The problem of engagement
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Presentation to PESA November 2014. How use of Deleuze and Guattari's philosophical concepts can help us understand the limited ways in which early childhood teachers are reported to engage with children's working theories. Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy also provides some possible solutions leading me to put forward strategies for a pedagogy of engagement with the materiality of the teaching and learning event.
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The problem of engagement
- 1. Vicki Hargraves University of Auckland PESA 2014 A Pedagogy for Engagement: Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism for engagement at a molecular level Or, On how to fly with bee theory
- 2. Working theories • “Magical and creative” (Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 44) • Become – “more elaborate and useful”... – “more widely applicable and have more connecting links” (Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 44) • Pedagogical techniques: – Disequilibrium (Lovatt, 2013) – Scaffolding, mediation (Davis & Peters, 2011) l i m i ts maps and tracings
- 3. Increasing creative capacity Creative thinking spaces for enlarging what it is possible to think difference variation creative interactions & self-development productive & inventive lives increased capacity to affect and be affected life-affirming & capacity-enhancing affects
- 4. • Problem of Creative Thinking • Possible Solutions: striation tracings opinion transcendental empiricism & becoming-other, mapping molecularity
- 5. ‘The machine makes the pollen then it makes it into honey. The holes are the honey.’ ‘Honey drops the honey into the pollen … then use its tongue to turn the machine on then it turns the pollen into honey.... It drops the honey into the machine. It drips it from its tongue. He carries it in his legs then he puts it on his tongue... The honey turns it and makes it moosh and turns it into honey. Like I stir my ice cream into ah ah ice cream moosh. When I stir it I moosh it up....You know something … he carries the honey in his arms, then he puts it on his tongue and then drips it the honey into the machine.’ (Peters & Davis, 2011, p.12-3)
- 6. J ‘Yes! How many bees live in the hive?’ P ‘Ah, maybe two.’ J ‘Two bees?’ P ‘Yeah [emphatically]. One is the Dad, one is the Mum.’ J ‘How many babies do they have.’ (P was thoughtful for a while then slowly raised three fingers) PR3 ‘So there are five bees in there if you count the babies.’ P ‘One, two, three’ [she raises one finger at a time]. J ‘What happens to the honey after they’ve made the honey?’ J ‘How do they put them into the jars?’ J ‘Why do they [bee keepers] wear a hat?’” (Peters & Davis, 2011, p. 13). ❶❷❸❹❺ J and PR3 are parent-practitioners in parent-led education service, P is the child
- 7. Immanent plane “collective assemblages rising and falling according to inextricably entangled fields of force” (Cole, 2012, p. 13) Non foundational Flux Creativity Movement Difference
- 8. Creative thought • composed of local, more supple and diffuse connections • capable of continual variation • libidinal and unconscious • “microentities, processes, creations – tiny things (singularities) that destabilize the perception of a whole” (Jackson, 2010, p. 582)
- 9. Thought as repetition • opinion (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994) • “ready made facilitating paths” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 49) • “a more habitual assemblage” (O’Sullivan, 2010, p. 199) • seductive recourse to easy information Striation
- 10. Tracings Animalia Chordata Anthropoda Insecta Arachnida Hymenoptera Lepidotera So how do we get back in touch with the multiple molecular intensities and singularities of the teaching and learning event, and loosen the tracings laid over events? •Forms colonies •Agricultural pollinators •In decline pollen basket on hind leg warning colouration pile: long branched setae Genus Bombus proboscis sting
- 11. Possible Solutions: Creative strategies • Transcendental empiricism (Deleuze, 2006) and becoming-other (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) • Mapping (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987)
- 12. "Becoming animal, plant, molecular, becoming zero” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 169)
- 13. Mapping links connections change transformations
- 14. children teachers EC cEeCn cteren t&re m &a tmearitaelirtiyality
- 16. References Cole, D. R. (2012). Matter in Motion: The educational materialism of Gilles Deleuze. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44, 3-17. doi:10.1111/j.1469-5812.2010.00745.x Davis, K., & Peters, S. (2011). Moments of wonder, everyday events: Children’s working theories in action. (Summary). Wellington: Teaching and Learning Research Initiative. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi Trans.). London, England: Bloomsbury Academic. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1994). What is philosophy? (H. Tomlinson, G. Burchell Trans.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Jackson, A. Y. (2010). Deleuze and the girl. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23(5), 579-587. doi:10.1080/09518398.2010.500630 Lovatt, D. (2013). Children’s working theories: Invoking disequilibrium. (Unpublished masters' dissertation). University of Auckland, Auckland, NZ. Ministry of Education. (1996). Te Whāriki: He whaariki maatauranga mo ngaa mokopuna o Aotearoa. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media. Peters, S., & Davis, K. (2011). Fostering children's working theories: pedagogic issues and dilemmas in New Zealand. Early Years, 31(1), 5-17. Retrieved from internal-pdf:// peters and davies-3977565696/peters and davies.pdf
- 17. Attributions In order of use: Beeinflightfromfront by pdphoto.org [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Kloecker Primeur by Ingo Klӧcker [CC-BY-SA-3.0-de (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/ 3.0/de/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons Old map by Enrique Flouret: https://www.flickr.com/photos/photoshoproadmap/7564212902/ Bee designed by Janet Cordahi from the thenounproject.com Ice Cream designed by gayatri from the thenounproject.com Maze by Civertan (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Human brain illustrated with millions of small nerves by Johan Swanepoel, via https://www.flickr.com/photos/arselectronica/ Bumblebee by Xlibber (Bee Uploaded by russavia) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Wolf girl by Daniel Kulinski, via https://www.flickr.com/photos/didmyself/14406667676/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/didmyself/14406667676/ Linkedin maps data visualization by Luc Legay, via https://www.flickr.com/photos/luc,viz Water droplets by SAİT71 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Editor's Notes
- My subtitle comes from a Working theory that I have taken from the existing research literature where a child imaginatively theorises how it is that bees make honey. In exploring this working theory, I also will look at the response the child receives from early childhood practitioners. Several research studies note that although ece practitioners note the creativity of these working theories, they feel duty-bound to ensure the child develops the correct knowledge through their intervention. This powerful urge or force for the predominance of particular knowledge formations working through educators is one thing I want to examine today. I argue that it prevents a full engagement with the child, their thinking, and the materiality of the teaching and learning event within which thinking is immanent.
- Recent research on pedagogical practices surrounding working theories and my own personal experience as an early childhood teacher and centre leader, suggest that teachers believe they have a role in supporting children to refine their theories to align with universally accepted theories or standardized knowledge. Te Whāriki suggests children's theories are gradually modified as experience increases and this description thus allows for theories to be inaccurate, even “magical and creative” with eventual modification expected. This too might imply that the initial creativity should be overwritten with facts at some point. The research gives examples of teachers who feel uncomfortable not to correct a theory they know is erroneous, because they feel accountable for children's knowledge : what will the parents think if they don't correct the child? Pedagogical actions which have been explored in the literature thus far, such as constructivist notions of provoking disequilibrium for cognitive change, and of sociocultural notions of the teachers’ role in scaffolding or mediating thinking, provide less of a model for encouraging further creativity, and more of a channelling of thinking in the direction of universally agreed knowledge and standard theories and explanations for phenomena, using transcendent epistemologies founded upon beliefs such as that the observable facts of science of observable facts have the greatest value . Now I want to use the philosophical concepts of Deleuze and Guattari, particularly the cartographical notions of smooth and striated space, of maps and tracings, of molar and molecular movements to help us think about what's going on, and to explore how a Deleuzo-Guattarian provoked understanding might be productive in creating something new, in this case, a pedagogy of engagement with the materiality of the teaching and learning encounter, that enhances the production of creative thought, both for the practitioner and the child
- But if we were to offer teachers an alternative conception of working theories as a curricular space for creative thinking, if we were able to resist the push for accuracy, what kind of pedagogical action would enhance the child’s creative thinking? That is the second goal of my presentation today, to put forward some pedagogical strategies that open creative thinking spaces for enlarging what it is possible to think. These are strategies that might help both adults and children to draw on difference and variation in order to be more inventive and imaginative in their thought and therefore increase their creative capacity. I read Deleuze and Guattari's work as having potential to empower and support creative interactions and self-development to enhance the capacities of all things for a productive and inventive life. a Deleuzian ethics would argue for encounters and interactions between bodies and other bodies and things that increase each body's relations and affect or capacity. One way to think about affect is as an increase or decrease in capacity. They argue we should seek affects that are life affirming and capacity- enhancing. I see creative thinking as this kind of expansion.
- Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's work, I am going to suggest a pedagogy of engagement with the materiality of the teaching and learning encounter. An engagement within a smooth space where creativity can freely develop through unrestricted connections and trajectories. I am going to explore several of Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts which I relate to creative thinking, and the distinction they make between real thought and what they call opinion, as well as a thinking process they call tracing. Understanding creative thought requires an understanding of what it isn’t, although in practice there is no sharp division and Deleuze and Guattari often set up such binaries to elucidate concepts, then offer many examples to break down the binary distinction. Deleuze and Guattari say that concepts are invented as solutions to problems, so I set my thinking out as such.
- We'll start with a recent example of a working theory - the bee theory! Te Whāriki describes as children making connections between experiences to form theories about the world, so Working theories are made up of knowledge, skills, strategies attitudes and expectations, used for learning and making sense of the world.This bee theory is the child's working theory, a creative deployment of her knowledge, skills, strategies and expectations to solve a problem of understanding. Note that this is an understanding that will also satisfy the context: she is trying to understand the honey making process in relation to drawing a picture of it
- And here is the adult’s response. Its pretty clear that this kind of questioning demonstrates a low level engagement with the creative thinking process, the interaction with the child being turned into a knowledge-testing opportunity. We can probably guess that these kind of questions will shut down the creative thinking process, as what is valued is ‘right’ theories.
- Creativity for DG, is the natural mode de operandi of life. Reading DG, I would argue that creativity is their ontological starting point, an inherent quality of all life, human and non human, living and what is traditionally seen as non living. Taking lead from complexity science, DGs ontology and then later their epistemology, imagines a plane of immanence, a swirling chaos or complexity of free elements, that bump up against each other, encounter each other and interact. Some of these elements come together into assemblages to produce forms, that is bodies and things and social systems and so on . This is a materialist perspective, in that material is viewed as having productive and performative force. But it is also an immanent materialism. This process is free and immanent, without any structuring forces - nothing is seen as having agency to produce or direct assemblage. And these processes are ongoing, elements are added, subtracted, assemblages merge, disperse, all the time life seeks a creative variation that allows it to persist and thrive. Key features of this ontological theory are creativity, diversity, movement, change. Thus the meaning I am taking for creativity here in the context of creative thinking in working theories is this evolving creativity, a generativity or productivity, an ontological process of bringing into creation, which includes even more than that, the forms which DG call virtual that aren't actualised in a creation, but remain within the realm of potential.
- Just as all of life develops and changes through ceaseless creative variation through connection-making, thinking has a similar ontology. By thinking DG mean what I am specifying as creative thinking, because other kinds of thinking (and we’ll get onto those in a moment) are not thinking at all for them, but repetition, opinion etc. Creative thought is molecular: molecular refers to a freer kind of assemblage, composed of local, more supple and diffuse connections, and can be capable of continual variation, whereas molar compositions are rather more restricted, and more heavily structured by an outside or distant force. The molecular is made up of the libidinal and unconscious, it involves "microentities, processes, creations – tiny things (singularities) that destabilize the perception of a whole... Relates to singularities, to individual responses, to becoming" (Jackson, 2010, p. 582). Creative thought is free to roam, connect, to take nomadic trajectories, it works best in a relatively smoothed out space, like the blank page before drawing. Bees can be connected with machines, and with ice cream makers...
- Despite their assertion of the natural onto genesis of free association between elements Deleuze and Guattari recognize that there are structuring forces and dominant powers in the world, that lead to what they call molar forms: well-defined, and governing – such as large structures or identity categories- one of their major self set tasks for example, is theorising capitalism for example which has both molar and molecular elements. They theorise how these structures become powerful and direct ontological processes. They see a tendency for attractions to be set up which create thickenings on the ontological plane, sticky or viscous forms which compel other elements to join or follow them. These repetitions create striated spaces, overcoded, gridded spaces, organised into segments, with boundaries and borders that are determined, bounded, reified, and made rigid. Think of the way people might take a short cut across grass, and over time, how the grass gives up growing and the path becomes more and more obvious until every body is using it. These segmentary lines encourage repetition of the same. In thought, think of how quickly our brains recognize an object as a particular type, an identity, when really there are a multitude of differences between them. We don't even need to look too carefully, we can read those sentences in which the spelling of each word is jumbled. Where there are strong striations, thought is directed towards repetition of the same - instead of seeking new ideas and knowledge, we are often more likely to repeat something that has come before (a piece of language use, patterns of actions). This can sometimes be useful (for example it enables us to perform some cognitive tasks automatically and turn our conscious attention to other matters, for example). But it is an automatic, habitual style of thought that is not conducive to creativity. While previous research notes (and celebrates) the creativity and complexity of children’s initial working theories, maybe what begins as creative variation in a working theory soon can become ‘thick’ with repetition and become overcoded with the strong forces of already established knowledge. Deleuze argues thought as repetition is not thinking. Instead it is mere opinion (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994), which is a type of thinking that emerges from transcendental and universal ground. This kind of thinking involves nothing more than following “ready made facilitating paths” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 4 ) of “habitual assemblage” (O’Sullivan, 2010, p. 1 ). In the present era in which information is ubiquitous, seductive and easily accessible, it is perhaps easier than ever to follow a ready made path through the management of information, circumventing a full engagement in world and its intensities and possibilities.
- We can consider the way knowledge is formed and repeated through striations which legitimise certain associations between things, and work to screen other possible associations. For example, our thinking about natural phenomena such as a bee is overcoded by factual knowledge transmitted by biological science: their collection of pollen, making of honey, or their categorisation as an insect, or even an insect that can sting. This factual knowledge transcends other ways of knowing, and, in an actual encounter with a bee, it forms a “tracing" one of those striated grids, over our experience, so that other sensations or perceptions fade in significance. Tracings are reproductions or representations that are based on models of deep structure such as the belief that scientific knowledge is both stable and universal and holds higher value than other kinds of knowledge. This can have a limiting effect on inventive and creative thought - it precludes other potential ways to think about bees: as sound-makers, for example, or fairy-carriers… The response of J in earlier example involves tracing, as she attempts to lay a transcendent framework of ‘facts about bees and beekeeping’ over the child’s thinking. The prioritisation of factual knowledge makes the significance of all the other aspects of the child’s thinking, all aspects of the here and now materiality of the event invisible. Another tracing is made in the practitioner’s assumptions of the deep structure for this working theory teaching and learning interaction, the educational experience is traced over with ideas about teaching and here, J seems to assume that the deep (or Deleuze and Guattari's term is molar: ) structure of this interaction in which she is acting as educator is to find opportunities through the drawing to demonstrate skills and knowledge, such as adding up the number of bees. Any other aspects become redundant. So how do we get back in touch with the multiple molecular intensities and singularities of the teaching and learning event, and loosen the tracings laid over events?
- Deleuze, and Deleuze and Guattari offer solutions in their ontological thesis. For example, with each existing form in the world continuously developing from planes of endless possibility, Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of the world is one of plentitude, a multiplicity or superabundance or excess of which only a part can ever be actualised. Accessing this excess is where we might best find a new creativity of thought. This entails a deep engagement with the world and attempts to seek the potentiality (Deleuze and Guattari’s term is virtuality) that has yet to be formed. In other words, every thing has a range of potential becomings, and access to these forms is through the signs that are emitted by things (Deleuze, 2000). Creative practice, and the creative development of a working theory therefore, is about tapping into signs as an index of the many becomings that are integral to the thing. To do that requires new modes of perception
- As is characteristic of Deleuze and Guattari there are a wealth of concepts we can draw on to describe this mode of perception in which the potential or virtuality of the world’s signs is perceived through casting off the blinkers of transcendent thought as an organiser of experience for example, transcendental empiricism and becoming-other. Transcendental empiricism is an empiricism without a grounding in some kind of theory, belief or system (Colebrook, 2002). This is thus an empiricism prior to a transcendent subjectivity, and thus we must think without recognizing ourselves or other bodies and things, simply encounter without words and seek to make connections not already given ( Rajchman, 2000). In our usual way of perceiving, “we take the intense, complex and differing flows of life and perceive a world of extended material objects” (Colebrook, 2002, p. 127). We recognize and divide the world’s intensities in a reductive way. Learning not to perceive in this way means abandoning the point of view from which we order life. Becoming other means becoming-imperceptible, "Becoming animal, plant, molecular, becoming zero” p.169 DG 1994 that is taking a point of view that is alien to us. Thus we have to “read everyday reality in a foreign language with a hesitancy and a stuttering, keeping in abeyance our everyday modes of apprehension” ( Roy, 2003, p. 172–173). It is about encountering the data to perceive sensations without transcendent thought interfering.
- Another Strategy is that of mapping the molecular. To explain mapping Deleuze and Guattari contrast it with tracing. Instead of tracing transcendent forms or schema, or opinion and common sense onto life, mapping involves thinking and the creation of the new. Mapping is used to discover links and connections, which might propel all kinds of transformation and change. Maps, in contrast to tracings, are in touch with all elements of an event and not limited to what is currently assembled, but also include what is possible. Mapping seeks to produce a view of what is partially obscured or limited by our habitual ways of perceiving and repetitive patterns of thought with transcendent concepts.
- A pedagogy of engagement with the materiality of each teaching and learning encounter can go some way to prevent falling back on transcendent and representational epistemologies and guiding children's thinking towards the known, that is, towards repetition of accepted theories, or the accumulation of ‘bee facts’. Strategies such as transcendental empiricism, becoming other and mapping might enhance teachers engagement in the here and now materiality of the teaching and learning event. My thesis intends to find out!