Dance-Play and Drawing-Telling as Semiotic Tools for Young Children's Learning

Jan Deans, Susan Wright

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317197133
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Investigating children's learning through dance and drawing-telling, Dance-Play and Drawing-Telling as Semiotic Tools for Young Children's Learning provides a unique insight into how these activities can help children to critically reflect on their own learning. Promoting the concept of dance and drawing-telling as highly effective semiotic tools for meaning-making, the book enlivens thinking about the extraordinary capacities of young children, and argues for the incorporation of dance and drawing in mainstream early childhood curriculum.

Throughout the book, numerous practice examples show how children use movement, sound, images, props and language to imaginatively re-conceptualize their everyday experiences into bodily-kinesthetic and spatial-temporal concepts. These examples illustrate children's competence when given the opportunity to learn through dance and drawing-telling, as well as the important role that teachers play in scaffolding children's learning.

Based on award-winning research, this insightful and informative book makes a sought after contribution to the field of dance education and seeks to reaffirm dance as a powerful learning modality that supports young children's expressive non-verbal communication. Encouraging the reader to consider the significance of multi-modal teaching and learning, it is essential reading for researchers in the dance, drawing and education spheres; postgraduate students taking courses in early childhood; play and dance therapists; and all early childhood teachers who have a specific interest in arts education.

1 Embodied thinking

The central role of dance

As Hanna (1987) states ‘to dance is human’ and in many ways expressive movement can be metaphorically referred to as a universal language of children (Jensen, 2001) who use it to discover and learn about their world, to make meaning of experience and to express reactions and ideas to others and situations. Through the moving body the young child builds knowledge and understandings through the dynamic interplay between physical, cognitive and affective domains of experiencing. Hanna (2008) defines dance as a:

behaviour composed of purposeful, intentionally rhythmical, and culturally influenced sequences of non-verbal body movements and stillness in time and space and with effort … Dance has inherent and aesthetic value. … is usually accompanied by music, with its range of sounds and rhythm, and sometimes by costume and props.

(p. 492)

For the young child learning through the body is intuitively based, for example when a child is learning to run, climb and jump. However, there are other times when the child naturally accesses a deeper level of inter-subjectivity and consciousness, which enables bodily communication that is considered to fall within the realm of artistic and aesthetically oriented expression. The dance of the young child can be understood as a specific form of communication or bodily narrative that is displayed by the individual to meet personal and also social needs. It is a unique language or one of the ‘hundred languages of children’ (Malaguzzi, 1996) that is universally accessed for the purpose of expressing kinaesthetic consciousness or body thinking.

Movement in the life of the young child can be acknowledged as a semiotic tool that is akin to spoken language and it can also be understood in terms of artistic expression, with the body acting as an expressive instrument that enables a temporally and spatially oriented process of what we can label dance discourse. As Hanna (1987) notes:

Dance is a whole complex combination of communication symbols, a vehicle for conceptualization. It may be a paralanguage, a semiotic system, like articulate speech, made up of signifiers that refer to things other than themselves.

(p. 26)

It can also be said that dance discourse is an outgrowth of a deeply experienced cognitive process that animates the body to express kinetically what it means to be alive. It is through the ongoing development of movement consciousness that the child learns to navigate the nature of what it means to be human and to express thoughts, feelings and emotions through aesthetically oriented movement.

Dance as a ‘language’ of childhood

The idea of thinking in motion leads to the conjecture that the young child’s playful dance explorations are in fact a paralanguage or as noted earlier one of the many languages through which children express their understandings (Malaguzzi, 1996). In exploring the idea of ‘dance as a language of childhood’, Hanna (1987) describes dance as a “conceptual natural language with intrinsic and extrinsic meanings, a system of physical movements, and interrelated rules guiding performances in different social situations” (p. 5). Her research has identified that dance is an effective communication medium that comprises a wide range of complex communicative symbols. It has many language-like features such as duality of patterning (a system of physical action and a system of meaning); affectivity (expression of an internal state with the potential for changing moods and for a sense of situation) and similar cortical activity to that of verbal language. It also shares other components, such as vocabulary (in dance gestures and locomotion), semantics and sequences. However, while spoken language strings words together, dance combines sequences of movement. Jensen (2001) adds further strength to the argument for dance to be viewed as a language of childhood, commenting that the kinaesthetic arts, including dance, “play a powerful role as a universal language, with a symbolic way of representing the world enabling the communication and demonstration of human experience” (p. 71).

Dance behaviours appear very early in a child’s life with the body and its movement repertoire providing a readily accessible instrument for repetitive, rhythmic movement explorations. Tortora (2006) has examined the motor and movement development stages of young children highlighting how movement is used to navigate the body through the surroundings. She has summarised the characteristic elements of each developmental level demonstrating how the emotion-body connection enables young children to create a wide expressive communicative repertoire. She states:

Through investigation of the infinite variations and subtleties of movement qualities, a young child begins to develop his [sic] personal movement signature. A young child’s preferred movement qualities become clearer as his more defined sense of self emerges – a sense of self that continues to grow into early adulthood.

(p. 90)

Dissanayake (cited in Horton Fraleigh and Hanstein, 1999) draws attention to the emotionally based movement communication observed in the mother–baby relationship, identifying that “babies possess a precocious capacity to respond to “rhythms and modes” – patterned vocal, visual and kinetic signals that arise in play with loving adult partners” (p. 12). Dissanayake notes that rhythms and modes create and sustain love and attachment and also give rise to the arts. Such a finding explains and further develops Hanna’s (1987) idea that “the dance medium often comes into play where there is a lack of verbal expression” (p. 4). Stern (1985, p. 125) also refers to the pre-verbal communication between the mother and infant explaining it by way of “gesture, posture and facial expression”. Other research evidence (d’Aquili, 1983) supports the theory that repetitive stimuli such as rocking or patting can drive cortical rhythms and eventually produce an intensely pleasurable, ineffable experience in humans that could be described as a form of communicative signalling or very early symbolic representation.

The National Dance Education Organisation (2005) describes dance as an innate behaviour that children exhibit even before they develop a command over spoken language. It is considered a natural method of learning, and as previously noted, one of the ‘hundred languages of childhood’ (Malaguzzi, 1998) that is a basic expression of personal and social culture. Such a view is consistent with the Vygotskian (1978) idea that language is central to development of thought and consciousness and that, through expressive communication, ideas and thoughts find reality and form. Vygotsky (1978) argues that the origins of the social functions of speech can be found in the early stages of the development of the individual. He identifies the interconnection between the intellectual and communicative functions of speech, citing the relationship between social encounters and the individual’s use of language as a semiotic process that links the inter-psychological and intra-psychological domains. Eisner (2002) speaks about language providing a way of making distinctions in the world with these distinctions supporting the separation of thoughts and ideas. Communication through dance is derived from the child’s intent to express, and it is through the employment of body-based thinking and gesturing that distinctions and connections at the level of body consciousness are made. Individuals integrate and connect a multitude of innate responses, prior experience, anticipation of the actual experience and then finally the expression of or ‘giving voice’ to the experience. As Matthews (1994) notes, such expressions should be considered no less meaningful than speech and understood in terms of being akin to spoken language, with dance acting as a semiotic tool that enables a temporally oriented process of discourse. As Hanna (1987) notes:

Dance is a whole complex combination of communication symbols, a vehicle for conceptualization. It may be a paralanguage, a semiotic system, like articulate speech, made up of signifiers that refer to things other than themselves.

(p. 26)

To extend the thinking about dance as a language of childhood, the ideas of Malaguzzi (1996) shed significant light on the young child’s capacity to communicate through what have been metaphorically labelled ‘the hundred languages’. The highly acclaimed Reggio Emilia philosophy draws attention to the image of the child:

… who from the moment he is born, is so eager to be part of the world that he [sic] actively employs a complex (and still not fully appreciated) network of abilities, learning strategies, ways of organizing relationships, and creating maps for personal, interpersonal, social, cognitive, affective, and even symbolic orientation.

(p. 10)

The Reggio Emilia philosophy incorporates the idea that young children communicate using many different languages for expressive communicative purposes. Children are acknowledged as having “a hundred ways of knowing, feeling and understanding” (Malaguzzi, 1996, p. 1) and it is through the utilisation of graphic, visual and performing arts, that they build knowledge and concepts, expressing their thoughts through body actions, making marks and sounds. Along with drawing, painting, singing, making music, enacting, poetry and story, dance is one of these ‘hundred languages’ for learning (Gallas, 1994). It provides through the use of the body, a symbolic medium for children’s meaning-making and comprehension, stimulating them to expand their boundaries of personal communication and expression. Malaguzzi (1998, p. 93) notes: “symbols have profound associations with emotions, feelings and many other things that cannot be qualified through observation” and in the case of dance it is a unique language through which individuals can express their feelings, thoughts and emotions. So it is accepted that the spontaneous dance forms of the young child act as a ‘languaging experience’ (Sheets-Johnston, 2011) with the generation of motion making a whole raft of new experiences happen. Movement then is understood as a significant symbolic language and cultural tool that is used for the expression of meaning, ideas and feelings.

What is so very interesting is that young children have the capacity to transform the qualities of their movement experience into an expressive form. Through the integration of all of the senses an amazing vocabulary of movement is generated through everyday energised body thinking and communicating. Running, skipping, jumping, turning and swaying are just a few of the naturally occurring movements that are coloured by feeling states, which in turn impacts on the dynamic quality of the movements, and as such children are often observed jumping excitedly or running freely expressing their exuberance for life with spontaneous movements referentially expressive of a feeling or mood. Children have the capacity to abstract this everyday movement and enter into what Vygotsky (1971) terms ‘perezhivanie’ or intensely emotionally lived experience. Through the course of making complex and dynamic connections between key psychological processes of thinking, imagining and creating, the young child transforms information from the material and social world of lived experience, constructing knowledge into understandings and making meaning across a variety of contexts and codes or symbol systems. Dance, as a language of childhood provides opportunities for children to abstract spontaneously occurring everyday movements, moving into the artistic domain where the single components of movement are elaborated upon to produce an expressive symbolic form. This transformation enables a form of communication that integrates the tactile, kinaesthetic and corporeal components of consciousness and experience to engage in symbolic expression.

Dance as an expression of voice

Another way of understanding dance as a significant language of childhood is to acknowledge bodily learning for its capacity to support the individual child’s expression of voice. Recent literature (Conklin Thompson, 2005; Clark and Moss, 2001; Dahlberg and Moss, 2005; Dockett and Perry, 2007; Rinaldi, 2006) draws attention to the importance of teachers listening to children’s voices and perspectives. The catalyst of this trend has been the highly influential human rights charter, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) (UN, 1989), which recognies the right of children to be heard and consulted on matters that affect them. Of particular relevance is Article 12 of the Convention, which states:

State parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those view freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.

(UNCRC, 1989)

This Article has had a significant impact on how early childhood professionals view the capacities of young children to independently express their ideas and understandings and to take an active role in their learning and development and to be recognised as “social actors in their own lives” (Page, 2007, p. 20). Intersecting and expanding upon Article 12, is Article 13, which endorses the importance of children having the opportunity to express their ideas in a variety of ways. It states:

The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice.

(UNCRC, 1989)

This Article along with Article 14 (UNURC, 1989), which recognises and promotes the rights of the child to participate freely in play and in cultural life and the arts, highlights the importance of children being provided with opportunities to engage in learning that supports their personal expression through art making and community involvement.

The United Nation’s General Comment No. 7 ‘Implementing child rights in early childhood’ (UNCRC, 2006) provides further support for practices that acknowledge children as “persons in their own right … as active members of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Author biographies
• 1 Embodied thinking: the central role of dance
• 2 Dance and drawing as sign systems for transmediated meaning-making
• 3 Planning for dance
• 4 The dance encounter
• 5 Learning about children’s dance from children
• 6 Small group dance-play
• 7 Ensemble dance-play
• 8 Drawing the threads together
• Bibliography
• Index