Bodies
What can our bodies tell us about children's experience of school?
We often rely on words and on vision to tell us about what we want to know.
However, an approach that values all our senses opens up possibilities of different kinds of knowledges. In our research we acknowledge how important embodied experience is in children’s practices and ways of coming to know. We have found equivalents in our own research methods which have all involved being led by processes, materials, bodies and things.
In this thread, we look in particular at the importance of bodies in the research of Amanda Ravetz, Anna Macdonald, and Becky Shaw.
In 'Movement' and ‘Sitting’ we hear from Anna Macdonald and Amanda Ravetz about their different practical approaches to sharing what Amanda experienced in school as a class member in nursery and reception, in 'Position of Child'.
In Sensing, Becky Shaw discusses a child-led investigation of school with unusual viewing and listening apparatus to explore the school and 'oddness' in new ways.
When we think of bodies we might think the flesh and bone of our human forms, we might also think of the collective noun, a body of people.....or a non human body, a mass, material. All of these are relevant to this project.
Movement
Image description: drawing made by Amanda during her field work, after a day in Nursery class. These drawings document her feelings of being swept along by the flows and forces of movement with children.
What can we know as adults about what it feels like to be part of a cohort of nursery or reception class children?
To feel included - empathised with, accepted, befriended; to feel different - too big, too 'other'?
“Inhabiting ‘Position of Child’, attending to how I, and others, have handled my own ‘odd’ identity, has led me to notice more about how difference arises, its affective presence, what it feels like to have bodily or personal differences pointed out by others, or to notice these in others, and the way difference is responded to by self and others.
Odd, when it sticks, can lead to a feeling of being wrong, awkward, excluded, disconnected...
When I was in Position of Child...instead of putting my attention on moving, I was in movement all the time”
Since her time in school, Amanda has worked closely with movement artist Anna Macdonald to develop ways of sharing her experiences in ‘Position of Child’ that involved being caught up in moving flows with children. These workshops involved adults who work with or care for children, who are involved in research with children, or who are training to work with children.
Image description: photographs documenting movement workshops by Anna Macdonald, showing adult bodies in movement: from tiny subtle movements of the hands to leaps and big gestures, alone or swept along in movement with others.
Why does embodied knowledge matter for adults working with children?
Sitting
During the Covid 19 pandemic, the movement workshops were adapted to online participatory experiences, really testing the possibility of doing work that is embodied and participatory whilst remote from one another.
In a session for undergraduate students training to work with children as teachers, teaching assistants, play workers and educational psychologists, Anna and Amanda introduced some of the somatic (bodily) methods. This exercise on sitting became a way in for the students to sense the significance (in their own bodies) of occupying a position physically, and what can emerge from this.
Image description: a screengrab of a shared Padlet board about the experience of sitting, showing images of people sitting in different ways and situations, and words about sitting contributed by participants in a workshop.
As adults, how can we explore our embodied knowledges, to understand something about children’s experiences?
Sensing
What happens to our understanding of school, when we pay closer attention with all our senses, or use new tools for sensing?
Using stethoscopes, tuning forks, close-up cameras and cable cameras, artist Becky Shaw invited year 4 children to take her on a tour of the school to search for smells, sights, sounds and feelings that might be 'odd'.
Moving around school in ways not usual to the school day, recording unexpected and unusual aspects of the building, they attended to what happens when humans, spaces, objects, textures, sounds, apparatus interact - and what actions, feelings and sensations arise.
The instruments generated different movements and forms for relationships between children as well as a different physical ‘contact’ with the surface of the school.
Image description: a child’s hand holds a mirror against a piece of furniture, accessing a different perspective of a surface in school.
“I am inviting the children to take me on a tour, to see if we can locate oddness in the school space.
We will go looking for smells, sights, sounds, tastes and feelings that are ‘odd’... I’m trying to find phenomena where building and child touch to make affect or experience.
This might be impossible!”
As with Amanda's work, Becky's 'sensing' approaches offer us ways to think about our experiences as something always evolving, rather than fixed, and how we are always part of an entanglement with other people, material, and relations.
These threads of research challenge our ideas of separateness.
Image description: a child’s finger holds the the pad of a stethoscope against the dusty ground.
How might recalling sensory memories of spaces we have known help us to attune to the spaces of school and the experiences of children?
Caring
The Odd project was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The touching, sensing, movement and close-looking that shaped the various approaches of the team was no longer possible. Instead, most children at Alma Park stayed at home and experienced the first months of this unprecedented situation away from the people, processes, rhythms and textures that made up their school life.
Image description: ‘Spanish moss’ hanging with instructions on how to care for it, provided by the garden centre from which Becky bought the plants.
When they came back, staff at Alma Park decided to focus on ‘well-being’ during the rest of the term as a way to recognise how difficult it was and to help the students feel better. Becky Shaw was invited in to contribute and, turning over ideas of gifts, care and ‘well-being’, brought in some ‘odd’ plants…
Image description: an air plant bought by the teacher following Becky’s gift of ‘odd’ plants. The plant is hung within a shell in the classroom. Photograph taken by the teacher.