Embodied voices and voicing embodied knowing

accessing and developing young children's aesthetic movement skills

Cecilia Wallerstedt

Niklas Pramling

Ingrid Pramling Samuelsson

pp. 87-106

in: Eva Johansson, E. White (eds), Educational research with our youngest, Berlin, Springer, 2011

Abstract

Eleven-month-old Matilda is with her parents in the laundry room where they are hanging out the washing. All the washed and wet clothes are in a pile on the floor. Matilda sits down amidst the clothes while her parents hang shirts and sweaters on hangers. Matilda roots about among the clothes and finds two socks of the same kind, pink with white dots on. She holds one sock in each hand, looks up at her parents, laughs and waves the two socks in the air. Through her actions, Matilda displays some of her many skills. She has noticed symmetry, something that is central to aesthetic knowing as well as to mathematics. However, for her skills to develop into, for example, skills in mathematics (principles such as pairs, number, etc.) or aesthetics (understanding how the beautiful patterns of the fabric and the colours are "constructed", etc.), we suggest that it will be necessary for her to be introduced into and engaged in speech mediation by another (an adult).