In this presentation, we explore how children engage with space and matter while they dance. In particular, we seek to contribute knowledge on if and how children develop motor skills, physics learning, and dance learning simultaneously in dance events.
In line with posthumanist perspectives (Barad 2007) we assume that learning emerge from within child-matter entanglements, as children make themselves intelligible to the material world, while the material world makes itself intelligible to them. When children step up on a bench, for instance, they ’need to relate to how much force that is needed and how the body should maintain balance in this action’ (Svanbäck-Laaksonen 2020, p.41, translated from Swedish). Children make themselves intelligible to the bench, while the bench makes itself intelligible to them. Moreover, one could say that children who step up and down on a bench show bodily signs of trusting what they and the bench can do together. We use ‘trust’ (Areljung et al., 2023) to capture bodily sign of children’s learning in dance events.
The presentation builds on a video provided by the Swedish National Agency for Education (n.d). In the video, children dance with the floor, with dance scarves, with air, and with other children. When we analyse the video, we first look for verbs that capture child-matter entanglements related to motor skills, physics and dance. Examples of such verbs are that children and matter ‘spin’, ‘jump’, ‘lean’ and ‘turn’ together (see Areljung 2020 and Svanbäck-Laaksonen 2020). Second, we attempt to unpack the potential learning that emerges within these verbs/entanglements. At these stages, the three of us focus on one learning perspective each: motor skills, physics, and dance.
We discuss what happens when we merge our three learning perspectives, attentive to the overlaps and differences that come into play when (dis-)trustful child-and-matter events are viewed in relation to motor skills, physics and dance at the same time.
In the activities of the Nordic preschools, there are motor skills, physics and dance. This presentation can contribute to increased understanding and new learning perspectives on how motor skills, physics and dance can appear simultaneously in dance events.
References
Areljung, S. (2020). Capturing the world with verbs: Preschool science education beyond nouns and objects. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 21(1), 70-82.
Areljung, S., Bäckström, L., & Grenemark, E. (2023). Young children’s learning in physics: a (dis-)trustful play with gravity, friction and counterforces?, European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 31:4, 660-672, https://doi.org/10.1080/1350293X.2023.2177320
Barad, K. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press
Skolverket (n.d). Dans i förskolan – estetik, identitet och hälsa. https://youtu.be/Kin2AQ2EaOs
Svanbäck-Laaksonen, M. 2020. Tvååringars Spontana Utövande av Grundläggande Motoriska Färdigheter i Daghem. Forskning om Undervisning och Lärande 8(2): 25–45.
2024.