To Download the Abstracts, Please Click Here
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
PESA CONFERENCE 2013 Abstracts (in order of appearance, by session number) Measuring Up in Education SESSION 1 Negotiating the Emergent Terrain of Arts-Based Early Childhood Research This session comprises of three papers that explore emergent pedagogical and philosophical issues in a New Zealand arts-based early childhood project Move, Act, Play, Sing (MAPS). The papers draw out pedagogical themes and insights on arts learning that diverge from the prevailing culture of measurement and standardisation prevalent in educational practice and research. The exploratory nature of the research process as seen in the arts provocations and philosophical underpinnings provides a level of uncertainty yet at the same time opens up insights that challenge accepted norms of teaching and learning. PAPERS: Christopher Naughton, New Zealand Tertiary College 1a “They won’t be measuring anything…so what are the goals and purpose of the study?” A reflection on the philosophical terrain of Move, Act, Play Sing (MAPS) Work in progress Keywords: Arts | Early Childhood Education | Emergence | Deleuze ABSTRACT: With the increasing privatisation of seemingly no predetermined goals and education (Honan and Sellars, 2007; Steiner- purpose, addresses a facet of a philosophical Khamsi, 2004) schools and early childhood de-territorialisation of practice (Olsson, centres may see their educational priorities 2009) – where researchers look to what is as conforming to those of their local immanent (Deleuze, 1994) in the work that community rather than state legislature. This may unfold as opposed to measuring quote above was made by the mother of a achievement according to fixed learning child who was involved in one of the early outcomes. By looking at several instances childhood centres in the MAPS project from the MAPS narratives, the evolution of undertaken in Auckland New Zealand. The ideas can be traced with reference to dismissal by the mother of a project with emergent practice (Osberg & Biesta, 2008) 1 PESA CONFERENCE 2013 where community artists, teachers, children, 2007), allowing teachers to question the parents and researchers, enter into an prevailing culture of standardization, immanent plane (Deleuze, 1994) where their regulation and reduction of the Arts. An practice can be seen as constantly evolving answer to what the goals and purpose of the or becoming. project could be made categorically at the As teachers involved in MAPS started to conclusion of the project in terms of the art adopt more autonomy in the work of the making and sense of individuation (Deleuze, project, the children’s integrity and 1994) within the terms of a philosophical invention were sought above efficient enquiry rather than rigid curriculum procedures and striated evaluations (Mozère, definitions. [email protected] Bibliography: Honan, E. M. and Sellers, M. (2007). So how does it work? - Rhizomatic methodologies. In: Jeffery, P. L., AARE Education Research Conference 2006. Engaging Pedagogies, Melbourne, (1-9). 27 - 30 November 2006. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (Ed.) (2004). The global politics of educational borrowing and lending. New York: Teachers College Press. Ministry of Education. (1996). Aotearoa: Early Childhood Education. Wellington: Learning Media. Rinaldi, C. (2006) In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia: Listening, Researching and Learning (Contesting Early Childhood Series), London; New York: Routledge. Olsson, L.M. (2009) Movement and experimentation in young children’s learning: Deleuze and Guattari in early childhood education. London; New York: Routledge. Mozère, L. (2007) In Early Childhood : What’s language about? Educational Philosophy and Theory, 39(3), 291-299. Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and repetition. London: Athlone Press. PESA CONFERENCE 2013 2 John Roder, University of Auckland 1b Deleuze’s assemblages of desire: Mapping desiring machines that speak to arts based learning in early childhood settings Work in progress Keywords: affect | Deleuze | early childhood | arts | knowing with | power ABSTRACT: Recent critique of positivist research rational and where understanding learning in practices that have historically dominated terms of the rational autonomous learner has the field of early childhood education has little place. An aim then of the paper is to called for more exploration of approaches further explore the linkages in fluid spaces arising from ‘postfoundational’ philosophies where desire makes claims on curriculum, of education (Farquhar & White, 2013). on teachers as learners, on learners as Responding to this, and following Deleuze teachers, on environments as teachers, even & Guattari (1987) this paper explores the on environments as learners. Using counter- concept of ‘desire’ putting it to work in an narratives emerging from MAPS, arts based early childhood project (MAPS). cartographies are mapped that follow the Modernist narratives traditionally position material conditions and assemblages where desire in relation to a fantasised object. desiring machines construct, question and Deleuze and Guattari describe this view of speak to arts based learning. Further to this desire as ‘lack’ and this is linked with deficit understanding of desire, assumptions about takes on notions of childhood. Challenging the binary separation of adult and child the traditional narrative further Deleuze and worlds, and of human and non-human Guattari remove all claims to desire as a worlds are contested, opening up emergent natural and spontaneous flow. They argue space(s) and providing future provocations for desire as an assemblage, in which the to entrenched dominant practices in early construction of new assemblages is not childhood education. [email protected] Bibliography: Dahlberg, G., & Moss, P. (2005). Ethics and politics in early childhood education. London; New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Deleuze, G. (1983). Nietzsche and philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and repetition. London: Athlone Press. Deleuze, G. (2001). Pure immanence: Essays on a life. New York: Zone Books. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. London: Athlone Press. Edwards, C. P., Gandini, L., & Forman, G. E. (2012). The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia experience in transformation (3rd ed.). Santa Barbrara, Calif.: Praeger. 3 PESA CONFERENCE 2013 Farquhar, S., & White, E. J. (2013). Philosophy and Pedagogy of Early Childhood. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1-12. 10.1080/00131857.2013.783964 Jovanovic, S., & Roder, J. (2012). Disrupting the separation of adult and child worlds: Teachers’ identity and the ongoing flow of agency. In A. Fleet, C. Patterson, & J. Robertson (Eds.), Conversations: Behind early childhood pedagogical documentation. Sydney, N.S.W.: Pademelon Press. Lenz Taguchi, H. (2010). Going beyond the theory/practice divide in early childhood education: introducing an intra-active pedagogy. London; New York: Routledge. Massumi, B. (1992). A user's guide to capitalism and schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari (A Swerve ed.). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Olsson, L. M. (2009). Movement and experimentation in young children's learning : Deleuze and Guattari in early childhood education. London ; New York : Routledge, 2009. Rinaldi, C. (2006). In dialogue with Reggio Emilia : listening, researching, and learning. London; New York: Routledge. Semetsky, I (2006). Deleuze, Education and Becoming. Rotterdam: Sense Publications. PESA CONFERENCE 2013 4 Dr David Lines, University of Auckland 1c Deleuze and the Ocean Swimmer: Relationality and early childhood arts learning Work in progress Keywords: relationality | Deleuze | early childhood | arts | knowing with ABSTRACT: In education the idea of relationality is often Deleuze’s notion of difference and repetition viewed simply in terms of human (1994, p22-23) to consider the self as a relationships, typically between that of the relational learner who responds to the teacher and student. I argue that these moving and changing character of signs, readings become subsumed by dominant through engagement with the relational neoliberal discourses of standardisation and Other. The swimmer learns to swim through measurement. Recent research in New their relationality and responsiveness with Zealand in arts education and early the ocean wave, which emulates no childhood (Fraser, Price & Aitken et al, consistent shape or form but is constantly 2007; Richie, 2012), attends to moving and changing. Finally I show environmental and material conceptions of similarities between this Deleuzian learning relationality. I seek to further develop a and a story from an early childhood arts reading of relationality in education that is in project in Auckland New Zealand, (MAPS). tune with the environment, place, and space, One aim of the paper is show how the use of and that is also responsive to the changing a working metaphor disrupts normative signs and stimulants brought about through a interpretations of outcome-based early heightened awareness of the learning childhood learning and creates the potential environment. I employ a working metaphor for embodied and relational interpretations (Richardson, 1990) of the ocean swimmer of how children experience learning as (Deleuze, 1994; Semetsky, 2006) and use “knowing with”. [email protected] Bibliography: Aspelin, J. (2011) Co-Existence and co-operation: The two-dimensional conception of education, Education, 1(1), 6-11. Bergum, V. (2003) Relational