD) for implementation of the statutory data privacy requirements in the research.
The data were generated from field notes of the training of the actor-teachers, video
footage of two encounters between the actor-teachers and the two-year-old children,
my observations during the interactive encounters and my field notes after the event.
Notes and field notes supplement the films as the basis for my content analysis.
Two small groups of 10 two-year-old children were exposed to the space, materials
and actors. The first group consisted of five boys and one girl, and the second group
consisted of three boys and one girl. The duration of each encounter was approximately
one hour. The filmed interaction highlights similarities and differences between the
two groups; however, I have selected only one example of a similar process that is
explained in a narrative, The Blue Material, to be discussed below.
The performative expressions that occurred were analysed using the theoretical concepts of interaction used in the theatre analyses conducted by Fisher-Lichte
(2008) and Power (2008) as explained above. The performative expressions were
not analysed with the intention of understanding the staging itself; rather, they were
analysed to understand the embodied, co-acting behaviour of toddlers in a certain
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space as both an aesthetically framed learning process and a social-interactional
learning process. The performative event-based space as stage was conducted and
analysed as a means to develop a wider perspective, particularly regarding the experiential and experimental participation of children in a social context. Such contexts
are interpreted as human beings (actor-teachers) offering their embodied presence
in an action-based encounter and enabling the opportunity for others (e.g., toddlers)
to provide responses.
The narrative below exemplifies the actions of both the actor-teachers and the
toddlers and illustrates my aim for this study.
Presentation of the data
The scenic playground was presented using nonverbal actions. The toddlers added
vocal sounds, but they used only nonverbal communication during the hour of the
event. Before the introduction of a blue plastic material, the two groups had different
feedback loop processes, and role reversals were scarce in the second group. However,
a similar process occurred in both groups upon the introduction of the blue material;
therefore, I chose a description of this story from the second group only. The duration of the event that is described was approximately 10 minutes, and the event then
continued for approximately 15 more minutes concentrating on the blue material.
Story: The Blue Material
The performative event had proceeded for approximately half an hour when the Blue Material was unveiled by one of the actor-teachers. Prior to this occurrence, the Blue Material
had been hanging in a folded position in a short line under the roof. When the actor-teacher
began to unfold the material, none of the children were attending to her actions. As soon as
one of the toddlers heard the sound of the Blue Material, the sound captured this child´s
full attention. With facial and vocal expressions of awe and joy, the child attracted the attention of other toddlers before they actually saw the Blue Material unfolding. Both actorteachers engaged in handling the material to ensure that it appeared in waves and floated up
towards the roof. The toddlers appeared to be magnetically drawn into a sensation of sight,
sound and touch by the movement of the material. After observing the movements of the
blue material, running beneath it as it floated high above them, and seeing and feeling the
material sink down upon them, all of the children joined in a common action imitation by
following or attending one another´s bodily movements, gestures, steps, facial expressions
and vocal sounds. No words were uttered; only sounds were heard. The actor-teachers uttered no sounds but expressed surprise and awe through their facial and body movements,
such as smiles and expressions, which were in tune with the reactions of the children. The
actor-teachers continued to move the material. At one point, both actor-teachers lost their
grip on the material and it floated away towards the back wall and sank down to the floor.
All of the toddlers and both actor-teachers remained motionless as they waited for the material to complete its movement. Immediately before the material flattened to the floor, one
child moved towards it, and one actor followed before all of the others did the same. The
toddlers touched and lifted the material while the actor-teachers lifted it higher because of
their physical height; this action created waves in the material so that air again came beneath
it and ‘lifted’ it up. The material repeatedly rose and fell while one or more of the toddlers
ran towards the middle beneath it. The children also repeatedly stood and watched while
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moving their bodies and arms, and stepped into standing positions. At one point, all of the
children joined in the middle under the material, and the actor-teachers released their grips
on it and joined the children as the material formed a rounded shape similar to a bulb or an
igloo with all participants sitting still inside it for a moment. One boy came out from under
the material, fetched the light chain that he had previously examined for a long time, and
brought this item into the ‘igloo’. The small light bulbs shined through the material, and the
people’s shadows were slightly visible through the blue material. The blue material, teacheractors and children were completely still, no sound or movement appeared. Then, the boy
returned with ‘his’ light chain. He placed himself on the floor beside the bench, where he
had been situated before playing. The others sat in the igloo for a while before the experience
came to a close and the children returned from under the bulb.
Feedback loops
The feedback loop connected to the Blue Material, a thin plastic fabric, was established through an action that received an overwhelming response: the actor-teachers
unveiled the Blue Material, and the first child’s response, which included turning
towards the sound of the material, uttering sounds and showing facial expressions
of joy and interest. Building on this response, the other actor-teacher also began to
participate by assisting in unwrapping the material and beginning the planned action
of lifting it to ensure air flow beneath the material. The planned action was part of
the staging strategies that were performed based on the knowledge and experience
of the actor-teachers with the material. This experience was novel for these toddlers,
and the action was adjusted based on the response of the toddlers. For example, the
response of the toddlers in placing their bodies under the ‘roof’ of the material encouraged the actor-teachers to repeat the act of lifting the material. In contrast, the
withdrawal of the toddlers from the material and their actions for several seconds
received a copying response by the actor-teachers, who lifted the material and placed
their own bodies beneath it (Picture 3). The material sank and covered them, and
the toddlers responded by running towards the adults to attempt to lift the material
before being assisted by the actor-teachers. The action of placing one´s body under
the material was copied both before and after the first loss of the actor-teachers´ grip
on the material. This action is an example of the copying of child-initiated action that
created a feedback loop that was sufficiently strong to be repeated numerous times
throughout the event.
Role reversal to bridge the gap between spaces
Role reversal can be understood as bridging the gap between two spaces: one space
that is established for the presentation of the materials and actor-teachers and another
space for the audience-like observation role of the toddlers. The two spaces existed during the investigation of materials in one-to-one feedback loops before the Blue Material
was introduced. However, when the new material was introduced, the feedback loop
was accelerated and the perception of two separate spaces collapsed. Role reversals
concern both space and the emergence of a new perception of what an actor-teacher or
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a toddler can do in the scenic playground. The new perception that emerged for the toddlers (equal to that in an audience of an adult performative event) was that a separation
between spaces and actions is not necessary or desirable. This new understanding developed further and assisted the toddlers in bridging the gap between the roles of actorteacher and toddler. The continuation of role-reversed actions was based on copying,
repeating and including variations and tilts of the actions in the feedback loop. Sometimes the material itself contributed to influencing a situation, such as when the actorteachers lost their grip on the material and thus caused it to move across the space.
The response by the toddlers showed a high degree of concern for facilitating the feedback loop, role reversals and participation in building a performing community event.
The toddlers´ fascination with and attraction to both the sounds and appearance of
the Blue Material were essential in building this community. The other materials and
objects that were presented to the toddlers did not affect the groups as a community
in a similar manner. However, I believe that the feedback loops that were associated
with the other textiles and objects provided the foundation for the toddlers´ conception of role reversal. In this study, this particular material, in combination with the
staging strategies of copying, repeating and integrating unexpected actions from the
toddlers, framed the performative community event. The previous materials and actions may have been experienced as ‘rules’ of framing or even as types of rituals for
the event that prepared the toddlers for the actions of the Blue Material.
A community event is not a staging strategy; instead, such an event depends on
the responses and willingness of the audience to become co-actors. The embodied
actions of the toddlers, role reversals and experimental investigations facilitated such
a community.
If I assume that the experiences of the toddlers in the initial feedback loops resulted
in their feeling accepted, approved, seen and heard in their choices of action, then this
result may explain why some toddlers easily reversed roles with the actor-teachers
when the Blue Material was introduced. This assumption would also explain why all
of the children subsequently followed, abandoned their seated audience positions,
and moved closer to or into the middle of the event.
Power relations tilted. The role reversal had some important consequences that
may have influenced the social character of the performative community. The actorteachers´ control over the event decreased while the toddlers´ control over the
event increased. The toddlers´ initiated actions, pauses, repetitions and variations
occurred to such an extent that the dramaturgy was defined by these actions towards
the end of the event. The actions of the toddlers were collective when directed only
towards the Blue Material, but the children did not transform the event into a coplay among themselves. The toddlers maintained feedback loops and role reversals
with the actor-teachers by initiating repetitions or new actions that prevented the
actor-teachers from surrendering their actor role. In turn, both the toddlers and
the actor-teachers contributed to ensuring that the community remained a united
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entity by focusing on the Blue Material. The actions of the actor-teachers developed
into actions that assisted the children rather than simply performing or leading the
event. I was initially troubled that the actor-teachers ‘assisted’ and thus became more
social than performative. However, the actions that were difficult for the toddlers to
perform were instead performed by the actor-teachers either because of their own
judgement or the initiative of the toddlers. As the community developed, the actorteachers transformed their actions into being ‘positively passive’, but they remained
attentive and attuned to the situation. According to Power (2008), presence need
not be an active state for an actor: “Theatre can be seen not so much as ‘having’ or
containing presence, but as an art that plays with its possibilities” (p. 8). During the
course of this research project, I have become aware that both presence and nonpresence are ways to ‘put presence into play’ in a performance. What I call “passive”
may be an important staging strategy that may put presence into play and increase
the awareness of toddlers with respect to their own and other people´s presence and
non-presence in such interactions.
A performative community
Was this experience a special community of co-subjects or merely a transformation
of former play relations into a new type of experience? Did the toddlers and actorteachers develop a unique performative community by acting together, or were the
first embodied action responses to the actor presentation, for example, merely common play behaviour? “This question arises in most cases of role reversal and audience
participation; the answer remains as yet unclear,” explains Fischer-Lichte (2008, p.
40); “[a]t the same time, the question is valued differently according to the emphasis
given to subject-object relationship in each performance”. I argue that the interaction of the toddlers with the staging strategies in this study in combination with the
actions of the actor-teachers with respect to the materials, objects and movements
in the space transformed the social actions into an event that created a significantly
different community than communities of daily kindergarten or home life.
Because of the role reversal that spurred the dynamic and multiple shifts in the
subject-object relationship, according to Fischer-Lichte, I think that the circumstances
of the performative event framed the children to experience a sense of adventure
and equality with the adult actor-teachers who controlled the experimental setting.
Nevertheless, power differences between the adults and children were apparent, and
a strong social play element was demonstrated by these actions.
The toddlers clearly had no experiential knowledge of a performative event. The
intriguing question, however, is why both the toddlers and the actor-teachers performed well not necessarily in a theatrical sense but in the sense of a performative
community event that includes social action. As an observer of the two encounters,
I was actually concerned that the actor-teachers were being less performative or
expressive in their actions than they should have been in a theatrical sense when the
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toddlers began to interact. Specifically, I recognised a potential problem in that the
actions were sometimes more social than performative during the event. However,
as I will further argue, the social action may actually be an important indicator as to
why the interaction and role reversal developed into a community event in the scenic
playground.
According to Turner’s term “liminoid”(Schechner, 2006, pp. 66-72), the toddlers
transformed in a marked space-time, where they were stripped of their family-and
kindergarten identities, vulnerable, “powerless and identityless”, until they began their
actions, improvised and “performed special actions” in the community, which formed
a new “identity” as co-actors in this particular time-space environment. Betwixt and
between the conventional positions of child play contra performativity in the arts in
modern and postmodern societies, personal identities as a child and social categories
as a performer were challenged (Schechner, 2006, p. 66).
The actor-teachers were exposed to “liminoidity” in two ways; 1. the rehearsal;
and 2. the encounter with the groups of children. “The workshop-rehearsal phase
of performance composition is analogous to the liminal phase of the ritual process”,
Schechner states (2006, p. 66). The rehearsal equipped the actor-teachers with potential power over actions and scenario, but the particular time-space environment
and interference of the toddlers challenged their power. The actor-teachers had to
change their plan of actions and were vulnerable concerning the dramaturgy and
progression of the event. When the textiles and movements were introduced by the
actor-teachers, the ‘in-between’ actor-teachers actions and toddlers´ response was a
“limen” – a threshold, passageway – to the yet unknown actions which occurred in
the scenic playground.
In ritual and aesthetic performances, the thin space of limen is expanded into a wide space
both actually and conceptually. What usually is just a ‘go-between’ becomes the site of the
action. And yet this action remains, to use Turner´s concept ‘betwixt and between’. It is
enlarged in time and space yet retains its peculiar quality of passageway or temporariness
(Schechner, 2006, pp. 66-67).
In “the site of the action” the threshold contains the possibilities of actions not yet
seen or performed. Reflexivity, regulating hierarchy, and communication in terms of
action-based nonverbal interaction will now be discussed.
Defining the actions in the scenic playground as performative play makes
it complicated to find which exact elements this performative liminoid form
was made up of. “Was it a tension between the orderly and the unpredictable?
Was it a struggle between two kinds of playing?”(Schechner, 2006, p. 92). In
the scenic playground: 1. all the players (actor-teachers and toddler-actors) accepted the rules of the play. (Rules of: frame, materials, nonverbality, action
and interaction); and 2. the flexible dramaturgy influenced the indeterminacy
and changed the rules of the game at times, and therefore nothing was certain.
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Quality in art is generally linked to a performer’s professional skill level; however, in
the scenic playground, neither the actor-teachers nor the toddlers were professionals
in an artistic sense. I have searched for explanations that are linked to the participant
exploration and experience of actions during the building of the community event.
How did the participants decide which actions to perform? For both the adults and
the children, the situation was unfamiliar; nevertheless, the improvisation with the
blue material persisted for approximately half an hour, with the whole event lasting
about an hour.
I assume that every chosen action that did not elicit a response was likely to be
abandoned. If this assumption is correct, then the conceptualisation of inter-dependency between actions and responses must have been present. The community was an
experimental setting in which the persons involved tested their own actions in encounters with the blue material and with one another, although they were unaware of
the predefined meaning and outcome of the event. When the blue material moved its
movement made a sound, the use of one’s senses in the present, as opposed to relying
on prior knowledge, was central. This use of senses applied to both the actor-teachers
and the toddlers. Despite differences in prior knowledge, both the actor-teachers and
the toddlers were subjects in a situation they had never encountered, and this situation was characterised by uncertainty with regard to the available choices of actions
and interactions. I question how the process of choices can be explained apart from
the use of performative event theory or improvisational skills.
Being aware of the unclear aspects of the concept reflection, I wish to understand
the action aspect of the event in the scenic playground as an alternative to a theatrical understanding by using the concept of reflection in action that was described by
Molander (2008) as “characterised by the fact that it reshapes our thinking and our
action while we are acting”.
The actions of the actor-teachers and the toddlers during the event in the scenic
playground informed them throughout the course of the actions themselves. This information may explain why prior knowledge was not essential to the co-creation of the
action-based community with the blue material. A variety of structures may describe
reflection processes that are neither pre- nor post-reflective but represent reflection
in action, according to Molander, by stating that structures may involve “a mirroring, meeting or a confrontation of a situation in which I as an agent am a part” and
“meeting and confrontation with myself and my experiences” (2008, p. 13). To be an
agent in the event was a structure that involved the participants´ voluntary responses
to a situation. These voluntary responses in the event helped construct and maintain
a certain common reality. The common reality is visible in my material because all
actions, movements and senses were directed towards the events surrounding the
blue material. Individual actions merged with collective actions.
The frames of staging strategies that involved materials, movements, and the actions of the actor-teachers provided a foundation, but the experimental choices of
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actions and the uncertainty of outcomes and responses (as in improvisation) actually constructed and maintained the event. Of course, the participants did not have a
great deal of time to withdraw and halt their actions in the community with the blue
material; therefore, the reflection needed to occur within the experiences of mirroring, meeting, confronting and responding. In turn, I believe that the adult and child
participants held relatively equal positions concerning their experience in the actions.
Molander uses the concept of “attentiveness” in action (2008, p. 15), which I compare
to Power´s concept of “presence” (2008).
“Agent-in-the-world epistemology”
Molander argues for a non-representationalist reading of Schön in which dialogue
and conversation describe knowledge as agent-in-the-world knowledge. In this study,
dialogue, which was previously described as a feedback loop, and conversation,
which was described as a co-acting role reversal process in a performative event,
were essential to enable the performative community to appear. I observed that the
continuation of the actions and responses of the actor-teachers acted as an adhesive
in their conversations with the toddlers, and vice versa. If any of the participants had
left the common space of negotiating the aesthetic expressions in contact with the
blue material, then the community would have been divided, broken, or halted or
would have taken another turn or been terminated. The event community became a
structure of meaning as such:
the relation between ‘those who converse’ is not a relation between subject and object, but
rather, between two subjects or between a subject and the (unobjectified) totality of which
she forms a part. /…/ The work – and the formation of knowledge – involves an alternation between leading and sketching and opening oneself up to allow the sketches to talk, so
that the unintentional and the uncontrolled may also make themselves known (Molander,
2008, p. 18).
Both the toddlers and the actor-teachers ‘sketched’ their actions and experienced
the actions of mirroring, meeting and confronting the material, the space and one
another. These actions involved visual, tactile and kinaesthetic experiences, each
of which ‘fuelled’ the conversation. According to Molander, reflective experience is
considered a process of doing in which you either enjoy or suffer the consequences.
The responses demonstrated to each individual the actions that she or he had taken
during the interaction. I assume that the emotional, visual, tactile and kinaesthetic
experiences that the actor-teachers and toddlers experienced during the event provided reason for reflection in action.
My reflection as a researcher differs as my reflection primarily occurred before
and after the event due to my detached position as an observer. If we assume that
reflection in action can only be ‘mental’ and can occur only before or after an event,
then the toddlers would be excluded from reflection processes. However, if we assume
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that at least an embodied action-based reflection in doing can mirror the process of
choices in a community event, then the toddlers would be included.
To give one´s ‘beginnings’ to the world and wait for a response
An encounter between actor-teachers and toddlers is a situation in which their differences –in terms of experiences, skills, knowledge, size and other factors – were
apparent. In his book about democratic education, Giert Biesta (2006) understood
Hannah Arendt´s concept of action in terms of people who act towards another person or an actual community by offering a beginning (“give their beginnings”); thus,
rather than asking “who am I?” in an interaction, I ask “who are you?” In other words,
how will you react to my beginning? I view the actions of both toddlers and actorteachers as “beginnings” that they offered to their performative event community;
the participants could not predict the responses of the other participants but must
wait for such a reaction. According to Biesta (2006), when a perception of difference
and plurality is obvious in any encounter, an intersubjective and ethical space may
develop. The participants in the event community were restricted in their choices of
actions because only those participants who were given responses and answers by
others in the social community were reinforced in their actions.
To extend the point of embodied thinking and doing to the scenic playground, I
observe that the concept of embodied actions and beginnings in Biesta´s interpretation of Arendt´s theory may explain what I call the unskilled “social” presence,
actions and interactions that led to the creation of the community. “Social” rather
than skilled performativity may be understood as subjective. Arendt´s perception of
human subjectivity relates to action: “To be a subject means to act, and action begins
with bringing one´s own beginnings into the world” (2006, p. 133). Subjectivity is not
understood as an attribute of individuals “but is understood as a quality of human
interaction” (2006, p. 134). In my view, this perspective offers both an aesthetical
and “social” human conception of action. An understanding of human subjectivity
that exists only in action may consist of aesthetic actions in the performance arts and
performative event communities. However, although performative events enable artists to demonstrate their “virtuosity” to an audience, as Arendt suggests, performative
events can also stage action in interaction in the present rather than the “before or
after” (2006, p. 134). Thus, a fluctuating event is flexible to beginnings and responsive to actions. Then, such actions can be performed by adult and toddler, skilled and
unskilled people within a performative means and staging strategies to allow co-play.
Conclusion
In my project, the gap between actor-teachers and toddlers was reduced as a result of
staging strategies that permitted the toddlers´ embodied actions to intervene in the
teacher- actors´ and events´ actions. My purpose in conducting this study of theatrical
interactions between performers and audiences, specifically audiences consisting of
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young children, was to provide a better understanding of how kindergarten teachers can assume the role of an actor in a scenic space. With materials, movement and
other staging strategies that are comparable to those used in performance events,
these actor-teachers experienced a flexible co-acting process with the children. Based
on the results of this empirical study on toddler participation in interactive play with
actor-teachers, I have discussed how children learn about interaction through embodied and emplaced action. The materials and the embodied actions of the actors
and toddlers in the scenic playground are artistic effects that combine to add colour,
shape, movement, embodiment, touch and sound to the performative expression.
Together, the adults and children in my study developed embodied, nonverbal forms
of expressing themselves. This experiential, art-based learning situation demonstrated
challenges for both the adult performers and the toddlers in both performative and
inter-personal ways. The event became a common task of creating a community of
actions that involved the interpretation and participation of the toddlers. In the future, the manner in which toddlers act and contribute to a common task of building
a community event may be further discussed in both theatre art and pedagogy by
reflecting on the negotiation of meaning. In pedagogy, I find the levels of participation of interest for a democratic education. As the children experience themselves as
co-actors in a role-reversal hierarchy and the option to express one self and experience other people express themselves is playful, ‘real’ and ‘fictional’ simultaneously.
In this practical, experiential, empirical and small-scale study, the results are
related to the conducting. Results of potential similar scenic playground conducting
may take different turns in the hands of others. I find that developing a theoretical
understanding of action, interaction and community enlightened not only by performative theatre theory, but also philosophical and educational perspectives gives
layers to the results, and to aesthetic participation as a democratic possibility.
Anne Lise Nordbø. After Master in drama and theatre at the university NTNU in Trondheim, Norway
1995, she has been teaching drama and theatre at university colleges in Norway since 1997, and in
other educational units before. Early childhood educational perspectives on theatre communication
is of special interest. Inspired by improvisational and experimental theatre forms and expressions,
investigations are conducted through student programs and a research studies.
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References
Biesta, G. J. J. (2006) Beyond Learning: Democratic Education for a Human Future. Boulder,
Colo.: Paradigm.
Blixrud, T. H. (2010) Møterommet: en refleksjon over et interaktivt teater for de minste. T.H.
Blixrud, Trondheim.
Fischer-Lichte, E., & Jain, S. I. (2008) The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics. London: Routledge.
Hovik, L. (2011a) Grenser og terskler i barneteater for de minste. In M. S. Liset (ed.), Møter i bevegelse (pp. 119-141). Bergen: Fagbokforlaget.
Hovik, L. (2011b) Nærværets betydning i barneteater for de minste. In M. S. Liset (ed.), Møter i bevegelse (pp. 89-117). Bergen: Fagbokforlaget.
Løkken, G. (2000) Toddler Peer Culture: The Social Style of One and Two Year Old Body-Subjects in Everyday Interaction. Trondheim: Pedagogisk institutt, Fakultet for samfunnsvitenskap og teknologiledelse, Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet.
Løkken, G. (2004) Toddlerkultur: om ett- og toåringers sosiale omgang i barnehagen. Oslo: Cappelen akademisk forlag.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962) Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge.
Molander, B. (2008) “Have I kept inquiry moving?” On the epistemology of reflection. Education
Inquiry, Phenomenology & Practice 2(1), 4–23.
Power, C. (2008) Presence in Play: A Critique of Theories of Presence in the Theatre. Amsterdam:
Rodopi.
Schechner, R. (2006) Performance Studies: An Introduction. New York: Routledge.
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Education Inquiry
EDU.
INQ.
Multimodal texts in kindergarten
rooms
Astrid Granly* & Eva Maagerø**
Abstract
This article provides an overview of the results of our project “The Kindergarten Room: A Multimodal
Pedagogical Text”. Our major initiative was to investigate what the multimodal texts in kindergarten
represent and the extent to which they reflect and provide attributions to the children’s activities. In
addition, we wanted to investigate whether kindergarten walls and floors can be called ‘pedagogical
texts’, and the extent to which texts on walls and floors establish a particular text culture. The study
is being carried out in Norway. Our analytical approach is situated within the theoretical framework
of Michael Halliday’s social semiotics and systemic functional linguistics. A kindergarten room is
a composite design that spatially utilises the co-deployment of various semiotic resources, such as
architecture, language and visual images, and is thus viewed as a multimodal text. Our multimodal
analysis is primarily based on the work of Kress and van Leeuwen. Our research is a qualitative
study of three kindergartens. The material consists of video observations, photographs, field notes,
documents and interviews with teachers and children. We believe that our analysis contributes to
the body of knowledge regarding texts in the kindergarten room, the purpose of these texts, and
thus the factors that influence the composition of kindergarten rooms.
Keywords: kindergarten, space, pedagogical text, multimodality, social semiotics
Introduction
Kindergarten rooms are characterised by a colourful mixture of items that include
toys, furniture, cupboards and boxes with material for drawing and crafts, book
shelves, pictures on the walls and name tags. When entering a kindergarten, one can
usually immediately recognise the rooms as belonging to a kindergarten. Both verbal
and visual texts on the walls and floors in many of the rooms play an important role
in characterising these institutions. Traditionally, a text is realised through verbal
language, through writing on paper or through spoken language. Recent text research
has emphasised that a text may consist of various types of meaning-making signs,
including both verbal and non-verbal signs (Kress, 2010; van Leeuwen, 2005). A text
*Hedmark University College, Norway. E-mail: [email protected].
**Vestfold University College, Norway. E-mail: [email protected]
©Authors. ISSN 2000-4508, pp. 371–386
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is created when meaning is realised through signs. Accompanied by other artefacts,
the texts in a kindergarten present a pedagogical institution in which the activities
of the children are the centre of focus. These texts relate information about daily life
in a kindergarten, trips, projects, games and visits. The nature of these texts spans
different kindergartens, and some texts may also communicate important features of
one particular kindergarten, such as the activities and ideology that are emphasised
there. In addition, texts that are not found among the variety of texts within a room,
may also relate information about the kindergarten (e.g. whether all of the texts can be
interpreted as mono-cultural in a multicultural world) (Maagerø & Simonsen, 2012).
Children are physically surrounded by a variety of texts in their kindergartens on
a daily basis, but texts are also important in the context of their daily lives outside
kindergarten and play an important role in the general upbringing of children. The
texts on the walls and floors in kindergartens provide the foundation for this research
project. We aimed to describe and analyse the variety of texts that could be found in
kindergarten rooms. We also wanted to view each room as a text that can be analysed
as a meaning-making unit. In addition, we aimed to discover whether the texts on the
walls and the floors were used in the daily activities of the kindergartens, or whether
the texts served only as colourful decoration. We were also interested in determining
whether the kindergarten teachers viewed these texts as potential pedagogical texts.
Selander and Skjelbred (2004:32) define a pedagogical text as a cultural artefact that
is “used in specific learning situations”, and determined that such texts are intimately
related to and used in an institutional framework.
We will provide an overview of our entire research project in this article: therefore
we will not conduct a detailed analysis of particular texts but will attempt to answer
three of our major research questions:
• What do the multimodal texts on the walls and floors represent?
• Are the texts on the walls and floors integrated into the activities of the
children and/or in organised pedagogical activities?
• Can the texts on the walls and floors be considered pedagogical texts?
We will also briefly discuss if there is a special text culture in the kindergarten. According to Berge (2005:15), a text culture is a limited cultural context or a social
field in which those who participate in the field in a qualified manner communicate
mutually by meaningful utterances that have status as ‘texts’. We will begin with a
brief introduction to our theoretical framework and our research methods before we
present and discuss our main results.
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Multimodal texts in the kindergarten rooms
Theory
This project builds on the view that kindergarten rooms can be considered as pedagogical texts, and that we can reveal the meaning potential of these texts by using text
analysis tools from social semiotic theory. To limit our research material, we have
concentrated on the walls and floors in the rooms that are defined by the staff as the
main rooms in each kindergarten, or department within a kindergarten. Semiotics is
the science of meaning-making verbal and non-verbal signs, and in social semiotics,
this meaning-making is studied within social and cultural contexts.
The British scholar and social semiotician Michael Halliday states that language
is a social construction that performs essential functions for people as social human
beings (Halliday, 1978, 1994; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). Halliday’s systemic
functional linguistics presents three functions of language which he calls metafunctions. Language has an ideational metafunction by representing phenomena in the
world around us and inside of us. Words represent objects and phenomena and enable us to create mental pictures of the world. By combining words to utterances, we
observe relations between them and glean an overview perspective. An utterance is
simultaneously a communicative act that involves a speaker or a writer and a listener
or a reader, and the listener or reader will consciously or unconsciously react on the
utterance. Halliday calls this function the interpersonal metafunction. The third
function is the ability of language as a meaning-making system to create coherence
between utterances, and this ability gives us resources for relating to non-verbal
conditions, to the context in which the utterances are realised. Halliday calls this
function the textual metafunction. Language and context dynamically interact with
one another. Kindergarten texts have been created in specific contexts of situation by
certain participants in certain places. The participants have desired to communicate
something and have chosen ways of expression that they believe are functional within
their respective contexts. These texts may also be components of communicative
events in the daily life within the kindergartens. In addition, the texts are part of a
more general context of culture. Kindergartens serve a specific role in society, and
this role is interpreted and operationalised in every kindergarten by genres realised
by the participants, and through which they communicate.
Halliday’s work concentrates on verbal utterances, and our material contains
many verbal texts (e.g., posters, signs, labels, notes, stories from practice). However,
Gunther Kress (e.g. 2003) developed the notion of multimodality in which modality
is understood as modes of meaning, such as the mode of writing, the mode of image,
the mode of speech and the mode of space. Texts are multimodal when they consist
of more than one mode of meaning. Modalities arise as a combination of material
forms and ways of organisation created in culture. The similarities and differences
between paintings and drawings can illustrate this notion. Drawings and paintings
are primarily organised by the same principles, but their material forms differ; thus
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drawing and painting are considered different kinds of meaning-making. Collaborating with Theo van Leeuwen, Kress developed a grammar of visual meaning-making
(Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001, 2006). Van Leeuwen has also used this framework in his
analysis of spatial organisation in villages and museums. In an educational context,
the same framework has been used by many researchers, e.g. Kress (2003, 2010),
in his studies of children’s multimodal texts in school, by Hopperstad (2008) and
Maagerø (2005) in an analysis of children’s drawings, by Jewitt (2003, 2006), Lancaster (2003), Mavers (2003), and Pahl (2003) in an analysis of multimodal literacy,
by Granly (2007), Løvland (2010) and Maagerø (2010) in multimodal approaches
to textbooks and Maagerø and Østbye (2012) in an analysis of picture books as multimodal texts. Research on texts on kindergarten and classroom walls (and floors)
where this framework has been used is, however, unknown to us.
The multimodal analyses of Kress and van Leeuwen are important to our study of
the kindergarten texts. We will use Halliday’s three metafunctions as a framework
for the discussion of our findings. These metafunctions are also used in the visual
grammar of Kress and van Leeuwen.
Method and ethics
Our research is a qualitative study that examines the walls and floors in three kindergartens as multimodal texts. We are also interested in individual texts and units
of texts in addition to the kindergarten room as a multimodal room (see above). Two
kindergartens that were studied are located on the outskirts of a town in southeast
Norway, while the third kindergarten is the Sámi kindergarten in Oslo. We collected
our data during three visits to the first kindergarten and four visits to the second
kindergarten, and these data consist of photographs and films of the walls and floors,
video observations, field notes, and interviews with six teachers and assistants and
twelve children. The first day in each kindergarten was used for making photographs
and films of the texts on the walls and floors and video observations of the children’s
activities in the room in order to see if there were any interactions between the children and the texts. The next visits were mainly used for interviews with children
and teachers and additional video observations. Field notes were made during all
the visits. In addition, we have studied local and national documents for pedagogical work in kindergartens. The children who were interviewed were 4 to 5 years old
in one kindergarten and 3 to 4 years old in the other kindergarten. The children
were interviewed in pairs, whereas the teachers and assistants were interviewed
individually. A semi-structured interview guide (Thagaard, 2009) was used for both
the interviews with the children and those with the staff. The Sámi kindergarten was
visited only once, and the data for this kindergarten only consist of photographs of
the walls and field notes.
Photographs and the films of the walls and floors serve as the main data for our
text analysis. The video observations and the interviews with children provide infor-
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mation regarding the interactions between the children and the texts and regarding
the activities that prompted the creation of the texts that are hanging on the walls or
taped on to the floors. The interviews with the teachers and assistants enable us to
reflect upon the texts as pedagogical texts.
The kindergartens, teachers and children are treated anonymously. The Norwegian
Scientific Board for the collection of data has accepted our data collection methods.
The Sámi kindergarten is recognisable; therefore our material from this kindergarten
consists only of photographs and field notes, and no children or names are visible
in the photographs. Interviews with children are demanding; we tried to take the
children’s perspective, be active listeners and let the children have the initiative as
much as possible. The data material is rich even though we have focused on just three
kindergartens and 18 interviews. This makes it challenging to interpret and present
an overview of the findings. We are aware of these challenges and have included the
findings we find most obvious.
Main results
In this section we will present some of the main results of our study. We will concentrate on findings that provide insight into the three research questions mentioned
above.
The multimodal texts on walls and floors and their representations
First, the walls of the kindergarten rooms can be considered rich multimodal texts
as various types of texts nearly completely cover many of the walls, with few empty
spaces remaining. The material and the colour of the walls serve as a background,
and the texts that hang on the walls are visually prominent through their materials
and their expressions and thus salient in the interpretation of the walls as texts (see
Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). In addition, several parts of the floors, primarily along
the walls and in the corners, are used as texts. Many meaning-making resources are
realised as the texts consist of verbal language, photographs, drawings, paintings,
illustrations from books, paper decorations, collages of different types of material
(e.g., glitter, feathers, wool), and toys, such as puppets and teddies etc. The texts are
also characterised by strong and bright colours. Many texts (e.g., individual texts that
were created by a group of children) are placed together and form a composition or
cluster (Baldry & Thibault, 2006) that a viewer would interpret as one unit of meaning. Drawings, paintings and different types of paper work, such as coloured hands
or feet of the children, often form visual clusters. Other clusters contain photographs
and verbal texts documenting a trip to the woods or to the beach. The clusters are
sometimes held together by a frame (e.g., a paper with a special colour serving as
common background for the individual texts) that separates the unit from other units
and assists in the reading of the texts (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). In addition to
the mentioned texts, shelves with books and different types of materials, games and
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toys are placed near the walls. Notes with the names of the items on the shelves are
sometimes placed in front of the shelves. Thus, the walls and partly the floors represent a rather complex environment for children and staff in which many different
expressions metaphorically compete for the attention of viewers.
Most of the texts represent the activities of the children in the kindergartens. The
drawings and paintings of the children in connection with different projects are frequently hung on the walls. In some instances, the children are given concrete tasks,
such as the task of drawing characters in books; in other instances, the experience
with a material is more important than the content, and the children are allowed to
choose the motifs themselves. The interviews with the children aided our understanding of many of the drawings; for example, monsters, planes and rockets were often
mentioned by the boys. In their interviews, the teachers and assistants emphasised
that only works with a certain quality were displayed on the walls. Other texts were
created by the staff and primarily consisted of documentation from trips and celebrations. Photographic series often represented special activities that occurred outside of
the kindergarten room (e.g., children creating a bonfire in the woods). In one of the
kindergartens, an assistant had created collages of illustrations from books she had
read to the children. Many of the texts that were created by the staff were verbal texts,
including both printed and handwritten texts. The printed texts primarily consisted
of relatively long documentations of the children’s work or reports from trips outside
the kindergarten and were often arranged as part of a cluster, with photographs.
Other texts included instructions for hand washing or coughing without transmitting
infections to others. The handwritten texts primarily consisted of stories from different types of events that were held in the kindergartens. In these texts, the names
of individual children were sometimes mentioned, and the content was related to
activities in which these children had played a role.
Some of the texts were placed in a high position on the walls and were difficult to
observe from the perspective of a child. Such texts would not be salient for the children
as viewers. In one of the kindergartens, the letters of the alphabet had been drawn on
separate sheets of paper, and each letter was accompanied by an animal or a thing
beginning with that particular letter. These letters were placed in a row immediately
below the ceiling. When the oldest children worked with the letters through rhymes
and songs, several children were asked to show one special letter. Even when rising
from their seats, walking to the middle of the room and standing on their toes, the
children had difficulties when attempting to see the letters. As many schools also
place these letters in a high position on their walls, this placement might be a traditional practice in educational institutions. In the Sámi kindergarten, precious dolls
in Sámi folk costumes and other items from the Sámi culture were also placed on
shelves located high up on the walls. During the interviews, the staff mentioned that
valuable things were hung in a high position to ensure that the youngest children
could not damage them.
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In the Sámi kindergarten, the texts on the walls primarily represented the Sámi culture. For example, a collage of individual texts showing running reindeer dominated
one wall. Because the individual texts were arranged so that a viewer would observe
them in the form of a visual cluster, the reindeer formed a running herd, which is
an element of the lives of many Sámi people. The material emphasised the cultural
meaning as the individual pictures were composed of reindeer skin and bits of wood.
Picture 1: The reindeer collage
Posters of a reindeer’s body with all of its intestines, which are used for food and
household items in the Sámi culture, and posters featuring the Sámi language were
also placed in prominent positions. In addition, some texts signified the urban culture
of Oslo. In the other two kindergartens, few texts contained multicultural content. A
collage of pictures of an Indian girl and verbal texts relating to her life story in India
were found in one of the kindergartens and, because a few of the children in this
particular kindergarten had multicultural backgrounds, the names of these children
on the birthday poster and on the shelves were representative of other cultures.
Further, the walls as texts change over the course of a year in the kindergarten.
During the interviews, the staff emphasised a correlation between the rhythm of the
year and the change of the seasons, in addition to special occasions such as Christmas
and Easter, as important factors for the selection of texts. Nevertheless, some texts
were ‘forgotten’ and remained mounted on the walls for a full calendar year or longer.
The interaction between the children and the texts on the walls
During the interviews, the children were asked to identify which texts on the walls
and floors were important to them. In all cases, the children pointed to texts they
had created themselves or created with others, or photographs in which they were
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represented. In one of the kindergartens, the oldest children had created colourful
abstract paintings on black sheets of paper and used glitter to make the paintings
shine. These pictures covered a large portion of the wall in front of the viewer when
entering the room, and thus had a prominent position. The colours and the glitter
also rendered these texts more obvious when compared with other texts. Some of
the children immediately led us to this particular wall and informed us about the
process of creating the paintings, especially the glitter aspect. These children were
also eager to draw attention to the paintings that they had created themselves. In the
other kindergarten, the children had become familiar with stories about Pulverheksa
(Pulver witch), a series of books by the Norwegian author Ingunn Aamodt. When
the kindergarten participated in a recycling project, this group of children created a
collective collage of Pulverheksa and her companion, Grønnskollingen (The Green
Head) from materials that included used paper, milk cartoons, yoghurt cups, garbage
bags and corks to create meaning within this context. The collages were hung on the
wall together with verbal texts that explained the process. The project was a long and
difficult but pleasant work regarding a topic in which the children were interested
and the children whom we interviewed immediately led us to this wall.
Picture 2: Pulverheksa
Both kindergartens featured presentations of the children with their photographs, names
and dates of birth. These texts were formed in the shape of a snake in one kindergarten
and in the shape of a millipede in the other kindergarten. When a child had a birthday,
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this text was used to present the child and to sing the birthday song. The children in
both kindergartens also called attention to these texts as being important to them, and
they climbed on a chair to show us their photographs and names. In some instances,
the children showed us series of photographs as important texts. Two boys led us to
photographs that were taped on the floor and displayed a trip in the woods. The boys
were lying on the floor and pointed to the details in the photographs that reminded
them of events from the trip. These children spent a significant amount of time recalling their enjoyment on this trip and relating the details to us. Again, the photographs
with representations of the boys themselves were the most interesting to these children.
The video observations conveyed information regarding the importance of the
texts on the walls and floors in the daily activities of the kindergarten. When the
children played in the room, they did not appear to be occupied with the texts. The
walls were merely walls in the rooms and were not integrated into their activities.
This observation also applied to the structured activities of the teachers. However, we
did observe some interactions with the texts initiated by the teachers. These activities can be characterised as literacy events (see Barton, 1994; Barton & Hamilton,
1998), including the work with letters that was mentioned above and the reading of
children’s books. In the kindergarten with the youngest children, reading was a frequent activity, and some of the illustrations from their favourite books were placed
on the walls. During the reading process the teacher emphasised these illustrations to
the children. However, our primary observation is that these texts were less directly
involved in the daily life activities of the kindergarten, and were merely regarded as
colourful surroundings for the ongoing activities.
The walls as pedagogical texts
In the interviews, the six teachers and assistants were asked about their purpose for
placing the texts on the walls. All of them emphasised the importance of documenting the children’s activities. The National Framework Plan for Content and Tasks of
Kindergartens (2006) 1 indicates the importance of general documentation of activities
and the texts on the walls assist in fulfilling the claim for pedagogical documentation.
The teachers and assistants explained that this documentation was intended for both
the children and the parents. The children felt proud when they observed their works
and their activities documented on the walls, and the texts enabled the events behind
these works to endure in the minds of the children. The parents should also be able
to visualise the activities of the children in kindergarten, and both creative work and
outdoor trips were important to display. However, none of the interviewees stated
that the kindergarten had a general plan for the texts on the walls regarding their
selection and execution; rather, these texts were placed and arranged spontaneously
in most instances. Nevertheless, some conventions were observed, such as the letters
mentioned above that were placed near the ceiling. Precious works by the children,
such as the paintings with glitter and the collages of Pulverheksa and Grønnskollingen,
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appear to receive prominent placement in areas in which they are obvious and can
attract the attention of the viewers. This particular placement adheres to another
convention: it appears to be more suitable for adults than for children because the
texts are often in a physically high position from a child’s perspective.
It was also stated that the texts were rarely used in further activities, and there were
no conscious strategies for using the texts for such purposes. The birthday texts and
the letters were two exceptions to this general trend. However, in instances in which
a child expressed interest in something on the wall, the teachers would then discuss
that particular text with the child. The texts were primarily pertained to past activities and served a memory function more than as a resource for ongoing activities.
The teachers and assistants also mentioned the importance of a cosy and visually
appealing kindergarten, and the walls with a wide range of colourful multimodal texts
play an important role to fulfil this intention. The texts provide a warm and welcoming
impression to children, parents and staff when they enter these rooms. Empty walls
give a cold impression. These texts are components of the decoration in the kindergarten rooms, in addition to other items, such as brightly coloured furniture, flowers,
bookshelves, and shelves with nice toys etc. Thus, the texts contribute to creating a
friendly atmosphere and making the kindergarten room a desirable place to be.
Discussion
In this section of our article, we discuss the findings in relation to our three research
questions. We must emphasise that because our research uses only three sample
cases, it is impossible to draw general conclusions on a broader scale. However, our
results are based on three examples that have been studied using several types of
data. According to Flyvbjerg (1991), good examples can provide valuable and relevant
information on research topics of interest.
First, we find that the walls in the three kindergartens represent a great variety
of modes, such as pictures, paintings, drawings, collages, toys and written language,
which contribute to creating rich multimodal contexts for the children. We believe
that it is possible to claim that there is a kindergarten text culture (Berge, 2005). Although we have included only three kindergartens in our research, we recognise that
kindergartens in many societies around the world similarly feature a great number
and variation of colourful texts. One question that our research does not attempt
to answer is whether the walls with their strong colours containing many modes of
meaning could make the surroundings excessively distracting for children.
The different texts are often organised in clusters on the wall that provide a certain
organisation and relation amongst these texts (see Baldry & Thibault, 2006). We
believe that the main organising principle is the content of the texts (i.e., what they
represent in the world). Halliday refers to this concept as the ideational metafunction
(Halliday, 1994), e.g., the reindeer collage in the Sámi kindergarten and the collages
of Pulverheksa and Grønnskollingen in one of the other kindergartens. The reindeer
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collage represents a prominent feature in the Sámi way of living and in the culture
of the Sámi people and occupied a prominent place on a white wall close to a table
at which the children ate and worked with colours, papers and other materials. The
placement made the collage obvious in the room (see Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006).
The reindeer collage reminded the children and the teachers of one important aspect
of Sámi life in a place in which the children spent a significant amount of time each
day. The Framework Plan (2006:13) states that the Sámi children should be assisted
in retaining and developing their language and culture regardless of where they live
in Norway. The Sámi culture is clearly present, as shown in the texts on the walls in
the Sámi kindergarten in Oslo.
The collages of Pulverheksa and Grønnskollingen are conceptual representations
(see Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006) of the two main characters of the books that the
children in one of the kindergartens had read. The characters are shown in full size
without context, and the colours of the clothes and other items correspond to those
in the books. Both collages were based on working drawings (copies from the books)
that were hung beside the collages themselves. According to the interviews with the
assistants, this design was chosen to render the two characters as realistically as possible for the children. The degree of closeness to reality in the representation appeared
to signal quality in this instance. The large collages were arranged on a white wall.
Again, these texts were prominent as meaning-making expressions in the room and,
by serving as representations of the book illustrations, the main function of these texts
was ideational, according to the framework of Halliday (1994). Representations from
important pedagogical work seem to be part of the text culture in a more general educational context, having a parallel in maps, posters, articles etc. in school classrooms.
Writing as a mode of meaning was represented more frequently than we expected
during our first visit. Children in Norwegian kindergartens are exposed to written
language in kindergarten, but unlike preschool children in many other societies they
do not learn to read and write at a level that enables them to read the many written
texts on the walls. Some of the written texts were printed, while other texts were
handwritten (see above). Most of these texts communicated information regarding
the activities in the kindergarten and were arranged in clusters with, for example,
drawings, paintings or photographs. One photographic series showed two girls playing
with water. The written text conveyed the enjoyment they derived from this activity
and their closeness as friends. The multimodality of this cluster expands the meaning of the girls’ activities and emotions of the girls through both visual and verbal
representations. However, the multimodal meaning applies only to those who can
read it (i.e., parents and teachers).
As mentioned above, every text invites to communication (the interpersonal
metafunction) (Halliday, 1994). To communicate, a text must have an audience, a
viewer or a reader. In the presentation of our findings, we determined that the texts
on the walls and floors were actually used infrequently in the children’s freeform and
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organised activities. Therefore, the question is whether the texts are purely decorative
or whether they also have a pedagogical purpose. The texts appear to be a dynamic
source for playing and learning (for meaning-making) in the kindergarten only to
a certain degree. This lack of use contrasts with the great number and variation of
texts that characterise the kindergarten rooms. However, the texts may interact with
individual children without being a part of a certain activity. Such texts are always
present and may offer information or emotional engagement. The interviews with the
children informed us that at least some of the texts held personal meaning for them,
primarily the texts in which they were actually represented. To be exhibited through
photographs, name tags and products is important for most individuals, especially
for children who are attempting to find an identity and a place among other children.
The texts communicate that the children are important to the extent that their images
and paintings hang on walls. This communicative function was clearly demonstrated
when the children led us to the texts they found important.
Our study demonstrated that the communicative aspect of the texts had limited
importance to the children in their activities. Another communicative aspect is that of
pedagogical documentation. The documentation of activities has become increasingly
important in Norwegian kindergartens as it has in kindergartens and preschools in
many other societies. The Norwegian Framework Plan (2006) emphasises documentation in numerous respects. For example, it is said that “staff at kindergartens must be
able to justify value judgements relating to children’s upbringing both to themselves
and to the parents” (2006:15). This justification also goes for the choice of everyday
activities in kindergarten and for the organisation of the physical environment of
the kindergarten for the children. Cooperation between parents and kindergartens
is an important issue in the Framework plan (2006:9), and documentation is often
considered a component of this cooperative relationship. In this respect, the texts on
the walls and floors convey information to parents regarding the activities that have
occurred in the kindergarten. In the interviews, the teachers emphasised this purpose
of the texts and explained that it was important to show the parents what occurs in the
kindergarten and that the texts should also exhibit activities of which the children were
proud. The latter objective was especially emphasised when two assistants commented
on the purpose of the collages of Pulverheksa and Grønnskollingen. These interviews
demonstrated that the assistants were as proud of the collages as the children were
and that these assistants were as excited as the children to show them to the parents.
As Halliday (1994) explains, texts offer information and viewers or readers can
choose whether to receive the information or not. In the interviews, the teachers
mentioned that some of the parents did not express an interest in the texts that were
hung on the walls. These parents were busy when they delivered and collected their
children. Other parents noticed the texts that were created by their own children or
photographs in which their children could be identified. Few parents actually demonstrated an interest in the texts as documentation of the pedagogical activities in
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kindergarten. If this lack of interest is widespread, then the purpose of documentation
for the benefit of the parents has little value.
The last of our three research question was whether the texts on the kindergarten walls and floors could be interpreted as pedagogical texts: texts that are used in
specific learning situations within the framework of a pedagogical institution (Selander & Skjelbred, 2004). We observed that the texts on the walls and floors in the
kindergartens are distinct cultural artefacts. These texts are characteristic of Norwegian kindergartens and they dominate the main rooms in most kindergartens. The
texts that we viewed during our observations were used only rarely in the pedagogic
activities of the kindergarten, as affirmed in the interviews with the teachers and assistants. However, many of the texts exhibited the results of pedagogical activities,
including reading books or painting with special materials such as glitter. Other texts
were created by the staff to encourage the development of literacy, such as the letter
sheets in one of the kindergartens. We questioned whether the teachers could use
the texts more actively as pedagogical texts in the daily kindergarten activities. As
text researchers, we see a meaning potential in these texts that could be an important
part of the development of multimodal text competence.
Based on our findings, we raised the question of whether there is a specific kindergarten text culture. Kindergartens have (as we have shown) a cultural context,
and the texts in the rooms represent texts that are meaningful in this context. A text
culture has textual norms that make certain texts valuable and valid in this culture
(Berge, 2005). The texts in the kindergarten rooms are valuable within the kindergarten culture and appear to follow norms for the representation of children and
their work, documentation for staff and parents and appealing decoration for the
daily life in kindergartens. We surmise that the texts on the walls and floors in this
text culture are intended to demonstrate active, happy, positive and creative children
through colourful and varied expressions. As all teachers state in the interviews, the
most successful texts are the ones that are hung on the walls, i.e. the texts they define
as the best paintings and collages, the photos from good trips, the copies from the
books that received most attention etc. This aspect emphasises the importance of the
texts in creating a positive and successful kindergarten.
Summing up
In this article, we have presented our research on texts in kindergarten rooms. We
have not conducted a detailed analysis of the individual texts, clusters of texts or kindergarten rooms as texts. However, we have attempted to provide an overview of our
findings by providing an insight into all three of our research questions through an
investigation of the texts as multimodal texts based on their representation (ideational
metafunction) and the manner in which they communicate (interpersonal metafunction). In addition, we wanted to discuss to the extent to which we can label texts on
the walls and floors in kindergarten rooms pedagogical texts. We have used a broad
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definition of the concept of a text and devoted attention to visual, verbal and material
modes of meaning. In this respect, multimodality is an important notion. We have
based our research on Halliday’s social semiotic theory and methods for analysing
multimodal texts (Halliday, 1978, 1994; Kress, 2003; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001,
2006); this framework has provided us with the tools that are necessary to perform a
detailed text analysis. In this article, however, we have concentrated our presentation
more generally on two metafunctions; the ideational and the interpersonal metafunctions. We have only briefly mentioned the textual metafunction by commenting on
the cluster organisation of the texts in the kindergarten rooms.
Our main findings reveal a rich multimodal text culture in the three kindergartens,
which we believe is shared with many other kindergartens in Norway and elsewhere.
Through drawings, paintings, collages and photographs, the texts represent the activities that have occurred in the kindergartens. Many of the texts were created by the
children and organised into clusters by the staff. Other texts, such as photographic
series, letter sheets and verbal texts, were created by the teachers and assistants. We
observed that most of these texts are used infrequently when the children play or in
the more organised activities between staff and children. These texts document past
experiences and do not appear to be important in ongoing activities. However, these
texts do offer documentation pertaining to individual children, common activities
and projects for parents if these parents have the opportunity to study the texts. In
addition, the texts communicate a high level of activity to all visitors, children and
staff and create appealing and colourful surroundings. We believe that kindergartens, as social and cultural institutions, establish a particular text culture. However,
as mentioned above, we believe that the pedagogical potential of these texts is not
seriously considered.
Notes
1 We refer to the Framework Plan from 2006 which was valid when we collected our data. The revised plan from 2011
can be found: Ministry of Education and Research (2011). Framework Plan for the Content and Tasks of Kindergartens.
Retrieved from http://www.regjeringen.no/upload/KD/Vedlegg/Barnehager/engelsk/Framework_Plan_for_the_Content_and_Tasks_of_Kindergartens_2011.pdf
Astrid Granly is a PhD-student at Hedmark University College in Norway. Her major interest of
research is literacy, mainly writing literacy, but also literacy according to different modes of meaning
making, such as materiality, pictures and form. Her analytical approach is situated mainly within
the theoretical framework of Social Semiotics and Systemic Functional Linguistics.
Eva Maagerø is professor at Vestfold University College. Her research interests are social semiotics,
systemic functional linguistics, multimodality, and literacy. She has participated in research project mainly on reading, writing and multimodal and linguistic text analysis, and she has published
several articles and books in these fields.
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pp. 11-190). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
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Jewitt, C. (2006) Technology, Literacy and Learning. London: Routledge.
Kress, G. (2010) Multimodality. A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication.
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Barns tekstpraksis (pp. 158-170). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
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A. Løvland & G. Malmgren (eds.), Multimodality: Text, Culture and Use (pp. 47-60). Kristiansand: Norwegian Academic Press.
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Barns tekstpraksis (pp. 138-156). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
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& T. Papatheodorou (eds.), Cross-cultural Perspectives on Early Childhood. London: Sage.
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philosophical questions. Children’s Literature in Education 43(1), 1-17.
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Ministry of Education and Research (2006) Framework Plan for the Content and Tasks of Kindergartens. Oslo: Ministry of Education and Research.
Ministry of Education and Research (2011) Framework Plan for the Content and Tasks of Kindergartens. Retrieved from http://www.regjeringen.no/upload/KD/Vedlegg/Barnehager/engelsk/Framework_Plan_for_the_Content_and_Tasks_of_Kindergartens_2011.pdf
Pahl, K. (2003) Children’s text-making at home: Transforming meaning across modes. In C. Jewitt
& G. Kress (eds.), Multimodal Literacy (pp. 139-154). New York: Peter Lang.
Selander, S., & Skjelbred, D. (2004) Pedagogiske tekster for kommunikasjon og læring. Oslo:
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Thagaard, T. (2009) Systematikk og innlevelse: en innføring i kvalitativ metode. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget.
van Leeuwen, T. (2005) Introducing Social Semiotics. London: Routledge.
386
Education Inquiry
Vol. 3, No. 3, September 2012, pp.387–400
EDU.
INQ.
When matter comes to matter –
working pedagogically with junk
materials
Nina Odegard*
Abstract
This article focuses on junk materials and how they invite and encourage children to play and construct without the need to name, define or label the constructions. The article also deals with how
practitioners’ expectations can disturb this creative and transitory process. The article is based on
one aspect of my study entitled “When matter comes to matter: Recycled materials as a pedagogic
idea” (Odegard, 2011). A focus of the study concerns how pre-school children’s meetings with recycled
materials can encourage equality and creativity. The junk materials seem to be equal in that they can
invite children and practitioners to play and learn on equal terms. The children appear to be given
equal opportunities from the material itself, regardless of gender, culture, age, disability, language,
ethnic background and history. Having been saved from the garbage bin, recycled materials seem to
have lost their function, which in turn seems to appeal to children’s creativity and make them collaborate and construct in numerous ways. My discussion relates to MacRae’s studies (2008; 2011) and
to Foucault’s concept of heterotopias (1986) combined with Deleuze, Guattari and Massumi’s lines
of flight (1988). These concepts enlighten the issue of practitioners’ expectations to children’s work
with junk materials, as this issue emerged from analyses of the focus group conversations of my study.
Keywords: junk-materials, materiality, expectations, lines of flight, heterotopia
Introduction
In this article I focus on junk materials, materials that with their diversity and complexity can open up spaces for various forms of play and imagination, thereby providing numerous and more varied play experiences. Junk material is saved from the
garbage bin or can be surplus materials from industries or companies that are given
new life through children’s ability to construct and be creative with them because they
acknowledge the lost of their previous functions, or invent new ones. I will highlight
how this material seems to invite and encourage children to play and construct, and
also how the materials invite children and practitioners to play and learn on more
equal terms. It appears that the material itself does not discriminate in that it gives
all children equal opportunities regardless of their gender, culture, age, disability,
language, ethnic background or history.
* University College of Vestfold, Norway. E-mail: [email protected]
©Authors. ISSN 2000-4508, pp. 387–400
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This article is based on one of the aspects of my study “When matter comes to matter
– Recycled materials as a pedagogic idea” (2011), which focused on how children’s play
and learning with junk materials can encourage creativity and equality. In this article,
I present findings from two different methods of data collection from this study: focus
group discussions and pedagogical documentation. Theories of materiality underpin
the interpretation of the data. I employed deconstruction and discourse analysis as
my analytical tools, and different issues emerged from the analyses of the focus group
conversations, with one of them being explored in greater depth in this article.
I use concepts in line with MacRae’s studies (2008, 2011) and relate to her use of
Foucault’s concept of heterotopias (1986) combined with Deleuze, Guattari and Massumi’s lines of flights (1988). Together with theories of materiality, these philosophers’
concepts and theories seem to open a new world of thinking and understanding, in
this case when it comes to working pedagogically with junk materials. These concepts
and theories enlighten how this may have an impact on pedagogical work.
My aim with this project is to explore the concept of materiality and the idea of
working pedagogically with junk materials, and to argue that this can open up new
ways of understanding children and new ‘spaces’ for play and learning.
Background context and method
The focus group of the study was seven kindergarten and school practitioners from
seven institutions: three kindergarten teachers and one assistant, two school teachers,
and one teacher for children with special needs. These practitioners were selected
from a larger pedagogical network that had in common the experience of using junk
materials as pedagogical material, combined with critical reflection on such experience. The focus group conversations were mediated by the participants’ photos and
texts documenting their pedagogical work with children’s encounters with recycled
material. This documentation showed or described children exploring and playing with
different kinds of junk materials, either on their own or together with other children.
The method of using focus group members’ own photos and texts for group conversation is based on a democratic approach in which the group members themselves
set the agenda for what they feel is worth examining more closely (Taguchi, 2010;
Dahlberg, Moss, Pence and Halvorsen, 2002). Thus, the focus group conversations
also produced new documentation (Taguchi 2010). In other words, ‘documentation’
shifts from being photography and text to an arena for reflection and new knowledge
(Odegard, 2008; Åberg, Manger, & Taguchi, 2006).
Taguchi (2010:64) describes pedagogical documentation as a material-discursive
“apparatus”, based on Barad’s (2008) view of material documentation itself as being
an active agent in the production of discursive knowledge. Häikiö (2007) argues that
learning is given a shape, an interpretation and a voice through the use of pedagogical documentation. Hence, the apparatus we make use of helps to construct meaning
around children’s learning, and should also be interpreted in the light of materiality
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When matter comes to matter – working pedagogically with junk materials
(Taguchi 2010). In these processes everything has significance – who we are, what
we document, how we document it and by what means: camera, pen and paper will
all be significant for how we construct the meaning of the documentation: “knowing
does not come from standing at a distance and representing something, but rather
from a direct material engagement of the world” (Barad 2007: 49).
Through the focus group conversations evolving around the photos and texts
brought to the situation by the group members, we tried to bring to the surface the
different pedagogical processes that arise in children’s work with recycled materials.
The conversations in the five meetings of the focus group, each meeting lasting for
two hours, were recorded and later transcribed by the researcher. The transcriptions
were analysed by means of discourse analysis as applied by Palmer (2010a), and
Jørgensen and Philips (1999), and by deconstruction of the conversations as applied
by Kjeldsen (2004), Otterstad (2006) and Taguchi (2004).
In accordance with Otterstad’s analysis (2008), the group conversations of my
study went on in a kind of spiral process in which the members themselves identified
the stories they found the most significant, and therefore meaningful to the conversations. Throughout the five meetings the group participants returned to themes or
concepts they found particularly interesting. I found that this process both extended
and challenged the recurrent themes each time. Listening to the conversations, and
re-listening to the recordings afterwards while I transcribed them, gave me a systematic entry into the search for patterns of different themes and possible dichotomies.
The schema I used for identifying patterns gave me an idea of the frequency of themes
in the data and thus what the dominant discourses were. One dominant discourse
was that of recycled materials encouraging equality and creativity, in which I have
selected one aspect to concentrate on in this article. This aspect concerns the staff’s
expectations linked to children’s work with junk material and models.
The research ethics of the project concerned the privacy protection of the focus
group members. In the process of developing new pedagogical documentation through
group conversation, I wanted to maintain a respectful environment valuing the different points of view of each participant. At the same time, I also wanted to challenge
the discourses and perspectives that occurred.
Below I discuss the specific concept of junk materials and the more general concept
of materiality. Moreover, the issue of staff’s expectations to children’s work with junk
material that emerged from the empirical data will be seen in light of the theoretical
concepts of lines of flight (Deleuze, Guattari and Massumi 1988) and heterotopia
(Foucault 1986).
Junk materials
Inspired by the pedagogical philosophy of Reggio Emilia and the ReMida centres (a
centre for recycled and surplus materials), some of the kindergartens in this project
gather materials together with children from their family homes and from local shops/
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businesses. They display these materials in an aesthetic manner by structuring them
according to colour, type or shape. They are then offered as alternative materials for
play, exploration and learning. This embodies a strong desire to facilitate sustainable
development for the future, to increase the collective awareness of source separation
and to combat the consumer society, at the same time as offering alternative, complex
and varied materials for pedagogical work. The following narrative is constructed to
illustrate the encounter between a two-year-old girl and her encounter with a junk
material centre:
Bea, 2 years old, is heading for a room in the basement where there are thousands of different kinds of junk materials. For a moment she hovers on the threshold. Her eyes scan the
shelves. Her body appears almost to be trembling with all the impressions. She closes her
eyes for a moment as if to protect herself or to preserve or refine the moment. She takes a
deep breath before moving towards one of the shelves. Her hand moves towards one shelf and
then another, she touches, she absorbs, she moves and is moved by the encounter between
herself and the materials. The materials work with her, around her and inside her. One of
the shelves, with many different colours and many different objects in all the colours of the
rainbow and all kinds of shapes, draws the attention of the two-year-old. Her gaze, body,
arms and hands turn to the different containers on this shelf. She touches different things,
turns them around, lifts them up for a closer look, smells them, keeps them in her hand for
a moment and puts them back.
But some things have particularly attracted her attention, and the child collects things individually according to her interest in their colour, shape, texture and size. An outsider may
believe that things have been chosen at random but, after observing the little energetic body
and the deep concentration that the child radiates, you will find that this is far from the case.
This narrative is constructed on the basis of many documented encounters between
children and the junk material centre. It describes how human interaction with junk
materials can involve the entire sensory apparatus, and how the materials affect and
influence the individual. Bea’s encounter with the room and all the materials is in itself
a material experience, and can represent the experience of many others – adults as
well as children. In the centre, materials can be selected for use in constructing and
building installations, in making patterns or as props in play activities.
The term “reuse” has associations with clothes and furniture, recycling, design
and architecture, the recycling of paper, packaging and the like. When I use the term
“junk materials”, like MacRae (2008; 2011) does, I refer to materials that in normal
circumstances would have been thrown in the rubbish bin if their potential for reuse
had not been spotted through active source sorting.
In themselves, junk materials do not convey a message about what they are to
be further used for as they represent an infinite range of ‘junk’, e.g. hair rollers, corks,
mosaic tiles, fabric, leather, plastic, paper and glass packaging products, off cuts of
paper and cardboard and so on. Mosaic tiles, for example, can serve to make junk
material more specific and tangible. Regarding their visual appearance, they often
390
come in different colours, they are glossy and appear to most people to have beautiful
and aesthetic qualities. When it comes to their utilisation potential, they are usually
square in shape, easy for everyone to use and can be fitted together in various designs
and in several layers. In a purely tactile sense they have a smooth, comfortable surface and a rougher reverse side, and can be pleasing simply to touch or to hold close
to one’s cheek. They can be viewed as an invitation to touch and structure them, to
count and systematise them, to categorise, measure and mix them, and to use them
in collaboration and interaction. I regard this as a suitable, well-liked material for
play and construction among children in the kindergarten. The tiles allow children
to be creative, often in a transitory manner in that they are not creating something
with the intention of something permanent. Images are created, changed, destroyed
and re-emerge in new contexts. Children work with this material in a concentrated
manner for a lengthy period of time with great enthusiasm and enjoyment.
The diversity and complexity of junk materials open in various forms of play and
installations, thereby providing numerous and more varied play experiences than
more pre-defined materials. Junk materials inspire and open for exploration and play
without a specific purpose in the same manner as natural materials or more open and
flexible materials such as building bricks or clay.
Same shit – new wrapping?
Junk materials are known by many names or, as the heading “same shit...” humorously indicates, re-emerge under new concepts such as undefined materials, worthless or valuable materials, surplus materials and the like. I do not intend to dwell on
the clarification of such concepts in this paper, but highlight a concept that the focus
group in my study questioned, namely that of undefined materials. For many of my
research participants, materials such as tissue paper and rubber tiles are described
as ‘undefined’ materials, an articulation that emphasises their properties rather than
their uses:
Isn’t it the use and the areas in which it is used … that are more undefinable, a spinner is a
spinner, it’s not necessarily the case that it’s the material itself that is undefinable. It has its
own quality, a shape and a … but it can be used in an undefined context, can’t it?
This reflection examines that what is undefinable is not the materials in themselves,
but the situations in which they are used, for example the expectations attached to the
materials, the children’s experiences and the material’s cultural context and qualities.
In order to understand this complex context, I have constructed the concept of lost
function which refers to the materials’ loss of their original function through reuse.
In many cases, children will recognise the previous function of the materials, but
at the same time they perceive the potential of the materials for use in new creative
contexts. This moves us on to the more general concept of materiality.
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Materiality
In the context of this article, the concept of materiality is pluralistically derived from
Hekman (2010), Barad (2007, 2008), Hultman (2010), Taguchi (2010), MacRae
(2008; 2011), Palmer (2009; 2010b; 2011) and Sandvik (2011a; 2011b; 2012). These
studies constitute the research field I am engaged with. Barad claims that language
has gained excessive power in research, writing that “the only thing that doesn’t seem
to matter is matter” (Barad, 2008: 103). She points out that materiality and meaning
do not constitute separate elements, but are instead entwined and mutually dependent on each other. She relates this to Bohr’s theories arguing that it is impossible to
separate the object observed from the subject (Barad, 2008; Palmer 2011).
Hultman (2010) describes how “everything is related to everything”, declaring
“things, just as humans, make things happen. Things, just as humans, offer certain
possibilities and foreclose others” (p.7). The consequence of this process of thought
is that no situation can be observed without also seeing it in relation to the materials
– which play a role in “everything”. It is not insignificant which space, materials and
environments children are offered, nor are the discourses that inform this practice
unimportant. Taguchi (2010) and Barad (2007; 2008) introduce us to the materialdiscursive concept, which expresses how discursive practices already are material.
In other words, there is more to uncover when it comes to the child’s encounter with
junk materials. My focus group material included the staff’s expectations, attitudes,
discourses and notions, as well as space, furnishings, bodies and objects.
As pointed out, one of the perspectives highlighted by the focus group members
was the production of expectations related to what children make – of what the
product should be named or defined. To combat such expectations, the concepts of
lines of flight (Deleuze et al.; 1988) and heterotopia (Foucault 1986) in combination
can illuminate the “different space” created as the child works with materials that are
incompatible, with lost functions, and as such cannot be named. The perspectives
of lines of flight and heterotopia can elucidate different aspects of the pedagogical
processes associated with junk materials and materiality. The further discussion on
these aspects also forms a dialogue with MacRae’s study (2008).
Lines of flight and heterotopia
Within the area of creativity and equality one of the perspectives of this study is that
junk materials appeal to children and encourage them to interact and construct in
very different and varied ways without feeling the need to interpret, name or define.
Through MacRae’s doctoral thesis (2008), I discovered a new approach to thinking
about children’s encounters with junk materials. MacRae links the lines of flight of
Deleuze et.al. (1988) with Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, which I find to be of
particular significance and relevance to this research. She identified the clear expectation of being able to comprehend what the junk models of her study represented,
in addition to a desire to interpret or give a name to the children’s constructions.
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However, she experienced that both the children and the junk materials resisted this.
In her examination of this resistance, she found a meaningful association with the
concepts of heterotopia and lines of flight.
According to Foucault (1986), the concept of heterotopia was introduced to describe places and spaces that were not compatible with each other: “the heterotopia
has the power of juxtaposing in a single real place different spaces and locations that
are incompatible with each other” (Foucault 1984: 5). MacRae (2008) explores the
potential of heterotopia, and notes how educationalists can employ this theory to
respond to the child’s constructions, in this case junk models, and attempt to resist
their urge to understand, explain or summarise everything:
…the junk model fulfils Foucault’s concept of a heterotopia, in that it occupies a space that
is different… As well as occupying a different place ‘in which things are arranged differently’
from their usual orders, heterotopias are also sites that bring together many different things
that would not always be associated with each other (MacRae 2011: 105).
In my conversations with the focus group members of my study, we saw that children
use things that are usually not associated with each other when they construct – things
that were arranged differently from their usual order. Through the children’s choice of
colour, size, shape and texture, each material enforced dissimilar rhythms or motifs in
different ways, resulting in constant changes of construction, as also shown by MacRae
(2011). The concept of heterotopia can be argued to be at work in these processes.
Deleuze et al. (1988) describe how systems and structures cannot be fully defined,
but on the contrary, have leakages. These leakages are described as lines of flight and
are attributed importance because they represent the creation of something new.
Such lines of flight can therefore stimulate creativity and provide positive force and
energy, and open to new ideas and innovation. This may lead to unexpected actions
and things happening that were not intended. At the same time, you can never know
where it ends, it can lead anywhere or nowhere at all (Olsson, 2009).
Taguchi (2010) states that lines of flight arise in a pedagogical space freed from
conventional thinking. “A genuine thought only begins with an external violence to
thought, a jolt that forces thought out of its ordinary habits” (Bogue, 2003: 178). Children’s encounters with junk materials can appear to breach conventional thinking;
the materials’ incompatibility exercises a power that can force us to act differently
and dare to venture into the unknown. According to Taguchi (2010: 115), we might
try to verbalise seemingly impossible ways of thinking or understanding something,
or try out new ways of doing and organising something in our practices.
The connection between the concepts of heterotopia and lines of flight has turned
out to be an exciting perspective from which to study the children’s junk installations.
This link as established by MacRae (2008) is particularly interesting because it enables
us to question the human need to interpret, explain and summarise in the setting of
a creative or different space. In addition, it also can help to counteract the urge to
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name what children construct, or to understand children’s work as products. This
may give more room for children’s creativity, and even a sense of equality between
children and the practitioners.
Staff expectations
The focus group narratives also showed that transition situations in general, such as
before and after meals, or before and after going out, trigger situations where children
play with children that they usually would not play with, and in more intense and
creative ways than in more structured situations. The question is whether the room
for children’s creativity and innovation is wider when the staff is more relaxed or busy
with specific tasks. It can be argued that transitional situations create lines of flight
as described by Deleuze et al. (1988).
In Hekman’s analysis (2010) based on Foucault, knowledge and power are closely
related where power is practiced. Power is always already material (ibid.:57), in power
there is also always the possibility of producing counter-power. One of the focus
members of my study describes that the staff sometimes used transition situations to
let good things happen among the children. The narrative describes a need for space
where specific expectations are absent and where the staff have more laid-back attitudes, to offer the possibility of creative situations.
Häikiö (2007) emphasises the interaction that occurs between children and
adults, and describes the adult’s role in the process of constructing with children as
co-constructers, by challenging, questioning and supporting the ongoing construction. The important dialogue involved here should be characterised by sensitivity and
respect. Although she also acknowledges the “present adult”, the most interesting
situations seem to arise when the adults are pulled back a little. When children seem
insecure in their contacts with the materials in an atelier situation, they are also often
unsure of what is expected of them (ibid.). Such productions of expectations but also
the uncertainties that may accompany the encounters with junk materials were also
frequently talked about in the focus group of my project.
Curtis and Carter (2003) compare the teachers’ work with that of an improvisational
artist: sometimes needed right in the action, and sometimes withdrawn from action.
They describe the need for the teacher’s constant attention, awaiting invitations, offering new opportunities, and with all her presence keeping the children’s ideas alive
through attention and curiosity. This relates to the idea that joy (flow) emerges from
the balance between challenges and mastering. Häikiö (2007) applies the concept
of flow zone to describe the children’s need to feel joy in what they do. She sees this
joy reflected in the working methods of Reggio Emilia pedagogy where the children’s
interests, ideas and developments are at the centre of meaning making. One member
of the focus group remarked:
394
…this emphasis on there being an expectation that something should be made … If you want
the child to describe a process. What kind of questions should you then ask? … for example,
do we safeguard the child’s ability to be present and to function in the world in better ways
if we ask other kinds of questions? Or are we able to ask them to describe the process and
not what is latent in our expectations?
This is one of many reflections that demonstrate what the staff expect from the children. Several of the focus group members believe that expectations of an upcoming
product are often created. They are concerned with how the development of good
questions as well as the absence of questions can help to avoid this. The recurrent
theme of the production of expectations vis-à-vis the children and what they are
constructing with the junk materials is exemplified in this statement:
What would happen if the materials were available in the section all the time? Would thought
then be given to what to make, that there ought to be a product? I think that there are certain
expectations here. And there are. From the adults.
Both MacRae’s material and my material contain elements that can be seen as parallel findings. MacRae’s (2008) research has revealed that in all types of construction
with materials there is a kind of expectation that there will be some product, and she
also identified this expectation in herself. Nevertheless, she observed that if children
are allowed to work with junk materials over time, and are not confronted by such
expectations, they do not necessarily create anything specific. The analysed data of
my study revealed the same adult expectations, but also the fact that children seem
to make, build or construct without necessarily having to explain or give a name to
what they do.
My analysis also revealed that when children construct or play with junk materials, they arrange various materials in relation to each other. Through its colour, size,
shape and texture, each material will enforce dissimilar rhythms or motifs in different ways, which result in constant changes to the construction. Thus, the concept of
heterotopia can be recognised here. MacRae describes the intense and empathetic
relationship between things and the children’s “thinking” simultaneously with their
hands, sensibilities and brain. According to MacRae, this kind of “thinking” offers
opportunities for lines of flight and leakages towards new relationships or new connections in the creation of something new (MacRae 2011: 106).
What is constructed simply comes into being and disappears again in its transitoriness. This implies combating the expectations that the work will end in a product.
The need to do so is read out of the statement of one focus group member:
I think this is very obvious in the world of the kindergarten, how children act in relation
to the expectations we have. Very often they respond on the basis of the expectations they
think adults have.
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Taguchi (2010) states we have a responsibility to convince children that they are allowed to think as they like, rather than in true and accepted ‘correct’ ways. This statement can also be transferred to a child’s actions. This may allow both children and
staff the opportunity to explore and construct together, more as equals in a creative
space. MacRae (2008) warns against over-interpreting the meaning or intentions in
the work:
By setting ‘purpose’ alongside ‘play’, early years discourse attempts to re-conceptualise the
child (disempowered by a modernist developmental approach) as an active, intentional
meaning-maker. There is a danger of over-stating intention, purpose and meaning. This
lies in the way these words are saturated in a rationalising and essentialist construction of
knowledge where it becomes the task of the teacher to grasp the purpose of the child. The
overlaying of ‘purpose’ results in the imposition of a coherent and unifying thread that gives
the work meaning (ibid: 183/184).
My material revealed constructions of ‘incompatible’ material that resists interpretation, models that did not appear to represent anything, in line with the concept of
heterotopia. In this thinking, junk models are not given names that represent something or someone but are often labelled with the names of the children who made
them (MacRae 2008). The resistance in the materials or in the models is primarily
imbued in the materials’ properties and structures. When junk materials are joined
together, each piece is incompatible, but in combination they can become ‘something’
that has meaning or value for the child. The deep-rooted idea that everything that is
made must represent something is also challenged by the focus group in my study. I
argue that this underlines the poststructuralist critics of the idea of representation. If
we look beyond the tendency to think that what is made must represent something,
we could instead search for something other than what is recognised as similar and
named accordingly.
Both material and discursive
According to Sandvik’s (2011b) Deleuze-inspired study, the staff’s struggle to understand can close processes rather than open them. Without ethical reflection on this,
the staff may be in danger of reproducing what they have already seen or thought in
an unending circle of recognition and repetition. The philosophy of Deleuze centres on
taking in complexity instead of attempting to simplify, on observing how the agency
of materiality affects and is affected in construction processes, as well as seeing the
value of being different (Sandvik 2011b). The encounter between junk materials
and children is both material and discursive as the junk materials “assume” agency,
i.e. they act in conjunction with the child’s construction. How the child works and
constructs using the materials will depend on whether the practitioner has achieved
awareness through reflection, and how they have confronted their own attitudes to
and expectations of the children and to what they are constructing. Children’s right
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to influence is worthless if it depends on the ebb and flow of the adults’ expectations
and supervision (ibid.). Junk material can also be seen as resistance coming from the
materials themselves in the form of the absence of categorising, defining and naming.
This has to do with what I stated above as the lost function by which the children
may recognise the previous function of the material but at the same time see its new
potential and use the material in freed and creative ways.
The different shapes and sizes of junk materials invite a variety of uses. One of
the focus group’s members points out that junk materials with the same shape and
a similar height inspire children to use them to construct and build tall structures.
This point was exemplified by attempts of the children to balance a construction by
placing ice cream carton lids between cardboard tubes. Häikiö (2007) describes junk
materials as materials that offer resistance and challenge and, when children work
with such material, creating and constructing are closely allied. Construction is both
a language and tool for children that gives them the opportunity to explore different
global aspects, thereby creating their own identity and building an understanding
of the various phenomena in society. Through constructing, children can create and
work on aesthetics, geometry, mathematics and language, against the normative social need of the adult social world to categorise forms of play (Mylesand 2008). If we
excessively analyse constructing, playing with and exploring junk materials as being
about developing special skills or abilities, we lose the value of living in the present
moment or being in a transitory state in which play, learning and imagination are
interwoven in a creative context.
Impacts on pedagogical work
The expectations expressed through the staff’s body language, actions or questions
asked can create situations in which children feel that what they are working on ought
to have a name or become something or someone. Pedagogues should concentrate to
a greater extent on creating space for new structures, on thinking differently and on
constructing objects that intrinsically need no description as this in itself will create
meaning. Sandvik (2010) wants us to consider children’s “unauthorised actions” to
a stronger degree: “a more expectant and discreet pedagogical practice would pull
children’s perspectives to the fore, in ways that allow different and unknown pathways
to be explored” (ibid.:8).
Working on junk materials and reusing things provides meaning in itself. The
fact that children acquire a greater awareness of the ability to reuse things is valuable. Further, it is meaningful to create space for creative innovation. This raises the
question of whether working on junk materials also can give rise to a resistance to
categorisation and definition. Junk materials are not easily categorised. With sensitivity towards the agency of the materials, children can work in a concentrated manner
over time, and the situation itself opens to innovation and construction, technical
skills and creativity.
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Nina Odegard
Conclusions
Children’s encounters with recycled materials are both material and discursive. Reusable materials can be argued to take agency, and how children work and construct
with the material will depend on how the staff confronts their own attitudes and
expectations to the actual situation. I argue that the counter-power to adult expectations comes from the material itself and the ways children work with it.
I also argue that junk materials and their effect on children’s choice of expression
provide us with new knowledge about children’s play and learning. Irrespective of
this, I would assert that the incompatibility of junk materials in the form of different
sizes, colours, shapes and textures, and thus their diversity and complexity, create
more disparate situations, challenges, meeting places and play experiences than
other defined toys or pedagogical material can do. In encounters with junk material,
meeting places are created in which new ideas can be developed and where one can
experience the absence of expectations and be absorbed in working with the material.
Junk materials offer a golden opportunity to explore the tension between creating
meaning and being part of the transitory.
Through combining heterotopia and lines of flight, and in dialogue with MacRae’s
study, I have tried to show how junk materials and in particular special junk models
can challenge both children and teaching staff, thereby leading to the discovery of
new ‘hidden’ rooms in pedagogy. In these rooms the materials break boundaries,
open up realms of thought and create new connections. Moreover, the materials used
have been rescued from rubbish and have been given new life in the encounters created between them and people – which in itself creates meaning on several levels in
relation to environmental considerations, as well as in relation to the significance of
materials and materiality.
Nina Odegard works for the time being in the Municipality of Porsgrunn, Norway, both as a pedagogic tutor and a project leader for establishing a center for recycled and surplus materials. Member
in a research group at University College of Vestfold, which works in a research project concerning
spaces and places for children: Kindergarten spaces: Materiality, learning and meaning making.
398
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OPEN
SECTION
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Education Inquiry
EDU.
INQ.
Supervision by an artist creating a
poetic universe as a reference in the
development of aesthetic approaches
to pedagogical supervision
Anna-Lena Østern*
Abstract
This article is based on a study of what contributes to the development of an aesthetic approach
to supervision that might be identified in a choreographer’s supervision of artists in a co-creative
artistic production process. The theoretical framework consists of multimodal learning theory with
a focus on semiotic mediation inspired by Jewitt, Kress, van Leeuwen, Rustad, and Vygotsky. The
analysis is informed by Dewey’s theory about transformative aesthetics, developed by Sava as a
description of transformations in artistic learning processes. Some of the characteristics of artistic
supervision were identified as corporeality, heightened listening, mindfulness and the avoidance of
a negative response. These characteristics are suggested to serve as inspiration for multimodal approaches to pedagogical supervision in general. The tools provided by different art forms, different
ways of telling, sharing and communicating stories are considered as holding the main potential of
an aesthetic approach to supervision.
Keywords: artistic supervision, multimodal theory, pedagogical supervision, aesthetic approach,
dramaturgical thinking
Introduction
Vitalising and renewing the supervision discourse is the purpose of a project where
the prevailing discourses of supervision in teacher education are challenged by more
concrete and bodily founded supervision discourses in the arts. In a pilot study undertaken in spring 2011 a research group at the Norwegian University of Science and
Technology (NTNU), Programme for Teacher Education, was developing analytical
concepts for a more extensive study within the framework of the “Space me” project
(carried out in autumn 2011 and spring 2012). In Norway there is already an extensive
body of studies on supervision in education that have developed within a tradition of
cognitively oriented reflection around the theme of supervision in teacher education
(cf. Boge et al., 2009; Handal & Lauvaas, 1983; Skagen, 2004; Østern, 1997). As I
*NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. E-mail: [email protected]
©Authors. ISSN 2000-4508, pp. 403–419
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Anna-Lena Østern
have been educating drama teachers and teachers of language and literature, I have
become aware of the potential of ways of thinking in the arts which might contribute
to the renewal of model thinking in the supervision context (cf. Østern, 2007; Østern
& Kaihovirta-Rosvik, 2010). Dramaturgical thinking in particular opens up complex
affordances by using other semiotic resources in addition to the semiotic resource
of verbal language.
The challenge posed to education by multimodal theory (Kress, 2003) is to open
up a more complex understanding of what learning is, what there is to be learnt about
something by including aesthetic ways of knowing. Sensing something aesthetically
might add to the multi-layeredness of human insight.
In the arts learning processes are considered cyclical, yet they are also considered
transformative and they are multilayered and multimodal. In an artist’s work feelings
are regarded as valuable sources of human experience. The notion of transformation
is used to refer to a change of understanding gained through new insights. The notion
of transformation is also used to refer to the mode and form of transformations in an
artistic process (in this case a piece of choreography).
The problem formulated for this study is: Which are the main characteristics of
the artistic supervision of a collaborative production process? Based on the answer
to this question, I will discuss the potential of including some of these characteristics
of artistic supervision in teacher education as an aesthetic approach to supervision
in teacher education.
Artistic supervision by a choreographer in a collaborative
process
I will in this article focus on the supervision by a choreographer in a collaborative creative process connected to the production of a performance for children aged 2–3 years.
For the pilot study two teacher educators with competence and experience in both
pedagogical supervision and arts education (I was one of the observers) observed
rehearsals during a 3 week period in spring 2011. Some of the observations were
video recorded. The director and the choreographer wrote reflexive logs connected
to the production process (eight logs from each). The director was the owner of the
concept idea based on some poems by Federico Garcia Lorca. She had invited the
choreographer to cooperate in creating the performance “Oranges and lemons”. The
production team also included a person working with scenography, a composer, and
a song lyric writer. There were three performers: a dancer, a clown and a musician
playing the trombone. For the analysis I have chosen to focus on the observations of
the choreographer’s supervision/instruction/guidance of the performing group of
artists, and on the choreographer’s log texts. The concept is based on collaboration
and co-production through improvisation within given frames. The intentions of the
production were explored through an initial interview.
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Supervision by an artist creating a poetic universe
Methodological considerations
The epistemological approach is informed by constructivist interactionism because the
collaborative and co-creative production process can be seen as a floating, unstable
phenomenon, and as a phenomenon that can be interpreted in different ways, formed
in interaction (Järvinen & Mik-Meyer, 2005, 9.) The study may be considered a micro
ethnographic study of the artistic supervision culture (Fetterman, 1998). Through an
analysis of two video clips from the artistic supervision process and of one log text I
will guide the reader through a possible artistic supervision process.
Video observations, field notes and the choreographer’s log as
research material
The video material I have chosen to use in the analysis was captured with a fixed
camera that video recorded two sessions of supervision. I made field notes from three
other supervision sessions. Finally, the material consists of eight of the choreographer’s logs. The research material is considered to be rich. The instruction for the
log writing was as follows:
The log writing should be done preferably 5–10 minutes after each working day (3 days
a week during 3 weeks gives 8–9 log texts). It is important that the log text is not edited
regarding your experiences of the working process.
The log is focused. The focus is on direction/choreography as supervision in collaborative
creative processes.
Write about:
1. Your sensual experience of yourself right now (How do you sense your body after to-
day’s work?)
2. What is the most important thing you can say about your supervision of others in the project? What did the supervision consist of?
3. What are you satisfied with? Is there something you want to do differently next time? (What was blocking?)
4. Mention a supervision moment that led to the development of an idea or form? What did you do then?
5. Mention a movement dialogue/verbal dialogue/music dialogue you considered to be co-creative!
6. How important is the fact that the target audience consists of small children? How does this influence choices?
7. Name the current phase in the working process: (for instance probing, developing, form giving, rehearsal for performance, repetition of the performance…)
The log texts are as a rule 1–2 pages in length, with each one concentrated on one
or two episodes from the working session, locating sensations, describing emotional
experiences, engagement as well as disturbances.
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Anna-Lena Østern
Method of analysis
In this analysis I am using Giorgi’s (2009) model for phenomenological analysis step
by step. This method is called meaning concentration. After an overview of the data
that have been gathered the researcher chooses to focus on meaning units. I choose
the meaning unit ‘artistic supervision’ based on video transcriptions and a log entry.
In this phase of the analysis excerpts are marked because they contain passages connected to the chosen unit artistic supervision. In the next step I code the meaning unit
excerpts according to central themes found in the meaning units. I identify central
recurring themes in the supervision process. These central themes form the basis for
making a written account called a basic description of the artistic supervision meaning
unit. I hence sum up by giving a basic description of the artistic supervision based
on the themes identified.
In the discussion of the importance of the findings in the analysis I introduce multimodal thinking as framework for constructing a juxtaposition of artistic supervision
versus applicability to pedagogical supervision.
Before actually introducing the reader to the analysis I introduce a theoretical
framework which I use as optics for what I am looking for in order to catch some of
the characteristics of an artistic supervision process in dance. I firstly introduce a
model for an artistic learning process formed by the Finnish researcher Sava (1995),
with distinct inspiration from Dewey’s transformative aesthetic theory described in
“Art as Experience” (1980). I also introduce the concept of autopoietic feedback loops,
referring to Fischer-Lichte’s (2008) concept in the description of the emerging aesthetics of a post-modern performance. I continue with a short discussion regarding
the need for a series of distancing moments in both artistic and educational work.
For this discussion I use a model created by Schøien (2011). The final part of the
theoretical framework is formed by multimodal meaning theory according to Jewitt
(2009), Kress (2010) and Rustad (2010).
Transformative aesthetic theory and artistic learning
processes
In “Art as Experience” Dewey (1980) outlines a transformative aesthetic theory where
he attributes everyday experience with a vital role as a starting point in an artistic
process. Dewey describes interactions as a dialogue. This dialogue might comprise the
relationships I-me, I-others, I-the technique, I-the task. Each dialogue might result
in a transformation of understanding how the expression will become meaningful.
Each transformation includes developing form expression. Sava (1995), a Finnish
researcher in arts education, has developed this thinking into a model. A modified
version of Sava’s model for an artistic learning process is visualised by KaihovirtaRosvik (2011:222, my translation) in Figure 1. The process described in the model is
cyclical and consists of a series of transformations. The form expression is the nodal
point (layer 5 in the model), which generates a series of transformations. Starting
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from a sensuous experience from nature, culture, everyday life (layer 1) the learner
chooses a material, a technique based on aesthetic and ethical considerations (layer
2). Through a dialogical process the form expression is developed metaphorically
in the language of art, as well as conceptually in academic language (layer 3). A
product is thus formed (layer 4). Sava writes that this is an artistic learning process
which is characterised by a possible change on three levels: the learner might learn
something quantitatively (more about the chosen technique), qualitatively through
gaining insight into a certain relationship, or structurally in that the learner starts
thinking in new ways.
Figure 1. Model of a transformative artistic learning process (Kaihovirta-Rosvik’s modified
drawing of the original by Sava)
Different phases of an artistic learning process can be identified in the artistic supervision process. The performance is the developed artistic expression which is the
outcome of this learning process. I let the transformations guide my interest in observing and analysing what seems to go on in the collaborative artistic forming process.
Transformation and dialogue are analytical concepts used in the analysis. Many of
the choices in the process of creating a piece of art, a performance for children aged
2–3 years, are omitted from the analysis. I have chosen to focus on the artistic expression in the making, and I have identified the different phases in dialogical concept
formation through the choreographer’s choice of bodily metaphors and movement to
express meaning in the making. These metaphors communicate in the performance.
This transformation process is recurrent like spirals, where the performance is formed,
elaborated, and in this way the performance becomes finally crystallised.
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Anna-Lena Østern
In the process the artist group creating the piece of art is in ‘a closed system’, where in
moments with flow autopoietic feedback loops can occur. The notion of an autopoietic
feedback loop is borrowed from systems theory and describes how self-referential
systems give feedback within the system. Fischer-Lichte has applied this to the autopoietic feedback loops between performers and audiences, describing the ongoing
interactions of performers and audiences. In the process I am analysing in this study I
seek autopoietic feedback loops which enhance the creative process. The participants
are the performer and the choreographer. Fischer-Lichte (2008:74) writes that the
bodily presence affects the participants and sets the autopoietic feedback loop in
action. This process might be part of the production process, but in the performing
stage this autopoietic feedback loop is part of a well-functioning performance. During the production process the choreographer must take distancing steps in order
to ‘see’ what has been created. The process contains a series of taking steps back in
order to distance the artist [in this case the choreographer and the performers] from
the art work created.
I introduce Schøien’s (2011) suggested model of three stages of distancing in both
artistic and arts educational work to describe this process.
In her description of the phases in an artistic process, Schøien (2011) points to the
need for distancing in different phases of an artistic process, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. A series of distancing moments in an artistic creation process (modified and
translated from Schøien, 2011:252)
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In Figure 2 the creating person, the artist, or the teacher, is called ‘I’. In the first phase
I create (there is already a distance because I have to make decisions about what and
how to create). In phase 2 I take one step backwards as me and look at what I have
created (formative evaluation) and reflect upon what I have done so far alone or
together with others. In the third phase I have to let go of what I have created, and
in this phase I have to let the artistic expression meet the audience and its evaluation of the quality. In teacher education this model is also relevant to a study of the
trainee teacher’s lesson. The lesson is created by the trainee teacher. This phase is a
good phase for pedagogical supervision. The next phase is the reflection on the lesson
carried out, parallel to the piece of art created. Much pedagogical supervision takes
place in this phase. The third phase is in comparison the response from the students
who have participated in the lesson. Also here the supervisors of practice come in
and evaluate the teaching done. In the pedagogical supervision context, this phase is
also a place for meta reflection on the reflections undertaken and the choices made
in phases one and two.
During the different cycles of the creation process observed in this study, the
performance is tested out for one person, for a few response givers, as well as for
small groups of children, and the feedback given influences the forming process. The
choreographer is first in the ‘I’ position, then moves to the ‘me’ position, and finally
she takes the ‘it’ position, making the choice of which choreography should be the
actual result. The choreographer becomes detached from the piece of art created. It
becomes ‘it’. When producing an art work the supervising process is a process which
fully acknowledges the vulnerability of the participants, but in the end the performance becomes public and the audience and the critics experience and evaluate the
performance. The notion of distancing is an analytical concept used in the analysis in
this study. As a more overall horizon of understanding for the study I briefly introduce
three concepts connected to multimodality: mediation, remodalisation and meaning
expansion. These concepts guided my analysis and interpretation.
Multimodality and semiotic mediation
A performance is multimodal in its expression, which makes multimodal learning
theory relevant as a frame of reference. A central idea is that there is learning potential in the in-between space among different art forms which challenges both feelings
and thoughts in meaning making. Different art forms use different semiotic resources
and together these form meaning clusters which can be interpreted simultaneously
or subsequently. Kress (2003; 2010) describes multimodal meaning theory as an
emerging meaning which is not very fixed, but fixed enough to make sense. Literacy
in the age of multimodality is a broad concept encompassing visual symbols, dance,
graphs, notes, movement and physical theatre as text. Communication is understood
through the use of symbols, different semiotic signs and semiotic tools. The use of
semiotic resources other than the verbal system is demanding and dynamic. In the
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Anna-Lena Østern
translation, interpretation and transformation from one sign modality to another a
possibility appears to broaden the meaning potential (cf. Jewitt, 2009; Jewitt & Kress,
2004; Rustad, 2010.) The semiotic mediation in an artistic collaborative supervision
process is in fact, quoting Vygotsky, “a roundabout way” (Vygotsky, 1994:61).
In the empty spaces between what is said, what is shown and what remains unsaid
lies a surplus of meaning which interpretation might activate as meaning production.
Lotman (1988) talks about the univocal versus the dialogical text function. Univocal
text carries a meaning. Dialogical text points to the possibility to produce a new meaning. An affordance is a potential for meaning making. In order to catch the semiotic
value it is necessary to contextualise semiotic systems historically, culturally and
socially. Säljö (2005) has written extensively about learning and cultural tools, and
he underlines that mediating tools are signs or symbols which enable human beings
to interpret the surrounding world, to take a stance and to act in it (op.cit., 27). In an
artistic production process as well as in pedagogical supervision the questions are
targeted at the future. Van Leeuwen (1999) has written about the question forward,
into the future:
Semiotics was supposed to be ‘the science of signs’ and science, in turn, is supposed to be
about ‘what is’, not about ‘what could be’ or ‘what might be’. Still when you systematically
describe ‘what is’ you find gaps, you find yourself wondering why certain options are not
available and why certain things cannot be done in certain semiotic modes. Which is only
one step away from unlocking semiotic doors, from asking: Could it be done? Does it have
to be impossible? And if we are going to do it, how shall we do it? (Van Leeuwen, 1999, 10)
In artistic supervision the creation of something new by recirculating already existing material is relevant. As work in art forms usually functions at least in a double
hermeneutic way, it is important to pose the question about what meaning making
is made possible through the interplay between Garcia Lorca’s poems, the dancer,
the clown, the musician and the supervising choreographer and the director forming the concept of the performance. Interpretation in another modality might bring
forth other aspects of an experience and of the world which is already represented in
the modality you start from. Rustad (2010: 240, my translation) suggests that this
translation is called remodalisation. He also points to aesthetic values as being central:
Defamiliarisation as a result of remodalisation forms an otherness that is part of the aesthetic
quality of the product. The interplay between modalities insists on the sensuous dimension
of the meaning and underlines the aspects of the former text which go beyond semantisation, where the text cannot be given conceptual meaning/…/ Remodalisation is a creative
process which produces something as more adequate, or more perfect, in another way. The
remediated and remodalised text develops the world and the experiences which are created
in the former text.
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Vygotsky (1978) gives the semiotic mediation a central role in his theory about the
child’s development towards higher mental functions. He gives social interaction with
a more competent peer or an adult a central role in the acquisition of, for instance,
language. Vygotsky underlines that there has to be a mediating function in this learning
process. The artistic supervision might be such a mediator in the production process.
My analysis of this process focuses on the artistic supervision as a collaboration between the choreographer and the performers. To gain an insight aesthetically means
to grasp relations and concepts in a sensuous way using both feelings and thoughts.
The artistic supervision of a collaborative production process can be considered as
an artistic learning process. The concepts in use from multimodal theory as guiding
principles in the analysis are mediation, and meaning expansion through remodalisation. My pre-understanding is that the meaning expansion potential in the transformations throughout the artistic collaborative process in the choreography in some
ways, quoting Rustad, “develops the world and experiences”.
I have in this part of the article presented the analytical lenses used in the analysis
with the guiding concepts of dialogue, transformation, distancing, mediation and
meaning expansion through remodalisation. As a sounding board in the analysis I
also use my competence and experience from pedagogical supervision as well as my
experiences from arts educational creative processes in teacher education.
How the choreographer supervises artists in a co creative
process
In this part I will elaborate on two transcripts of video sequences. In the first sequence
(Video clip 1), the choreographer is collaboratively working on a piece of choreography.
She is co-creative together with the three performers. I will connect this clip to the log
text the choreographer wrote about this particular sequence after the session. I chose
this piece of supervision because the log text gives additional information about the
character of the collaborative process during this session. The collaboration is based
on improvisation, mainly contact improvisation. The choreographer instructs some
fixed choreography moments during this session. Here the clown is just following,
not using her special skill to improvise on the spot. She is still a clown, though. The
musician is playing a composed melody, at least parts of it. The choreographer is
using instruction as well as side coaching. Side coaching is a technique developed by
Viola Spolin (1999) in theatre improvisation, and here it means that the supervisor
gives small instructions while the dancer and the clown are working. Even if there
is some dissonance in this sequence, it also shows the main characteristics of the
choreographer’s artistic supervision.
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Anna-Lena Østern
Transcription of choreography sequence 1
(From 46’ 22’’ to 50’ 04’’on the DVD)
(In this sequence the choreographer (Chor.) is working with the dancer and the clown.
The director (Dir.) is watching, and the musician (Mus.) is playing the trombone.)
…
All:
[Laughter]
Chor.: OK. Now it was too long.
Dancer: We have to make variations, I feel.
Chor.:
That we do not do it for such a long time, it has to build itself up. It must
become quite clear.
Dancer:
It is a bit loose when we whirl around.
Chor.: But after that it must become clear – we can do it like that – whirl (finger click) – whirl (finger click) and so it has to be there, like that it may go, but it
is almost what there has to be.
Dancer:
Yes, but then also this one could come. (Shows)
Chor.: Yes, that is good. OK so we take – whirl – whirl – bow 1-2-3 – bow –
stand on hand.
Dancer:
OK then I come, but when we turn around, are we turning in the same direction?
Chor.:
[to the director watching] – what do you think?
Dir.:
[Laughter] I don’t know.
Chor.: But – hmm – I do not think you should turn quite alike, but in the same
direction.
Clown: I follow her?
Dir.: Can I ask something? /…/
Chor.: She must end up with the gliding jump.
When looking at the sequence repeatedly I notice the corporeality, how the communication is happening from body to body. I also notice the mindfulness in the situation.
Everyone involved is fully concentrated. I notice that the most active participants in this
sequence are the choreographer and the dancer. In the choreographer’s log text other
aspects of the collaborative creative process come to the foreground. She has noticed
some kind of resistance, which she interprets as too directing a choreographing style.
[The choreographer’s diary entry about this day:]
Tuesday 8 March 2011
Today was the first time I experienced a little bit of slowness, while resistance and feelings
in the system were noticed. I felt it partly when I was working, and partly when the director
was working.
I actually felt it first in me when I should start in the morning and knew that we should
work with a pre-planned choreography. I like more to work like more playfully, instruct a
roundabout material, which can be altered in the performers’ bodies. At the same time, I
very much like that some short sequences are stringent and defined. And then they have to
be choreographed in a different way.
The process was like this: I wanted to work on creating a choreography swinging from toe
to heel, which I can see many toddlers do. Yesterday, Monday, we played around with this,
improvised, played in pairs. Decided on a roundabout structure. It worked well.
Tonight the movements the performers had improvised around whirled around in my head
and in my body and a feeling of a choreography, a rhythm, a swinging structure. In waltz
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because the music had been a waltz. The waltz had just played itself from the musician.
This little structure I instructed and demonstrated today, as the first thing to do after warm
up. I counted the waltz rhythm 1-2-3, 1-2-3 … swing back and forth, fall down, stand on
your hands – a little resistance. Why? Too little co-creation I think. Both the clown and the
dancer are very co-creative artists, and I think they become less motivated by being given
instructions. And something more: the clown seemed to be tired. Very little clown simply.
Conclusion: choreography does not fit into the clown’s world. The clown continually works
with improvisation and communication, to use what the space gives.
… Many other things happened throughout the day, too. Energy was found again, and
laughter was bubbling up. …
One place a creative artist must be is at peace with her ideas. She must supervise, instruct,
demonstrate and have peace around her.
Heaven and sea! What subtle, but at the same time very concretely experienced processes.
Now I have all the others’ bodies, feelings, thoughts and rhythms close to me, with me. Slowly
they drip away, but it takes time. [Choreographer’s narrative]
The process in the log text is described as dialogical. The lyrics as a starting point
contribute to remodalisation into dance and music. This process can be described
as autopoietic in the sense Fischer-Lichte (2008) writes about. The system is selfreferential, and the participants inspire each other to a greater performance, or when
the autopoietic feedback loop does not work it is experienced strongly – and the
blocking of energy is a challenge for the collaborative process.
In the second sequence the focus is on the collaboration between the musician and
the dancer. In this example the choreographer gives the performers space to develop
material for the performance. One point is to make the dialogue between a moving
and trombone-playing musician and a dancing dancer function in the performance.
In this sequence the choreographer is working with the musician and the dancer.
This is an example of a collaborative creation process, where the choreographer and
musician first explore a movement pattern, and a little later the musician and the
dancer develop the movement pattern into a well working form.
Transcription of choreography sequence 2
(From 40’28’’ to 44’14’’ on the DVD)
Chor.: [She has movement contact with the musician, like in contact improvisation.]
Mus.: A bit unusual [Laughter]. [The dancer joins in and tries out the movement pattern.]
Dancer:
[Laughter]
Chor.: Can you play now then?
Mus.:
No [Laughter]. [The trombone] can stick out to one side. Nice if we come up from a bit of a distance.
Chor. Now you two work a little more, find out what is possible.
Dancer:
From there? Up and down? [Laughter] [The musician leans on her back.]
Whop! This one was a bit heavy, because it was a little twist. You were really strong.
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Anna-Lena Østern
Mus.:
How was it… I think you must be on the other side. If we shall manage this...
Dancer: Can you do this with only one leg /…/ this is fine. You do not need to cling
to me with one arm…
Mus.: Heavy?
Dancer:
It’s OK.
Chor.: I think there is a little structure emerging there... I think it is a little trip – you run between the trees – you can just continue to explore how you are
doing it…
Dancer: [The dancer and the musician are exploring movement and music
patterns.] It is much easier when you do it like this…
Chor.: Yes, it’s much better when you work corporeally [She shows], include that one – it is very joyous.
Dancer: Yes!
Chor.:
/…/ [to the musician] you follow her with the music.
Video clip 2 shows a co-creative process. It starts in a very exploratory way, trying
out possible ways of playing and dancing. In the beginning the guidance of the choreographer is leading the process. Later on, the dancer and the musician continue
to explore possible movement patterns. Finally the structure is chosen and fixed. It
starts by floating back and forth, but ends up with an emerging form – a choreography.
Central themes in artistic supervision
In the meaning concentration made (based on the observations and the log texts) with
‘artistic supervision’ as a meaning unit the following central themes were identified
in the artistic supervision:
1.Corporeality
2. Concrete instruction
3. Giving a model
4. Scaffolding (giving frames and freedom within them to improvise and try out)
5. Being very present in the situation (mindfulness)
6. Being very attentive and listening to responses (heightened listening)
7. Taking up ideas from the artists
8. Elaborating and probing ideas
9. Autopoietic feedback loops (the participants inspire each other to a greater performance)
10.Many ideas are tried out, only a few of them remain in the final product
11. The supervision is different in different phases of the process
12.The vulnerability of the participants is acknowledged (avoidance of negative response)
These 12 central themes form the basis of a basic description of what artistic supervision is in this context. The central themes identified can be connected to the concepts
presented in the theoretical framework: dialogue, transformation, autopoietic feedback loops, distancing, mediation, remodalisation and meaning expansion. These
concepts have functioned as the lenses or optics I have used when analysing. I am
theoretically sensitised and informed by these concepts. In the basic description,
given in the next part of this article, the choreographer’s mediating role is highlighted.
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The artistic supervision is a complex process where different modalities cooperate,
and also are challenged, and through remodalisation new constellations are formed,
which makes meaning expansion possible.
Basic description of the artistic supervision
The choreographer is clearly a mediator using her bodily communication in different
ways. She takes in the moods of her artistic team by watching movement patterns.
She elaborates movement ideas from the creating group. She also gives verbal instruction accompanied by movements, and she gives a model as inspiration for the dancer
and the clown, as well as the dancer and the musician, to elaborate on further. She
also builds scaffolds by telling about an idea with a certain movement and by giving some frames for movement improvisations. The choreographer is fully present
in the supervision situation. It is a focused attention, a mindfulness, which has an
energising impact on the participants at its best. As a consequence of this attentive
presence there is heightened listening to the collaborating team, including taking up
ideas from the artists as well as elaborating and probing ideas.
These central themes can be summed up in the notion of autopoietic feedback
loops where the participants inspire each other to expand on their creative flow
and expression. As this process shall lead to a performance for an audience of small
children, the creative process has some distinctive features. Many ideas are tried
out, but only a few remain in the final product – the performance. The supervision
is different in different phases of the process. In the initial phase, the choreographer
gives the frames and acknowledges the vulnerability of the participating artists in
the creative process. Negative response is avoided. The process floats back and forth
for some time. Finally, the choreographer decides upon a chosen structure, and the
series are rehearsed with exactness. This is a more distancing phase in the process.
In the meeting with the young audience there will still be space for improvisation,
but much less than appears to the audience.
Outline of an artistic supervision model
In this section I discuss the basic description of the artistic supervision with reference to Sava’s model of an artistic learning process as a series of transformations
forming repeated cycles in a spiralling movement. The starting point for the artistic
supervision is the poem written by Lorca, the three performers (clown, dancer and
musician) and the targeted audience: very young children. From the beginning the
frame is relatively complex, but the mission of the choreography in the performance
has to be explored. Through the analysis I have identified the different phases in an
artistic (learning) process from the choice of material, and the basic form through
transformations into a more elaborated form, towards metaphors and the finally
crystallised form. Through a few examples I have brought into the foreground some
of the characteristics of this process – from the point of view of supervision.
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Anna-Lena Østern
The model for an artistic supervision process can be outlined as: (a) cyclical; (b)
an interplay between I-me-it in a series of distancing moments during the creative
process; and (c) multilayered. Multimodality is characteristic of every part of the artistic process, as well as of the artistic supervision. The group works very concretely
with form. As the performing team has the music, the dance, the stage props, and
the physical theatre, it is possible to use different fictitious layers like concrete (what
they do), abstract (the use of symbols pointing to the story like movement patterns
and ways of playing the trombone, supporting or leading), and finally metaphorically creating the poetic universe. The collaborative process consists of a series of
interplays between the ‘I’ position, the ‘me’ position and the ‘it’ position, where ‘it’
is the product created, the artistic expression and its reception. The analysis allows
me to identify aspects of the (movement) dialogue like being corporeal (from body
to body), being free in floating back and forth sometimes, and being very instructing
and defined sometimes. I have identified moments of flow called autopoietic feedback
loops between the participants in the co-creative process, and I have acknowledged
that there are moments of resistance in this creative process. The analysis has pointed
to the need for a positive response as the main response because of the vulnerability
of the participants in the creative process.
The artistic supervision starts with open exploration, but it is not quite open. The
process ends with a closure made by the supervising choreographer having the responsibility to decide on the final form of the expression. In the concluding discussion
I give a tentative answer to the research problem outlined at the start of the study. I
discuss my findings regarding the characteristics of an artistic supervision process, and
I connect them to a pedagogical supervision context and evaluate their applicability
to an educational context. In this discussion I still use the chosen theoretical guiding
concepts, now in a more generalised way in order to inform about ways of learning
connected to meaning expansion, with the intention to inform supervision contexts
about possible paths to take as a supervisor in the near future in teacher education.
The importance of the findings of the analysis is that they indicate one possible story
about what it takes to supervise with an aesthetic approach, and in this example in
an artistic setting creating a poetic universe in a performance.
Concluding discussion: Applications to other supervision
contexts?
In the final discussion I take the central themes identified, look at them one by one
and make an assessment of the possibilities of introducing the technique and way
of working as an artist into pedagogical supervision in teacher education. I use the
central themes because they are very focused and concentrated, and thus suitable for
the juxtaposition. There are distinctive features that make the supervision of a cocreative performance different from supervision in a pedagogical context. The cultures
are different and the aims are different. The product is in the first case a piece of art,
416
a performance as a result emerging from the artistic supervision. The product of a
pedagogical supervision process in the second case is teacher autonomy and skilful
responsibility for a classroom with learning individuals. In the final discussion I take
a look behind the obvious differences and make some, perhaps surprising, observations of similarities. In Figure 3 I juxtapose artistic and pedagogical supervision
from the artistic supervision point of view. I do not include one special column for
a description of characteristics of pedagogical supervision sessions. I consider this
knowledge familiar enough from the teacher education perspective and the literature
in the field of supervision I have mentioned earlier in this article. Still I make reference to this knowledge in the second column where I suggest how and if the central
themes identified in artistic supervision, and articulated in the analysis, are applicable
to pedagogical supervision.
Characteristics of artistic supervision
Applicable to pedagogical supervision in
teacher education?
1. Corporeality
A wider repertoire of semiotic resources can
be used like drama and narrative techniques to
make the supervision explorative and alive.
2. Concrete instruction
Concrete instruction is part of teaching.
3. Giving a model (in movement)
This can be done. Here different subject areas
differ in how much of a model is given.
4. Scaffolding; giving frames and freedom
within them to improvise and try out
This can be done. Improvisation could be part of
training.
5. Being very present in the situation
(mindfulness)
This is an ideal in all supervision sessions.
6. Being very attentive and listening to
responses
This is an ideal in dialogical supervision.
7. Taking up ideas from the artists
The acknowledgement of good ideas is part of
pedagogical supervision.
8. Elaborating and probing ideas
This can be done to a certain degree. This can
be subject to meta reflection.
9. Autopoietic feedback loops (the participants
inspire each other to a greater performance)
This is part of a creative process at its best.
In a supervision session it can be the inspiration
and energy emerging from the supervision
dialogue
10. Many ideas are tried out, only a few of them
remain in the final product
More ideas could be tried out, even if only a few
remain in the repertoire of the teacher.
There could be space for more “trying out”.
11. The supervision is different in different
phases of the process. (First giving frames, then
floating back and forth; finally deciding upon the
structure and exactness; meeting the audience)
In supervision in a pedagogical context the
opposite is the case. Limited freedom, strong
frames for a beginner, then more freedom and
responsibility to the more experienced person.
12. The vulnerability of the participants is
acknowledged. (Negative response is avoided)
The vulnerability of the person being subject
to supervision should be acknowledged and
respected. As a main rule negative response is
scarce.
Figure 3. Artistic supervision and its applicability to pedagogical supervision
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Anna-Lena Østern
As a conclusion regarding the juxtaposition in the matrix (Figure 3), one can say that
some of the characteristics coincide, some could be ideals to strive for, while others
could be introduced as vitalising elements in the educational supervision discourse.
Especially the corporeality and the larger repertoire of semiotic resources seem to
hold the potential to intensify the learning experience through supervision.
I introduced multimodal theory as a frame of reference for the article because that
theory stresses the modal affordances given by different modes of expression. Jewitt
and Kress (2003, 2) suggest that a multimodal approach to learning starts from a
theoretical position that treats all modes as equally significant for meaning and communication. The authors state: “Within a multimodal approach to communication an
assumption is that any mode may become fore-grounded; that different modes have
potentials that make them better for certain tasks than others; and that not every
mode will be equally ‘useable’ for a particular task” (Jewitt & Kress, 2004, 2-3). The
dramaturgy of a supervision session could be vitalised by a multimodal approach,
carefully planned and focused on relevant issues to explore. Introducing the cyclical
thinking from artistic learning processes is one possibility to strengthen the aesthetic
dimension in pedagogical supervision. To strengthen the aesthetic dimension fuels
the meaning expansion through involvement with multimodal narrative techniques.
It is also a way of moving away from taken-for-granted ways of supervising in order
to develop supervising skills including artistic elements. In both artistic and pedagogical supervision the supervisor’s mediating function seems to be critical for the
process as well as the outcome. The mediating tools provided by different art forms,
different ways of telling, sharing and communicating stories will, based on this study,
be considered as holding the main potential of an aesthetic approach to supervision.
Anna-Lena Østern is professor of arts education at Program for Teacher Education, the Norwegian
University of technology and science NTNU in Trondheim. She is scientific leader of the national
graduate school for teacher education in Norway NAFOL. Her current research is connected to
artistic approaches to learning, art and science combined in inquiry based learning, and supervision in teacher education.
418
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Education Inquiry
EDU.
INQ.
Keep a-knocking (but you can’t come
in): The issue of passing by the gatekeeper
and gaining linguistic access to qualitative
research fields
Göran Widding*
Abstract
This paper explores methods that researchers, including students, use to gain access to research
being conducted in their subject areas. I conducted a review of the literature on research methodology to find out how the access problem is defined and the points highlighted by scholars. The
review was based on articles accessed through databases like Web of Science, reference books on
research methodology, and handbooks on scientific writing. I then summarised the thoughts of two
philosophers of science, Jorgen Habermas and Naomi Scheman, on the subject. The analysis focused
on elements challenging the process of gaining access, including power and diversity dimensions.
The paper concludes with a consideration of gender and diversity as operational frameworks in the
process of gaining access and the possibility of applying a practice grounded in trust that would
strengthen an inclusive process and the validity of a research project.
Keywords: gaining access, communication, power, gender and diversity, context
Introduction
“Previous agreements? But my staff members are now saying they feel too busy and
have neither the time to be interviewed nor to be observed, I´m sorry” (end of conversation; author’s translation into English). With that abrupt ending to my conversation
with the principal I realised that I had not gained any access at all. What had gone
wrong with our communication?
Surely, several readers recognise the situation that I have encountered as a PhD
student, whereby in a particular setting, a group of teachers, and a headmaster of a
school, despite earlier promises, granted me no access to collect research data for my
thesis. In our conversations, the school’s new headmaster referred to the upcoming
organisational changes, claiming that the staff could not cope with the extra burden
my study represented. This largely came as an unpleasant surprise given that I had
completed my research design and was finally at the breakthrough stage and eagerly
looking forward to searching for my answers. Then this happened, and I suddenly
*Umeå University, Department of Education, Sweden. E-mail: [email protected].
©Authors. ISSN 2000-4508, pp. 421–435
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Göran Widding
had to find a new research site. It made me wonder: What can I actually learn from
this event?
Some argue that restricted access to research sites is an increasingly prevalent
obstacle within both undergraduate programmes and graduate programmes. What
makes the issue even more problematic is that in the teacher education programmes
of Sweden, Norway and Finland students must perform a scientific empirical study
to pass the final exam (Johansen, 2011; Johansson & Svedner, 2006; Kansanen,
2003). Further, teacher training departments in the USA and the UK emphasise the
importance of gaining access to research sites as they include elements from teaching
practice in teacher-training programmes (i.e., assessing candidates’ field experience
logs and reflective journals) (D. M. o. Education, 2008; D. o. T. Education, 2011).
In my case, I started to try to obtain a rough idea of how the research field and
research methodologies actually describe the access problem. If there are such descriptions, what do they highlight? I was also attending a PhD course (Scheman, 2009) as
part of my graduate studies during this period and I began to wonder whether that
course might be helpful in trying to understand this complicated problem. Since
part of the course content analyses so-called community-based research (Scheman,
2001, 2008; Jordan et al., 2005), this made me think of access to sites as not simply a
question of the methodical application of communication strategies but also as being
conceptually embedded in research practice. I thus wondered what some philosophers
of science would think about access. What would they highlight and think and feel
about the research field and research methodology?
Aim of this paper
This paper explores ways that might allow researchers (and students) to gain linguistic
access to qualitative research fields. Two research questions drive this exploration:
• How is the access problem described in journal articles and books on research
methodology and what has been highlighted?
• What would some philosophers of science think about access and what would
they highlight in relation to the research field and its methodologies?
Initially, the presentation of the analysis model is followed by a short review of articles
and books addressing the first question. The next part of the paper briefly presents
two philosophers of science, followed by (suggested) answers to the second question.
The conclusion and discussion analyse the results of the literature review along with
the thinking of two philosophers of science in relation to the central aim of this paper.
Reviewing the literature
The primary purpose of the following literature review is to provide a rough and
preliminary picture of the research field that focuses on the access problem. It does
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The issue of gaining access to qualitative research
not claim to be comprehensive. Following Creswell’s (2003) recommendations, it
gives priority to articles in open access journals available via databases like Web of
Science and EBSCO. The review involves modes of access that are primarily verbal
and does not address forms that do not entail linguistic communication. Examples
of search terms were “access to research” and “gaining linguistic access”, but then
the articles primarily addressed disabled people’s access problems in society in many
search hits. Other examples of non-relevant hits when using these search terms are
articles describing research in fields such as medicine, economics, and information
communication technologies.
Eventually, 11 articles in international journals relevant to the current subject –
the access problem –appeared. One article was published in 1985, two articles were
published during the 1990s, and eight articles were published after the turn of the
millennium. Given that only 11 relevant articles seemed to be too low a number, the
search process was extended to include the use of backwards or ancestry searches
(Hill & Tyson, 2009) exploring reference lists of the articles that led to a book chapter
and one book on the subject. In order to broaden my understanding of these articles
and books, I included reference books on research methodology that are common
in Swedish educational research, such as 15 works generally oriented to the social
sciences, supplemented with three handbooks on scientific writing that address
students in teacher training programmes, sociology, and social work in Sweden. In
summary, this means that the search results reflect an apparent lack of literature
approaching the problem stated above and thus lead to an analysis based on a limited amount of data.
Analysis model
There are several meanings of access to research. In laboratory research, access does
not require verbal communication; the object under examination is usually to be understood in terms of separateness, and problems with access may involve technical
causes and/or limitations. But when it comes to qualitative research on human beings, access is mainly linguistic since it involves a question of acquiring entry to their
verbal communication, as it “requires being in a position to learn from the people
you’re talking with and observing” (Feldman, Bell, & Berger, 2003, p. vii). Moreover,
people –as complex and social organisms – need to be understood in context, not in
abstractions from their physical and social environments, and research needs access to
such contextual understanding (Scheman, 2008). Therefore, a relational perspective
is necessary to understand the fundamental nature of access (Feldman et al., 2003,
p. vii). Accordingly, the starting point for this analysis is the question, “How is the
issue of gaining access problematised in articles in the research field, in literature on
research methodology, and by philosophers of science?”. Based on social constructivism, discourse analysis aims to conduct critical research on power relationships
in society (Winter, Jörgensen & Phillips, 2000, p. 8). A research enterprise can be
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seen as a discursive practice, and issues of access can thus be framed as part of the
communication process within this practice.
Following Fairclough (1995), communication can be examined as a combination
of power and rhetoric. According to Laclau and Mouffe (1985), it can be understood
as part of a process that forms the meanings of, for example, power, entirely within
the discourse. Inspired by these perspectives, the issues of access are framed as part
of the communication process within a research enterprise in this analysis. In the
second step, I consider whether a consensus or a conflict view of communication is
prevalent by asking, “Does power matter?”. Consensus means that collective agreements based on good arguments comprise the principal object of all communication
within the research enterprise, while a conflict perspective explores the productive
use of conflict by emphasising different power relations.
Journal articles and books on research methodology
describing access
Those that do not do not explicitly comment upon access to the field
The majority of writers covering this issue considers the access problem in the methodological discourse as largely absent and as not being discussed in much depth
(Adler & Adler, 2001; Brennan, 2008; Feldman, et al., 2003). Previous explanations
of access are presented in a fragmented and simplified way without any conceptual
bridge linking to a coherent and theoretical perspective on the matter (Feldman et
al., 2003; Harrington, 2003; Okumus, Altinay, & Roper, 2007). In this review, the
majority of books presented as reference books on research methodology and handbooks on scientific writing confirm this claim by not explicitly commenting on access
to the field. However, when addressing the ethnographic approach, access may be
reviewed, for example, by stating that “the problem of access to research and to the
data needed pops up in ethnographic studies” (Dovemark, 2007, p. 136).
Gaining access is a matter of communication
The articles considering problems of gaining access use anthropology and/or ethnography in qualitative research as a common feature and this approach is reflected
in a smaller number of books on research methodology. By emphasising the intense
nature of the relationships established between the researcher and the researched
(Burgess, 1985), ethnography considers access as the practical use of communication
strategies through which the researcher should exercise skills for building relationships, managing personal appearance, and building rapport (Measor, 1985). Thus,
the literature describes communication strategies, such as the process of “getting
in” and mastering the art of “staying” (Adler & Adler, 2001; Burgess, 1985; Candlin, 2003; Feldman et al., 2003). Examples of other communication strategies are
handling information given in confidence or given as an act of resistance and seek-
424
ing mentorship from experienced researchers who are already trusted. Fortunately,
researchers can manage this subversive information through alternate approaches
during interviews that aim to establish trust and rapport (Adler & Adler, 2001; Ball,
1985). However, managing access problems by using these strategies merely focuses
on the traditional execution of the research practice. Eventually, this approach has
become overshadowed by questions of negotiating legitimacy and logistical problems
even before entering the setting. This has caused the focus on access to expand and
consider such factors outside of actual research practice as exerting an influence on
the methodology. Ultimately, a relational view in the field has extended the notion
of access as integrally connected to the research design in terms of the execution of
choices already made in the design process (Adler & Adler, 2001; Feldman et al.,
2003). Depending on whether different kinds of power dimensions associated with
people in the research enterprise are viewed by the researchers as exerting an influence or not, this study suggests two perspectives on the communication process of
managing access.
Consensus
The consensus perspective considers communication as not linked to dimensions
of power, assuming researchers and participants share some mutual interest in the
research enterprise and see reciprocity as an expected part of the research situation
(Gurney, 1985; Measor, 1985; Patton, 1987, 1988). This means adopting an instrumental perspective based on mutual agreements of using reciprocal procedures that
facilitate communication. Shenton and Hayter recommend a number of strategies or
tactics for gaining access, such as to “seek to blend in with the community,” “acknowledge openly the value of informants’ contributions” and “ensuring some element of
reciprocity is a key ingredient in several of the strategies” (Shenton & Hayter, 2004, pp.
225, 230). Other examples of instrumentality views may be the “payoff” perspective on
access, defined as the information trade and/or battles taking place in media research
(Brennan, 2008) and the guidelines applied in research on bereaved people using
ethical criteria such as informed consent and rigorous methodology (Parkes, 1995).1
Conflict
The conflict perspective sees thinking of access as relational and considers human
communication connected to the production of power and knowledge as situated in
a local context. A conflict perspective is thus critical for considering reciprocity as
tactics or procedures that facilitate communication because this perspective simplifies the access process into a matter of stages and required skills by adopting a range
of strategies and/or policies (Ely, 1993; Okumus, et al., 2007; Shenton & Hayter,
2004). Instead, access should be viewed as situated in a continual process of negotiation in which conflicting interests and actors in opposition must always be taken
into account (Laurila, 1997). Describing the researcher-respondent relationship as
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Göran Widding
cooperative could obscure exploitation and hidden power structures. These shortcomings of the cooperative view “suggest the need for reconceptualization of access in
terms not limited by identity assumptions” (Harrington, 2003, p. 597; Lather, 1986).
Access can be gained through so-called “reciprocal exposure” (i.e., the researcher’s
willingness to be questioned by potential respondents) (Bolognani, 2007) and should
be analysed as a process that develops throughout the course of the study (Adler &
Adler, 2001; Hamzeh & Oliver, 2010). In order to complicate and add nuance to the
ethnographic conceptualisation of access, Harrington (2003) recommends the use
of social psychology as a way to reframe the researcher-participant relation. By using “informed improvisation” for managing access, the approach becomes consistent
with the symbolic interactionist view of social structures as processual, contingent
and enacted (Hall, 1987; Harrington, 2003, p. 595).
This literature review found that a communication perspective seems to activate
relational views that challenge the process of access by means of either a consensus
or a conflicting perspective. The question is therefore whether this relationality is
restricted to the research practice or if it manifests in a larger context.
The next section of this paper presents two philosophers of science and speculates
what they would think about the problem of access and what they would emphasise in
relation to the research field and research methodologies. Since the issue of gaining
access to people´s communication is central to this study, the choice of these persons
is based on their common interest in these subjects as expressed in some of their
original texts. Naomi Scheman, the object of my PhD course, is currently working in
feminist and other libratory epistemology, stressing social structures’ influence on
relationships in human knowledge practices. As she views conflict as often a necessary component of change, she emphasises a conflict perspective on communication.
Through the idea that we learn from different perspectives, my strategy has been to
find a counterweight to this position. According to the analytical model above, this is
the consensus perspective on communication, a position that is primarily represented
by Jurgen Habermas. While still emphasising contextual significance, but from a
consensus perspective, it seemed relevant to choose him as the other philosopher of
science.
Philosophers of science thinking about access
Habermas
Communication is a key word in Habermas’ philosophy, which assumes that communicative reason makes itself felt in the binding force of intersubjective understanding
and reciprocal recognition (Habermas, 1996, p. 613). Habermas (1984) describes the
system’s colonisation of the lifeworld as a rationalisation process in terms of expertise;
social engineering; and the narrow, positivist belief that science is a solution to the
problems of society. This can be offset by a rationalisation of the lifeworld by using
426
science to develop an emancipatory cognitive interest that questions society’s creations of norms and meaning. One of the main ways to do this is through the theory
of communicative action (Habermas, 1984, 1996). People learn from one another
through a mutual interaction in a social context, using language and communication, and they test different ideas and norms spread by the system (Habermas, 1984).
Communication acts coordinate action and contribute to interaction. Communicative
action depends on situational contexts that represent segments of the lifeworld of the
participants in the interaction. The communication procedure is a precondition for
a democratic dialogue characterised by openness, strategic behaviour, and a state of
communicative rationality. The key in reaching this state is to create opportunities
for undistorted communication, wherein the individual’s competence and reflective
ability are essential.
The theory of communicative action assumes that every discussion can be understood by others as truthful and sincere when the participants use certain social rights or
norms. Such dialogue characterises undistorted communication. No practice – power,
status, manipulation, fear or insecurity – affects the participants’ understanding more
than the strength of a good, well-founded argument. According to Habermas (1984),
this discourse is propelled by a unifying and consensus-building force that helps the
participants to overcome their initially subjective and biased views in favour of the
rationally motivated agreement. If every claim of knowledge is open to challenge,
then different experts’ statements can be communicatively grounded, which means
they are accorded reasonable influence in relation to people who are not experts. The
ideal situation of genuine consensus emerges if there is a symmetrical distribution
of opportunities to choose and to apply speech acts. This gives rise to the opposite of
undistorted communication: social actions that draw on empirical pragmatics that
have no conceptual (formal-pragmatic) instruments with which to recognise rational
communication. The result of this is the manifestation of communication pathologies,
such as systematically distorted communication and manipulation (Habermas, 1984,
pp. 331–333). This kind of communication comprises actions of the system that stretch
beyond its range of validity and colonises a space for communicative actions (Habermas, 1987), which is one of the reasons that Habermas is not primarily empirically
oriented. An overly strong emphasis on interpreting the empirical material leads to
only reduced aspects of different phenomena being illustrated, as they do not include
the communicative processes or the social conditions set in the background of the
participants and in their subconscious, making the results of the interviews unclear.
The comprehensive nature of Habermas’ approach intertwines views on research
methodology with theoretical and philosophical concepts that draw together all of the
ideas about gaining access from interpretations made by the author of this paper. One
possible starting point may be the notion that communicative action is dependent on
both situational contexts and interacting participants, which emphasises a relational
view of the communication process as it considers factors outside of actual research
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Göran Widding
practice. At first sight, this approach seems to correspond with the conflict perspective
that recognises that the plurality and diversity of minds in practical conditions (e.g.,
a research enterprise) are politically and culturally determined by the surrounding
contexts. But how does Habermas´ relational view work when it comes to actual
research practice and thus to the issue of access? Habermas pictures the communication procedure as something strictly linked to rational thinking, one’s competence,
and one’s reflective ability. This grounds his relational views chiefly in a process that
is purely intellectual, letting no contextual practices such as power relations affect
understanding. He asserts that every statement in the communication procedure
should be communicatively grounded and that it should also be open to challenge
from various speakers. These qualities seem to suggest an open and inclusive attitude
regarding practical questions dealing with participation and thus with access. But the
focus on the communication process links the strength of a good, well-founded argument to theoretical instead of practical dimensions. That is, it deals with challenges
from various speakers primarily as a matter of choosing and applying speech acts in
an effort to establish the ideal of perfect communication, rather than as something
related to actual research practice.
Due to his preoccupation with communication and the rational agreement of all
participants in an entirely rational, unlimited discourse, Habermas does not answer
the question of how this idealised condition of an agreement through perfect rational discourse can be achieved in practice. He requires a conceptual instrument to
recognise rational communication and to avoid distortion. This instrument favours
competence and reflective ability that correspond with the mutual agreement in the
consensus perspective that uses reciprocal procedures to facilitate communication
and thus access. But neither case considers the influence of power relations and both
therefore omit valuable sources of knowledge within the communication procedure.
One cannot expect to conduct a realistic analysis if one disregards power, as then
one would not be sensitive to the social context and the status dimensions influencing dialogue in the research enterprise; this, in turn, would mean that the enterprise
would be deprived of some of its potential (e.g., the ability to interpret and recognise
women´s subordination and/or actions with no corporate aim or explicit fulfilment).
Therefore, the claim that the process of unanimous conviction is crucial for practical
agreements in teaching practice must be a weak spot in the consensus perspective
on communication. Further, applying a vision of teachers as persons who have no
conceptual instruments to recognise rational communication makes it difficult for
researchers to maintain didactic credibility, thereby restricting their access to participants who currently exhibit an increase in didactic and scientific awareness through
their teacher training programmes.
It may therefore seem that Habermas has little to contribute to the access problem
because he only employs theoretical and philosophical dimensions. Nonetheless,
the contextual dimension in his approach is crucial as it defines various influences
428
on research that do not necessarily fall into the categories of methodological rigour
or skill. Habermas includes relational views and frames them with an emancipatory
interest by considering the historical and social scenery that could enforce attitudes
of scholars’ perceptions of research methodology and enforce access as something
relationally integrated within the research process and, most importantly, in the
surrounding context.
Scheman
According to Naomi Scheman (2005), the crucial dimensions of methodology are
linked to general questions about the trust placed on current research by the taxpayers,
particularly since public research universities play an important role as providers of
reliable information, while they also depend on state funding. Scheman suggests one
explanation of the states’ steadily declining support for higher education: a virulently
spreading cynical climate concerning authority, especially with regard to experts doing
research. Scheman claims that problems of access chiefly stem from a question of the
mistrust of researchers across the board. Such mistrust stems from the style of the
conventional scientific method. Jordan, Gust, and Scheman (2005) argue for a major
change to the approach in community-based research (using terms such as “action
research”) as a means of instilling trust in the research enterprise. The value of any
research is a direct and primary effect of its “trustworthiness” – whether people will
find it useful enough both individually and in joint projects. However, people’s image
of research and research practices is under the strong influence of a laboratory science discourse, even when the research is about human interactions. Procedures for
measuring and controlling for confusing variables that threaten the objectivity of the
research may be appropriate when dealing with research objects that can be distilled,
filtered or quantified (Jordan et al., 2005). However, science still holds research on
people to standard laboratory norms, a position that creates problems because these
standards erase important dimensions of human interactions that make a marked
difference if we are serious about social, ethical and political trustworthiness (Jordan
et al., 2005). As a solution, Scheman suggests redefining the defining virtue of modern
science – objectivity – as trustworthiness which requires the responsible engagement
of the researcher, meaning a willingness to listen to and learn from the participants
involved in research projects. Scheman suggests involving people without any academic training because she asserts that objectivity as trustworthiness has to do with
how widespread the public’s support is for scientific claims and how convinced people
are that these claims are reasonable. Recognising that these claims are affected by
aspects such as the social location of the people involved, Scheman considers power
to be the main issue.
In community-based research, members of the community actively participate in
a partnership with progressive researchers by using distinct scientific methods and,
in contrast to traditional research which makes the researcher more powerful than
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Göran Widding
other persons involved, sharing power is a key to overcoming mistrust in communitybased research. The idea is to regard the participants’ intuitive knowledge, latest
skills and learned experience valued as being equally important as the competence
of the researchers. When it comes to the question of trust, Scheman states that we
can strengthen our confidence in scientific results by building up a trust-grounding
practice that changes the image of research as something only geared toward certified experts. By democratising our knowledge practices, community-based research
is including the social context which makes it possible to ground knowledge claims
acceptable to all of us and not only to people who are privileged as a result of gender, class and ethnicity. A number of alternative systematic procedures are able to
accomplish this, including critical, contextual, political, participatory, pluralist and
relational procedures (Scheman, 2001, p. 26). When it comes to questions of research
integrity, both the researchers and the community members collaborate in a common process of education and justification in which the community members act as
co-investigators, contributing to the research by providing deeper information and
knowledge. By participating in the interpretation of data, the research group can
overcome cultural and language barriers and thus prevent oversimplification. This will
ultimately contribute to an application of data that utilises research findings to make
changes in society. The social arenas participating in this provide feedback about the
use of data, and doing this confirms a kind of ecological validity.
Scheman criticises conventional research practices that reproduce traditional power
relationships and create mistrust. Her analysis confirms the relational views emphasised by the conflict perspective on communication, while highlighting this relationality
as not restricted solely to the research process and practice. Instead, she stresses the
importance of framing these views in a larger context as essential to carrying out research. What is at stake is whether it is possible to control communication through some
kind of rationality geared towards an ideal condition. Scheman shows that contextual
factors cannot be managed solely by means of methodological skills as they leave critical
communication problems unresolved, for example, the very problem of gaining access.
But when she transforms and integrates these communication problems into a larger
framework that emphasises different dimensions of power and diversity influencing
the research enterprise, she makes it possible to consider access as relational to the
surrounding context. Understanding the world as composed of people with diverse
perspectives on a common object, her analysis argues that truth claims rest largely
on socially grounded reasons for trust. By using alternative systematic procedures,
including gender and diversity dimensions, she challenges the standard norms of the
traditional laboratory science discourse. Thus, her work establishes a trust-grounding
practice based on a conflict perspective on communication that makes it possible to
ground knowledge claims that seem acceptable to all people.
As a result, the question of access becomes intertwined with a larger matrix that
traditional research methodology cannot possibly capture. Instead, gender and diver-
430
sity can be regarded as one of several frames that operate as intersecting rationalities
in a process of access that moves the focus of analysis from the mere act of methodical
issues to a consideration of the political and social contexts surrounding and driving
the research.
Conclusions and discussion
In this section of the paper, we return to the initial question of what went wrong
with the communication between the school and myself. What can we conclude after
consulting the literature and the two philosophers of science on this problem? What
might the latter have suggested for solving this particular problem? And, finally, what
did I learn from this event?
According to the consensus perspective in the literature, the communication
process went wrong chiefly because of me. The consensus perspective reduces the
researcher’s role, making him/her solely responsible for attempts to obtain access,
as it highlights a number of communication skills that I should apply during my research process. By identifying various kinds of mutual interests that are shared in the
research enterprise, I would make it possible to design some appropriate strategies
that would facilitate access. I was unable to do this in advance, so I simply lacked
bait when I asked for access. Consulting Habermas on this role did not highlight the
problem with respect to concrete researcher-gatekeeper-participant relations and
to issues of power in fieldwork. His approach does not consider social context and
diversity influencing the dialogue because it does include consensus. His notion of a
normalised communicative rationality creates a closed system that is not accessible
to people with dissenting types of rationality, and it does not allow for the plurality
that is fundamental to the understanding of human relations. Thus, the question of
access to communication between humans in fieldwork would not be characterised
by perspectives on power. Using Habermas as an interpretative lens makes me blind
to my own “normality” and insensitive to people with dissenting rationalities. I do
not find Habermas to be of any help at all in obtaining access to fieldwork.
According to the conflict perspective in literature, the notion of mutual interests
could dim exploitation and hidden power structures. The conflict perspective recognises different dimensions of power that have an impact on the relation between
people involved in research, stating that a person cannot control his or her communication process independently. It stresses the notion of the development and use
of communicative strategies, although it applies no instrumental views specifically
centred on required skills. Reframing the researcher-participant relation as situated
in a process characterised by conflicting interests and constant negotiations means
that I, as a researcher, am not solely responsible for getting access.
This emphasis on context leads to the next philosopher of science reviewed here,
Naomi Scheman. Because she feels that research practice corresponds to context
and that this correspondence is fundamental, her answer to my problem about gain-
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Göran Widding
ing access is obvious: If the researchers are trusted by people in the field, they will
gain access. By highlighting the trust-grounding practice as a way to democratise
knowledge practices through the inclusion of the social context, she provides practical solutions to the access problem. Rather than applying the consensus perspective,
which assumes the influence of power, gender and diversity as examples of distorted
communication, Scheman uses a conflict perspective that recognises these influences
as crucial because they contribute opinions, knowledge and practical proposals that
reflect the practice and diversity of the community. Making productive use of these
conflicting relations provides functional guidance for how to embed issues of access
into research practice and comprises a credible response to the aim of this paper,
that is, to explore ways that researchers (and students) may gain linguistic access to
qualitative research fields.
As the philosophers of science jointly perceive research as an activity aiming to
find new, previously unknown opportunities and approaches that do not reproduce an
already known world, the political dimension of research and access becomes clear.
The majority of writers in the field, as well as the philosophers, stress the conflicting
ways in which a research enterprise relates to the surrounding context, and thus their
notion of access can be interpreted as being conceptually integrated in the research
enterprise as a whole, not considered as an isolated step in a methodological process.
The political dimensions of government policy that pervade and steer school practices
through framing factors represent rationalities that intersect with other rationalities.
Examples are local and national discourses on resource allocation, teaching, gender
and diversity that all influence access. As the traditional laboratory science discourse
still prevails, demanding instrumentality and theoretical rigour and – important in
the context of the school – demanding the valuable time of teachers, it will conflict
with alternative views that consider research as a corporate source providing new
knowledge supporting the practice of the organisation. Thus, the door to a research
setting like a school can remain closed, regardless of the extent to which the researcher
can apply communicative strategies and talent.
One possible solution applies a trust-grounding practice that corresponds to the
Scheman model of research: It may be a joint venture (e.g., researchers, students
and teachers investigating, analysing and supporting shared and perhaps already
started projects in the school). In this way, researchers can facilitate access by using starting points in a conflict perspective on communication, apply the idea of the
trust-grounding practice, and emphasise a diversity of participants’ collaborating in
and thus supporting the educational practice. These increasing elements of diversity
can thereby challenge various hidden power structures in fieldwork. The process of
research itself is empowering to the participants as they can participate in framing
“more useful (…) stories about themselves, rather than leaving that framing in the
hands of researchers or more socially, economically, and politically powerful others”
(Scheman, 2008). Acting as co-investigators, the teachers in school jointly participate
432
in the interpretation of data, which helps to ground knowledge claims and strengthens
the research validity through inclusive processes that are sensitive to issues of access.
What I learned from this episode was that to gain access I should have visited
the school and the teachers more often so I could get involved in their activities and
learn more about how they perceived their teaching practice. In accordance with the
idea of trust-grounding practice, I could have argued that both teachers and the new
principal could have benefited from participating in my study while developing their
school organisation. Then, I might have been able to offer my help and support to any
studies that were already initiated in this school. In my case, however, I was unable
to do so because I had to participate in a basic research training course during this
time, which shows that some of the problems of gaining access are also associated
with the structure of doctoral education.
To conclude, methodological, scientific, philosophical and political views on the
matter confirm that the gaining of access extends far beyond the simple “combination of planning and dumb luck” (Van Maanen & Kolb, 1985, p. 11), showing there
is no easy answer to this complicated research problem. Thus, discussing this issue
from a consensus and conflict perspective should be considered as a simplification.
However, the main purpose of this analysis is that it will hopefully serve as a firstaid kit to those researchers who, like me, have been “dumped” by the gatekeeper.
Further studies can broaden and deepen knowledge of the access problem by using,
for example, critical ethnography.
Notes
1
The issue of research ethics is not addressed in this paper. However, it may be noted that some researchers consider the
establishment of institutional review boards (IRBs), which are mandated to approve, observe and review individual research plans, as a process that has advantages in terms of gaining access since it seeks to establish trust and rapport with
informants and helps applicants to develop relationships with those who give permission to pursue the research (Feldman
et al., 2003).
Göran Widding is a PhD student at Department of Education, Umeå University, Sweden. His main
interest is gender research on home-school relationships. He is also a teacher educator and has
worked as a primary school teacher and music teacher.
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Göran Widding
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Education Inquiry
EDU.
INQ.
Disrupting the picture: Reflections
on choices, resistance and
consequences in a pre-study
Eva Skåreus*
Abstract
Reflecting on the implementation of a pre-study may be decisive for the design of a following main
study. This text consists of a reflective process where the researcher’s different choices are examined
and problematised. The reflections take place within the framework of a pre-study and in relation
to the aim of that study. They also take place in and through the written language, i.e. in the process
where “the language turns back on itself to see the work it does in constituting the world” at the
same time as “the subject/researcher sees … the object of her … gaze and the means by which the
object is being constituted” (Davies et al., 2004:360). By doing this, different consequences can
be discussed in relation to gender, the art subject and methods as well as the academic context
and become understandable. The text may thus be regarded as an investigative and critical text
with the ambition to understand and create meaning, both on an overarching and an individual
level, about what the researcher has experienced. The reflections chiefly concern the gathering of
material, choices of methods and the resistance that occurred in these two areas. The choices of
methods refer to selected as well as forgotten methods and how this forgetfulness includes pictures’
elusive information in an academic context. The writing process brings the researcher’s situated
knowledge to the fore.
Keywords: research methods, gender, art education, emotion, teacher education
Introduction
With a light palpitation of the heart and some nervousness mixed with curiosity I step
into the group of students to inform them about my research project. My purpose
is to obtain informants for a pre-study. The information functions relatively well,
some students are unequivocally interested and directly fill in their consent forms.
Then somebody asks, “Do I have to decide now?”. “No, of course not” I answer, at
the same time as I observe that the atmosphere in the room changes from interest to
resistance. It would turn out that the resistance persisted in the group and that the
difficulty of obtaining informants was repeated. What is the reason for this? Are the
reasons due to my request, to the aim of the study, its design or complex factors that
are difficult to immediately grasp?
*Umeå University, Department of Creative Studies, Sweden. E-mail: eva.skåreus.estet.umu.se.
©Authors. ISSN 2000-4508, pp. 437–450
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Eva Skåreus
The aim of this article is to reflect on different choices, what I did and what I did not
do, in the pre-study. This is done within the framework of the pre-study, for example
to understand the resistance that sometimes occurred and other consequences of my
choices. I do this in a feminist tradition of reflecting not only on the research object
but also on the research subject (Harding, 1986, 1991; Ehn & Klein, 1994; Magnusson,
1998; Widerberg, 2002; Davies et al., 2004). By critically examining what happened,
what I did and said, I turn my gaze both at the contexts in which the pre-study took
place and the contexts in which my informants and myself as a researcher are actors. In these contexts an influence inevitably takes place or, as Davies formulates
it with reference to Foucault, “the self who carries out research and the self who is
the subject of the researcher’s gaze … is there, as an effect of discourse” (Davies et
al., 2004:364). This text may thus be regarded as an investigative and critical text
with the ambition to understand and create meaning, both on an overarching and an
individual level, about what I experienced in the pre-study in order to be able to act
more consciously in the main study.
The most frequent term for a small study made before a main study is pilot study.
A pilot study is supposed to give valuable information to the researcher about the
project’s questions, possible reformulations, and experiences in the work and the
meeting with informants and the material, in order to optimise the quality of the main
study. Another designation – pre-project – has other and partially similar ambitions
(Widerberg, 2002). In a pre-project, researchers obtain ideas about the thematisation
of a problem area, often by acquiring their own experience of the research questions
and the projected investigation (Skåreus, 2007:29). It functions then as reflective work
where one can “‘position’ oneself in relation to the theme” (Widerberg, 2002:103).
Since I have not fully followed Karin Widerberg’s instructions for pre-projects, which
in her version can also contain memory-work based on Frigga Haug’s model (Widerberg, 2002:45), I have chosen instead to use the term pre-study, a combination of
the two terms.
My reflective work moves in the text on two different levels, namely on gathering
material, i.e. information occasion and consent, and on selected and forgotten methods
of analysis. The questions I have primarily worked with are: How can I understand
the informants’ resistance? Which consequences can I see based on the choices I
made? In order for the reflections to gain a foothold, here follows first of all a short
presentation of the research project and some of its theoretical points of departure.
Background
Presentation of the project
The research project’s overarching aim is to study how emotions and gender interact
in the teaching practice of schools. For the pre-study I worked with the question:
Which emotions do students in the teacher education programmes, specialising in
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Disrupting the picture: Reflections on choices, resistance and consequences in a prestudy
art and media, describe as memorable during their teaching training period? The
material will be students’ own pictures with the motif “an emotionally loaded event”,
i.e. something they experienced during or in relation to a teaching situation, “positive or negative, dramatic or trivial” in a practical training period (information letter,
2010). The students will also make a brief note on what the picture represents. These
two statements, one depicting and one verbal, then form the basis for an interview
between the informant and myself lasting 30 minutes.
My point of departure, that gender and emotions interact in teaching, may be found
in several contexts. The educational researcher Eva Gannerud points out that emotions constitute a central aspect of a teacher’s work, a statement the sociologist R.W.
Connell also emphasises (Gannerud, 1999; Connell, 2000). “The work of a teacher
requires an emotional relation to the pupils” (Gannerud, 1999:35). Patterns of emotion are one of R.W. Connell’s four analytic dimensions of factors that influence an
institution’s gender regime, i.e. the local variation of society’s overarching gender
order (Connell 2000:153, 2002:86; Nordberg, 2005). The other three are power, division of labour and symbolic relations. Through the interacting relation structures,
education creates its definitions of gender, impersonal and existing as social facts. The
regulation of an institution’s emotional relations, i.e. what is legitimate to express,
Connell compares to what Arlie Russel Hochschild calls “feeling rules” (Hochschild,
1983/2003). In The Managed Heart from 1983 Hochschild studies flight attendants’
commercialised emotional work where “feeling rules”, defined by the airlines, control
what are emotionally legitimate actions in the profession. Connell thinks there are also
“feeling rules” controlling how teachers can act and relate in the activities of schools.
The conditions given by the gender order have consequences for teachers as professional individuals in their experiences of their exercise of the profession and also for
their working conditions (Gannerud, 2009). A study by Michalinos Zembylas (2005)
very clearly shows how a school’s implicit rules for emotions control and regulate a
teacher’s scope of action and state which emotions are permissible and in what form
they may be expressed.
In the wide field of research on emotions that has developed in the last few decades,
both nationally and internationally and in widely different disciplines, a number of
different theoretical explanatory models have emerged (Hochschild, 1983/2003;
hooks, 1995; Woodward, 1996; Rey, 2000; Koivunen, 2001; Sutton & Wheatley, 2003;
Ahmed, 2004). In educational science, there is also increasing interest in research on
emotions (Nias, 1996; Hargreaves, 1998, 2000, 2001; Veen & Lasky, 2005; Zembylas,
2005, 2007a, 2007b). Roughly divided one might say that emotions are regarded either as connected to individuals or as cultural expressions. As something individual,
they can rest passively within a human being, be aroused by external impulses and
mainly constitute a biological process (Darwin, 1872/2009; Freud, 1895/1995; Hochschild, 1983/2003; Ahmed, 2004; Zembylas, 2007a). bell hooks (1995) points out
that this perspective presupposes an essential view of human expressions and actions
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as a result of the subject’s race and gender and not as a result of cultural mastery.
As cultural expressions, emotions are regarded as part of human beings’ cognition
or as a way of understanding the world (Nussbaum, 2001; Elam, 2001). As sensual
and cognitive signs, emotions obtain or are given meaning and importance in their
cultural context and become part of social, historical and cultural factors embedded
in local conditions (hooks, 1995; Ahmed, 2004).
According to SAOB (Svenska Akademins Ordbok [‘the Swedish Academy Dictionary’]), emotion and feeling are synonyms and comprise mental states including
physiological reactions where the word affect indicates that the emotion is strong. I
have chosen to separate the terms where feeling represents something sensual that the
subject experiences and names (entitle), and emotion represents the designation or
categorisation of gestures, facial expressions and actions between human beings. Emotions are then cultural appearances, performative signs that circulate among people.
The definitions are inspired by Sara Ahmed, Professor of Race and Cultural Studies,
and her book The Cultural Politics of Emotions (2004), and provide a perspective that
abandons an individual and psychologising logic demanding authenticity. Emotions
are instead regarded as ascribed attributes through which the subject forms/is formed
or constructs/is constructed as e.g. a happy, angry, frustrated, empathic, rational or
emotional actor in time and space. The focus is then instead on what emotions do than
what they are (Ahmed, 2004:7). Through emotional relations (parts of) a school’s
gender regime are ‘done’ and manifested. In this case, I regard teacher education as
an arena on a level with the school, comprising a local gender regime, where both the
school’s and society’s more overarching gender order exert an influence.
Choices and consequences
In the pre-study the choice of informants was students at a large university in Sweden
studying to be teachers, specialising in either art or media. Both educations are aimed
at upper secondary schools and run for nine semesters where the major subject is
complemented with a minor subject. The choice of student groups is based to a great
extent on my interest in working with pictures as analytical material (Skåreus, 2007,
2009, 2011). On one hand, these groups are used to and skilled in working with and
expressing themselves in pictures, which increases the chances of obtaining richer
material in terms of content. On the other hand, they are relatively few in number,
which may be seen as a negative limitation, in spite of which I made this delimitation. In my thesis work the material consisted only of pictures, depicted statements,
and now my ambition is to increase the material with verbal statements. The picture
maker is thereby given a greater preferential right of interpretation, which was not
the case in the thesis work. In conversations the students’ understanding of pictures,
both technically and in terms of content, may be advantageous at the same time as I
am interested in comparing my interpretations of the pictures with the picture makers’ narratives.
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In the spring of 2009 I started the first part of the pre-study by participating as an
observer on two occasions when in small groups art and media students respectively
accounted for their placement experiences. I wanted to gain an understanding of
whether the students talked about emotions at all, how they did it in such cases and
where the main focus of the talks was. I made notes where the foci were explicit or
embodied emotions during the speech act. Few emotions were mentioned and the
main focus was rather on lesson proposals, implementation and other technicalities.
In the observation notes there are nevertheless notes on the students’ pronounced
happiness and frustration but also on my own interpretations of their partially explicit
but mostly implicit powerlessness vis-à-vis pupils. But sitting as a highly occasional
observer in a group naturally affects a discussion, something I was highly aware of. I
still thought that the observations gave me an idea of what was legitimate to talk about
and in retrospect I can note that the topics provided an agenda for my expectations.
In the autumn of 2010 the second part of the pre-study started in the form I intended to use in the main study. The design comprises: an information meeting with
written information and a form to hand in providing consent to take part in the study;
a picture created by each informant during the placement period at a school; mailing the picture to me before the talk; a first picture analysis made by me before the
meeting and without the student’s narrative; an interview with the informant lasting
roughly 30 minutes about the picture – about what feeling is depicted – concluded
by the student reading out her/his notes. The two groups I came to contact were not
students I had met before. On both information occasions I first introduced myself,
then presented the aim of the study and what participation would involve. I also
presented and related briefly to my thesis.
On resistance – and gender
The reception in the groups differed, but the results were the same: few students were
interested in participating, although I returned to both groups to give them a reminder.
The difficulties in obtaining participants aroused thoughts, doubts and speculations
about possible reasons. As a gender researcher it is easy to explain listeners’ resistance with the research orientation. I would not like to call it a paranoid attitude; too
many researchers and educationists have mentioned the difficulties of this choice of
subject in various teaching contexts (Bondestam, 2003, 2007; Wahl et al., 2008), but
choosing that explanation automatically is problematic. In spite of this, perhaps the
combination of the subject of art, gender and emotions may be conceived as provocative or something one does not want to be involved in.
Internationally and in Sweden a power order can be identified both among the different subjects of education (Connell, 2000; Marner, 2006) and the different age levels
(Drudy, 2008; Hjalmarsson, 2009), an order that to a high degree may be related to
gender (Connell, 2000; Swain, 2005; Larsson, 2005). When Swedish politicians point
to what they regard as the most important school subjects, it is mathematics, Swedish
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and English that are mentioned. Art is a subject that is recurrently being threatened
in the educational policy, and Swedish pupils in lower secondary schools regard it as
a fun but unimportant subject (Marner & Segerstedt & Örtegren, 2003). The subject
of art may thus be regarded as subordinate to languages and mathematics, i.e. in
the symbolic relations of education where knowledge is gender-marked and hence
interacts with power aspects. But it is also possible to add a further dimension, the
emotional one. In historical retrospect in connection with presentations of emotion
research (Sutton & Wheatley, 1996; Koivunen, 2001; Zembylas, 2007), the academic
view of emotions recurs as an explanation of the absence of the subject in research.
Historically (and today as well) feelings have been regarded as something feminine
and irrational, a categorisation in contrast to rationality, and hence outside scientific
controllable knowledge. In older syllabuses for art, the emotional aspect is included
(Skolverket, 2006) and pupils in primary and lower secondary schools also talk
about the subject of art as strongly associated with feeling (Wikberg in press, 2012).
In a search among older texts on the history of art one can also find the combination
of art and feelings when art is linked to upbringing (Read, 1956). Has the nearness
between feelings and the subject of art, the associative connection, accumulated the
subordinate position of the subject of art just there and then?
If I now place the students in the academic context where they were on the information occasion, it is possible that both their position as students in the education
and history of academia in relation to feelings was brought to the fore. As regards
the students’ power position in education, it may be said to hover between being students at the university and teachers in schools (Gustavsson, 2008). Their prepared
power position hovers (and is thus not given, since power is done on a daily basis)
between subordination and supremacy depending on what place they are at. On the
information occasion I talked explicitly about gender and emotions in the educational
practice of the subject of art and connected it to the students’ own activities. Based
on this reasoning, I cannot avoid asking myself to what degree my presentation of
the subject brought up different notions of emotions, gender and the school subject
of art in relation to power and subordination. Could the explicit feminine marking of
the subject have influenced the student (a man) who asked “Do I have to decide now?”
as mentioned in the introduction to this article. Regardless of whether this was the
case, these aspects may be something that student teachers must more or less relate
to and position themselves against in relation to both the education and to a research
project that explicitly thematises these issues.
With these thoughts in my head I decided to make a short inquiry in the first
group where the question was asked and where I experienced clear resistance. A few
weeks after the information meeting and the following reminder meeting, I asked
their teacher to hand out a questionnaire in which the students were asked to briefly
answer why they had refused to take part in the pre-study. Nearly all of them said that
a lack of time was the reason. Some added a lack of interest and one student had not
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understood the purpose of the investigation. In retrospect, this solution to my curiosity appears slightly naïve. What did I think they would answer? Did I really believe
they would confirm what I had reasoned about above? Or mention any of it at all?
On resistance – and academic language
But what is my own part in the resistance I triggered? As I learned in my naïve, but
still implemented inquiry, the students answered that some lack time and others are
uninterested. What I asked for were their time and interest, which few were willing
to give. One aspect of the resistance may be explained here. But I also asked them in
an academic language. What fundamental view of the students did I communicate,
through the academic language, in my talk about gender and emotions?
As an academic I talk about abstractions, gender and emotions, and use the language
in which I have been educated in academia. Through the language and delimitations
I make, I turn to them as fragments and not as whole human beings. In the students’
situation, just before the placement period, maybe with light nervousness, uncertainty,
curiosity and expectant tension or with a mixture of all this, I asked them for a motif
of something fragmented. What association does this give, based on their lived experiences? That my research delimitations, gender and emotions alienates them from
their own existence? In retrospect, I can even claim that I made them [cephalopods]
(see e.g. Rönnblom 1999:61), human beings consisting only of gender and emotions
on two legs. How can I understand that, when my ambition is to meet them (and all
other human beings I meet) as whole human beings?
Foucault would probably have answered that discourses function in a self-disciplining manner (Foucault. 1993) and Bourdieu that I had for several years been
working with gathering cultural capital in academia in order to attain legitimacy,
which in turn had permeated both my actions and my way of thinking and speaking
(Bourdieu, 1996). And the scientific approach, which is based on analysis and not on
empathy, also has repercussions for me as a researcher. As Annelie Bränström Öhman
points out in an essay on Kärlek och andra laglösa känslor [Love and other lawless
feelings], feminist researchers in the field of emotions have “seemingly without friction … adapted themselves to a rational view of language”, which among other things
has sometimes resulted in an “almost laboratory-like systematisation ardour”, in
wanting to distinguish and define “emotions” from “feeling”, “affect” and “passion”
(Bränström Öhman, 2011:159, my translation). The description reverberates against
my own theoretical points of departure and a slight “word shame”, “a linguistic embarrassment” presents itself (Riley, 2005). But in the gap between what an academic
normative culture expects and the resistance the students displayed, I think that I
can see my own exertion of power through a scientific language. In the struggle to
acquire academic legitimacy, and above all as a woman in a feminine-marked area
(talking about emotions), I took that struggle with me into the student group. In spite
of the chosen research area, I wanted to appear as a rational researcher with intact
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authority. Power is exerted through language, a self-evident insight in many ways,
but also too easy to forget.
On resistance – and theoretical choices
The theoretical choices a researcher makes are, so to speak, the researcher’s own
concern. At the same time, it may be important to include some aspects vis-à-vis the
informants since the choices indicate the researcher’s epistemological foundation. But
how much of the theoretical perspective should the researcher inform about? What
is relevant and how can it be done without unnecessarily muddling the information?
At the information meeting I used both the word emotions and the word feelings,
the latter as a clarification in order to connect to a more ordinary definition. But as
Ahmed (2004:7) points out, feelings attribute the subject as having different properties in everyday speech; one is e.g. happy and hence owns the happiness as an inner
characteristic. In everyday speech, feelings appear as an individual concern rather than
as an attribute marked by a local culture’s rules and regulation of legitimate actions in
relation to others. The question of individual or cultural regulation may be regarded
in the light of what a professional education offers. Besides professional knowledge,
the individual is offered different action models, solutions or proposals for how to act
or, as Berger & Luckmann express it, the notion that the professional roles represent
an institutional order in which the individuals “are partially hidden in an institutional
body” (Berger & Luckmann, 1998:92, my translation). A working culture also provides
prerequisites for being able to perform work more or less well. To what degree do
student teachers regard experiences in the teaching practice as individually caused or
socially prepared? Do they look upon their own successes or failures as being due to
themselves or as facilitated by the structure or as structural faults? An individualistic
explanatory model, where only the teacher is made responsible for how the work
functions, may be connected to the personality discourse that is clearly observable in
teacher education. Despite a clear professional orientation, notions of the importance
of personality play an important role for student teachers (Skåreus, 2007; Åberg,
2008). One of the informants in the pre-study talks about dreariness during the placement and paints herself grey in the picture. If it is an experience she shares with other
students (as indicated in the main study), and a position that is only given individual
explanations and not placed in a relevant context, it might not initially be a pictorial
motif that is directly attractive. If individual difficulties, or what the subject judges as
failures, are not analysed in relation to cultural and structural preconditions, perhaps
participation in the study might be experienced as risky. Who would like to describe
their individual shortcomings as memorable, based on that explanatory model? Just
as important as meeting the informants as whole individuals and not as fragments or
“cephalopods” is explaining some of my points of departure, such as e.g. my view of
the preconditions the students encounter during their placement and how decisive the
structure may be for the individual in her/his professional practice.
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Picture analysis and text analysis – chosen and forgotten methods
In spring 2011, I started to compile and process the pre-study based on a number of
pictures, transcriptions and collected notes. The pictures had been analysed by means
of the tools I had used in my previous work (Skåreus, 2007:37f, 2009) to find out to
what degree it was possible to interpret the students’ representations of emotions.
I made a comparison between what I had found out and what the students told me.
In the interpretation of the talks, via the transcriptions, I concentrated on emotional
words and dramatic or loaded turning points in their narratives. As the narratives
seemed on a superficial level to be a form of success stories, they opened up for deconstruction and reasoning about underlying difficulties, i.e. the problems the students
had possibly overcome. When writing, I did put pictures and texts together and only
afterwards discovered that the combination was a reproduction of the academic writing culture, “the primacy of the printed word” (Erixon, 2010:131). The pictures only
constitute illustrations for the analysis of the students’ verbal narratives. What my
compilation represents was: it is in words and solely through words that knowledge
can be analysed and represented. In my eyes, with a research career where pictures
have primarily constituted the material for studies, I can blame myself for having
committed a sin of omission. How did I end up there?
First of all, there is this business about pictures. Pictures and words are certainly
different semiotic systems of signs (Marner, 1999), but both mediate meaning (Marner
& Örtegren, 2003:23). There is no “relation of similarity between the words … and an
externally located reality”, as Erixon quite correctly points out (Erixon, 2010:139),
but signs are analysed, interpreted, associated and accepted by an active subject as a
representation of a depicted object (Bal, 1998). The active subject is also in a cultural
and social context, i.e. the meaning creating process is socially situated (Skåreus,
2007:35). In my compilation, the context stands out strongly, the invisibly active
discourse of academia where verbal statements naturally carry knowledge and validity. But all signs need to be interpreted – words, figures and pictures. The different
modalities represent knowledge and meaning in different ways. The students’ verbal
narratives comprised a dramaturgical line of past time, situation, event or relation
and some form of reflecting postscript about where they are today when looking back
at their pictures. To a greater extent their pictures materialise a frozen moment in
the depicted class room, or an emotional state or mood. The narrative timeline or
development is then not obvious in the same way as in a verbal statement.
Art is a different kind of statement where different signs may represent changes, as
e.g. an empty railway platform may signify that a train has just left or will soon arrive
(Skåreus, 2007:38). Other indexical signs (than merely “an empty railway platform”),
such as people in motion on their way to or from the platform, may give further associations and indicate that a train has just left if the people are moving away from
the platform. An observer of the picture can also imagine a past and a future in the
picture with the aid of what is called the referential framework of the picture (Marner,
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1999; Skåreus, 2007:38) by means of indexical signs. Then the observer widens the
picture’s depicted room to comprise an imagined room. What the observer sees is
then to be transferred to another modality, to words, perhaps not a translation, since
the meaning is moved between different systems of signs, but what Bezemer & Kress
call a “transduction” (2008:169).
It was here that I forgot myself, at an individual level, perhaps because it is always
a struggle in academia to assert that the picture’s own statement is equal to that of
words and that my interpretations of pictures may be scientifically relevant. It may be
related to a structural level where aspects such as the academic structure or discourse
influence myself as a researcher. I have touched on this in several ways in the text; a
fragmenting look at the students’ situation as student teachers and my implicit basic
assumptions of which preconditions the structures of schools give the individual
student during her/his placement. The language is also important here, the language
I use in research contexts through which existence is strained and creates repercussions for what can be visible and what can be said.
One step backwards to move forwards
I might call my behaviour an appropriation of the academic discourse, while my thesis
initially was a resistance to it. Having acted for several years to become a legitimate
researcher, forgetfulness of other positions has slowly appeared. Through the reflective
work this writing has involved, I have been able to look back at different elements that
initially seemed to be difficult to grasp immediately. By scrutinising my meetings with
students, in dialogue with different perspectives, different realities and by weaving
them together with my experiences as a researcher, the writing process brings to the
fore the situated experience of working in academia and what that structure does to
me (see e.g. Norlander, 1994). In the reflective writing and via the text a fictitious ego
also emerges which both has and does not have a counterpart in lived life. The narrative that is created through the text is both I and not I, or as Roland Barthes says
in an interview about the book A Lover’s Discourse (1977) “The subject that I am is
not unified (…) To then say ‘It’s I!’ would be to postulate a unity of self that I do not
recognize in myself” (Barthes, 1985:305).
When I now try to round off a process that has hardly been linear, the question
“Who wants to know?” also crops up. Naomi Scheman argues that this classic gangster
film retort is a key question (Scheman, 1993:205). Seeking the answer to the riddle, it
points out the direction of the value of discussing scientific knowledge and the overt
or covert power potential that exists there. The aim I stated initially, to reflect within
the framework of a pre-study on different choices, what I did and what I did not do,
may therefore be said to place expectations on attained knowledge. I feel able to step
forward at the end of this text, without blushing with shame, and say, “This is what I
have learned”. One aspect can be found in the words formulated by Bronwyn Davies
and her colleagues:
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It is in looking at what is found when one gazes at oneself as constituted subject and the
means of its constitution that the details may be found that enable researchers to recognize
and (at least momentarily) break out of the oppressive determinate structures and practices
through which those selves are constituted and made real (Davies et al., 2004:368).
I prefer to formulate another aspect of gained knowledge as a question: Is it that easy
that I should start information meetings by saying that I am interested in finding out
what their (the students’) situation is like during their placement period?
Eva Skåreus is a Senior Lecturer in Educational Work at Umeå University, Department of Creative
Studies. In her research Skåreus has mainly been concerned with issues of teacher education in
relation to professional identity, pictures, artwork, gender and emotion. As postdoctoral research
fellow (at Umeå Centre for Gender Studies and Umeå School of Education) she is currently working
in a project called ”Emotions in education”.
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Eva Skåreus
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Education Inquiry
EDU.
INQ.
From risk to resilience
The therapeutic ethos in youth education
Kristiina Brunila*
This article considers the rise of therapeutic education in Finland, a phenomenon already acknowledged in Europe, Canada and the United States. In Finland, the therapeutic ethos has been
assimilated into educational policies and practices, but the shift to therapisation and especially its
consequences have attracted little interest in critical educational research. This article is based on a
Foucauldian discourse-analytic methodology and on a previous empirical study. It emphasises the
effects of therapeutic interventions in education and focuses on project-based educational practices
that deal with young adults who are on the margins of society. The central argument is that therapeutic interventions force young adults to focus more on themselves and lead to an internalisation
of the idea that societal problems such as unemployment, a lack of education or criminal behaviour
are in fact individual-based.
Keywords: therapisation, young people, subjectification, discursive research
Introduction
According to Kathryn Ecclestone and Dennis Hayes, concerns about the purpose of
education obscure a profound crisis of meaning which is producing a serious change:
the dangerous rise of therapeutic education, with far-reaching implications for educational goals and practices (Ecclestone & Hayes, 2009). In Finland, educational
policies and practices have adopted therapeutic aims such as improving self-esteem
and talking about emotions, diagnoses, syndromes, addictions, traumas and low selfesteem. In kindergartens and schools, counsellors, therapists and coaches are available
whenever a child or student faces a problem. The rise of therapeutic education has
already been acknowledged in Europe, Canada and the United States (Ecclestone et
al., 2009; Ecclestone, 2007; Furedi, 2004). Therapisation is understood here to refer
to the rise of a psycho culture (Kivivuori, 1992), positive psychology (Ecclestone et
al., 2009) and diagnosing (Harwood, 2006; Burman, 2008; Teittinen, 2011), leading
to the popularisation and increase of interventions for mental health and emotional
well-being, activities to raise self-esteem, emotional and psychological support as
well as counselling and mentoring (Ecclestone et al., 2009).
In this article the wider focus is on the effects of therapeutic interventions in education, and the specific interest is in project-based educational practices that affect
*University of Helsinki, Institute of Behavioural Sciences, Finland. E-mail: [email protected].
©Authors. ISSN 2000-4508, pp. 451–464
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young adults who are on the margins of education, working life and society at large.
The objective is to examine the ways in which the therapeutic ethos in the policies
and practices of education related to young people construct the object and subject
of education. The article’s research is based on data produced in my post-doctoral
study on the marketisation, projectisation and therapisation of education that focuses
on the education, guidance and rehabilitation offered to young adults who are seen
to be at risk of social exclusion. Using examples drawn from the project documents
and interviews, I will discuss how young people as targets of therapeutic interventions are viewed by professionals, and how therapeutic practices such as diagnosis
and emotional work are used. Finally, I will disclose what these techniques offer to
young adults as a way of functioning in society. The research questions are as follows: 1) Which types of politics and practices does the therapeutic ethos represent? 2)
How does the therapeutic ethos meet the interests of young adults? 3) What kind of
agency is available for young people within the therapeutic ethos as well as in terms
of further education and employment?
The rise of therapisation in young adults’ education
A therapeutic ethos is permeating the entire education system in Finland (e.g., OPH,
2010a/b). Therapeutic ideas and practices have been intensified in contexts such as
project-based education that has rapidly increased under new governance (Lindblad &
Simola, 2002), EU programmes and the marketisation of the public sector (Hansson
& Lundahl, 2004; A 2009; 2011), in addition to the more traditional support systems
within education such as kindergarten and special education.
Youth unemployment (in Finland at 27%) is considered a problem at the national
and European Union policy levels. In 2008, almost 60,000 young people (15–29
years) in Finland were outside educational or working life and 52,000 were unemployed (Myrskylä, 2011). In Europe, more than one-third of all young people are not
in education, employment or training (Commission of the European Communities
2009). In all EU countries, investments have been made to reintegrate young adults
considered at risk into education and employment.
These reintegration activities have mostly been publicly-funded educational projects (see e.g., Commission of the European Communities, 2007; 2009; Hansson &
Lundahl, 2004). Their main aim has been to improve the life-management skills as
well as further education and employment possibilities of youth at risk. In Finland,
young adults considered at risk are obliged to take part in publicly-funded and mandatory educational projects from a post-compulsory transition point (OPM, 2009;
TEM, 2009; VM, 2010). The view that these individuals considered at risk should be
managed more closely has created hundreds of publicly-funded educational youth
projects which have simultaneously created new professions such as learning professionals, coaches, mentors and evaluators (e.g. Kovácha & Kučerova, 2009; Rantala
& Sulkunen, 2006).
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From risk to resilence
These professionals work with young people in a market-oriented society, in educational activities that aim to be more inclusive and also affect the mindset. In education, the orientation has become relatively individualistic, emphasising a new kind of
resilience with competence based on self-discipline and continuous self-development
(Komulainen, Korhonen & Räty, 2009; Siivonen, 2010). This article links individualisation to the rising ethos of therapisation in education (Ecclestone et al., 2009).
Frank Furedi has argued that the whole Western culture has begun to make sense of
human experience by interpreting behaviour through the highly individualised idiom
of therapeutic discourse (Furedi, 2004). The main argument of the present article
is that market-oriented policy with its alliance of therapeutic methods and projects
forms a joint framework in education which produces consequences that need to be
studied thoroughly.
Therapeutic interventions, such as those for mental health and emotional wellbeing as well as activities to build emotional and psychological support and raise
self-esteem, have become more common in the educational policies and practices of
a growing number of countries, including the United States, Australia, Canada and
the European Union (e.g., Ecclestone, 2010; Furedi, 2004). The therapeutic ethos –
using the language of disorder, addiction, vulnerability and dysfunction – has been
prevalent not only concerning infants and children but also adults (c.f. Ecclestone,
2007; Ecclestone, Hayes & Furedi, 2005; Furedi, 2004; Burman, 2008; Harwood,
2006). Rooted in different branches of therapeutic, psychological and psychiatric
practice and having different psychological rationales and claims, emotionally and
psychologically-oriented interventions have recently become more prevalent in legal
systems, humanitarian and aid interventions and social policies (Ecclestone et al.,
2009; Furedi, 2004).
Educators have already noted individually targeted therapeutic interventions such
as psycho-emotional learning responses, interventions to improve emotional wellbeing, and raising children’s and students’ self-esteem (Burman, 2008; Harwood,
2006; Ecclestone et al., 2009; Ecclestone, 2007; Ecclestone et al., 2005). Several
researchers have voiced concerns about therapisation’s consequences such as the
individualisation of societal problems and the consideration of children, students
and adults as vulnerable and fragile instead of capable (Burman, 2008; Harwood,
2006; Ecclestone et al., 2005, 2009). Some researchers argue that mass education
is underpinned by an expanded and increasingly expensive “SEN Industry”, a term
used by a number of professionals and practitioners who work with lower-attaining
and ‘special needs’ students who are the focus of attention of special educators and
behavioural specialists as well as psychological, medical, therapeutic and other professionals (Tomlinson 2010; in press). In Finland, this phenomenon has not been
studied extensively studied (however, see Kivivuori, 1992; Teittinen, 2011). The aim
here is not to criticise psychology as a science; instead, the objective is to determine
the ways in which our culture and particularly the domain of education popularises
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Kristiina Brunila
psychology in its politics and practices. For example, according to Janne Kivivuori
(1992), psycho-culture means every day life’s psychologisation to such an extent that
people talk about their lives using concepts derived from psychological science.
Therapisation as a disciplinary and productive form of power (Foucault, 2000) does
not turn its targeted individuals into passive objects; rather, it cannot work unless
these people are capable of action. In order to understand why therapisation works and
why individuals end up acting as they are supposed to, I have utilised the concept of
subjectification derived from Michel Foucault (e.g., Foucault, 1977, 1982) and further
developed by several educators (e.g., Davies, 1998; Davies, Dormer, Gannon, Laws,
Rocco, Lenz Taguchi, & McCann, 2001). Subjectification refers to the construction of
a subject and to the dialectical relationship between the mechanisms of power and
exercise of power. In terms of therapisation, it means a process to which we are subjected, and in which we actively take up the terms of our subjection as our own. As a
form of therapisation it involves individuals adopting the discourses used by people
involved in project work, and using them as if they were their own. Through these
discourses, people become speaking subjects at the same time as they are subjected
to the constitutive force of the discourses.
Research Data and Analysis
In 2010 I collected and analysed policy documents from the Finnish National Board of
Education and the Ministry of Education and Culture as well as educational projects
in the Helsinki metropolitan area (mostly EU-funded). I took notes on the projects’
activities, weekly schedules, teaching material and training. I also interviewed 10
project workers who deal with young adults and 22 young adults (17–30 years) who
have taken part in these projects. These young adults were considered to be at risk
of social exclusion and eight had a criminal background. In this article I mostly use
selected extracts from policy documents and interview transcripts because they best
describe how the therapeutic ethos works in practice.
By project I mean one that is publicly-funded (by the EU, ministries, foundations
or associations) and which usually operates outside the formal education system of
the Finnish National Board of Education, together with others constituting a separate
system. Youth projects have certain predetermined goals such as promoting employment, further education and life-management skills for young adults. They offer
short-term (from three months to one year) education, guidance and rehabilitation to
young people who are outside of working life and education. These projects are usually mandatory and operate at the transition point, which refers to the stage between
compulsory and post-compulsory education.
It is important that human subjects are fully aware of the goals, purposes, results
and forms of dissemination of the research in which they participate. Accordingly,
special attention was paid to ethics, taking questions of honesty, accountability and
responsibility into consideration. Anonymity was guaranteed by using pseudonyms
454
and changing the context whenever necessary. Before the interviews, the research
aims and measures to secure anonymity were also discussed.
The article is based on Foucauldian discourse theory and a discourse-analytic
approach. As an analytical tool I used the concept of discourse not only as speech
and writing but also as a productive and regulative practice having material effects
(Foucault, 1977). According to Foucault (1980, 2000), power and knowledge are
always found embedded together in the discursive regimes of truth. Discourse is a
way of representing knowledge about a particular domain at a particular historical
moment. It defines the domain and produces the objects of knowledge within that
domain (Edwards, 2008, 23). I have chosen not to mention the names of the projects;
instead of paying critical attention to individual projects I wanted to emphasise that
rather than who is speaking, it is important to analyse what is said and done. This
has been a central point of my analysis of discursive power.
I studied the therapisation of activities in terms of discursive power by acknowledging the relation between discourse and power in project work as productive and
regulative (Foucault, 1977; Davies, 1998). This kind approach enabled me to see how
the forms of power work and which effects they have on how one ought to speak in
order to be heard. My discursive research also included ethnographical elements.
Ethnography is used here as a research process theory that informs the study’s methodological solutions (Lappalainen, Hynninen, Kankkunen, Lahelma & Tolonen, 2007).
Further, ethnography is seen here as research on and in project-centred education
based on participant observation and interviews.
Towards the therapisation of education
In the project, the prevention of alienation and development of practices for supporting students’ self-esteem were the aims. (Report from a project that promoted healthy self-esteem
and life-management skills in the comprehensive school, funded by the Finnish National
Board of Education, 2001.)
A review of the policies of the Finnish National Board of Education or the Finnish
Ministry of Education and Culture and their implementation, such as projects, reveals that policies and practices are discussed in a therapeutic context, i.e. in terms
of psychological well-being, emotions, and emotional support. Particular attention
is given to low self-esteem which is seen as a problem either of students who are not
doing well in school or young people who are living outside of education and working life (see, for example, the Ministry of Education, 2007). In the curriculum of
the National Board of Education, low self-esteem is understood as the lack of a skill
that would enable individuals to take control of their lives, to learn new things and
to function as active citizens (e.g., OPH, 2004). Indeed, the idea that people cannot
emotionally cope with a range of encounters informs the way that therapeutic culture
makes sense of the human condition (Furedi, 2004).
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Emotional education means monitored activities that recognise the emotions. With the help
of this a young adult may learn new ways of behaving and surviving. It can influence the
forming of an individual’s self-esteem, social skills, and morality. (Extract from a project
in 2000 that aimed to enhance the emotional skills of boys through emotional education.)
Finland has a history of project-based emotional education, particularly for boys
and young men (e.g. Mäkelä, 2010). My research data also dealt with emotional
education. Most of the activities in the data were targeted at young men, which is not
surprising because the public debate in this domain sees the risk of social exclusion
and criminality as the problems of young men. The tendency in the projects was to
redefine societal problems such as unemployment or school drop-out rates as a lack
of ability to handle emotions:
Young adults who are seen in danger of alienation need support and intimacy. The importance of handling their feelings is crucial. (Youth project report, 2000)
Based on my document analysis, I have suggested that the activities of projects targeted at young adults represent various kinds of therapeutic interventions which can
be described as emotional work (also see Hochschild, 1996). These activities included
therapeutic discussions concerning emotional and psychological well-being, selfesteem and anxieties, as well as coaching and mentoring with respect to the subject’s
emotions. It seemed that in order to obtain funding project workers were concentrating
on therapeutic and individual-based activities. It was therefore crucial to visit these
projects and hear what the workers as well as the young people themselves had to
say. I was interested in learning about their thoughts on the situation facing young
people, their hopes, fears and future plans, how the project activities were meeting
the young people’s interests, and what was important in their lives.
Therapeutic interventions in young adults’ education
I visited four educational projects that provided education, guidance and rehabilitation
to young adults who were seen as being at risk of social exclusion. I also interviewed
people who were working with these young persons. The project workers described
the project activities which one worker, named Marja, referred to as “customer work”,
as is evident in the market-oriented discourse that follows:
Interviewer: What do you mean by customer work?
Project worker Marja: Customer work means two things: firstly, we map learning difficulties and then we aim to direct them (customers) to applied rehabilitation. I would say that
these people are really challenging, they are really somewhere in deep. The main aim is to
improve life management skills because our customers have so many learning difficulties.
Instead of educating, the main aim of the activities appeared to be related to therapeutic-driven rehabilitation. Project workers such as Marja above believed in the potential
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of education to improve the lives of these young people, but they also said they had
not been given enough resources to organise long-term educational courses. All the
project workers appeared to be very much involved in working with young people and
also in favour of education, but their resources for providing education were limited.
One project worker mentioned that she believed in education’s potential, but that
the Ministry of Education was not interested in investing in these young people. The
only resource they were given was short-term, project-based funding. In addition, the
project workers also explained that their customers were not particularly interested
in educating themselves.
The most common diagnosis of the participants in the educational programmes
was ADHD, which in some cases had been acknowledged as correlating with criminality. For example, the following research finding estimates the prevalence of the most
common psychic add-on symptoms that occur with ADHD:
Conduct disorder 10–55%, depression 15–75%, anxiety 10–40%, sleeping disorder, over
30%, criminality 20–30% (Michelsson, Miettinen, Saresma, Virtanen, 2001).
In the above estimate, not only are ADHD and criminality shown to correlate with
each other, but criminality is also seen as a psychic phenomenon, as a mindset. ADHD
was also the most common diagnosis in the projects I studied:
Project worker Ritva: If a customer is believed to have ADHD, we then take a look; we start
from his early childhood. It is really challenging to find somebody who knew this person
when he was a child. We are, of course, not licensed to conduct official diagnoses. But when a
customer has done this test [the project developed its own test that measures concentration
skills and learning difficulties], we write a statement that shows the test results and makes
further recommendations.
During the project, before conducting any tests that may have indicated ADHD, the
project worker collected as much information as possible about her customers. Information was gathered by interviewing people who had been involved with them. The
project worker interviewed school teachers, kindergarten staff, relatives and social
workers. This was done in order to gain an understanding of the customer and to help
the customer with his or her problems. When enough statements were gathered the
information was used to indicate which particular learning problems the customer
had. The project worker was not licensed to make diagnoses, but instead employed
tests that might indicate ADHD.
Valerie Harwood has acknowledged a clear shift in education, which she calls
psychopathological. According to Harwood, diagnostic practices in particular are
emphasised (Harwood, 2006, also see Conrad, 2006). In my data, diagnostic practices
that resulted in diagnoses of, for example, ADHD were described as soothing and
relieving to project workers without any critical attention (Conrad, 2006; Harwood,
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2006; Graham, 2010). One project worker noted that she was aware of a possible
correlation between ADHD and criminality, but she did not believe that ADHD determines criminality (also see, Siltanen, 2009). In addition to ADHD and criminality,
other connections were also mentioned during the interviews:
Project worker Ritva: I don’t know, but there might be a connection between a criminal
lifestyle and failure at school, because there are so many kinds of learning difficulties.
Interviewer: You mean that there is some kind of connection between learning difficulties
and criminal behaviour?
Project worker Ritva: Yes, yes, it looks that way.
Finding connections between a criminal lifestyle and learning difficulties was one of
the less explicated aims of the project. As well as Ritva, other project workers I interviewed also seemed to look for answers in possible connections between criminality,
school failure and low self-esteem:
Project worker Sirkka: Our customers usually think that they do not want to study anything;
they feel they are not capable of studying. Of course, this is anchored in previous experiences
of failure (in school) and their very low self-esteem. But then when we have conducted the
tests (diagnoses of learning difficulties) and investigations then, wonder of wonders, believing in themselves begins to occur.
In the two extracts above, criminality is seen as the personal problem of an individual
and in the second extract the diagnosis becomes a solution to this problem. The project
worker in the latter extract also suggests that when young people receive a diagnosis
(or an indication of a diagnosis) they begin to believe in themselves. Furedi has also
stated that people have learned to demand such therapeutic measures in order to feel
that they have been given enough attention by society (Furedi, 2004).
Consequently, a diagnosis of ADHD seems to ease the difficulty of dealing with
society’s problems and the behaviour of young people. According to Sally Tomlinson, in a number of countries more institutional measures, resources, funding and
professional personnel are being directed towards the large number of young people
described as low achievers, who have special needs, disabilities or learning difficulties, or may be disaffected or disengaged (Tomlinson, in press).
The mastery of and submission to therapisation
Therapisation works to render not only project workers but also young adults as their
targets. I interviewed Teemu, in prison, and he explained the project-based activities
in which he was taking part:
Then we had those emotion groups. They had planned questions or statements and then
we discussed them, mentioned what came to our minds. And then there was one (project
worker) who gave us some direction, what one should be thinking, and then of course we
received feedback instantly (Teemu).
458
Teemu’s extract could be considered as exemplifying the ‘confession society’ that has
developed not only through education but also through society as a technology shaping and fostering certain kinds of activated and responsible citizens (see Dahlestedt
& Fejes, 2011; Rasmussen, 2000). Therapisation works in the same way. As a form
of power it regulates individuals so that one person, the young adult, confesses and
is recognised, while the other, the project worker, hears the confession and reports
it. According to the therapeutic ethos, not only project workers but also teachers and
other professionals are given the task of functioning as experts capable of addressing
fundamental questions such as identity and lifestyle choices (e.g. Rose, 1999).
Therapisation constitutes its subjects of power, as powerful subjects, and in terms
of subjectification:
It (the project) gave me a good starting point. I was able to work with my emotions, and to
express these feelings I had never been able to talk about before (Timo).
During the interviews with the young adults it became clear that therapeutic interventions operate by teaching individuals not only how to reproduce what is expected from
them but also how to utilise these power relations. Timo, who had just been released
from prison, considered the emotional work to be rewarding and as providing a good
starting point for him afterwards. Riku, who was unemployed and had participated
in an educational project, told me what he thought was the most important thing he
had learned from the project:
Interviewer: If you think of this time period (in the project), what do you think has been
important to you?
Riku: I have finally learned to believe in myself. Before I guess I did not believe enough, I had
all kinds of problems, but luckily the project helped. I know it’s all up to me; I can if I want.
Both Timo and Riku were eager to give a convincing image of themselves as active,
developmental and self-disciplinary. These extracts represent the ideal kind of subjectification related to therapisation. Based on my research results, it appears that
the ethos of therapisation makes young people more inward-looking and leads to an
internalisation of the idea that societal problems such as unemployment, a lack of
education or a criminal background are in fact individual-based. This teaches them
that the solution to all types of problems such as unemployment, criminality, poverty
or a lack of education is to be found in oneself.
Based on my research results, it could be argued that therapisation offers young
adults a life in which they must learn to make their own choices and take responsibility,
as well as learn to become developmental and trainable (see, for example, Filander,
2007; Ball, 2007, 2006). Tomlinson has argued that higher levels of education and
training for all young people, including those with learning difficulties and disabilities,
are required in order to successfully compete in a global economy. This has already led
459
Kristiina Brunila
to the growth of an industry devoted to special educational needs (a ‘SEN industry’) in
England, Germany and the United States (Tomlinson, in press). The projects I have
analysed could be viewed as forming part of the SEN industry Tomlinson refers to:
Interviewer: What do you think about society at the moment?
Ville: I don’t think about it; I have not really considered society.
Interviewer: What about education or working life?
Ville: I really don’t have any idea.
Interviewer: What do you think about society, here in prison?
Mika: It’s too difficult to think here. Society feels so distant.
The greatest problem with therapeutic activities appears to be connected with the lack
of societal perspectives. None of the projects I studied or project workers and young
adults I interviewed considered the problems of unemployment, a lack of education
or criminality to be societal in nature. All of the young adults, like Ville and Mika
above, were asked about their thoughts concerning society, education and working
life, and with only one exception they described society as distant, complex, troubling
and unreachable.
It appears that therapeutic activities could be repeated endlessly. When a young
person acts as expected, yet remains unable to enter education or working life, the
problem can easily be reflected back on the individual because that is where the
problem is always seen to originate. Societal problems become personal inadequacies.
Consequently, terms such as low self-esteem, at risk of social exclusion, and fragile
identity evoke a unique sense of powerlessness among young people (e.g., Ecclestone
et al., 2009).
Conclusion
The central argument of this article is that the focus of therapeutic intervention seems
to be on working towards an ideal individual who is flexible in accordance with the
needs of the economy. Therapeutic methods and diagnoses seem to be gaining credibility and popularity in both Finland and elsewhere. In education, the rising ethos
of therapisation has begun to explain not only behavioural but also societal problems
such as social exclusion and unemployment. It is easy to agree that understanding
internal life is important, but when education becomes preoccupied with the self it
may easily lead to dismissing societal power relations as well as the social and cultural
foundations of the individual.
The therapeutic ethos seems to be tempting because it appears to legitimise educational interventions that seek to ensure a more effective labour force for successful
competition in the global economy and flexible, market-oriented individuals. Consequently, this privileging of emotions entails a redefinition of personhood. According
to my results, the therapeutic ethos offers young adults a way of engaging a process
460
from risk to resilience, from understanding societal problems as personal problems
and then learning the right act of submission and mastery, to carrying one’s own
choices and responsibilities as well as learning to become developmental and trainable.
Therefore, the therapeutic ethos fosters an ideal in which the internal world of the
individual becomes the site where the problems of society are raised (Furedi, 2004).
It is worth asking whether this interest in individual-based problems, diagnoses and
correlations helps in understanding the problems young adults face in society today.
Based on my results, I suggest that this might not be the case. Therapeutic interventions represent the success of an ethos that keeps young people busy concentrating
on themselves and learning how to present themselves in the correct way. They learn
how to make their own choices and take responsibility, and learn to become developmental and trainable. This drives young people to focus more on themselves and
leads to the internalisation of the idea that societal problems and socio-economic
realities are in fact individual-based. Within this discourse, youth unemployment or a
lack of education leads to individual-based interventions. Self-esteem and emotional
capacity become explanatory tools for understanding the world. Education, as well as
autonomy concerning young adults, becomes limited to a question of learning how
to speak according to what is expected of you.
The greatest problem is that therapisation appears to deprive young people of the
opportunity to situate themselves in society, as capable human beings deciding their
own futures. Because young adults’ agency lies in their capacity to negotiate and adapt
to the opportunities, challenges and restrictions they confront, it is important to critically examine both the potential and limitations that the therapisation of education
offers. It is crucial to further analyse the therapeutic methods that are used in education, how these methods shape young adults’ every-day lives and the kind of agency
they provide in terms of planning the future, from the perspective of transitioning to
further education and working life as well as functioning as citizens in society.
Kristiina Brunila is an Adjunct Professor and works as a post doctoral researcher in the Unit of Sociology, Politics and Culture of Education, Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki.
Her research interests are focused on marketisation, projectisation and therapisation of education
in the era of knowledge capitalism.
461
Kristiina Brunila
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