This post discusses the possibilities of artworks in facilitating learning and alternate ways of imagining the world. I draw upon the work of Maxine Greene and John Dewey to explore the proposition that children’slearning through artworks has the potential to challenge dominant discourses, opening up new ways of thinking and being. There is also a resource list for educators and parents interested in incorporating artworks into children’s learning.
“It is not that the artist offers solutions or gives directions. He nudges; he renders us uneasy; he makes us (if we are lucky) see what we would not have seen without him. He moves us to imagine, to look beyond” Maxine Greene (2000, p. 276).
Artworks can be used in many ways for many different reasons in learning contexts. They offer rich possibilities for experiencing and imagining the world from new and multiple perspectives. Visual art as well as the arts more generally, have the ability to make people aware of different ways of thinking and being in the world, working against reductionist and singular ways of thinking.
Maxine Greene (2000) extends upon the word of John Dewey (1916, 1934, 1954) to argue that imagination and the arts play a critical role in the making of democratic communities. She suggests that school curriculum should aim to prioritise the ‘releasing of the imagination’ through providing rich aesthetic experiences for children. These then provide new modalities for children to sense, experience and learn through the world.
However, the mere presence of artworks in a learning environment does not guarantee that a child is encountering or imagining the world in new ways. Greene argues that if school curriculum is to support imagination through the arts, children’s encounters need to be aesthetically varied, rich and reflective. Through this, learning through artworks has the potential to challenge dominant discourses and ways of thinking. This may then encourage children to question their understandings and assumptions about the world, to think critically about what is and what could be.
Below is a list of resources for educators and parents who may be interested in incorporating artworks in children’s learning at home or in the classroom.
Resource list
Many of the major modern and contemporary art museums have online digital archives for their collections. Here are some links to my favorites:
The Museum of Modern Art has made 77,000 works from 25,000 different artists available online. The search engine is easy to use and you can refine your hits using different classifications and time periods.
Tate also have an extensive online collection featuring artworks, exhibitions, videos and artist journals. The digital archive is well referenced and has many tags that are great for getting lost in amazing artwork worm-holes. The search engine is easy to use and has lots of search filter options. Tate’s most famous artworks feature extensive summaries, a copy of the artwork’s display caption as well as the techniques used to produce the artwork, for example Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ page.
TateShots and TateTalks– Tate have also put together two quite an exceptional collection of video and audio recordings. TateTalks features video footage of talks and events held at the art museum. TateShots comprises of artist interviews, performance pieces (I highly recommend watching Earle Brown’s ‘Calder Piece‘), exhibition films and artist studio visits. If I had a dollar for every minute I spent watching TateShots I would be a millionaire. But I work in children’s education and the arts so maybe I shouldn’t put a monetary value on the amount of time I procrastinate.
The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark has a constantly growing online collection of videos from different fields such as art, architecture, music, literature and design. I love the Louisiana Channel as it features a lot of Scandinavian and European contemporary artists who I have only discovered through watching these clips.
The art auction houses of Southeby’sand Christie’sboth have YouTube channels featuring short video clips of artist interviews, studio visits and world auction records.
Online courses
MoMA has developed three online courses that explore inquiry-led learning through artworks. Admittedly I have not had a chance to do any of these courses but I think it worth a look. The first, ‘Art & Ideas: Teaching with Themes’ uses theme-based teaching practices to support educators in incorporating modern and contemporary artworks into curriculum. Then there is Art & Inquiry: Museum Teaching Strategies For Your Classroom looks at museum education strategies for inquiry-based teaching and how these can be used in classrooms. Finally, Art & Activity: Interactive Strategies for Engaging with Art builds on content from courses one and two to explore activity-based strategies for using artworks primary and secondary lesson plans.
This post discusses the possibilities of materials and material play in children’s learning through art. I draw on the theories of loose parts and new materialism to argue that materials, including artworks, play an active and participatory role in opening-up divergent thinking and inquiry-led learning in schools, home and informal learning contexts such as art museums.
Why do materials matter?
Materials and material exploration have long been a part of artistic inquiry. Since Frobel’s development of the kindergarten in the late 1700’s, they have also held an important place in early childhood settings. In the 1970’s Simon Nicholson presented the theory of loose parts – the proposition that young children’s creative empowerment comes from the presence of open-ended materials that can be constructed, manipulated and transformed through self-directed play. It is fair to say that material content, including artworks and art materials, hold tremendous possibilities for facilitating children’s inquiry-led learning in new and divergent ways. I consider materials to be one of multiple forces that learning can emerge from in an art museums. Others may include social interaction between people, spatial layout of things and the delivery of curatorial content such as through audio guides or information resources.
As reading and writing are often privileged in school curriculum, experimentation with different materials can provide new opportunities for alternate and aesthetically-driven pedagogies to be produced (check out this blog for how I define pedagogy). This is to say that different materials may encourage different ways of thinking, learning and being. For example, in a previous posts on ‘suggesting as a technique for facilitating children’s learning through art’ I talk about the different cognitive, social, emotional and aesthetic learning pathways that two different materials: plastic cylinders and large paper sheets may present. Whilst the cylinders may provoke explorations around stacking, placing, dismantling, balancing, arrangement and construction, the large paper sheet may suggest gentle movements, swaying, rolling, folding, hiding and enveloping. Through experimentation, the properties and abilities of a material may change, creating new starting points for further inquiry and experimentation.
The active role of materials in art practices and learning
In the arts, different materials such as paint, clay, paper, resin, fabric, wood or plastic can be experimented with in a myriad of ways. In art forms such as dance, live art and socially engaged practices, materials may be slightly more abstract such as the human body, sound, participants and society. I believe that art materials are not just a tool for self-expression or a thing for children to manipulate; they are an active and participatory force in the production of learning and knowledge. For example, check out this lovely video by visual artist Shirazeh Houshiary in which she talks about the active role of materials in her practice:
I really connect with this, especially the comment: “… they are not representation of the form but a pulsation of the form. I am not interested in painting. I am not interested in the processes of making in the conventional sense of representation. I am trying to get into how something works. This process has taught me a huge amount about who I am, which is surprising. It a process of learning for me more than anything else.” The paint and paintings are active, participatory and dynamic in the artist’s creative experimentation.
Art materials as an invitation to experiment
Material play has the ability to encourage emergent thinking processes, allowing children to produce new understandings as well as experiencing the world from multiple perspectives. However, materials also have the ability to be used in static and predictable ways that shut down creativity and divergent thinking. Whilst I do love Instagram feeds and craft blogs that share ideas for children’s art activities, I am cautious that these may unintentionally encourage imitation and fixed ways of using materials with children. This may then reduce the ability for experimental thinking and practices to emerge.
The challenge to me – and everyone working in learning settings with children – is to keep experimenting, keep questioning, keep venturing into the unknown and the yet-to-be-discovered of art, play, materiality and pedagogy.
I am sure many of you have really interesting insights on this topic and it would be lovely to hear them. Why is children’s play with materials important to you? What are your favorite materials to experiment with?
Further links
The Institute of Making at the University College of London has a great online material library – perfect for anyone who likes to nerd out about different material forms: http://www.instituteofmaking.org.uk/materials-library
This post looks at the Slow Art Collective’s ‘Children’s Sensory Lab’ (January 8-21, 2017) at C3 Gallery in Melbourne, Australia.
Last week I visited the Children’s Sensory Art Lab at C3 Gallery in Melbourne, Australia. The lab was created Dylan Martorell and Chaco Kato from the Slow Art Collective – an interdisciplinary artistic group dedicated to exploring creative practices and the ethics of environmental sustainability, materiality, DIY culture and participation. The collective describe ‘slow art’ as:
“… the slow exchanges of value rather than the fast, monetary exchange of value. It is about the slow absorption of culture through community links by creating something together and blurring the boundary between the artists and viewer. It is a sustainable arts practice, not an extreme solution; a reasonable alternative to deal with real problems in contemporary art practice.” (Slow Art Collective website)
The Sensory Art Lab featured six different material environments spread out over the C3 Gallery space. These included a dedicated room for babies and toddlers, a giant loom and an archery area where children could shoot arrows at drum symbols (pics below)! A commonality between the activities was a focus on art making or aesthetic exploration through art. The Lab had an endearingly D.I.Y feel to it. Many of the materials were either recycled or everyday items being used in unfamiliar ways, giving a slightly eclectic and ingenious atmosphere to the show.
My favourite activity was the loom, a simple concept with high creative potential. The design of the weaving apparatus encouraged social interaction between people making textiles, opening up the possibility for new connections between people, materials and things.
Below are some pictures from the show. The collective also have a great website featuring all of their projects. Check it out: https://www.slowartcollective.com
The ‘audible touch space’ – an area designed especially for children aged 1-2 years and their carers. Babies and toddlers were able to touch the silver triangles that had motion sensors connected to them with pre-programmed sounds
A bucket of material off-cuts, ribbons, wool and thread
The archery area – children could fire arrows at the drum symbols, making loud bangs of sound
In this activity, children could make paper basketballs then throw them at the drum kits. Each snare drum (I think this is what they are called?!) was set at a different pitch, making different bass notes as the balls hit them.
This post discusses the symposium presentation ‘Material play: children’s learning with new, found and recycled ‘stuff’ given by Professor Pat Thomson, Nina Odegard and Louisa Penfold at the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) in Canberra, Australia.
Image: Bradley Cummings
On November 27, 2017 Pat Thomson (University of Nottingham), Nina Odegard (University College of Oslo and Akershus) and myself (University of Nottingham) presented at the AARE conference on young children’s learning with materials through play. Julianne Moss from Deakin University was the session discussant. The symposium was put together as a result of our common research interest in material-led play in early childhood education.
The symposium was built upon the proposition that many educators and artists working with young children are committed to play-based practices and understand this as critical to individual and social learning. The session focused specifically on early years arts-orientated play through asking: when children are ‘doing art’ play what are they learning with the materials they choose? The presentations explored the idea that when children are playing with materials they are simultaneously:
learning about concepts such as line, pattern and form;
learning about the properties and potentials of materials such as how they can be pushed, pilled, stretched and transformed;
learning what materials are and do in the world;
being called and directed by the materials, forming possible selves with materials and forming new relations with the world
being given the possibilities to work with materials without having to name, define or categorize what they are doing
Why is this important? Academics and education practitioners are becoming increasingly interested in ways that humans can and need to be de-centred in order to take account of the importance the material, both organic and inorganic, worlds in which we live. This is essential in creating discourses and practices that offer hopeful action in an ecologically and ethically challenged world. This also comes at a time when policy makers around the world increasingly position play-based early childhood curriculum as trivial and not sufficiently focused on knowledge and skills. Consequentially, we identify an urgent need to push further with discussion on why materials matter in early childhood play-based arts programmes and projects. Our concern was to not only explore and explain the importance of play in early childhood and to promote the value of the arts, but also to broaden our explanations of what this is.
Young children’s thinking with natural materials in art museums
Image: Louisa Penfold
Louisa’s presentation explored the invitations natural materials such as logs, leaves, sticks, stones and clay offer in young children’s play in art museums. Data generated in an early year’s art studio session at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, was used to consider the encounters (Pacini-Ketchabaw et al., 2017) between children, artists, curators, artworks, materials and the museum space. Lenz-Taguchi’s notion of intra-active pedagogies (2010) – where one’s attention shifts from interpersonal relationships to the relations between humans and non-human entities – was drawn upon to consider children’s learning with and through artworks and materials in the art museum.
Descriptive examples of visual documentation including photography and video footage was discussed in relation to how the ‘stuff’ curated for the art studio provoked open-ended possibilities for children’s thinking and learning. The presentation concluded with the suggestion that through thinking with materials, new pedagogies are able to be constructed that allow artists, learning curators, children and their families to continuously produce and reconsider the relations between themselves, others, artworks, materials and the natural world.
Imagining immanent didactics
Image: Louisa Penfold
Nina’s paper focused on the concepts of aesthetics and aesthetic explorations, ethics and how these open possibilities for creative thinking, doing and being. Concepts of new materialism were discussed in relation to the potential they bring for expanded discourses and practices relating to recycling, sustainability and consumption.
The presentation drew upon data generated in a ReMida creative recycle centre in Norway. Results suggested that children were ‘rhizomatic thinkers’ (Dahlberg, 2016, p. 131) in their aesthetic explorations of recycled materials in which children’s learning shifted between disciplines to make use of the ‘vibrant matter’ (Bennet, 2010) and ‘how matter comes to matter’ (Barad, 2008). Nina also focused on pedagogical practice in which children’s process itself is valued, and there is a reduced or no focus on the result (Dahlberg, 2016). This builds on previous research out of the ReMida centre (Odegard, 2016) that argued that recycled materials can open up to the discovery of new ‘hidden’ pedagogical spaces, that produce meeting places for the emergence of new ideas (Odegard, 2012). The children´s exploration with vibrant matter like recycled materials seems to evoke creativity, curiosity, problem-solving and narrate stories. Through this, the paper argued for a paradigm shift away from the neoliberal way of measuring and categorizing learning and towards an emphasis on the collective and creative pedagogical processes.
What can rope do with us? Agency/power and freedom/captivity in art play.
Image: Bradley Cummings
Pat’s paper, co-written with Anton Franks, discussed an ongoing ethnographic study conducted within the ‘World without walls’ programme run by Serpentine Galleries in London. The programme supports artists undertaking residencies in one early childhood centre in central London. The residencies focus on different kinds of art/play that draw upon the artist’s practice and selection of materials for the programme. The presentation discussed data generated from Albert Potrony’s residency in which the artist elected to use large material objects such as card, plastic, foam and rope.
Throughout the sessions, numerous children were drawn to/called by the rope (Bennett, 2010). Perhaps unexpectedly, the children wrapped/tied up their teachers and the learning curator with the rope. The data suggested an explicit exploration of the kinds of power-laden relationships that exist between adults and children in educational settings. Drawing on field notes, photographs and interviews, the paper presented an analysis of the materials on offer and their affordances. The presentation concluded considering the material differences made by, with and through the rope, and probe further the ways in which it co-produced caring and ethical experimentations with power, agency, captivity and freedom.
Following the presentations, attendees had an opportunity to play with an array of materials arranged in the symposium space. As a group we then asked and explored questions such as why were particular materials chosen and not others? What was possible with the materials and what wasn’t? What about the play experience can be put into words and what can’t? Did you feel a desire/need to name, categorize or define your installation? What senses were used, and what feelings were evoked through playing with the materials?
Overall, we hoped that the symposium shared thinking and opened up new discussions around early childhood education, play, the arts and materialism. We were inspired by the questions and discussion amongst the group throughout the presentation and hope to build upon this in the future.
Image: Bradley CummingsImage: Bradley Cummings
References
Barad, K. (2008). Posthumanist performativity: toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. In S. Alaimo & S. J. Hekman (Eds.), Material feminisms (pp. 120-157). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Bennet, J. (2010). Vibrant matter, a poltical ecology of things: Duke University Press.
Dahlberg, G. (2016). An ethico- aesthetic paradigm as an alternative discourse to the quality assurance discourse. 17(1), 124-133. doi:10.1177/1463949115627910
Lenz Taguchi, H. (2010). Going beyond the theory/practice divide in early childhood education: Introducing an intra-active pedagogy. New York, NY: Routledge.
Odegard, N. (2012). When matter comes to matter – Working pedagogically with junk materials. Education Inquiry, 3(3), 387-400.
Odegard, Nina, & Rossholt, Nina. (2016). In-between spaces. Tales from a Remida. In Ann Beate Reinertsen (Ed.), Becoming Earth. A Post Human Turn in Educational Discourse Collapsing Nature/Culture Divides. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Pacini-Ketchabaw, V; Kind, S; & Kocher, L. (2017). Encounters with materials in early childhood education. New York, NY: Routledge.
In this post I consider the gap between academics/non-academics in children’s art education. A contestable claim but something I believe is worthy of further discussion.I reflect upon my experience of moving from working as a full-time learning curator in an art museum to full-time PhD researcher and what I have learnt along the way.
Before starting my PhD, I thought I knew a reasonable amount about early childhood education theory. I had studied an array of undergraduate education subjects at university, worked with researchers in art museums, attended the occasional conference and regularly read new books and articles that came recommended from colleagues. Upon commencing the PhD I very quickly realised that there was an entire universe of theories and ideas that I had never encountered. I love this part of research, there is something so motivating about seeing the world as a place where so much more can be discovered and created.
At the same time, the more conferences I attended, the more books I read and conversations I had with academics, the more I realised that so much academic research is read and used by other researchers and simply does not make it into a form that other non-academics can use in their everyday practices with children. On the flip side, so much amazing knowledge and expertise produced and held by people working directly with children never makes it into the academy. Instead this sort of knowledge is produced and shared through feelings and non-verbal actions.
Possibly the most pronounced example of the gap between academics and non-academics I have come across is in relation to new materialism. I find the ideas of Karen Barad, Jane Bennett and Deleuze & Guattari really interesting and highly applicable to children’s art education. Especially in relation to the consideration given to the role of matter such as artworks, materials and tools in the production of knowledge. At the same time, it has taken nearly 12 months of continuous reading, thinking and discussions to begin to really understand the key terms underpinning new materialism. Perhaps I am just a slow thinker or perhaps these are really complex ideas that are difficult to explore in everyday practices. I also find it slightly ironic that much of the language used in new materialism (i.e. assemblage theory, intra-activity, affect, onto-epistemology) is quite inaccessible to that vast majority of people working directly with young children. At the same time, what is fundamentally being considered is the production of knowledge that is not solely based on language.
I wonder how such a gap in the knowledge of academics/non-academics has formed. Perhaps the ‘output’ of academic research (journal articles, academics texts) is not in a form that others working directly with children can use? Or when toolkits or resources are produced for practitioners the research has not been intertwined with practice enough to allow it be easily applied.
Without question there are teams of researchers and practitioners working brilliantly together to produce rich, multifaceted ways of thinking and practices with children. There are also people who approach both practice and research as interconnected fields through working as ‘practitioner-researchers’ – a hybrid that offers a myriad of possibilities for universities, practical industries and beyond.
I think I will spend the rest of my career exploring the grey area of being a practitioner, a researcher, an artist, an educator and a curator. I wonder how I will continue to explore and combine these in different professional situations. Something I find so exciting about the process of pedagogical documentation is its ability to intertwine theory and practice in everyday contexts, breaking down the binaries such as teaching/learning, adults/child, individual/group and research/practice. I wonder how this process could be further used in art museums to bring together academics and non-academics.
This post looks at Serpentine Galleries’ ‘Play as Radical Practice’ toolkit, a creative resource produced between the Gallery’s learning team, artist Albert Potrony and the Portman Early Childhood Centre (UK).
Image credit: Serpentine Galleries
In 2014, the Serpentine learning team commenced a series of artist residencies with the Portman Early Childhood Centre in Westminster, London (UK) run as part of their Changing Play programme. Changing Play aims to explore the possibilities of play through exploring current practices and alternate re-considerations of early childhood education.
Last year, artist Albert Potrony undertook a 12-week residency at the Portman as part of the programme in which he worked collaboratively with children, staff, parents and Serpentine to explore the potential of free play in the school system. Throughout the residency, Albert created a series of material-led play spaces featuring matter such as recycled tubes, plastic sheets, ropes and reflective plastics. During the sessions, children were encouraged to creatively explore the materials alongisde peers and adults through play. Before, during and after each session, the artist, Portman staff, parents and Gallery team engaged in critically reflective discussions that considered the relationships between the programme’s various components such as the materials, curriculum, people and pedagogical underpinnings. The ‘Play as Radical Practice’ toolkit is a direct product of these collaborative discussions.
The toolkit is comprised of three main parts: a booklet, a 24-piece card game (pictured below) and an accompanying film. These work together to share and further consider the imagery, questions and ideas generated from the residency. The toolkit also seeks to support early educators to form solidarities with the children they work with and to advocate for free play in the state school system. This is done through taking a individuals taking position as well as including thoughts and questions from multiple perspectives.
I really like the way the card game explores the residency’s emergent debates and ideas from multiple perspectives including children, parents, curators, the artist and centre staff. Each of the cards in the game features an image and provocation such as field notes, a quote and/or question. For example, one card combines an image of a child and staff member playing with the artist’s materials in the nursery. A quote from a Portman staff member is then presented alongside the image with four interconnected questions:
” ‘They are different children with different members of staff. It’s really interesting, when you read the school reports you think ‘I don’t see him like that at all.’ He may be really chatty with me and really quiet with someone else and also the children behave differently depending on who is present, which is that thing about stepping away from them and letting them play by themselves as part of that witnessing.’ Staff
What is witnessing? Who does it? What does it mean? Witnessing as assessment? “
These work together to situate the emergence of the educator’s idea around the standardisation of learning within the specific context that it was produced. Furthermore, the card invites the reader, or ‘player’ of the card game, to extend, challenge or support the teacher’s experience through critically thinking about the questions themselves.
Each card is further divided into key themes such as space, relationships, standardisation and chaos/order. Each one of these themes prompts deeper consideration and re-considerations around the imagery, quotes and questions featured in the toolkit. The accompanying booklet investigates these themes more extensively alongside quotes from key early childhood and play theorists such as Hillevi Lenz-Taguchi, Tim Gill, Simon Nicholson and Arthur Battram. You may also come across the introduction I wrote for the toolkit in the booklet, lol. I do wish to point out that my role on the programme is insignificant in comparison to the amazing educators, curators, artists, children and parents who worked together on an ongoing basis to produce the complex conversations, thinking and practices throughout the residency.
The toolkit booklet can be downloaded from the Serpentine website here. A limited number of printed toolkits are available free of charge from the Serpentine learning team. For a copy, please email: jemmae@serpentinegalleries.org . The Play As Radical Practice film will be available to view on the Serpentine website in the near future. An interim report of Serpentine’s World Without Walls programme, including Changing Play, can also be downloaded from the University of Nottingham’s Centre for Research in Arts, Creativity and Literacies website here: worldwithoutwalls_interimresearchreport_final-copy
In this post I discuss my understanding of the term ‘pedagogy’ and the ability for the process of documentation to act as a critical thinking tool to reconsider the assumptions, beliefs and practices that shape a learning environment.
Vest Pocket Playground. Credit: Playscapes.com
‘Pedagogy: the principles, practice or profession of teaching.’ Collins Dictionary
‘The subject of children is not static or the same in every era because both the culture and society in which they form change very rapidly. Pedagogical and psychological knowledge should therefore always be open to channels for listening and interpreting and avoid becoming filters that are too short-sighted or opaque for reality to pass through.’ Vea Veechi
I remember having a conversation with a teacher-friend five or six years ago in which I distinctly recall saying, ‘I will never use the word pedagogy. I have only ever heard pretentious people say it in convoluted ways. The last thing the world needs is for the language and meanings of education theories to be presented as high-brow and inaccessible’.
Fast forward to last week. I was giving a talk to a group of architects on pedagogical documentation as a tool for learning and change in art museums. The first question asked after the presentation was, ‘this may sound silly, but what exactly does pedagogy mean?’ My mind flashed back to the conversation from a few years ago – gah! I had become everything I thought I would never be… a person who uses the word pedagogy. How did this happen? Well, let me explain.
Prior to starting my PhD, I often used the words ‘learning’ and ‘education’ to describe the different processes happening in the art museums where I was employed. A few months into my doctorate I realised that these words were limited when trying to consider the wider context of children’s experiences. I then started reading up on different meanings and understandings of pedagogy. I found many of these surprisingly useful in expanding my thinking around children and art. Now I use it all the time, including in my blog title. I sometimes cringe to think that it might come across as pompous. At the same time it is the correct word for what I am trying to think more deeply about.
My current understanding of the term has been influenced by the definition provided by Thomson et al. (2012) in ‘The Signature Pedagogies Project.’ In this, pedagogy is described as the ‘shaping of the learning environment as a whole’. It is viewed as the combination of teaching methods, curriculum, assessment practice and how these are created into patterns of interactions, actions and activity in a particular context.
This description emphasises the ‘relationships, conversations, learning environments, rules, norms and culture within the wider social context’ (Ibid, p.8). It implies that pedagogies consists of intertwining connections between both people and things in a specific social, historical, political and cultural context. This also suggests that such forces are not fixed but rather constantly changing, recombining and multiple.
Siraj-Blatchford (2002) extends on this through stating that it is the quality of interactions between a learning environment’s components that give significant insight into the depth of early childhood education experiences.
Questions relating to a learning environment’s pedagogies could be as follows:
What are the concepts and content being taught?
How is this being done, for example what are the methods?
What learning strategies are being produced by learners?
How do we know that learning is taking place?
How do all of these forces come together at different moments to shape how, what and why a learner learns?
What are our assumptions and beliefs that shape such understandings of learning?
I personally do not believe such questions are reserved for formal education settings and that museum teams can also benefit from continuous critical thinking around these ideas. The process of documentation can support such investigations when used by teams as a mean to consider, challenge and transform the assumptions, beliefs and understandings that shape a learning context. Many of these assumptions are formed and maintained implicitly and therefore require active debate, visbility and questioning from multiple perspectives to explore the complexity of practices. Or as Lenz-Taguchi (2009) describes, the process of documentation becomes a pedagogical one when it is used as a tool for learning and change. This then allows for the production of new theories, ideas and alternate ways of thinking about early childhood education discourses and practices.
References
Lenz-Taguchi, 2009. Going Beyond the Theory/Practice Divide in Early Childhood Education (Contesting Early Childhood). Oxon: Routledge.
Siraj-Blatchford, I., Sylva, K., Muttock, S., Gilden, R., & Bell, D. (2002). Researching effective pedagogy in the early years (REPEY). London: HMSO.
Thomson, P., Hall, C., Jones, K., & Sefton-Green, J. (2012). The Signature Pedagogies project: Final report, Culture, Creativity and Education.
Vecchi, V. (2010). Art and creativity in Reggio Emilia: Exploring the role and potential of ateliers in early childhood education, London: Routledge. p.49
Last week I had my final day of data generation in Manchester. Over the past couple of months I have been fortunate enough to have worked within a fantastic team comprised of an education curator, artists, teachers, children and parents. This time has been such an intense period of development, growth and expansion for my research and all of us on the team. I will spend the next couple of months writing up and theorising my findings before starting the second stage of fieldwork in 2017.
How many photos can a three year old take in 40 minutes? 287 apparently including this portrait of me that accurately captured my energetic state of mind
At times it can be strange working with children in education settings. You have this intense period, whether it be a school year, or a series of repeat visits to a museum, or even a single workshop, where a particular group of little humans become the centre of your creative and intellectual being. You see them change and develop in their thinking, communicating and curiosities about the world. Then all of a sudden it is the end of the academic year, or a project finishes or you change jobs and just like that these people who were once at the core of your world are no longer there. Yet the time spent together is always transformative, for better or worse. Somehow these endings always make the ephemeral temporality of life seem so much more acute.
In art museums these encounters are sometimes short-lived but nonetheless present meaningful snapshots into children’s lives. Many of these vignettes are heartwarming, full of tenderness and beautiful complexity. At other times these vignettes are unsettling and disturbing – the inequalities of society seem so much more enraging and unfair when it is a baby or toddler born into a situation they have no control over.
I often think about different children I have worked with over the years across various jobs and projects. I wonder where they may be in their lives now: if they have continued with their schooling, what their passions may be, if their parent’s divorce led them on a completely different trajectory or if their brief experience in a children’s art programme had any sort of enduring legacy throughout their life. I will probably never know the answers. That’s okay, there is something totally fine in that uncertainly. I guess it is this murky grey area of the unknown that so much incredible art, music, literature and thinking comes from.
On my final day working with the children this week one of my little mates brought in this artwork he had made for me. He handed it over with a ‘I will miss you’ and a cuddle. One of the artists saw the moment unfold and said, ‘don’t cry Lou, don’t cry!’ I thought, ‘it’s cool, I am a fully grown adult, I have got this’ while trying to hold back the tears and then bolting for the bathroom.
When you work in this field it is not about the status, or the money, or recognition, or ever expecting any sort of thanks or praise. It is about using everything you have got to try and make more meaningful lives for others. And sometimes these moments suddenly appear when it feels like your heart will burst with the fullness of the world in all its beauty, heartache, uncertainty and impermanence.
This post features an interview with Emma Spencer, Family Learning Coordinator at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (UK).
Image credit: Jane Hewitt
The Yorkshire Sculpture Park sits upon 500 acres of jolly green parkland that an Australian who has never visited rural England may be pitifully excited to see. The open-air gallery won the 2014 Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year and is also home to the National Arts Education Archive. In 2014 the Park was awarded a three- year grant from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to conduct an action-research project looking at the development of its family-learning programme. I recently spoke with Emma Spencer about the project’s findings and future plans for early years learning at the gallery.
Could you please give some background on the action research project? What were your initial ideas and motivations?
Starting out, the key focus of the research was around bringing people from the community together with the Park. We wanted to use the project to change how we connect with families. Families come to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park regardless to experience the beautiful natural space, however we really wanted to think about creating a more considered and in-depth offer for families. The focus of the research has changed slightly over time, especially in relation to how we used the early year’s space.
What happens in art galleries is quite distinctly different from what happens in science centres or natural history museums. This was a key consideration entering the research. We also wanted family’s experiences to be centred on the connection between nature and art.
The research project is now entering its third and final year. What have been the key findings to date?
The first year of the action-research project was focused upon looking at school-aged children and their connection with the Park. We wanted to use the first stage of research to understand how the Park can engage with families in new ways. So with these families we tried out various different activities to see what they liked, what they were interested in, how they behaved and different methods of engagement.
Image credit: Jane Hewitt
The family model that we use at YSP is one-on-one approach. So rather than being the whole family coming together, we encourage one parent to bring one child. So therefore the project was not looking at issues between siblings. Instead we wanted it to focus on and encourage really meaningful time between one child and their parent.
Data was collected over four half days at the sculpture park and four half days in the education settings. We worked with eight families from children’s centres and nurseries in Wakefield. All families involved in the initial stage of research had children aged two and up. Over the eight days we trialled different creative activities with the families. We then did in-depth evaluation on each activity that gave us incredible insight into participants experiences. We were then able to build these findings into the subsequent stages of research.
What types of programming have come out of these initial findings?
Coming out of the first stage of research we were able to identify what sorts of workshops we would need to offer, what resources we need to develop and what we need to do as an organization to engage families. Results indicated the following:
An enclosed children’s outdoor space is both wanted and needed;
Families need to make art in addition to looking at it;
Open-ended resources are essential in supporting families connection with art and nature;
Children behave better outside then inside and are not worried about the weather.
Leading on from this, the second stage of action research comprised of the development of a series of public events for families. These included drop-in days and school holiday activities. The major outcome of the research is the creation of a new family space for under 5’s called Hidden Forrest.
How did you work with artists on the project?
Bryony Pritchard was the main artist we worked with. Bryony has extensive experience in working in children’s art education and is a very reflective practitioner. A key responsibility of hers was designing the creative activities within Hidden Forrest and facilitating these activities on the day. These activities were essentailly provocations that connected children with nature and art.
When developing children’s programmes it really helps to be collaborating with people who have have direct experience working with children and understand how they communicate and think. I did this earlier in my career and this gave me great insight which I was able to bring to my current role that is more focused on research and development.
How has using the action-research process (planning, observing, interpreting and reflecting) benefited the programme’s development?
The difference between everyday practice and action research is that you are constantly thinking, reflecting and making changes. Of course everyone is reflective in this field but having it as a formal research project allowed us to really look at something critically. It un-sticks old patterns of practice and thinking within the organization. This can be particularly useful when working with staff who have been around for a long time – to challenge old ways of thinking.
I have always been a reflective practitioner. I also knew Bryony would be open to trying new things. Using action research allows us to development of an attitude of “if this does not work, this is okay.” This is a really freeing thing for practitioners. When things did not go so well we were able to reflect, discuss and then give ourselves permission to try it again with changes. For example we once tried the same program with a different audience with surprisingly different results.
Sometimes there is a lot of pressure on artists to do it well the first time as they are getting paid a lot of money (and so they should!). However there is an idea that these activties always need to be sparkly and everyone needs to have a fabulous time. The action research enabled us to explore and challenge many ideas around practice. We knew that we would possibly learn a lot of things when it went wrong.
Where do you hope to take the findings from the research? What is your future vision for family learning at YSP?
We are now entering our third year of the research project. The focus is not upon institution-wide training. An interesting thing about action research is that other teams can take findings and re-adjust them to fit with their own context. This training will focus upon things such as how staff talk to families and children who may have very little gallery experience. We hope to also create a regular offer for families.
Family engagement is not just about the learning team. These are institution-wide conversations that need to be had. It takes time to implement such change and to shape how we collectively engage with families.
“People need ‘tools’ that empower them to work independently, they need these tools and technology to make the most of the energy and imagination each has… society needs to project individual skills and voices, people need to move, to think and have the means to communicate with one another. People cannot make everything for themselves, they need to collaborate and share in a community for it to function.’ Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (1973).
This post features an interview with Elizabeth Rood, Vice President of Education Strategy and Director of the Centre for Childhood Creativity at the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito, California in which she discusses the timeliness, importance and challenges of developing the world’s first early years Fab Lab.
Children and parents create designs using a laser cutter during a prototyping session at the Bay Area Discovery Museum. Image credit: Bay Area Discovery Museum
“We want to shift the way that people think about learning so it is not only based on transmission and close-ended answers. Instead we want to create a rich environment that promotes design, building, construction and an excitement around learning through technology!” Elizabeth Rood
On May 14, 2016 the Bay Area Discovery Museum will open the first early years Fab Lab designed especially for children aged 3 to 10 years old. The Fab Lab movement came out of the MIT Media Lab in the early 2000’s with the original laboratory aiming to explore how technology can power under-served communities through access to information. Labs typically consisting of a small digital workshop space featuring digitally controlled tools such as 3D printers, design software, laser cutters and technology-powered products which individuals to bring their personal ideas to life. There are currently around 600 labs running around the world in museums, libraries, schools and community spaces. Fab Labs are closely linked, yet distinctly different from the maker, DIY, hacker and open source movements through their focus upon design, engineering and creativity.
I visited the Bay Area Discovery Museum in August 2015 whilst in San Francisco doing an artist residency at the Prelinger Library. I was extremely impressed by the museum’s commitment to child-centred practice and the development of an interdisciplinary creative learning pedagogy based on hands-on play.
Louisa Penfold: Elizabeth thanks so much for taking the time to talk this afternoon. The Fab Lab sounds amazing and I am sure there will be lots of people very interested its development. Perhaps we could start by hearing about the value of creativity in childhood and what unique offerings the Bay Area Discovery Museum provide in relation to that?
Elizabeth Rood: One of the things that people get caught up on is whether or not kids actually can be creative when many definitions of creativity are about having some sort of meaningful output that is not just personal but helpful towards the universe and the world. Yet it is really clear from the research that the quality of kids imaginative play is actually a significant predictor of creativity in their adult life. We actually authored a paper recently and one of the key findings in it was the way in which the quality of kids play in childhood, especially if they are able to access rich environments, ends up equipping them with the creative and innovative skills needed for future success. Therefore a lot of value is placed on making sure kids have really rich creative experiences when they are young that will set them up for life. The other finding from that paper was that it zoned in on seven key teachable skills which allow children to develop into more creative adults.
The research shows that creativity is influenced more by your environment and less so by your inborn genetics… so we are more likely to have our parent’s political views passed onto us than creativity.
So rather than focus on this elusive idea of creativity as an inborn trait, if we recognize that these seven habits of mind that help nurture kids and support their growth, then it will lead to them becoming really creative people.
Here at the museum our mission is all about creativity and in our community work we are helping people see the creative potential in all kinds of thinking across different disciplines and not just art. Certainly art is one area where kids are able to build a lot of creativity but as a museum we really want people to realize that deep thinking in math is about creativity and being a really good scientist is about creativity and being an engineer is about creativity.
3D printers will feature in the Fab Lab. Image credit: Bay Area Children’s Museum
LP: Yes, for sure. I am interested in the comment you made about the link between a rich environment and creativity. From your research and from your experience working in this field, what are the qualities of an environment that constitute a rich experience for children? ER: A lot of it has to do with whether or not children are empowered and invited to chart their own course or whether a model is put up by adults, or their peers which says ‘this is what is supposed to happen.’ For example, if you walk into an art creation space and there is a model and an attitude which says ‘okay, now you make it.’ Or another example could be in regards to a science experiment where an attitude may be that there is only one way to go about doing it. This idea that one needs to learn what the experts know and mimic it needs to be turned on its head. We need to put kids in the driver seat!
First of all encouraging the idea that there is not one right path or one right answer. A simple example of this is that we don’t ask kids ‘what is 2 + 8?’ we ask them ‘what are all the different ways you can get to 10?’ Even just in a small flip like that, you could encourage the mind to do much deeper thinking. And also you are setting up the framework of their being multiple right answers and through that a value is placed on originality and original thinking and through that we are teaching our kids that they don’t have to mimic the people that have come before them. So that’s a really big piece of a rich environment.
Another aspect is that research clearly demonstrates that cognitive flexibility is a huge part of creativity so the more we can experience new things and expose our children to diverse ways of thinking about the world, the more the brain becomes wired to promote creative thinking, new ideas and awareness.
The final part of a rich environment links back to the importance of pretend play. I think that sometimes people think that pretend play is something we should be doing to ages five or six but then after that comes this social commentary that it’s not healthy or normal to engage in imaginary play. However if you look at people who have one Nobel Prizes and done amazing ambitious things in their lives there is a huge number of those people who had very rich imaginary worlds pushing into their adolescence and adulthood allowing for the construction of rich imaginary worlds. This allows for a different kind of thinking about reality. These are the kinds of a snapshot of experiences that we would like kids to have at the museum.
Children and museum staff play with a programmable car Image credit: Bay Area Children’s Museum
LP: So leading on from those ideas of cognitive flexibility, process-based learning and pretend play, in terms of the development of the Early Years Fab Lab at the Bay Area Discovery Museum, what sorts of skills will children learn within the space? I say this in the sense that may parents and teachers have great fear around children using screen-based technology such as iPads and computers as they it as passive consumption of media that takes away time from hand-on creative learning. How will the Fab Lab promote creativity and promote creative skills?
ER: I think part of what we are trying to do is establish a new model of what high quality use of technology in the early years can be. A key quality, you know you have visited the museum, there is no technology on site. This is going to be the first piece of technology at the museum. Part of the reason for this is that we want to promote pretend play and rich imaginary worlds and that often screens, media and technology can be set up to say ‘this is the right way, the right answer to this question.’ A lot of the Apps that are out there are close ended, they made have an educational value such as teaching vocabulary, but they don’t tend to be open-ended. So for us, part of us is about making sure that technology is a tool for creation as opposed to passive consumers of the technology. So that’s a huge difference!
Part of the danger of screen time is not the screen itself but the way in which adults are using them as babysitters.
Within the Fab Lab there is a screen that kids design on, more specifically a touch screen which children and parents are able to use side by side. And the experience doesn’t end there, they then fabricate either a 2D or 3D printout of what they designed so they are using the technology as a tool to make something. Part of what Fab Lab does is linking the artistic and design processes with some of the science, engineering and math concepts to help kids build the kind of underlying design thinking that is really critical in fields like engineering or architecture and any human-centred design field.
LP: So what tools and equipment will feature in the Fab Lab?
ER: At the moment we have Surface Pro tablets and the main reason for that is they have both a touch-screen and ability to plug-in and use keyboards or a mouse. So that is the main computer software that we will use. There will also be iPads as some of the software is optimised with them. In terms of fabrication equipment we have laser cutters that can be used with wood, plastic and cardboard. Then there is a vinyl cutter which is fun for making stickers with the little kids, mainly for use with clip art. There will also be 3D printers which will be running in the space but more for demonstration purposes than anything else as it’s not the right tool to use with young children. It’s a real buzz word, especially in the Bay area so it’s important that we can demonstrate the technology.
The other machines we are prototyping with are small C2C routers and table top routers. We will also have an industrial sewing machine which will be fun. Then there will be simpler things that are not so much about fabrication but more about technology and engineering such as circuit and coding games and toys.
LP: I’m curious to hear a bit more about the development of the technology going into the Lab. The design software and high-tech tools used in traditional Fab Labs have been created for adult use. How has the development team built the technology so that it is safe and accessible for young children?
ER: Well, because we are a museum and we need to have robust public programs experience and we also do a lot of work in the formal education sector with teachers, we have a two-pronged strategy of how we are going about this. So in working with schools, there is software that just was released called Fab@School Maker Studio which is really designed for kids ages 9 and up. It’s been built for in school classroom teachers to be able to do building and hands-on learning but not using very expensive fabrication equipment. It is using something that is called the silhouette printer that is a lot more affordable than 3D printers. We are using this software and in conversation with the software developers to simplify the interface such as using a touch screen instead of a keyboard and mouse. So we are developing something new from something that has already been released.
However this software does not necessarily work in the drop-in space as the program is very math based. It needs to be math-based as otherwise teachers would not be able to use it. At the moment in the United States there are only two things are being assessed which are literacy and math. So we are really thinking of how we can use the Fab Lab to do more hands-on learning.
Fab Labs are really at the intersection of active, experiential learning and technology. It is about linking creative, artistic power with science, engineering and math.
In the public program space, this doesn’t really work. Kids need to have something that is elegant and cool in which they can create something to take home and with a bit more of a wow factor in which they think ‘I want to keep doing this.’ So for the public program space we have landed on Adobe Illustrator, partially because it is the industry standard for fabrication and when you use it on a touch screen it automatically simplifies the interface. So it’s naturally more accessible for kids.
LP: What have been some of the most interesting discoveries you have had so far within the development process?
ER: We have been surprised at how easily kids are using Adobe Illustrator. Kids as young as five have been easily using it and that has been a shock to us. It is really interesting how kids quickly pick up software that has been designed intuitively and elegantly.
Another thing that was really interesting is that parents are more engaged in the early years Fab Lab than they are in other areas of the museum. There is more reciprocal learning going on because it is new for the parents as well. So that has been exciting to see parents jumping in and doing the design alongside their children. Also Dads have been really engaged in the prototyping sessions which is great and we hope that this is a pattern that will continue over the coming months. Overall the adults are really more engaged!
LP: I am sure there will be many people and organisations that will be incredibly interested in your experience of creating the Fab Lab. Do you have any plans to share your findings with the wider community?
ER: Yes, absolutely! We are currently looking into getting funding to get a high-level complex AV system so that we can do remote-in so that people can watch kids in the space from far away. The Fab Lab movement is international and there are people all over the world that are interested in this and part of what we want to do is to share what we learn. This will partially be through the use of video in the space so that people in Belgium, Columbia and Mexico can all watch what is going on. Part of why we are so excited about being part of the Fab Lab movement is because it is international. We will also do writing and presentations to accompany this and possibly a bigger picture research project.
Part of why we are so excited about connecting with the Fab movement as opposed to just the maker movement is that the maker movement has a very open-ended ethos in which children come in and experience what they want. What we are trying to do is build more of a bridge between that open-ended processes and STEM learning. Through this we hope to say that ‘through doing this kind of building, lower income kids from subsidized preschools are learning about shapes in a stronger way that predicts greater achievement over their lifetime.’
A father and son play with cardboard cut outs from a laser cutter during a prototyping session. Image credit: Bay Area Children’s Museum
Further Links
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2013). Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention, Harper Perennial.
Fab Foundation website (2016). FabFoundation.org, viewed March 30, 2016.
Heading, H. (2015). Inspiring a Generation to Create: Critical Components of Creativity in Children, Centre for Childhood Creativity, Sausalito.
Singer, D.; Golinkoff, R.; & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2009). Play = Learning: How Play Motivates and Enhances Children’s Cognitive and Social-Emotional Growth, 1st Edition, Oxford University Press, London.
The focus is not upon institution-wide training. An interesting thing about action research is that other teams can take findings and re-adjust them to fit with their own context. This training will focus upon things such as how staff talk to families and children who may have very little gallery experience. We hope to also create a regular offer for families.
Art. Play. Children. Pedagogy. 