Title: To see the world in a grain of sand: Early childhood centres as connected
communities
Abstract:
Children in early childhood centres exist for each other in their relationships with
each other and the environment. Communication connects children as a
community. Cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) can illuminate the
complexity and diversity inherent in children’s communication. This paper uses
the lens of CHAT to analyse how artifacts (tools, signs and symbols) mediate
children’s playful communication in one event. Tensions and contradictions
between the artifacts, roles, rules, and the community of children and teachers
engaged in the event are analysed and discussed. It is argued that these
tensions and contradictions sustain and motivate ongoing activity thereby
nourishing children’s feelings of connectedness and community. Some tentative
implications for teachers are suggested.
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Introduction
All young mammals play. Most children across cultures play, though defining
“play” can be problematic. In this paper play refers to the activity of young
children imitating and re-creating aspects of their cultures, playfully. This paper
explores the connecting role of playfulness in young children’s communication
and suggests that playfulness may be an important desirable disposition for
children (and others) thinking, feeling, playing, creating, communicating and
being together.
Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT)
This research focus on communication implies a focus on interactions. As both a
methodology and a paradigm, cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) is
compatible with this interactive emphasis. Chaiklin (2001) has defined CHAT as
“the study of the development of psychological functions through social
participation in societally-organised practices” (p. 21). Rather than focussing on
individual children this paper and the wider study from which it is derived
examined the relationships that mediated the activity of children being playful and
humorous together (Alcock, 2005).
A CHAT framework makes explicit how artifact mediation combines with other
mediating components of activity to form activity systems that dynamically
connect, intersect and cross over time and space in a multiplicity of ever
expanding interconnected activity systems (Engestrom, 1999). Components
analysed in this study included the rules, roles, and community of players.
Figure 1 (attached) illustrates these connections diagrammatically, though a
diagram cannot clearly convey the dynamic and dialectical qualities that are
integral to activity systems and important for any understanding of CHAT,
because diagrams are static representations and CHAT systems, by contrast,
are dynamic. Figure 1 does however illustrate the potential interactive
complexity of the components of activity, while text and imagination add to this
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complexity by describing the dynamic and dialectical nature of the linkages
between and across the components. Analysis involves looking for tensions and
contradictions between these interconnecting components. A CHAT perspective
illuminates how these tensions and contradictions motivate and sustain activity.
Defining terms
Community is open to many diverse interpretations. In this study community
refers to a micro perspective that includes individuals within an early childhood
centre engaged in activity systems with shared motivating aims, as illustrated in
Figure 1 and by Wells (2004).
Like community, activity systems also comprise multiple overlapping layers of
meaning. For the purposes of analysis activity systems, in this study, refer to the
mediated interactions between the rules, participants roles, connecting artifacts,
community, participant subjects and motivating aims – object of activity. These
are the core components of activity systems and systems interconnect and
overlap with other systems. Tensions and contradictions around competing aims
and the different components ensure that activity is always heterogenous and
multivoiced. In this paper one event is analysed and discussed as an activity
system.
Communication is understood as the mediating, connecting, semiotic function of
words, sounds, gestures, gaze, posture, rhythm, and movement among
communities of participants engaged together in playful activity.
The artifacts that mediated playful and humorous interactions became a key
research focus of this study. Artifacts includes both material and non-material
representations of tools, signs, and symbols (Wartofsky, 1979). Wartofsky
(1979) refers to primary, secondary and tertiary level artifacts that represent
different levels of abstract, symbolic and concrete thinking and feeling in relation
to their mediating and representational functions. Artifact mediation is the central
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concept in CHAT and all interactions are mediated . As Miettinen (2001)
explains “… through the use of cultural artifacts and participation in collective
activities, subjects assume the qualities of the environment. Ways of doing and
properties of things are objectified in tools and cultural artifacts” (p. 301-302).
The “event” presented here illustrates how non-material signs and symbols (such
as rhythm, gestures, posture, gaze sounds, music and words), and material
things, or tools (such as a climbing frame and tarpaulin), function as mediating
artifacts transmitting signals and connecting children communicatively emotionally and cognitively. The rules, roles and community of children are also
mediating components of the activity system (see Figure 1).
Rhythm, musicality and narrative in communication
Children’s playful communication is rhythmic, hence musical. Non-verbal, preverbal, verbal and musical aspects of communication interconnect rhythmically
as children create both emotional sense (feeling) and cognitive meaning from
rhythm, sounds and words (Vygotsky, 1934/1986). From a Vygotskian
perspective, words with sub-text and con-text carry both personal feelings and
social cognitive meanings. Feelings and thoughts are expressed rhythmically.
Rhythm, expressed musically in body movements and sound, is basic and
integral to all communication and a dominant component in the dance of early
infant caregiver relationships and the development of intersubjectivity
(Dissanayake, 2001; Trevarthen, 2002). Rhythm is also basic to the languages
of music, poetry, drama, and dance. The similarities of these phenomena are
captured in the ancient Greek word for music, musike, which includes all these
temporal arts. In the context of this paper musike mediates individual children
coming together as social beings, developing individual and group identities, and
feelings of belonging, while participating in the cultural activity of creating and recreating musike.
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Trevarthen (2002) suggests that rhythmic musicality:
…may be at the source of the ability to be socialized in the human way.
…New evidence on the place of affect in intelligence (Damasio, 1999;
Freeman, 2000), and on how emotions regulate brain development,
cognition and learning, makes the infant’s sensitivity to musical form more
comprehensible (p. 22).
He has proposed that, "music communicates with the very young human being
because it engages with an intrinsic movement pulse (IMP) in the human brain.”
According to Trevarthen (2000), the IMP detects "… pulse, quality and
narrative,… in communicative musicality" (p 27).
Narrative construction is a primal way of making meaning and sense of the world
(Bruner, 1990; Nelson,1996; Wells, 1999) and narrative plots and story lines may
be constructed musically using rhythm and tone, bodily using physical movement
and dance, and verbally with words and text. Thus, verbal, physical and musical
narratives may overlap integrating cognitive meaning with emotional sense when
children blend sounds and movements rhythmically and playfully.
From an evolutionary perspective music and movement connect people by
providing a “technology of social bonding” (Freeman, 2001, p. 22). Individuals
making music, talking, dancing, chanting, reciting and playing together are
communicating and connecting into social groups. Movement, music, sounds,
words, and gestures characterise young children’s social playfulness.
Method
The overarching research question for the wider study, of which this paper is a
part, asked: “How do young children experience humour and playfulness in their
communication?” (Alcock, 2005). This paper further explores rhythm and social
connectedness in young children’s playful communication by analysing and
discussing one event.
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The design of the study was inspired by the naturalistic and ecological field work
methods of ethnographic research (Chambers, 2000; Delamont, 2002; Tedlock,
2000), and involved 25 visits, totalling approximately 50 hours spread over a
year, in one early childhood education centre. This paper presents data from
that early childhood centre, called Northbridge, though three early childhood
centres were involved in the wider study.
Ethical consent for carrying out the research was obtained from a university
human ethics committee. Signed consent for all data-gathering was obtained
from all staff, and from parents on behalf of their children. Where appropriate,
children also gave verbal consent to being observed. For example, the
researcher usually asked 4 year olds if it was okay to video them, while also
ensuring that she did not interrupt children’s play by videoing or by talking with
them. The researcher was viewed as a friendly adult visitor at Northbridge. She
was not a regular teacher and took a passive reactive (Corsaro, 1985) participant
observer role, engaging with children when they invited her, and on their terms.
Tools used for gathering and generating data consisted primarily of participant
observation, with the essential aid of a hand-held mini video camera as well as a
laptop computer and occasionally an audio cassette recorder. Note-taking alone
was inadequate for capturing the complexity and spontaneity of playful
interactions, hence the reliance on technological aids. The video camera was
used to record visual body language as much as conversations. Perfect focusing
was not a priority, whereas ensuring that staff, parents and children remained
relaxed was a priority. The children were used to staff videoing them, so they
were familiar with the equipment.
The original typed field notes were divided into four columns: one for date, time,
place and such conditions; another for “objective” observations; the next for
interpretation; and the fourth listed the material mediating artifacts.
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The research observations of children playfully experiencing and communicating
humour were interpreted within narrative frameworks (Bruner, 1986; Clandinin &
Connolly, 2000; Ochs & Capps, 2001; Polkinghorne, 1988). The resultant event
narratives were further analysed using concepts associated with cultural
historical activity theory (CHAT) (Cole, 1996; Engestrom, 1999; Leont’ev, 1978;
Vygotsky, 1978, 1934/1986; Wertsch, 1991, 1998). This involved teasing out the
tensions and contradictions in relationships between the components of activity
and analysing how artifacts (Wartofsky, 1979) mediated these relationships.
Background context
Northbridge: an all-day, mixed-age (6 months to 5 years) early childhood centre.
The staff were all qualified and the centre had above average adult:child ratios,
with a small group size of up to 23 children and between 5 and 6 staff on duty at
all times.
Waterspout play
Background:
Northbridge: windy, outside, summer. The age span of children is wide, from 2 years, 2
months to 4 years, 9 months. Over half an hour (the time of the event) the number of
children involved in the play grows from three to six.
A large blue plastic tarpaulin cloth and a dome-shaped climbing frame mediate the
play as primary artifacts. The previous day the teachers had covered the dome with
the tarpaulin and the younger children (2-3 year olds) had fun, playing hiding games,
inside and outside the tent-like covered dome ("our house").
Zizi (4 years, 7 months), Dani (4 years, 9 months) and Sally (4 years, 8 months) are
together pulling a large blue tarpaulin over the dome-shaped climbing frame; they
make "oooooo" sounds in unison, imitating the wind, intersubjectively in tune with
each other, and connected by the tarpaulin. They laugh together as it blows off. The
activity involves them coordinating their moves while crawling, climbing and pulling
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the tarpaulin up and over the dome, against the wind. The wind blows it off again
and they laugh.
They leave for a few minutes then return to the task. This time teacher Rae offers
them pieces of string to fasten the tarpaulin. They cover the frame but don't use the
string as they don't all want to make a fixed tent-house.
Teacher Rae:
“Well you'll have to negotiate,…are you using your words Dani”?
Dani:
“No, no, no Zizi no no…” [Zizi has pulled too much to her side].
Oscar:
“Well I want to build a house”. [(4 years, 9 months), joining in]
Another gust of wind takes the tarpaulin off the frame. Laughter, glee and a lot of
movement; they battle the wind with the tarpaulin.
Younger children drift over towards the action, Eliza (2 years, 2 months), and Milly
(3 years, 2 months) (six players now). Oscar picks up bark chips from the ground
where he stands and drops them on his hat. Eliza, seeing this, also picks up bark
chips; she drops them on the tarpaulin [imitating]. Dani climbs to highest point on
top of frame and tarpaulin, while Eliza busily picks up more bark chips and smiling,
throws them onto the tarpaulin [repeating]. At this point the play changes direction.
Mediation: Houses, shelters and windy weather
This house re-creation is an example of how the broader socio-cultural context
provides motivation for and mediates children’s play. Houses and shelter are
important aspects of the adult world; in trying to make a "house" the children
intended to re-create a "pretend" version of the adult "real" world (El'konin, 1971,
2001). On several other occasions children were observed creating shelters or
nests. These were sometimes safe hiding places. As artifacts houses can also
create and mediate feelings of belonging that may be part of having a home. As
material artifacts the tarpaulin and the dome-shaped climbing frame mediated the
imaginative house construction. The transformational qualities of both the
artifacts and the imaginations of the children steered this event. Children used
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their imaginations to collectively transform the climbing frame and the tarpaulin to
a tent-like house. Later the blue tarpaulin is again imaginatively and playfully
transformed into water falling down inside the dome frame. The windy weather
was a powerful natural mediating force influencing and transforming the course
of the play. The windy weather, laughter, and the assertively negotiated agendas
added tension thereby connecting the activity across players and connecting the
players with their natural surroundings. The children laughed, played
rhythmically with the materials, the environment and each other. The tensions
and contradictions in both the wild windy weather and in their exuberantly
physical movements sustained and motivated the ongoing play. Repetition and
imitation also connected the children, particularly the younger ones, in playful
activity.
Event continues:
The play turns as Dani falls through the frame, with the tarpaulin beneath, carrying
and holding her; she laughs and screeches with glee. The tarpaulin falls in folds
through the gaps in the dome frame as she sits on it. Zizi, Sally, Dani laugh and
scream, like fire engines, under the tarpaulin,
Zizi explains excitedly to the watching researcher:
“We jumped down the waterspout, we're going down the waterspout”.
The blue plastic tarpaulin becomes a visual metaphor for the concept of water as the
children purposefully fall through the gaps in the dome frame and slide down the
tarpaulin waterspout [waterfall].
Oscar:
“I came down again”. [to Zizi, Sally, Danni]
Zizi:
“We've got two waterspouts”. [excitedly, to researcher]
Oscar:
“Zizi, in here, in here”.
Sally beside Oscar, laughs a lot and watches the others. Dani is all activity, totally
absorbed. Elli follows the older ones and drops through the dome, hanging by her
arms, teacher Rae rescues and lowers her. Zizi and Oscar lie next to each other in a
hammock like structure.
Teacher Rae:
“Sunhats on”!
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Oscar:
“Woweee, Here's the doorway”.
Zizi:
“Lets play hide and seek Rae”. [teacher]
Teacher Rae:
“Well I know where you all are, Okay, what shall I count to?"
Zizi:
“10”.
Teacher Rae:
“1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10”.
Zizi:
“Shut the door, shut the door”.
Teacher Rae:
“Mmm I wonder where they could be”?
[Screeches of laughter from inside the tarpaulin water spout]
Teacher Rae:
“Oh here you all are, hiding in the water spout, Woweee, Here's
the doorway”.
Oscar:
“That's the water spout”. [to teacher Rae]
Teacher Rae:
“Are you wet”?
Oscar:
“No”.
Teacher Rae:
“Why not”?
Oscar:
“It's a dry waterspout”.
Zizi:
“Come into the waterspout”.
Zizi:
“Sophie you count”. [to researcher]
Zizi:
“Hide, everyone hide, Sophie count”.
Oscar:
“Zizi, in here, in here”.
Researcher:
“1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10.
I wonder where the children are”?
Screams of laughter as the waterspout "door" (the waterspout still has some houselike attributes; the door is the overlapping edges of the tarpaulin) opens and six
children emerge laughing wildly, almost falling, tumbling over each other.
(Northbridge, 21.01.2000)
Distributed imagination: Playful synergy
These children laughed, screamed, chanted and giggled while their bodies
moved and danced excitedly, with enthusiasm, highly motivated to have fun
together.
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This play is creative "spontaneous fantasy play" (Corsaro, 1997). It is
"improvisational play" (Sawyer, 1997). It is also an example of distributed
imagination and distributed playfulness, phenomena that became apparent in this
study as the researcher observed children being playfully imaginative together
and learning from each other. The imaginary concept of a waterspout became a
central mediating artifact in the collaborative play of these children, yet it was
initially suggested and imagined by just one child, Zizi and was probably
unfamiliar to most of the children. The waterspout name is poetically appealing.
The falling blue tarpaulin conveys images of waterfalls and whirlpools.
Distributed imagination and playfulness share similarities with distributed
cognition as described by Salomon (1993). Imaginative thinking involves
analytical thinking; children being imaginative are not so concerned with the
immediate concretely empirical reality and playfulness also frees up thinking. In
this event imagination became distributed via playful communication around
artifact-mediated activity. Thus, roles were imaginatively transformed as Zizzi
assertively directed both the teacher and the researcher in counting and taking
useful roles in the play.
Rules also underwent changes as children's prior experiences with words and
the world motivated their imaginative play (El'konin, 1971, 2001; Vygotsky, 1978).
Thus, "waterspout" may be interpreted as creatively blending an exotic label with
concepts learnt from adults. Oscar, cleverly blended word meanings with his
world experiences, by referring to the construction as a “dry waterspout”, a
contradictory concept. The combination of words, sounds (ooooo), the climbing
frame, the tarpaulin, wind, children's imaginations and physical bodies, all
mediated children’s shared playfulness. The original house focus was
transformed to a waterspout. Words transformed and mediated the naming of
the imaginary and real waterspout. The youngest children, Eliza and Milly, didn't
speak. Neither did Sally who spoke very little English, having newly arrived from
Sweden. However these three, like the others, showed their understandings of
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the play, by using their bodies rhythmically to communicate ideas and feelings
and relate to each other intersubjectively and in tune with the play (Ruthrof,
2000).
The older children directed the play with chants, words and bodies, while the
younger ones immersed and enmeshed themselves in the tarpaulin, imitating
others, repetitively throwing bark chips, transforming and re-creating the previous
day’s house play in new ways. Using their imaginations the children
metaphorically re-created their earlier experiences creatively (Lindqvist, 1995).
This activity communicated physical fun and playfulness. Children used their
bodies purposively and intelligently, (Merleau-Ponty, 1962) almost in unison,
climbing up and falling down, getting caught in the tarpaulin, hiding and being
found and repeating these actions. Their body movements became rhythmically
centered on the image of a waterspout that they were either in, on, or some part
of, though they had to imagine what a waterspout might be like. In repeating the
actions, with slight variations, children internalised the associated feelings. Thus,
each child experienced the same waterspout play uniquely, meaningfully, and
personally. In this way the diversity in their individual experiences became
distributed and shared in the unity of the play activity.
At times the synchronous movements and speech of children having fun together
seemed like a spontaneously improvised dance. Signs overlapped and
boundaries between children became blurred in the activity. Individual children
were connected in shared and distributed, imaginative and playful, activity.
Some Implications for teaching
The complexity in this event (and play generally) can’t be reduced to “strategies
for teaching”. However some underlying themes do have educational and
pedagogical implications.
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The social and distributed nature of children’s playful communication and the
unity of the peer group stood out in this event and in the wider study (Alcock,
2005). This activity, like others, involved children in relationships, thus
connected to each other and the environment. A research focus on relationships
raises questions about the individualistic nature of programme planning and
assessment practices, which have tended to prioritise observations and
documentation of individual children. Such documentation is frequently collated
in individual child portfolios for example. Where is the authenticity in
documentation that seems to separate children from colleagues and contexts?
Rhythm in children’s playful communication was another dominating theme of
this research. Rhythm is integral to activity and rhythm is the basis of musike –
the temporal arts, ie music, dance, drama, poetry. Rhythm is also basic in the
creation of expressive arts, ie the visual arts. All such arts are communicative,
creative and aesthetic features of every culture. According to Dissanayake
(2001) rhythm - first expressed in early infant-caregiver relationships - forms the
basis for the origins of all artistic creativity. Young children communicate,
represent and create ideas and feelings by playing, practising and learning all the
arts. In this sense children re-create cultures artistically.
Rhythm expressed in musike - dance, drama, music, poetry – and in the creation
of visual arts is a fundamental connecting aspect of communication, creativity
and culture. These arts enrich cultures by broadening ways of communicating
thereby enhancing diversity in communication. It follows that a culturally
responsive curriculum implies a pedagogical focus on the mediating roles of
rhythm in relation to children creatively playing, learning and practising all the
arts. This sort of pedagogical awareness is likely to have positive spin-offs for
teachers and for the curriculum. Prioritising the creative arts in the curriculum
broadens choice, increases freedom and offers children and teachers multiple
ways of communicating, expressing and representing ideas and feelings.
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The aspiration statement in Te Whriki (1996) envisages children learning to be “…
confident and competent communicators, healthy in mind, body and spirit and
secure in the knowledge that they make a valued contribution to society.” This
emphasis on communication implicitly acknowledges that artistic creativity is
integral to communication and culture. Perhaps it is timely to understand “back
to basics” as including “Four Rs:” reading, writing, arithmetic and rhythm - and
rhythm is integral to all four “Rs”.
Conclusion
The CHAT framework for analysis emphasises the systemic, connected and
complex nature of activity by prioritising the mediating and motivating nature of
the relationships that create and sustain activity. Activity connected children
socially, emotionally and cognitively. As artefacts the weather, words, the
climbing frame and tarpaulin all mediated the development of peer culture
(Corsaro, 1997) and group togetherness in this event. Children, used rhythm,
sounds, words and bodies to communicate playfully and to express ideas and
feelings creatively, in activity.
Referring to the changing developmental links between words, feelings and
actions, Vygotsky (1934/1986) wrote:
The connection between thought and word, however, is neither preformed
nor constant. It emerges in the course of development and itself evolves.
To the biblical “In the beginning was the Word,” Goethe makes Faust reply,
“In the beginning was the deed”. The intent here is to detract from the value
of the word, but we can accept this version if we emphasise it differently: In
the beginning was the deed. The word was not the beginning – action was
there first; it is the end of development, crowning the deed” (p. 255).
Action - the deed or activity - includes words, and I suggest it also includes the
temporal arts as reflected in the Greek word “musike”: dance, drama, music,
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poetry and song. These arts are expressed in rhythm, or pulse, tone and
narrative (Trevarthen, 2002). Rhythm is a core component of communication.
The rhythm that connected children and was expressed imaginatively and
playfully, in words, drama, and movement, was a dominant feature in this event
and in the larger study of children’s communicative playfulness (Alcock, 2005).
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Cultural Artifacts:
environment, play materials,
words, scripts teachers, peers
Children:
thought
emotion
behaviour
Roles
Aim: play,
“togetherness”
Community:
early childhood
centre
Rules
Figure 1 Children’s playful communication in context
(adapted from Engeström, 1987, 1999).
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Sophie Alcock
Victoria University of Wellington
PO Box 600
Wellington
Email: [email protected]
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