Playing Researchers
Monika Riihelä Ph. D. Stakes Helsinki Finland 2001 (ISBN 951-33-1190-2)
This study consists of a video and a text
The video Playing Researchers: http://www.stakes.fi/videot/playingR.rm
Resumé
The article is based on my study, Playing researchers, which was
published in two parts, as a video and as a text (Riihelä 2000). This
research and development project focussed its attention on children's
thoughts and collaborative behaviour by using the new Storycrafting
method. The play and interaction of small, 1- to 6-year-old-children
in educational situations organised by day-care personnel was recorded
on videotape (in total, 14 hours, 20 children, 5 adults). The research
showed that children's thoughts and viewpoints are brought out when
they are allowed to play an active role and when educational work is
directed by children's ways of producing knowledge through telling
stories, playing and doing research.
The joint activity of children and their ways of producing knowledge
were analysed and compared with adult practices and learning
environments. Among other things the research showed that, due to
their innate collaborative playing skills, their zest for life and
their rich imaginations, children find the patterns of human
interaction very early on. Sociality, in fact , originates in
children's play. Important features in the formation of collaborative
activity are expressions, gestures, looks, initiatives and responses
and the rhythms of joint activity are regulated by rules which may be
externally directed or emerging from within the group.
Keywords: video research, Storycrafting method, small
children's collaborative activities, learning environments, adult
practices, children producing knowledge, sociality, children's play
HEADINGS:
- The data for this study
- A
community-based method for analysis of video records
CRUCIAL
FACTORS THAT AFFECT CHANGE IN SOCIAL ACTIVITY
INITIATIVES
AND RESPONSES IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
- At the heart of
conversation
- The
storycraftying method approaches the core of democratic talk
CHILDREN AS
PRODUCERS OF KNOWLEDGE
RULES
CREATE CLOSED AND OPEN SOCIAL SITUATIONS
IN
PLAY, THE SOCIAL SEEDS
- Play with set rules
- Play
with collectively activated and creatice rules
RESULTS OG THE ANALYSIS
- References
The data for this study
The data for this study (Riihelä 2000), which consists of video
recordings was collected in two day care centres. The collection was
preceded in one of the centres by four years and in the other by one
year of consultation and work development periods. The development
work was connected with my study How do we deal with children's
questions? (Riihelä 1996). Part of it was a continuation of Stakes'
national (Karlsson 1999) and Nordic (Riihelä 2001 b) project known as
Children's Storyride. In the developmental projects we were searching
for new ways of working with children which would respect their
personal and collective methods of producing knowledge.
The situations that were video recorded were part of the children's
normal day care routine and the adults' work. The children responded
freely and easily to the camera and the presence of strangers. We
discovered that the children were able to produce, in an amazingly
natural way, collective stories and investigative activities that were
improvised, collaborative and enthusiastic. In their own groups they
developed we-intentionality and collaboration. They entered into
discussion out of their own desire to tell or out of their own
curiosity. The situations were not practised in advance. Nor were they
the results of traditional pedagogical teaching.
A
community-based method for analysis of video records
In my earlier research (Riihelä 1989 and 1996) I have used video
material in the traditional way, transcribing words and action into
text. The transcriptions have been analysed, categorised and
sub-categories have been compared. However, in this research I have
treated the video material differently. The analysis, categorisations
and comparisons have concentrated directly on the video material.
After completion of each analysis stage the filmmaker has cut the
material according to my directions. With the help of the new cut
version I have gone onto the following analytical stages. That
activity was observed in which children were the initiators. I have
been looking for the answers to two questions with the help of the
analysis:
What do children talk about when operating together?
How does their co-operation proceed?
I have related this activity amongst children to children's
activity with an adult. This way of editing material I call a method
of intensifying reality. By editing and combining the most active
situations into a new weave it has been possible to render visible the
elements of children's joint social activity. There are 20 children
and 5 adults appearing on the videotapes.
CRUCIAL
FACTORS THAT AFFECT CHANGE IN SOCIAL ACTIVITY
Before the arrival of the comprehensive day care system children
were usually at play out of the sight of adults. These days children
are more watched over and pedagogical play, adult-initiated activities,
have increasingly become a part of children's lives. Children's own
play differs from that which is adult directed and it develops amongst
children who are familiar to the various languages of play. The
differences in expression and stress are extremely subtle. A long-term
lack of such companionship or the misunderstanding of play language
can lead to children being excluded from the group. The development of
play is always a social phenomenon indicating changes between the
actors and the objects. In the observation of small children's own
collective behaviour, it is the child communities that are seen to be
central. The most important members of this community are the
playmates (Corsaro 1997). This kind of play companionship appears
wherever children meet and are allowed by adults to develop their play
in peace and in time.
The meaning of the term social has been defined in different ways
and there is a divergence of opinion on the relationship between group
and individual. The individual takes the primary position when the
focus is on individual human activity and developmental stages.
Community-based human activity is emphasised when human action is seen
as a creation of group activity. To quote Timo Järvilehto (2001):
"Traditionally consciousness and the self are conceived as
belonging to the individual in some absolute sense. However, an 'I'
may be defined only in relation to somebody else. 'I' and 'You' are
conditional upon each other. Thus, an 'I' may exist only if several
individuals exist, making a common organisation possible. An
individual is nothing without the co-operative organisation, because
he gets his properties only through other individuals; we could even
say that an individual is the co-operative organisation, but only from
a limited perspective. And this perspective is set by the
characteristics of his body defined in relation to the other
individuals. This is also the perspective, which defines the self."
In the child institutions which participated in this development
work teachers were searching for dynamic and creative situations
arising amongst the children. The teachers activated the collective
processes that were going on in the children groups. Many issues were
to be considered in the search for ways to organise work in this
fashion.
The storycrafting method (Riihelä 1991) was the main tool for
giving the floor to the children for different purposes. It was used
in the first place in order to make the children's and adults'
dialogue more democratic. In the second place we used the method to
find out the children's own ways of producing knowledge. In our search
for new methods which would stress children's ways of producing
knowledge, our standpoint was that when children are learning
something new it is not sufficient to handle their learning activities
with an adult-centred approach. Using the storycrafting method, the
children's point of view and their thoughts and questions became
visible. Material was obtained from the children themselves with which
learning environments and situations could be constructed that
especially suited these children's way of producing knowledge.
In the third place we used the storycrafting method to strengthen
the feeling of solidarity in the children's small groups and their
collective activity. We had to arrange certain activities to guarantee
organisation by the children themselves and the development of their
own play and research. The adults occasionally had to enter the
children's world to look for children's questions and to see how the
surroundings might be changed to provide these children with ample
opportunities to work on matters which they consider topical. The
situations were varied so that every group member got the chance to
offer initiatives, verbal and non-verbal, which the others had the
opportunity to respond to. I will now go on to describe social
processes by taking into account four interrelated entities: laws of
nature, human knowledge, initiatives and responses and rules used in
group activities (see figure 1).
FIGURE 1
Factors of change in social activity
The laws of nature can appear as regular or irregular phenomena, as
order or chaos, consistency or chance, as static states or dynamic
systems or as externally directed or self-directed processes. Human
beings are born with the capacity for turn-taking, that is, to
alternate between initiatives and responses. Small children make
initiatives and wait for responses at the very beginning of their
co-operation. They give responses and they wait for new initiatives.
They are also capable of setting up a special rhythm with another in
an interactive - social - situation. There are many studies about
interaction with newborn babies which indicate these new viewpoints (Trevarthen
1999). Consciousness, or in this respect human knowledge, consists for
instance of thoughts and feelings, perception and motivation,
individual and collective intentions, everyday and traditional
culture, subordination and collaboration, power and influence.
The rules which govern nature also regulate human behaviour. Man is
a part of nature's multiplicity, whether as a biological being or in
terms of mind, language and concepts. However, our knowledge of these
rules is still poor. Sociality is understood here as the dialogue
between the human mind (including both individual thoughts and the
cultural products of society) and other natural phenomena (including
people). Sociality takes shape in the ever-changing interactive
situations and its characteristics cannot be discovered in the
characteristics of any individual member.
The starting points for the examination of man's sociality are not
social characteristics or external features but social change as a
manifestation. Interactive situations never repeat themselves
identically since there is always a question of change. The social
affects the action and the mind and vice versa. To be social is to be
in a relationship, to act interactively. Social activity takes place
with something or someone. It proceeds through alternation, which
itself is governed by the rules of activity. These rules are norms,
agreements, habits, customs, laws and decrees, comparable to the rules
within the laws of nature. Factors that change the activity are
initiatives and responses or stimuli and reactions. The rhythm of
action and the relationships between the actors are organised by
applying different kinds of rules. Sociality needs to be analysed in
relation to what and who are in the interaction and who is the other
participant in the interaction, in other words what or with whom
communality emerges.
INITIATIVES
AND RESPONSES IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
Initiatives and responses in human interaction are at the core of
the dialogue. There is more and more research evidence showing that
children are active learners, the subject of their own learning
behaviour creating their own knowledge structures (Wertsch 1998). This
has resulted in the demand to make education and teaching more
reciprocal, a balanced social activity of two active practitioners.
Individuality and communality will become entangled with one another
in a new and interesting way. From this point of view the traditional
education way of teaching children to be social becomes untenable.
In research it has been noticed that a child's individuality comes
into its own more clearly and emphatically when children work
collaboratively together in small groups (Riihelä 1989). When
individuals are obliged or permitted to say aloud their own thoughts
and back up their own views in their peer groups, they are noticed
more as people and thinkers. Their viewpoints are given common use.
The situation is entirely different when children do individual work
for themselves, with adults controlling large groups. The adult
accounts for about 80% (Wertsch 1998) of all speech turns and
initiatives. In a group of twenty children this means that each member
has only 1% of the time to express his or her own ideas. The
individuality of pupils is hidden behind the teachers' talk.
Accentuating children's own experiences and thoughts in successful
learning activity also means major changes in the adult-child
relationship. Teaching and learning blend into reciprocal and balanced
social activity. What we need is knowledge about where and how this
kind of reciprocity can be achieved. Similarly, the factors need
pinpointing which prevent children from being active.
At the heart of
conversation
It is in the micro-world of education and teaching, in the dialogue
between adult and child, where we find practice which maintains the
subordination of the children's world (Riihelä 1996). The smallest
unit of conversation is the dialogue between two people. First one
speaks and then the other connects his speech to the same subject. The
progress of the dialogue is affected by many factors, such as the
situation, the matter in hand, the participants and their wishes and
desires to influence. For example, a conversation between two close
people can proceed in such a way that one makes all the initiatives in
the discussion and the other follows. On the other hand, it might be
that the division of the initiatives takes place more or less equally.
In actual fact, the one who remains in the position of defendant is
the first one to be conscious of the unequal status of the
participants. Women and customer research have revealed the
distortions of influence in both gender and expert customer
relationships (Billig 1987).
In conversations between experts and clients, such as in doctor's
surgeries, law courts, classrooms, day care and in diagnostic
situations in welfare clinics, a similar conversational core, the
one-sided feature of influence, has been observed (Drew & Heritage
1992). A doctor forms his questions to a patient in such a way that,
based on the response, he can as specifically as possible assess the
patient's state and define the problem. The doctor asks the questions,
the patient answers, the doctor assesses the patient's response and
makes a certain diagnosis. The doctor-patient dialogue proceeds
according to the three-turn rhythm: 1. Expert's question - 2. Client's
response - 3. Expert's evaluation. The patient's questions and
evaluation of his/her own situation remain unheard in this discourse
culture. In pedagogical and educational conversations the basic
pattern is similar. The carer/teacher in traditional pedagogic
situations has either to develop the child in a certain direction or
follow whether the child has learnt what was intended: 1. The teacher
questions - 2. The child answers the adult's question - 3. The teacher
estimates the child's response in relation to the educational
objectives. The adult's evaluation may be stated out loud: "You
did that well and correctly", or it may be a quiet thought:
"This child did not understand what should have been done".
In the three-pronged expert conversations the expert takes the
initiative and the client/child is in the position of respondent.
The expert accounts for two-thirds of the conversational phases and
there remains only one third for the client. When teachers are working
with large groups of children, such as in school lessons or in day
care, the situation takes on a certain shape because of this tradition
of discourse. The teachers often deal with the whole child group as
one participant in the dialogue with themselves as the other. On this
occasion there are only two participants in the conversation, one the
child group and the other the adult.
This phenomenon was also obvious in the video material of the study
Playing Researchers. In many situations the adult's activity was so
overwhelming that the co-operation between children was destroyed.
Because the focus of this study was on children and their co-operation,
the passages of intensive adult activity were cut out of the video
report.
The
storycrafting method approaches the core of democratic talk
An interaction is a situation in which one gives and gets, in which
one determines things for others or in which the participants create
things together. Who gives in an interaction, and who gets? Who
determines and who follows? Can every child have something to give,
including something of use to adults? Democracy presupposes equal
interaction also from the point of view of benefit. Many of the
concepts concerning children spring from the assumption that children
are not useful, at least to adults. Children become useful only when
they become adult. But could a child's smile, a trusting look or a
boundless imagination not actually be seen as useful as significant
social capital? Somebody holding a new born baby can feel, even
physically, how the primitive life force flows from the apparently
helpless bundle to the bottom of the adult heart. Later on, children
may talk about matters which have never come to the adult's mind, and
which may be of importance in our lives.
The development work, which was the focus of the study Playing
Researchers, was principally based on the theory of the storycrafting
method and the knowledge gained through listening to what children
want to tell (Riihelä 2001 a). Work with children was arranged in a
new way so that, in the day care centre, all the children were asked
to tell their own stories on several occasions during the project.
Their narratives and their thoughts were transcribed as such, and were
used, for instance, when the adults were planning their activities
with the children. This storycrafting method, which respects
children's own knowledge and experience, has opened up a new channel
of interaction.
The method has been developed over many years. Using this method
requires nothing more than an open and listening mind, and pen and
paper, or not even that. The child is asked to tell a story, just that
kind of story he or she feels like telling. The adult promises to
write it down whilst the child speaks, in the words and manner that
the child uses. When the child thinks that the story is ready, the
adult reads it out loud. It may be corrected if the child wishes. The
story is created quickly, also in groups.
In the Storyride, which began in Autumn 1995, the communal meaning
of the children's own stories is emphasised by reading them to other
children and by fastening them to the wall for parents to read. The
correspondence network of stories has been built within and between
municipalities, as well as far beyond the borders of the country. The
stories travel to and fro across the Nordic countries. They are
translated and published (see: Broström & Georg 1997, Habbestad
1998). The network spread rapidly. The most distant knots in the net
from here in Finland are South Africa, Brasil and China.
By encouraging children to tell their own stories we succeeded in
attaining the core of democratic talk with small children (Karlsson
2000). The result has been impressive. When we started we could not
imagine that we were close to the bubbling source of children's very
own narrative culture. From the flow of the children's own stories,
over 5000 Finnish stories have been filed as well as 400 original
stories told in the other Nordic countries. The stories have been told
by children of different ages. The youngest narrator was 8 months of
age and the oldest 15 years. All the stories differ from one another.
There is something unique in each one. The stories can be found in
Lasten Satulehti, 1996-1998 (Children's Story Magazine) and in the
children's own storybooks Kissa lähti kävelylle ja hiiripiiri, Cat
out Walking and Mouse Club, (Kemppainen, 1998) and Voitko olla?, Play
with me? (Kemppainen & Riihelä, 2000).
The storycrafting method appears to suit everybody. Shy children
are encouraged by listening to other children's stories and later they
tell their own. Boisterous children find material in the story world
with which they can entertain their listeners. Through telling stories
together the children get to know each other in a new way. Parents
feel pride over their children's skills and rich imaginations. Instead
of replacing local dialects with standard expressions, the valuable
heritage of dialect is preserved through the stories.
In telling their stories, linguistically disabled children have
encountered understanding, often for the first time, in their own
language, a language which experts deem deficient and faulty. These
children use the same storycrafting method as children who speak
normally. Their missing letters are also left out of the written and
reading stages unless they expressly say that their stories should be
corrected and read in standard language.
The Storycrafting method differs from the traditional and still
very useful storytelling in a couple of ways. People have told each
other stories through out history. It is a good way to get acquainted
with traditions, with other people, different cultures etc. It is also
very useful in the contacts with children. The Storycrafting method
does not replace the benefits of storytelling, but it brings something
new and particular to the relation between attendants. The difference
from storytelling is that in storycrafting you actively make
situations for concrete sharing, by writing down the heard story and
by retelling it. In addition there is no evaluation of the content of
the story or the way the narrative is dictated.
CHILDREN AS
PRODUCERS OF KNOWLEDGE
I proceed now to the third entity of social processes, human
knowledge (figure 1), pointing to the view of children. When we try to
gain insight into children's and adults' shared social activities
through research and written reports, what invariably remain concealed
are the children's own experiences and their orally expressed
knowledge of particular situations. This problem directs us to one of
the main problems in child research, namely the application of
theoretical orientations that do not understand children as subjects,
but rather as objects of adults' activities. Objectification has a
long tradition which emphasises general, written and context-free
knowledge at the expense of local, oral and empirical (Toulmin 1990).
Today the interest in context-based research is increasing, but there
are still great difficulties in comprehending the child's world.
It can be claimed that every person, child or adult applies the
knowledge he or she has constructed in a very personal way. A certain
statement is truthful when looked upon and justified from a certain
angle. Angles vary ad infinitum and justifications may often seem
insufficient and even incorrect to another person. When a child claims
that night arrives when the sun sets into a cloud, it is consistent
with the observation that, during a sunny day, there are clouds on the
horizon behind which the sun disappears in the evening. This
observation by a child is very important to him or herself as well as
to others since the mode of observation illuminates a certain angle of
events concerning the sunset. When another child offers another idea
of how night begins, a debate might follow and possibly also the need
for further study. This is an example of a case in which children are
given the opportunity to deal with a subject from their own starting
points while exploiting their own experiences (Riihelä 1989). Dynamic
knowledge evolves according to the user and is pertinent to the
situation in which the knowledge is being used. Regularities in change
will be studied, theories formed and applied. In other words, there is
an on-going quest for the correlation between the different bits of
knowledge.
A dynamic conception of knowledge is unequivocally associated with
skills, emotions, equality, imagination and reflection. Dynamic
knowledge is adopted through the processing of thought. Experience and
reasoning take turns. Culture is transferred and adapted to fulfil the
needs of the following generation. Knowledge is accentuated through
active search. Creative learning and thinking skills becomes the aims
of education and teaching. Using traditional concepts of knowledge
prevents, in particular, children's participation in both the
production of research knowledge and in the organisation of practical
work. Figure 2 depicts a situation where a some professionals are
trying, for example, to support John in his learning problems. The
focus is on John, who is set in the centre. Both John and his parents
are interviewed to gain deeper understanding of the situation. The
professionals are involved in examining the situation and they all
express their opinions about possible solutions. In this way, John is
being examined from different view points, beginning from different
disciplines and theoretical backgrounds. Although the child is
apparently at the centre of the adults' interest, John's own opinions
are just one small part of the collected information used to create
the strategy for solving his problems.
FIGURE 2.
Points of view on children's world when the child is in the centre
The focus shifts when the child is not in the centre anymore, but
the question is more about the producer of the knowledge in the
situation, as seen in figure 3. The problem is approached by focusing
on what knowledge and whose knowledge is used or left unused in
research, education and teaching. Knowledge is taken to include not
only scientific and cognitive knowledge, but also such things as
experience, perception, and feeling. No matter at what age or
developmental phase the person is, everybody has experiences and
knowledge related to their own life. One can justifiably claim that
even before birth and before the speech phase, children have
experiences, perceptions and feelings.
FIGURE 3.
Different points of view on children's world, the available
knowledge of the situation being in the centre
"What or whose knowledge is used or not used?" is the
main question to be answered. To solve John's problem one could
jointly examine a situation in which the problems are visible. A
certain episode, such as failure in a mathematics class, could be
examined: one could investigate the learning environment, and whose'
experiences and knowledge is being applied in the class. What is the
state of the air in the class room, does it include a lot of carbon
dioxide? Have the teacher and the children had enough rest and
physical exercise to improve their concentration and cognitive skills?
Are children only doing calculations that the teacher introduces or
are the mathematical problems based on children's questions and
interests? Is the teacher the one who is talking in the class or are
the children in dialogue with each other? Who is paying attention to
John's problems? The teacher, his classmates or John himself? Are
there some misunderstandings between people that are related to John's
problems? Do other children see John's difficulty as a problem or is
it only something that the teacher observes? Does John have problems
with his perception, problems that may prevent him from seeing and
understanding things like the other children?
The laws of nature, including chaos and change, are crucial sources of
human knowledge. It depends on a given situation to what extent some
parts of the natural phenomenon becomes the focus of examination.
Furthermore, knowledge is produced by, on the one hand, the child and
the child group and on the other hand, by the adult and the adult
group. And still, both child- and adult- communities produce knowledge.
When research focuses on the producers of knowledge (in the broad
sense), children and adults are offered the chance of a
non-objectifying dialogue and the shaping of shared knowledge. The
main problem in child-related research, that is, to render visible and
significant the knowledge of child and childhood, can be solved by
focusing on who has the opportunity to produce knowledge used in the
situation.
RULES
CREATE CLOSED OR OPEN SOCIAL SITUATIONS
The fourth entity that causes changes in social activity are the
rules that govern human sociality (see figure 4). These rules of
social activity can be understood as ongoing processes that organise
the activities in a group in different ways depending on which kind of
rules are used. These processes can be divided into two classes,
externally directed and collectively activated (see fig. 4 A and B).
These processes develop events which are either fixed or open dynamic
systems. Externally directed activities are either hierarchically or
heterarchically organised. Collectively directed activities are either
accumulating or dissipating.
Social situations vary according to how existing laws and rules are
applied and whether new rules are created in the situation. Is the
situation open and dynamic or closed and pre-determined? Is it
dissipating or accumulating?
FIGURE 4.
Factors of change in closed and open social situations
Externally directed hierarchical rules include laws and man-made
decrees as well as those rules which not everyone is aware of, which
everybody may not be able to apply and which are used to achieve
supremacy, whilst others are subjugated. The situation is closed when
the rules are set in advance. When small children play with water, as
on the Playing Researchers video (http://www.stakes.fi/playingR.rm),
their actions with their hands are regulated by the fixed
characteristics of wet and dry, amongst other things.
Rules can help to locate the participants in a hierarchical position (fig.
4 A. a), as is the case in traditional education and teaching. With
other rules the participants are positioned equally (fig. 4 A. b),
heterarchically, as in a card game for example. In heterarchical
systems the rules of activity are also set in advance, as in many
sports for example. The inter-personal relationship is equal, although
it is important in action to follow the jointly agreed rules. Game and
role theories can be seen as located in the externally directed group
of fixed systems.
Accumulating open systems (see fig. 4 B. c) emerge when, as they say,
we all pull together. The rules are created during the action, as in
open discussion situations, or in creative project work. These are
situations that increase group collaboration and work energy. Dynamic,
open social situations take shape when people work with each other or
in their own mind with an imaginary being. Collaboration in social
situations occurs in a jointly-directed manner when the rules are
agreed upon in the course of the activity. Open discussions between
adults adhere to this interactive approach, as do children when they
are developing free games or doing playful research together.
In human intercourse there are countless dynamic and open social
situations. When newborn babies meet their parents' gaze for the first
time, this kind of delicate, open situation ensues. Initiatives are
made as much by small children as they are by adults. Decisions about
what to do and how to do it emerge spontaneously between two close
people.
In human activity open systems can also be what we call dissipated
(see fig. 4 B. d) and this is when there appear antagonistic relations
between the participants. We can here talk about self-directed action
that is tainted by the objective of one individual's benefit at the
cost of others. Rules are created in the course of the action, not in
search of a common denominator but through conflict in the
relationships between members.
In reality, action emerges through both open and fixed rules,
simultaneously and within each other. General customs and culture
prescribe fixed manners of behaviour amongst adults even though we may
be creating new, specific rules for the advancement of project work,
for example. Language is also a factor which is set in advance
although it contains many elements from which the user can freely
choose and which are not previously specified. Spoken language in
particular contains many levels of freedom.
IN PLAY, THE SOCIAL SEEDS
In play you can find all kinds of rules organising the joint
activity. As we see in the current data, children in play, form their
co-operation. Understanding children's play with the equivalent
concepts to those used for the activities of communities formed by
adults, you can find the core of social activity in children's play.
A collectively induced organisation is observable when children are at
play together. Theories of play have often over-simplified very
complicated events, neither can explanations of play organisation be
found in individually oriented theories. Children's play is usually
comprehended through their developmental stages. One common way of
categorising children's play has been to classify them into primitive
individual and parallel play that gradually develop into more
sophisticated collective play. Individual play has been understood as
a situation in which children play their own games with their own toys.
In parallel play children play different games with similar toys, for
example, children fill their own buckets in the same sandbox.
Collective play is spoken of when children play the same games with
the same equipment, for example, playing house, doctors or tag. The
old classification has its origins in Parten's research of 1932
(Niiranen 1995). This viewpoint can be compared with describing forest
life by saying that when trees grow they at first stand alone, then
gradually they are next to each other and finally they are together,
when their branches are touching. The interdependence of the forest's
thousands of plants and animals, the soil, the water and the climate,
the whole ecological system, is all left out of the examination. The
many levels of children's play and their mutual interdependencies are
usually ignored. By analysing children's play with the concepts of
initiatives, answers and rules you can find two categories of play:
plays with set rules and plays with creative rules (figure 5).
FIGURE 5.
The social core of play
Play with set rules
Play with externally directed (fig. 5 A), set rules is organised
differently from play with collectively activated and creative rules.
The tension in the play is maintained with the help of the rules,
which in turn contain certain predetermined decisions. In other words,
in games and other play with set rules, decision-making does not need
to take place during the activity itself. It is sufficient if, before
starting the action, it is agreed what game is to be played and by
what rules. During the game there is no negotiation, nor are
initiatives made which might change the course of the activity. There
can be discussion on how the rules give advice on how to proceed. In
games with set rules there is always a result: some win, some lose. In
pretend play the result is play itself.
Play
with collectively activated and creative rules
Pretend play, for its part, requires new initiatives to diversify
and continue the action as well as negotiation and decision-making. To
illustrate the social core in children's play with creative rules I
refer to two cases of pretend play. One was a dolphin game created by
the children themselves while the other was a teacher-made open
pedagogical situation, part of the theme of water. Four small children
started their play using different kinds of play language so typical
of children. With the help of this play language the children set up
and created the rules needed for this activity which would go on for
several hours.
The children started the joint play by negotiating the theme. There
were several proposals on offer amongst the players. "What shall
we play?" "Shall we play lizards?" "No, I think we
should play dinosaurs. I could be a dinosaur father, you could be
their child." "No, let's play something else." This was
the mode of discussion when children negotiated, when they prepared
the ground for the next stage, the decision-making: "Hey? I know,
let's play dolphins!" "Yeah!" in which the theme of
play is chosen. After this there follows the division of roles, and
again using a new word form: "That one would still be small and
this one the strong one." The individual 'You' and 'I' were left
out and the collective 'we' brought it up to the area of we-intentions.
When the roles had been thought up and shared out there was a moment
to negotiate the starting point of the drama and the movement rhythm.
When the youngest started with an eager young dolphin's life of diving,
an adult dolphin came out of the play for a moment to teach the
smaller, so that the play got the thematic tension it needed.
"The small dolphin doesn't move like a mother. It moves like this."
And immediately the young dolphin tries another swimming style:
"Oh, like this?" "Yeah." The play began somewhere
in the dolphins' life and continued until one of the players came up
with a new departure to the plot. A child came out of the play,
changed the tone of voice and proposed a new rule, a way of acting.
"Hey, that one could go further away, so that it gets lost. And
this one comes to look for it."
On the stage of the play and in the play the players spoke to each
other in dolphin language and from within the roles, which they had
agreed upon together. This language was matched to the theme. It could
be dolphin sounds or the dolphins could also use words. By their
intonation the children differentiated their messages in countless
speech styles.
Nevertheless, the most amazing aspect of children's
collectively-created pretend play activity is, how they, as well as
changing their speech styles and intonation, know how to use their
whole body to express the particular manner of movement of whatever
role figure. Adults have not taught children to distinguish a
dolphin's movement from a whale's, or a dolphin baby from that of an
adult. Neither would adults have been able to teach children the
rhetoric with all its sub-species which are so well adapted to this
play organisation. Where does it come from then? It is obviously a
question of collective processes that are directed by the children and
in which the characteristics are charged by the group's energy.
In the study, the children on the ice of Lake Tuusula were asked to
study water and teh reasons why ice melts. But the children went
further and combined fishing with how to make fire. Suddenly the
children organised a collective playful bit of research combining
fishing with fish, snow, water and fire elements. Here is an extact
from the video report, How to make it catch fire and fish?, in which
4-5 -year -old children make their inquisitive experiments:
- Here you have a good fire! Up there!
- It's burning, look!
- Hey, put it there in the snow quick
- Otherwise it'll catch fire worse. - Yes, a real fire
- I'll take it to the water
- The fish will eat it!
- Fish eating fire.
- Ville, let me try a little, can Jussi try too?
- Yes, we'll do it in turn.
- I put this deep.
- Wow, how deep ... a fish will grab it!
- Ville, let's see who catches a fish first.
- Have you got a little stick?
- Yes
- Why has Jussi got a big one?
- Don't throw it!
- Come here, now here's a bigger fire!
- Come and see over here, Jussi!
- Can I try one thing with your stick again?
- Yes, but give it back then.
- I must throw this to the fire.
- Do we need more wood then?
- Now mine caught fire!
- Mine caught fire!
- Mine caught fire Jussi!
- Yes!
- Would this work, I put smoke in there ... then they - swim over here
and then there'll be lots of fire there - then they'll dig out of here
and then - I'll get them from here if I fish with that stick.
- Oh, you've got the idea to put fire in this hole - so the fish flee
to that hole and then you'll get them, asked the teacher.
- Yes, with a stick. Have to make a snowball, and fix it to the stick
- so they'll think it's a worm, answered Jussi.
RESULTS OF THE ANALYSIS
More exhaustive analysis of children's play has resulted in a
noticeably more complex picture of children's communal play. In
Niiranen's analysis (1995 85), she concludes that children's
interaction amongst themselves is different in pretend play from other
situations. "… the interaction in pretend play may be more
demanding than most ordinary adult interaction." (Ibid. 91.)
But we can go still further and claim that play can be understood as
the core of sociality. Play always arises together with one or more
others. Children's play can be perceived as collaborative in three
ways, depending on who or what is representing the other participant
in the play. The other party may be a) a being or phenomenon, b) a
figment of the imagination or c) other people. Whether playing with a
phenomenon, moving shadows, experimenting with one's own footsteps,
putting tongue, lips and sounds together, touching objects and so on,
the child is looking for regularities and the laws of alternations.
The shadow moves on the wall. Does it always move in the same way? The
doll feels soft in the hand but rough in the mouth. When the rattle
falls on the floor, mother comes and gives it back. The rattle falls
on the floor by itself, but does not put itself back in the hand.
Changes in phenomena and experiments with them tell of regularities
and variations. When a hand pushes a ball, the ball starts rolling.
When a hand pushes a wall, the wall does not move but the hand feels
the pressure. Play with imaginary figures is a reduced example of
playing alone in which the company is the child's self-selected being.
We-intentions and joint scripts are constructed with other people (and
with pets, for example).
It is possible to make the social visible and the changes between
participants understandable using the model of the analysise of the
four elements, laws of nature, human knowledge, initiatives/responses
and rules that indicate fixed or creative changes in social activity.
The same model is useful in discovering for regularities both in child
and in adult group activities. The analysis of children's research and
play activity as externally directed and collectively activated
phenomena offers useful tools for evaluating the significance of
children's initiatives. It is possible to take the rules which guide
communal activity as the focus of observation. It would be necessary
to expose both fixed and open events in order to be able to
consciously influence them and promote the emergence of processes
charged with positive energy. This naturally concerns adults as much
as children.
Group processes do not take shape as a sum of the characteristics
of the group's different parties, but depend on the situation itself.
The rules governing human activity are systemic, with features both
chaotic and organised. This is a simmering phenomenon which influences
the actions of the group in a variety of ways. Whatever is going on in
the encounter is significant. It is connected to earlier actions or
events, to how long has it been going on, and so on. On the other hand
the creatures in the encounter only offer certain sides for the
group's use, depending on what the intention of the encounter is. The
situation depends on each one's interest, knowledge and, for example,
the present state of alertness.
The study, Playing Researcher, shows clearly that, for small
children, playing and doing research are interlaced into joint social
events. The movement of children's hands and feet and their
investigation of the elements of water, give new insights followed by
silent questions and further experiments. Spontaneous play stops for a
moment and the activity becomes an endeavour to understand some
phenomenon and try new combinations, such as fishing with the snowball.
Suddenly a new insight sets the imagination flying and the children
move into the world of play and creativity. Small, microscopically
fine actions, social expressions and so on, which promote collective
behaviour, are full of meanings which the group members fit together,
sometimes into play and sometimes into collective research activity.
In their play children also use drama to create new experimental
togetherness.
Children's own play has the same elements as that of adult social
activity. According to the results of this research it is important to
give children of all ages a substantial part in planning the
activities in child -institutions. The ways that children produce
knowledge need more attention.
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