Learning Spaces

Learning Spaces:

This past weekend I visited a learning space that is called Cookies and Canvas (When adults are there it is called Wine and Canvas).  This spot offered a perfect opportunity for my observation, as one of my children was attending a birthday party there.  At first glance, I thought Cookies and Canvas might be the perfect example of what this assignment called a “creative learning space”.  It did initially seem to fit the criteria, which called for a place where people are creating projects -- and learning from one another as part of the process. 

When first entering the space, it felt inviting, there were paintings lining the walls, a small snack bar area, and small easels, and paint smocks for children to use when they paint.  There were paint splatters on the tables, smocks and floors indicating that it was okay to explore with paint. When the painting part of the party began, what I found was that this art studio had adopted many of the “school project” procedures and policies and was not what I had dreamed it would be.

The projects created in this space were acrylic paintings that were replicated from the teacher’s sample onto each individual’s canvas.  The children were situated in rows to face the painting instructor, who sat on an elevated seat with a larger easel at the front of the room.  Every child made the SAME picture as the instructor.  It was as if I had walked into a very top-down traditional classroom. Every stroke of the paintbrush was modeled before the kids were turned lose to create the very same stroke on their own canvas. This process took up a ‘follow the leader’ approach to painting.  It was the opposite of discovery learning in which Kafai, Peppler, & Chapman (2009, in The Computer Clubhouse) explain that learning happens as children interact with a carefully considered learning environment without the use of direct instruction.  Alternately, in this place there was only direct instruction and no open ended design, this was instructionism to it’s core.

The 8 children, all young girls, sat quietly as the instructor demonstrated each step.  While the rules and norms were not explicitly covered, the children somehow knew that they should fall in line to obey the teacher instructions and to silently await the next steps.  They were performing “good student” identities.  They must have “read” the whole situation and taken on the assumed roles from clues they found from the layout of the space. If someone was talking when the teacher had something to say, she would announce, “ I need everyone’s attention please.” This set the tone for not being chatty.

The birthday girl may have chosen the painting she wanted to do for her party, but it was the instructor who wielded the power to get all these girls to make the same painting.  Interestingly, no one went off course or tried something unique with the paint, not one child tried to bust out of the scripted ‘paint by stroke’ curriculum.  In Chapter 1 of The Computer Clubhouse (2009) Rusk, Resnick, & Cooke assert that  the core of the Clubhouse learning approach is that young people don’t simply interact with technologies, they design and create with technologies.  This focus on construction, design and creation was missing from the painting experience at Cookies and Canvas.  Children at the party were interacting with paint, but they were not creating or exploring with paint. 

This space wasn’t set up for social interactions as the seats were in long rows, with easels blocking the view of the person across the table.  Children did talk quietly to neighbors about supplies that they needed and how they thought they were doing with their paintings, but there didn’t seem to be collaboration or sharing of ideas, nor did this room set-up appear to have a goal of supporting or encouraging collaboration.   All the mentoring came from the instructor. The only roles that were visible were those of the instructor/teacher and her pupils.  

The materials present included smocks, easels, paints (limited to the colors in the painting on display by the instructor), brushes, paper towels, and water. The colors being limited definitely lessoned the possibility of children creating deviations to the scripted painting.  The materials were authentic and calling to the children to create their own masterpieces, although their voices weren’t heard. The space itself seemed to quiet to be creative.  Adding music and some flexibility in what the kids can paint would be very welcome by this party attendee. 

My daughter left the party with a cute painting that she was proud of.  She seemed to enjoy the whole experience overall.  I left wondering if the children’s understanding of themselves as artists was decreased today.  Will they see painting as a process that they aren’t capable of doing on their own?  Will they think that in order to succeed as a painter, their work needs to look like other peoples?  What messages did my daughter absorb about her potential as an artist? 

As I read about the Computer Clubhouse (2009) I felt like this painting experience was very deprived. It certainly got me wondering.  What would the children have created if Cookies and Canvas adopted a creative design spiral (pg. 19),  as the Clubhouse programs did?  What if the children could have imagined what they wanted to do, then created a project based on their own ideas, all while having  had the opportunity to experiment with alternatives and finally, share their ideas and creations with others?  I’d like to think that many meaningful masterpieces might have grown from that.

Object To Think With...

My “object to think with” has been with me for 45 years.  It has been plucked from boxes headed to Goodwill at the last minute, and moved across the county numerous times.  My own children played with it and now are driving their own cars…yet it remains.

This special toy from my childhood is the 1972 Playskool Take- Apart Car with tools and people. This toy provided me with many hours of screwdriver-and-wrench assembly experience. The axles were large screws. The headlights and taillights used smaller screws and nuts, as did the wooden sides of the car. One of the trickier parts was getting the tabs for the hood and trunk in the holes when assembling the sides.  The interesting thing is that this toy came out in the 1970’s when toys were being marketed as very gender specific, I knew that this toy was “meant” for boys, but I wanted it anyway.

According to Papert (as cited by Kafai, 2006), physical objects play a central role in the knowledge construction process.  When I began playing with this physical object,  it was something that I did with my Dad, as I recall I also did Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys with my Dad.  This brings back sweet emotions about time spent with him. I enjoyed building and these toys gave me a place to practice and experience building.  I liked working with the tools and having a sense of accomplishment every time I put the car together on my own (even though I rebuilt the same car over and over). Kafai (2006) writes that “Papert’s constructionism views learning as building relationships between old and new knowledge in interactions with others, while creating artifacts of social relevance.” These ‘old’ experiences with my Playskool car may be what helped me later in life to have confidence in learning to change a tire and check my oil, use my imagination, and explore how things are made. I was never afraid to take things apart and put them back together again, or build birdhouses and candleholders in woodshop as a middle school student.  As an adult, I enjoy volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, could this be a lingering result of my early exploration?  

Maybe the most important lesson I was learning was that that girls can build and they can play with cars!  It went against the dominant messages that society was constructing for me at that time. 

Today, many toys have evolved in ways that allow for more options in building and creating.  This toy was great at the time, but very structured in the ways that it can be built.  It is made for consuming and following directions not creating.  This toy, followed the canonical style, as it was abstract and rule driven( Turkle & Papert, 1992). There is a right way and a wrong way to put the car together and it won’t work if constructed differently than the preplanned way. 

In the future, I hope for toys that don’t have a predetermined structure, rather, that they might allow for the diversity of children’s thoughts and experiences and allow them to design and create their own products and ways to approach the tasks.  Turkle and Papert (1992) write that equal access to even the most basic elements of computation requires an epistemological pluralism, accepting the validity of multiple ways of knowing and thinking.  This acceptance for multiple ways of thinking and knowing should not be limited to computation and subjects of science, it needs to spread to toys, classrooms, social sciences, art, music, and computer designs.  This type of innovation could produce what Papert and Harel (1991) call  “radical change in how children learn.”

Kafai, Y. B. (2006). Constructionism. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.) Cambridge Handbook of Learning Sciences. Cambridge MA: Cambridge University Press, pp. 35-46.

Papert, S. (1991). Situating Constructionism. In I. Harel & S. Papert (Eds.), Constructionism. Norwood, NJ:Ablex Publishing Corporation. 

Turkle, S., & Papert, S. (1992). Epistemological pluralism and the revaluation of the concrete.   Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 11(1), 3-33.

What is learning?

Learning is a construction process radically affected by interactions, backgrounds, languages, understandings, connections, experiences, cultures, actions,  multimedia, locale, emotions, relationships, gestures, materials, opportunities, and engagement.  In order to understand learning, it is important to think about all the different ways that our lives are affected by each interaction and also to understand that we are always changing--this results in learning.  Every interaction results in some form of learning-doesn't it?  I touch the stove and get burned; I learn to be more careful.  My grandmother comments that the length of my skirt is "interesting"; I learn that she doesn't approve of my dress and that I need to watch what I wear around her.

Whitmore, Martens, Goodman & Owocki (2005) write about Transactional Theory in literacy learning.  This theory helps me think about learning. They write that;

"The fundamental ideas of a transactional theory are defined by the work of John Dewey and Louise Rosenblatt and further informed by Kenneth Goodman’s language development and L. S. Vygotsky’s learning theories. Dewey (1938) says that, “An experience is always what it is because of a transaction taking place between an individual and what, at the time constitutes his environment” (p. 43). Rosenblatt (1976) adds that transaction is a poem—“the interrelationship between the knower and what is to be known” (p. 27). A transactional view of reading and writing means that we see literacy as a meaning construction process, and that within a given literacy event, both the text and the reader/ author are changed."  

I think my ideas around learning are informed by a transactional view of learning that demands words like transactional, interrelationship, meaning construction, process, and changing. Whitmore et. al., (2005) write that Vygotsky says learning begins long before school, meaning all school learning must be viewed as a continuation of a previous learning history. A critical feature of Vygotsky’s view of learning as it affects transactional theory is that learning awakens a variety of internal developmental processes that operate only when children are interacting with people in their environments and in cooperation with their peers.

I created a pictorial representation of my early thinking about learning, each sector represents another area of learning that is important. The reason that the list won't do on it's own is that it neglects the interconnectedness and action between and among the sectors.  Only a visual can show that. Currently, the seven sectors include:

1. We learn by doing, trying, making mistakes, having fun, and engaging in activities and with materials. Learning is active and involves doing something.
2. Learning is Social.  We learn with others who are experts or learning with us.  We learn with our peers through play, talk, listening, feedback, and their reactions to our lives.
3. We learn through interactions with multimedia like tv, books, computers, music, lyrics, billboards, visual images, video, movies, pop culture and more.
4. Learning is environmental and depends on spaces and places.  It is affected by nature, cultures, experiences and languages.
5. Learning is fluid, ongoing, relentless, and always changing us. It begins at birth and ends with we die.
6. Leaning is built on prior experiences and our past histories, families, cultures.
7. Learning involves emotions.