Abstract
A teacher educator phenomenologically researches with two studio teachers, creating a dynamic of three reflective practitioners making meaning of their time in the studios. They are reflective practitioners as they claim to practice learning and teaching in reflection, action and reflective action. In their team of three, they explore the question: How can reflective practices help us make meaning of our experiences in the early childhood studio? This team ventures to find meaning in their reflective studio encounters as they work together to reflect back on their experiences in a school’s studios. Working with small groups of children in two studios, these teacher researchers co-learn with children, in one studio about making family faces and the other about creating birds and nests. They bring together their trails and traces of learning – their documentation – to collaborate on reflecting back their experiences and make meaning of them to move forward in their work. In reflecting, problems arise with collaboration which leads to solutions of risking to listen, moving beyond comfort zones and more reflection.
Intentions and dilemmas
How can reflective practices help us make meaning of our experiences in the early childhood studio? Is there a purpose to reflecting on our teaching practices in an early childhood educational workspace? Can we find meaning in this practice of deliberate conversations and collaboration sessions to look back at our work as we keep moving forward in our practice? How does this propel us forward as practitioners and co-learners with our children? A problem in the early childhood work world rests in how we use our time and develop deep considerations of our work. Time to reflect, time to consider, time to create, time to listen, time to react. As Spiaggiari (2004) stated in a conference proceeding, ‘American educators have a tendency to slice up their time like the bacon slicer. Here in Reggio, we like to think of our time in terms of appointments of the day. Who and what we will encounter …’ How we ‘spend our time’ is one crucial matter to consider in early childhood work. The other is when and on what we will focus our attention (reflect) to improve practice.
Do we rush children from story time, to snack time, to circle time and outside time? What happens in and in-between these experiences? Are we listening to the children and ourselves as educators and co-learners (interchangeable with practitioners in our context)? Can reflection help educators become better listeners, gatherers of thoughts and ideas? While in this study, we may not have all of the answers to these questions. However, in reviewing literature on reflective practices and our own reflective results of this study, there are considerations which show the importance of reflection. These considerations lead us through our research aims to look at how reflective practices help us to make meaning of our experiences in the early childhood studio.
Teacher reflection literature
Deliberate teacher reflection is a complex and time-requiring activity. As Valli (1997) states, ‘A reflective person is someone who thinks back on what is seen and heard, who contemplates, who is a deliberative thinker … a reflective person gives careful consideration to important matters and is open to voices, opinions, and advice of others’ (p. 68). This is true of educators such as us in this study who are inspired by the Reggio Approach. We find that we must stay open to each other’s influence and voices and be able to look back together at what we’ve sought to accomplish.
Cadwell (2003) deliberates, ‘I also include stories from my life-memoir, which fits inside the puzzle of trying to make sense of these ideas in a personal context, not only a professional one’ (p. 10). Through journaling, collecting data, telling stories, listening to others reflect our own ideas back to us, and retelling our ideas, reflective practice begins to take shape in our teaching as we seek a Reggio-inspired approach. We found important layers to our own practices in Cadwell’s (2003) writing, ‘I will use my journals and our many collected notes, tapes, video clips, and photographs to recall the concrete, small details of real-life dramas in school and string them together through narratives’ (p. 10). Her ideas help to frame our way of collecting data, gathering our thoughts, and making sense of our experiences.
Furthermore, Valli (1997) eloquently describes the historical nature and involvement in the elaboration of teacher reflection by John Dewey: ‘Most educators who write and do research about reflective teaching and teacher education acknowledge their debt to John Dewey’ (p. 68). We turn to Dewey’s (1933) work, as he advocates, ‘The better way of thinking that is to be considered in this book is called reflective thinking: the kind of thinking that consists in turning a subject over in the mind and giving it serious and consecutive consideration’ (p. 3). Dewey (1933) describes reflective thinking not only as ‘a sequence of ideas, but a con-sequence – a consecutive ordering in such a way that each determines the next as its proper outcome, while each outcome in turn leans back on, or refers to, its predecessors’ (p. 4). The practice of reflective thinking leads us into reflective teaching practices and an increased appreciation of synergistic teaching and learning moments; those times in learning when both child and teacher or teacher and teacher develop shared meaning in the same moment. This process is a consequence of deliberate praxis or reflection and action practiced together and one in which we find our own work with young children.
Additionally, according to Silva (2001), ‘Schön discusses many experiences of practices – architectural design, psychotherapy (‘‘the patient as a universe of one’’), engineering design, science based professions, town planning and management to try to found similarities and differences in the way different types of practitioners reflect in practice’ (para 7). Schön (1987) visits the synergistic component of learning as described through the use of reflective teaching practices. ‘Reflection-in-action becomes reciprocal when the coach [teacher] treats the student’s further designing as an utterance, a carrier of meanings like ‘‘This is what I take you to mean’’ or ‘‘This is what I really meant to say’’ and responds to her interpretations’ (p. 101). This way of communicating and reflecting back what we hear, see, and understand brings us closer to shared understanding and creates meaningful curricular and project experiences between practitioners and children. Paraphrasing creates intersubjectivity (Rinaldi, 2006) or a ‘third-mindedness’ that exists between participants in dialogue. Schön’s reflection in action and paraphrasing habits become central tenant in our reflective research work as we look at one another’s work and engage our narratives to make meaning of them, especially as we seek meaning and reflect together on our work in the studios.
Our ability to question and grapple with what exists before our very eyes is sharpened with reflective practices. ‘If the inquirer maintains his double vision, even while deepening his commitment to a chosen frame, he increases his chances of arriving at a deeper and broader coherence of artifact and idea’ (Schön, 1983: 164). As Schön (1983) points out, tenaciously reflective practitioners (learners and teachers) broaden and deepen their knowledge of the individual and group thinking by studying and collaborating on the artifacts and ideas generated through the educational project and process. By looking back on the artifacts and recalling memories and experiences with a group we begin to sharpen our focus as we build on each others’ recollections, adding to each others’ knowledge of the experiences with this double-vision technique. This broadening and deepening of our knowledge is what we strive to achieve in our work to uncover the meaning of our experiences in the early childhood studio.
Reflective thinking is a special way of thinking (Sparks-Langer and Colton, 1991) and this is different for us than Dewey’s (1933) consideration of reflective action, which is also explored in depth by Schön (1983) as reflecting in practice or reflection that is tethered to moving us forward in our actions. These multiple ways of acting on reflection is important to our work in this reflective project.
Reflecting on practice or looking backwards on what we have already done, takes special consideration and time to accomplish such a task (McClure, 2005). ‘There is no doubt that ‘‘reflection’’ is a complex concept that has defied consensus on definition although some commonalities exist. It involves the self and is triggered by questioning of actions, values and beliefs’ (McClure, 2005: 3). Such reflected-on values and beliefs are then enacted differently or anew in our practice as we move forward in our daily learning and teaching.
Additionally, critical reflection helps us to reconstruct our point of view by looking critically on our self and our actions (alone and with others) to make improvements (Calderhead, 1989). This is a major part of our research task so as to not seem self-congratulatory or contrived about our work as we look upon it together in this study. As Jarvis (1992) states, ‘Reflective practice is something more than thoughtful practice. It is that form of practice that seeks to problematize … so the practitioners can continue to learn, grow and develop in and through practice’ (p. 180). An ultimate desire for our practitioner team is to continue to develop and deepen our practices together. As McClure (2005) suggests to us, we can maximize learning through critical reflection by finding our location in the experience and exploring the experiences and theories in new ways to understand our practices.
The practitioner’s personal and professional style or subjective educational theory is developed mainly by reflection on and in our practices (Keltchtermans, 1993). Reflection is a way in which practitioners weave theory and practice. As Schön (1983) first shows us, reflection enables us to uncover knowledge in and on action. Then, reflection raises attentiveness that changes practice (Schön, 1987). Challenging Schön, Greenwood (1993) reminds us that we must think through what we want to do before we do it, we must be intentional and reflect before we act (reflection-before-action); such as designing a research project and tentatively agreeing to the work (knowing there will be surprises along the way) before we enact our processes. Kuiper and Pesut (2004) suggest that reflection is a metacognitive process that supports thinking about our own thinking on experiences. Reflection in and on action leads to a metacognitive process, which grows us into to our critical inquiry stance and how we navigate our experiences. Through these many ways of reflection before, on and in practice, we address our question of how reflective practices help us make meaning of our experiences in the early childhood studio.
Research methods
This research is phenomenological. ‘Phenomenology has been referred to as a philosophy, a paradigm, a methodology, and equated with qualitative methods of research. Such wide usage can only create tangles of meaning’ (Patton, 1990: 68). Early philosophers, including Heidegger (1988), Hegel (1978), Sartre (1958) and others, paved a way for a more broadly viewed nature of an event. More recently, phenomenological research comes to life through the experience and meaning-making of lived-events (Byrne, 2001). Van Manen (1990) believes that phenomenology is an investigation of the meaning of the lived experience. As well, phenomenology is ‘an interpretivist tradition that gives priority to the meaning individuals make of their experiences’ (Sumsion, 2002: 2).
Sumsion’s (2002) and Van Manen’s (1990) views of phenomenology illumine our path for this research study about two studio teachers’ and the researcher participant’s lived-experiences and their meaning-making of teacher reflection in the studio. Borne out of a larger research project (Parnell, 2005), the purposes of this study is to consider the question: how can reflective practices help us make meaning of our experiences in the early childhood studio?
Asking research questions that seek out experiences, the researcher wishes to understand the studio teachers’ experiences by acting in the capacity of participant along side of the studio teachers in their studios, which is quite common in phenomenological research approaches. In this way, the researcher-participant reflects along side of the studio teachers to make meaning of the experiences in the episodes described as the results.
Approach
Many examples of phenomenological research studies come from the field of nursing and the field of psychology (Byrne, 2001). Phenomenology is a human science research method and a philosophy of ways to experience and make meaning of reality. As McClellend et al. (2002) point out, ‘Phenomenological research describes the world as it is experienced prior to any theories devised to explain it. Such research demands openness from the researcher so that implicitly understood experiences, such as learning, can be articulated’ (p. 4). Rinaldi’s (2006) stance on listening with all of our senses and with sensitivity to the welcoming of the other’s point of view is critical to our approach. This openness is accomplished by using such data collection methods as living in the field and taking field observations and notes, as well as living behind the lens and audio recorder to capture photographs as artifacts and audio recordings of events. This article aims to articulate our thoughtful group’s learning through the phenomenon of reflecting back our experiences while the researcher both participates as well as listens in on the experiences, pivoting the roles of engagement (curiosity for the experiences and living in and through the experiences).
The individual’s voice, each studio teacher’s voice and that of the teacher educator turned researcher-participant, has been fundamental in this study. We have sought out intersubjectivity in lived experiences (Rinaldi, 2006), brought each unique perspective to the forefront, and examined it in relation to ‘other’, subject, and surroundings. We believe intersubjectivity is the third mind existing between protagonists and generated out of working to understand the other.
We have also documented moments of shared meaning to demonstrate our learning. In the research, the studio teachers’ and researcher-participant’s experiences have been shown through the artistic and graphic languages and pictures that express what happens in the studio spaces. These recorded data have included many different forms of expression crafted from diverse interpretative media such as pictures, audio-recorded thoughts, and children’s displayed work revised by the studio teachers into books, narratives, gallery, or exhibit.
The researcher-participant and studio teachers’ voices and a copious amount of ‘I’ and ‘we’ language are present in the results, a typical response in phenomenological writing (Van Manen, 1990). This is purposeful and necessary in order to meet up with the phenomenological question asked in the study and to keep the lifeworld depictions intact. However, anytime the research-consenting children are mentioned by name in the descriptions, they are coded as pseudonym to protect their identity.
Data collection and analysis procedures
To develop results of studio teachers’ and researcher participant’s lived experiences and meaning-making, we have utilized numerous data sources including: artifacts (through photographs), direct studio observations, descriptions and interpretations in teacher journals, and recorded collaboration sessions. These sources have led us to explore the studio teachers’ and researcher’s journey into reflection. The choices of methods were used to demonstrate the experiences in this study.
Field observations, field notes, photographs as artifacts, teacher journals, and audio recordings of collaboration sessions, conducted during four weeks of a larger 12-week study, documented the lived-experience research journey. Field observations were conducted over a 30-minute period, where verbal language and physical movement were captured on paper in one-minute increments. Then, an additional 15-minute session of field notes was written free-form. Whatever was happening in the larger context of the room was jotted down or any one-on-one conversations between the researcher-participant and a child or studio teacher was recorded.
The researcher-participant captured photographs in the field as supplemental information to the field observations and notes. The researcher-participant’s data (documents) and other studio teacher documents were brought to each of the collaboration sessions for review and discussion; the discussion was captured in audio recordings during the collaboration periods.
The observations and notes were chosen as methods to best capture the phenomenon occurring as it happened. The idea behind using observational recordings is to describe people, patterns, and relationships among people and events and to record and make meaning of such recordings (Collen, 1984). ‘The importance of observation in addition to other data collection methods is that much of the thinking (or clinical reasoning) involved in clinical practice occurs at a rapid and subconscious level, particularly in experienced practitioners’ (Ajjawi and Higgs, 2007: 617). Through these sorts of observations, we can ‘enable practitioners to verbalize their reasoning, reflect upon it, and explain the rationale for it’ (p. 617). Discussing and reviewing recorded documents in collaboration sessions were chosen as methods for their ability to make meaning together by reflecting and thinking back over our experiences.
Meaning in the lived experience was sought before, through, and after the experiences. ‘In phenomenological research the emphasis is always on the meaning of lived experience. The point of phenomenological research is to ‘‘borrow’’ other people’s experiences and their reflections on their experiences in order to better be able to come to an understanding of the deeper meaning or significance of an aspect of human experience’ (Van Manen, 1990: 62). This shared meaning-making research created an arduous and thought-provoking phenomenological research analysis process.
We zoomed in on each of three experiences to determine its value, by asking what core experiences existed inside of the phenomenon. Opportunities during the collaboration session for checking in about the clarity of each narrative (developing a strong relationship between the meaning in the story and the text used to describe the story) became essential with the participants as readers of the text. The data were analyzed, revisited and distilled to create detailed portrayals of reflective experiences, through the context and artifacts.
The observational notes, collaboration session, and artifacts were segmented into various categories of ‘incidental and essential themes’ (Van Manen, 1990: 106) for examination near the end of this research study. ‘Phenomenological themes are not objects or generalizations; metaphorically speaking they are more like knots in the webs of our experiences, around which certain lived experiences are spun and thus lived through as meaningful wholes’ (Van Manen, 1990: 90). Three data sets were reported in the results and discussion section and then conclusions are drawn followed by implications for the future.
Contexts
The Child Development Center sits on an urban university campus in the US. This full-day school for young children serves more than 175 families with children ranging in age from four months through six years. The school was recently expanded and remodeled and has strong theoretical groundings in Piaget’s (1932, 1995) work also as interpreted by Chaillé (2007) and Kamii (2007a, 2007b), anti-bias education (Derman-Sparks, 1989), and social constructivism (Berk and Winsler, 1995; Vygotsky, 1980). In more recent years, the co-directors and many of the teachers in the school have been to visit schools across the US inspired by the educational work in the preprimary schools and infant toddler centers of Reggio Emilia, Italy. Several have been to visit the schools in Reggio and have found both a coming-home experience as well as surprise and innovation through such visits. Leaders from Reggio Children as well as Reggio-inspired US book authors and educators have been to the Center to frame professional development experience for our community.
During the renovation and expansion, the school added two large studios and two studio teachers in the second floor preprimary school and kindergarten. It added mini-studio spaces in the first floor infant and toddler areas as well. With the invitation to graphically represent thinking and creatively express, children, other teachers and parents are invited to utilize the studio spaces often; most frequently the children.
The tension between free flowing the children – coming and going from the studio and working with small groups in the studio – more particularly on project studies tied to emerging curriculum in classroom spaces, is a challenge for the whole school’s consideration.
As a co-director, it was easy for me to give up my rights and responsibility to supervise the teaching teams while playing the role of researcher-turned-participant, as was designed in the human subjects and ethical review. The other co-director becomes and remains the supervisor for the practitioners during and after the study so the official power dynamic shifts from supervisor to colleague. As well, the participants in this study had collaborated on work for so many years, one having played the role of the researcher-participant’s first director (25 years prior) and ongoing mentor. The other was a longtime colleague with over 30 years’ experience and a depth of life-experiences to lend to our sophistication in negotiation, facilitation of the project and amiable and critical encounters. We were grappling with issues as to how to ‘fit’ the studio into the larger context of school anyway as the three of us had already formulated strong commitments to working together.
The three protagonists have each worked in the field of early education for over 25 years, six of which have been together in this school, but 15 of which they had known each other. In the end and as researcher-participant, I wished to know the experiences in the studio, to live in the lifeworld called studio and be along side of the studio teachers.
Results of reflecting back: The meaning of our atelier experiences
‘We must reflect with the group in order to arrive at a context that listens.’ (Atelierista Marsha, Helen Gordon Child Development Center)
In this section, we explore the underlying research question: how can reflective practices help us make meaning of our experiences in the early childhood studio? We address this question through three narratives retold from the experiences.
One: Who knows what nose is the right nose?
Teacher reflection is an important factor in informing us, parents, other colleagues, and visitors of our small group’s previous thinking and the work in the atelier. As studio teacher Suzy has stated in her e-journaling, ‘Teacher reflection is very real. It is a way of getting to know children and families and look at them as individuals.’ She adds, ‘I sometimes wonder what they think about Suzy, about me as an individual? I want to see them grow and teach me what they know. At times, this makes me feel inadequate.’ I try to mirror what I am hearing Suzy say, ‘Reflection can feel scary at times. I wonder if reflection can bring about the vulnerability and listening we need in order to move forward in our work?’
I write in my journal that we both sit quietly and reflect on Suzy’s words together as we play with putting away the clay and putting up the beautifully configured faces our group of children have made. Madison’s (pseudonyms used) family of faces has a jotted note next to it, ‘We are all one big, happy family. So what if I made the noses too big! – jokes Madison.’ This is a note transcribed by Suzy but said by Madison. I overheard the conversation between Suzy and Madison as it happened, too.
I found it odd how Suzy and Madison heatedly discussed what noses might look like. Madison wanted the noses to look like the photos that we used as a tool to help discover what exists on the face. Suzy encouraged Madison to make the nose in any way she wanted. She didn’t have to ‘make the nose in just one way’. Madison wanted to make the ‘correct nose, you know Suzy, the one that looks like the photo’. Suzy thinks quietly and says, ‘Hmm, Madison do you want to feel my nose? See what it feels like? Or, you can feel a friend’s nose or your own?’ Suzy encourages, ‘Look around at the many wonderful noses there are in the world, Madison. There isn’t just one way.’ Madison begins to roll the clay. She declares that she is going to make her whole family, ‘all with many noses, but really, really big ones’. I ask, ‘Madison, does your family really have big noses. Look at mine, it is big and crooked.’ Madison lines up her ‘Family of Noses’ in clay. She laughs and I chuckle with her.
During a collaboration session with Marsha, Suzy and I come across the clay Madison had made (see Figure 1). Our reflective session begins with this exchange:
Why are these faces lined up?
Well, Madison wanted to create her whole family, but she really got stuck on the way noses looked. She wanted me to help her make them look real, like in the photos.
I wasn’t sure how to react, so I just watched and listened. Madison has a way with joking about but also being serious. Once she was watching Suzy and me chuckle out loud for no apparent reason.
As you two often do!
And, Madison turns to me and informs me that Suzy and I are just silly. She seems to get our playful nature.
But she didn’t want to play around with noses! She wanted them real and I wasn’t sure where to take her!
This is always hard to know where to go when a child has realized that what they do doesn’t match real life. How can we get them to understand that there are many ways to represent what they see in the world?
Madison’s family with noses
The conversation trails off into other directions and about other parts of children’s work from the week.
Discussion one
I had wondered how we would spend our time reflecting on episodes; what will show up as significant in our experiences remembered? It appears that we go where our attention and the documents take us. In the episode with Madison and the noses, I felt really uncertain as a participant, so I reverted to ‘researcher’ mode. I ask myself in my journal, ‘Is that an okay response for me? How do I live in the world of studio to understand the experiences of the studio if I step out of the experience? Do I do this naturally in life when I’m experiencing something I don’t know how to respond to?’
In this nose episode, as Madison says, ‘. . . correct nose, you know Suzy, the one that looks like the photo’. I feel shocked out of the experience and put on my listening ears; does this mean I’m more in the experience or less? Suzy keeps the experience rolling along so naturally. The question for me becomes, how do we know what to do as we stand there in front of competent children? A child who can understand what real looks like in the photo, but who doesn’t know how to make it come alive in their own representations is struggling intellectually, creatively and developmentally. How do we know what to do? How can we partner with the child to scaffold and give them a chance to explore, to create, and to understand the diversity of creation; in our own creations? These become the meaning in the experience.
I find that Suzy, Marsha and I propel ourselves forward through living in questions, rather than answering them. While uncomfortable for us, we let question linger in our collaboration sessions, such as in this case: ‘How can we get children to understand that there are many ways to represent what they see in the world?’ This becomes a question we don’t answer out loud. And, this process feels uncomfortable and good to us at the same time.
Two: Different pathways and taking social risks
As we explore the ideas of teacher reflection, I notice that Marsha’s thinking is on a different path than Suzy’s as she responds one morning after a session with children. ‘To reflect’, she pauses, ‘For me, this makes me think of the value of intentionality.’ She continues with an example of this intentional listening and explains that is how she selects groups to work together. She listens for their rhythms and their questions about the world around them. Marsha reflects in her e-journal, ‘Reflection pertains to the child, parent, and the teacher. It forms a better connection with what is going on in the school.’ Marsha more profoundly asks, ‘How do we expect that parents connect? Without groups and integrated research projects, parents would be hard pressed to understand the visual arts, academics, and socialization of our school context. We must reflect with the group in order to arrive at a context that listens.’
A parent has joined us for the egg hatching theory session and Marsha notices his level of discomfort around his unspoken role within the activity. He sits closely to his child and the small group he’s joined. On their own and as usual, the other groups warm up slowly but do begin to tell their stories, make up funny tales, and laugh with one another. Marsha and I take notice of the way the group of children with the hovering adult is laughing and talking, but not really ‘telling’ each other stories because, as Marsha later shares, ‘The parent was interjecting, hovering, and leading the group way too much. Sometimes I find it hard for parents as they step into a classroom adult role. It is so different and takes a lot of patience from everyone, especially the parent.’
This parent fairly abruptly leaves the studio without any interaction with Marsha and me and we feel this is unusual. Marsha turns to me, ‘Adults don’t know what to do! Not just teachers! Adults.’ I agree with Marsha and yet feel uncomfortable for the parent. This makes me reflect back on my own past experiences, ‘I didn’t know what to do with Suzy in the studio two weeks ago. Boy was I in crisis for a while. It feels better for me now, but still a bit nerve-racking at times. Marsha suggests, ‘He’ll (the parent) get there if he pays one-hundred percent attention, watches the children, and listens for the rhythm of the studio.’ I then say, ‘I feel like I am hatching from my egg! It’s a long process.’ After we mull over this thought of hatching, we go back to our work with the children.
I write in my journal, ‘There is a pendulum that swings between Marsha and me as we feel that we are gently holding our breath at intervals in the midst of making general decisions.’ We discuss this feeling at the end of our morning. It appears that we maintained minimal interaction with the children and none with the parent helper, which makes us feel badly. Marsha suggests that we have to think about, ‘What do we say? How do we say it? We speak to the children about the eggs, what they’ve seen, and what they are drawing. How do we do this with parents?’
We discuss how Andrea appeared to be struggling with what to draw. Using a technique I’ve learned from watching Marsha, I asked Estelle, ‘Can you share your drawing with Andrea of the bird coming from an egg?’ (see Figure 2). They got excited to join one another and worked together to draw and talk. In defaulting to Marsha’s expertise, I checked in with her, ‘I wouldn’t have just joined anybody together like that. They seemed ready?’ Marsha agreed with my decision and affirms, ‘The hum of the morning felt good.’ Maybe we are shedding our shells and becoming something new with our experiences? And, I wonder, ‘Maybe we have not quite figured out how to do this work with the other adults and parents yet?’
Sharing egg drawings in Marsha’s studio
Discussion two
Developing a context that listens requires the many venues we have explored already and many more we have yet to try. Currently, Marsha and Suzy tell me that they reflect with the school community by: Asking parents to review a project and comment on it or to directly experience the project and inform us about their views of it; Meeting with teachers on a weekly basis to reflect back what is happening in the studio and in the classroom; Asking children to explain what they are experiencing in the studios through morning meeting; Documenting commentaries and reviewing artifacts and photos as editorial tools; And, by developing both oral and written histories about the work of the studio, children, studio teacher, classroom, home, school and community.
I wonder if this community engaged reflection takes the work Schön (1983) suggests, when he describes the double vision in reflective practices. Remembering to double and triple back around on our experiences with others allows us to see other points of view and allows others into our meaning of experiences.
As Marsha has stated Probably the biggest difference between classroom teacher and me is that I have the time to develop this context. Let’s face it; there is a reality that exists for the classroom teacher. Her time is taken up by many daily in-classroom tasks so she should lean on me to develop the community aspects. This is just as I lean on a school coordinator or you to have even more connections outward from the school. It all works in tandem.
As for the experience with the parent, Marsha and I are left to wonder how to touch bases with him. Marsha suggests that for her it is taking a social risk that she is always willing to take to go back to the parent and revisit this situation. Risking to ask why he left, risking to hear the answer might be about something she or I did or did not do well; this is the lifeworld of the teacher. For me, I wonder which is more of a risk: to approach the parent and have a conversation and possibly build understanding or to ignore the situation, not find out and let the tension continue.
Three: Studio teacher frustration in the work
In our collaboration session Marsha says, ‘Teachers around you can create a negative influence with their attitude toward the studio and I didn’t see this in our visits to Reggio Emilia. I think they know what the Atelier [studio] is all about in Reggio.’ Later, Suzy discloses that ‘Everything revolves around the experiences. It can affect us positively or negatively. Every day, I have to think what am I doing? Why do it? Do the teachers care?’ As I continue to listen for the meaning behind these words during our subsequent sessions in the studio, I begin to understand a common and school-wide issue. Both Marsha and Suzy report to me that they feel their role ‘is misunderstood by teachers’. There is confusion about what they are supposed to be doing with children and in these spaces, which both agree, as Suzy says, ‘Feels like a lack of respect for us.’ Ultimately, the studio teachers’ roles in the school appear to be misread or not cultivated in a way to bring about their importance in the life of the school and each child’s experiences at the Center. This misinterpretation seems to be one of the biggest problems for them.
Marsha reports to me that ‘when the children come to the studio and have a sense of familiarity with the materials, the languages to use the materials, and the group project rhythm, then we can engage the children to work toward deeper meaning in their thinking’. Suzy agrees with this sentiment, ‘I think that as the classroom teachers take the time to collaborate on their work with us and vice versa, we all grow in how to share materials, tools, and applying them within the classroom and the studio.’
The studio teachers’ theory seems to be that it takes a combined effort put forth by the teaching team to learn to utilize the languages and materials of the studio. Marsha writes in her e-journal, ‘Children can gain more experience working in a studio way in various spaces across the school including in the classrooms. And, the community formulates a deeper understanding of the research project or study.’ I respond in my e-journal, ‘I don’t see this happening at present as I work in the studios with Marsha and Suzy. Perhaps this lack is due to the misunderstood role of the atelier and studio teachers?’
Phenomenologically, this reflection makes me wonder about the decisions I’ve made as a school leader. I press in on myself and what all I may have done wrong in communicating the intent of the studio across the school. I search for some answers as I feel plagued to consider the ramifications of my choices. Then, I find in my journal, ‘We have to start somewhere! Even if others don’t see my vision for the school yet, we’ll learn by doing the work together … walking through it together and listening to each other.’ I find some solace in this statement and return back to listening to Suzy and Marsha.
The family faces project with Suzy and the Ladybug classroom is as an example of this disconnection between classroom experiences and studio work. In our collaboration session, I ask Suzy to give details about her best and worst experiences capturing children’s learning. She says: The houses project with the Bumblebee classroom has been the best because of what they said and did. The teacher and I work closely together already and she understands what I am trying to accomplish in the studio because I understand what she is accomplishing in the classroom. There is a strong relationship between the Bumblebee classroom and the studio, just look in their classroom and you’ll see our shared work. If the teacher is studying houses, then I am furthering the study of houses in the studio.
In the end, the language of houses comes to life in the classroom, studio, and sometimes in the hallways of the school and at home when the classroom teachers and studio teacher work together. The studio teacher can carry the work from the classroom into the visual arts, down the hallways (see Figure 3), to other classrooms, into the parents’ hands, and out to the community around the school.
Angels and birds in the hallway
However, as Suzy has written, ‘The detachment I feel from the Ladybug room teachers and the classroom curriculum makes me frustrated.’ At one point, I note that: the teachers in the Ladybug room are literally just too busy to engage with our research project and are unfortunately missing out on huge experiences happening in the studio with our small group from their classroom. If only they could slow down and engage their colleagues in long-term strategic planning similarly to the way we are engaging children in the studio, some of their immediate problems may disappear. How can we help them to make this happen? What can we give to the teachers to help?
I read my journal notes to Suzy and she agrees and says: With the Bumblebee classroom I feel a part of community, seeing our school as a whole, where we all work together to create something new. This is why I started the dwellings project in the Ladybug classroom. I wanted that same feelings with these teachers, children, and parents to be across the school.
Suzy further declares, ‘In the end what matters to me is that I have to get back to a certain level of questions for myself anyway. What did those children say and do? What did I learn? Is this fitting with the classroom curriculum? And, what’s next?’ She ends our collaboration session by saying, ‘Apparently, building houses and clay figurines are not the solution to the Ladybug classroom and studio disconnection. But, what is?’ Suzy trails off with, ‘I love working with the Labybug teachers when we find time. We’ll have to keep searching for a way in . . .’ We walk away.
Marsha echoes Suzy’s sentiments about connection and teacher collaboration in a slightly different way at our final collaboration session (Figure 4). Marsha states, ‘Having other places where people in the school who do the work with you makes the studio experience recognized in a larger way.’ She takes the idea of studio into a more expanded view of importance in the life of the school. Marsha says: This year, children really embrace longer periods of time to study a subject in the studio and back in the classrooms. Their attention span is elongated due to their confidence level with the studio materials, my encouragement of art integration into the home, and maintaining a relaxed atmosphere in what other teachers think about the flow of the day between classroom and studio. This is not easy work! The teachers acknowledge it and we know it together.
Suzy and Marsha’s final collaboration session in Marsha’s studio
Discussion three
While the frustration of bumping into one another’s ‘rough edges’ (Cadwell, 2003) appears to happen in the daily experience of studio and classroom teaching, it is the larger issue of knowing and understanding the studio and studio teachers’ role that makes the biggest difference to Suzy and Marsha. They both communicated with me that they now feel heard about the underdeveloped meaning of their important and integral role in the school and assure me that in the upcoming fall we will introduce their role in a new and mindful way to the other staff and parents. Maybe this is what re-searching is for, to come up with solutions to big problems that we had not articulated before in our experiences in the school?
As Marsha shared with me, conflicts do happen in the teaching team in regard to the daily flow, the curriculum planning, and the discussions around the curriculum and project decisions. ‘Project planning comes slowly in a larger group of teachers and I try to include parents in the process . . . there is this kind of spiritual thing about it. I feel that in the Reggio schools and here too. Where it is just out of love and everyone is doing their best. You just have to love everyone. I mean, you’re going to have your bad and good days, but it’s just all out of love.’ While I understand where Marsha is coming from, I also wonder what else it takes; patience, listening, accepting myself as a protagonist in the school, honoring other protagonists as agents of change in the school, reflecting back and reviewing (Figure 5) and knowing that there is this life bigger than me alone which may take us in directions we never expected. How can we stay open to this movement? I wonder if this staying open is couched in Rinaldi’s (2006) intersubjectivity and listening, where shared understanding and building on shared values and meaning of the studio is the way we construct together our studios. Maybe it also takes Schön’s (1987) reflection-in-action and paraphrasing habits as practiced values in the school culture.
Reflection and review
Ultimately, we find that educators must articulate and express their professional beliefs, assumptions and values held in the ways we teach and learn as well as reflect together to create new meaning in school experiences. Such processes develop understanding, such as when Marsha and Suzy explain their feelings of disconnectedness from classroom teachers and we expound on creative solutions to their dilemma.
Conclusions
Is this our ending? Is it a new beginning? Or, is it simply just life continuing on in an ever unfolding web of experience? Where in the mundane have we found our extraordinary moment? Is it in the act of listening and talking together about the problems our school encounters with adding new ideas, such as a studio space? Or, is it in the in-between – the reflecting back that sits inside of each one of us?
Through a collegial and collaborative reflection, the research team has come to believe in a school which practices a strongly held set of values, such as the one of teacher-reflection. As the results indicate, reflecting on our experiences can push us out of our comfort zone not only in the studio spaces and classrooms, but all over the school and with and about family relationships. We begin to see this clearly as we reflected back on the first two episodes with the child who wants to make real noses and then the visiting parent who abruptly leaves the studio. As we found, an uncomfortable air existed in our experiences together but we had to revisit and listen to the frustrated child and the parent who walks away. We have to find out what was happening for them, even to risk hearing that we were a root cause of some problem.
Furthermore, Gandini et al. (2005) state, ‘The whole school has to be a large atelier, where children and adults find their voices in a school that is transformed into a great laboratory of research and reflection’ (p. 170). These words underscore a valuable construct for organizing the next stages of growth in our program as it relates to our third experience between the Ladybug teachers and Suzy. We find a desire to move away from fragmentation, isolation, and separation between classrooms, ‘shared spaces’ and the studio.
We realize that it is not solely the studio teachers’ charge to construct a deep and meaningful connection out into the school; this must appear in concert with each school participant, child, parent, teacher, administrator, cooks, housekeeper, and studio teacher and in each school space, possibly constructed through a new role of pedagogical director. I wonder how this role can play out with the current power structures and dynamics. Will the teachers be open to me playing a new role pedagogically? What will this do to the studio teacher’s role? These questions become our implications for more action and reflection.
I now embark on a journey to forevermore change my role in the life of this school. I move from a position of administrator to one of pedagogical director, where I focus the school on the values, the listening, the double-takes, the pathways to understanding, the naming our assumptions and the letting go of old ways of seeing and believing. In taking a strong pedagogical role, I collaborate and reflect with teachers about our work together and the frameworks we co-create.
As we develop our school context through reflection, a school that listens for the rhythms of the community’s thinking and work, we become something more than we were before. The implications of this research and the valuable reflection herein bring forth more deliberation; deliberation about our actions, our research and our ability to listen and reflect as we advance our work. We deserve the time to think about our journey and the theories we build as teachers of young children. We must not waver from an ecosystem which stimulates ‘a sort of psychic skin, an energy-giving second skin made of writings, images, materials, objects, and colors, which reveals the presence of the children [staff, parents, community] even in their absence’ (Ceppi and Zinni, 1998: 16). And, we must carve out our third mind (intersubjective) spaces for meeting up to work within each others’ thinking, and grapple and toil in the labor of loving children and school community. These experiences move us into the unknowing, wondering what comes next in our practice of reflection.