Introduction

The kind of research in which ECEC personnel (which can include preschool teachers but also other personnel such as development leaders and preschool heads) and researchers collaborate to conduct research has many different approaches, even different theoretical underpinnings. As will be explored further in this chapter, there are many methodological challenges in this kind of research, and there is a growing body of literature on them (see, e.g., Hanfstingl et al., 2019; Pramling Samuelsson & Pramling, 2013; Wallerstedt et al., this volume, for more general discussions). But approaches in the research addressed in this volume also share some features. One common feature in many approaches is that it is taken for granted that the research method has great implications for the kind of knowledge the research generates. A common observation at workshops in collaborative research between ECEC personnel and researchers is that educational professionals express an expectation that the research partners should tell them what to do and how something is. This clashes with a foundational premise of research – that research entails generating new knowledge – and thus we cannot say beforehand how it is or what should more specifically be done by teachers. If the discussion of collaborative research between ECEC personnel and researchers is to be advanced, a better understanding of the challenges in workshop methodology needs to be identified. In this chapter, the discussion moves beyond this identified challenge, through theoretical analysis of the language used in interprofessional communication.

Identifying and Clarifying a Recurrent Challenge

In this text, we add to the emerging literature on research with educational professionals by analysing and theorising on how to take on a frequently observed occurrence: participants’ different expectations regarding what participation in such projects entails in terms of learning and knowledge-building (John-Steiner et al., 1998). These different expectations can readily be observed at the workshop, which can take different forms but which will be integral to any researcher-educational personnel collaborative project.

The workshop is a nexus in researcher-educational personnel cooperative research projects, as it is the activity at which the participating groups interact and concretely carry out collaborative work. Being an activity characterised by interprofessional interaction, issues concerning language, communication, and metacommunication inevitably come to the fore. These may therefore require analytical consideration and theorisation in order to further develop the methodology of research with educational institutions/professionals, which could be referred to as practice-near or practice-development research. Here, we will highlight and discuss some particular features of this kind that we have experienced in our projects with ECEC personnel.Footnote 1

A recurring observation at workshops is that participating personnel from ECEC institutions express that they want the researchers to say what they should do, and how it is. Some examples relevant to the project referred to here are ‘How should we teach in a way that doesn’t exclude play?’, ‘What does it mean for teaching to be responsive to play?’, ‘What is play?’, and ‘What is socially and culturally sustainable ECEC?’ These are all matters that this project aimed to contribute novel insight into, and could therefore not be clarified beforehand.Footnote 2 The expectation of such clarification clashes with the researcher taking the stance that in the nature of a research study – as distinct from simply a development project – generating new knowledge constitutes its raison d’être, and that if we already knew, there would be no point in conducting the study (the project).

Rather than simply observe that different participants have different expectations, we can analyse and conceptualise this recurring empirical observation in terms of patterns of languaging, communicating, and metacommunicating. This enables us to theorise a recurring feature of workshops: that there would be value in having tools for metacommunicating in these kinds of projects in order to coordinate participants’ perspectives and thus establish some degree of necessary intersubjectivity (Linell, 2014; Marková, 2003) regarding the preconditions for collaborative work (knowledging).

Nominalising and Reifying

A common action in speech is what is sometimes referred to as nominalisation, that is, turning a verb into a noun (Billig, 2008; Halliday & Martin, 1993; Pramling et al., 2019). This transformation is evident not only in everyday discourse but also in scientific vocabulary (Säljö, 2002). This phenomenon of language transformation is not new. In the specialised literature on the scientific vocabulary of psychology, in a classic introduction to this field of study Woodworth (1940) notes:

Instead of ‘memory’ we should properly say ‘remembering’ or ‘O remembers’; instead of ‘sensation’ we should say ‘seeing’, ‘hearing’, etc.; and instead of ‘emotion’ we should say some one feels eager or angry or afraid. But, like other sciences, psychology finds it convenient to transform its verbs into nouns. Then what happens? We forget that our nouns are merely substitutes for verbs, and start hunting for the things denoted by the nouns – for substances, forces, faculties – but no such things exist; there is only the individual engaged in these different activities. Intelligence, consciousness, the ‘unconscious’ belong with such terms as skill and speed. They are properly adverbs, the facts being that the individual acts intelligently, consciously, or unconsciously, skilfully, speedily. A safe rule, on encountering any abstract psychological noun, is to make it concrete by changing it into the corresponding verb or adverb. Much difficulty and unnecessary controversy can thus be avoided. (p. 18f., italics in original)

Nominalising – turning verbs into nouns – thus means reifying what are, in fact, processes or activities. Through this process of transformation, what is dynamic is made into a thing. Through reifying what we speak about we re-establish a particular discourse – theoretically speaking, ‘things ontologies’ (Shotter, 1993) – according to which what exists does so as things (Säljö, 2002).

Another influential scholar who has emphasised the importance of ‘de-reifying’ (Nachmanovitch, 2009, p. 13) scientific vocabulary is Gregory Bateson. In his classic Steps to an Ecology of Mind (originally published 1972, reissued in 2000), he argues that this is a common feature of communicating and that we are ordinarily not aware of it. This is due to communicative and psychological economy. ‘The economy’, he further argues, ‘consists precisely in not re-examining or rediscovering the premises of habit every time the habit is used’ (p. 274, italics in original). However, as he also notes, in order to develop new knowledge, it is critical to do so, that is, to re-examine and rediscover the premises of our communicative habits.

Why Nominalisation and Its Associated Reification Matter for Workshop Methodology

One consequence of reifyingFootnote 3 is that it hides or mystifies who is doing that which is referred to (cf. Billig, 2008). What has been transformed into a thing appears as if it speaks for and by itself. This is problematic for various reasons. One problem in the context (yet another example of reification) of the kind of research we intend to contribute to the methodological discussion of here is that it is important to clarify who (e.g. which participating partner) says and in other ways does what in order to work together and to clarify different responsibilities and roles. Mystifying processes and activities into things that speak and do things by themselves thus also makes it impossible to analyse issues such as power hierarchies, since the world merely speaks for itself, as it were, rather than researchers and/or ECEC teachers or heads saying and doing this or that. Hence, there is a form of ethical problem with reification, we argue, as follows: ensuring that all participants have a voice and can contribute to evolving knowledging, we cannot hide who is doing the talking, arguing etc., which we severely risk doing if we use reified language at our workshops.

Reifying, for example, knowledge – which itself can be seen as a case of reification, which is why we (Wallerstedt et al., this volume) instead speak of knowledging – constitutes this as something that exists beforehand, as some kind of object. This view of knowledge is further harmonious with another figure of speech, in the form of a metaphor for communication, evident in everyday speech as well as in the specialised discourses of science: communication as information transmission (see Reddy, 1993, for a conceptual analysis of this metaphor, which he calls the conduit metaphor). Hence, we argue that metacommunicating at workshops – in the sense of talking about different ways of understanding knowledge, language, and communication not as static ready-made and transmittable, and as conduits for such transmission, but instead as actions carried out by people in dialogue, emerging through coordinating and conflicting perspectives in co-constituted activities – is decisive for working towards establishing some degree of intersubjectivity (Rommetveit, 1974; Marková, 2003). Such intersubjectivity enables participants to go on with a joint activity – mutual knowledging – rather than being engaged in parallel and uncoordinated ones. The latter would maintain fundamentally different conceptions of what participation in these kinds of projects would entail, which would be detrimental to collaborative, mutually developing, knowledging. Hence, critical to the methodology of the workshop in research with educational professionals are metacommunicating and particularly de-reifying the tools of discourse with which we think and communicate. Doing these things(!) is decisive for ensuring that all participants have a voice in contributing to mutual knowledging and for avoiding hiding power hierarchies, two important features actualised in these kinds of projects.

Conclusions

To summarise, contributing to an important feature of workshop methodology, we argue the following. In order to collectively learn, we cannot be content with merely observing or stating that participating ECEC personnel express an expectation that knowledge is there beforehand to be transmitted to them. To conduct research, we need to have theoretical tools that enable us to move beyond the specific here-and-now of each such project. Developing such tools is instrumental to collective knowledging and to further developing the kind of research with educational institutions that is, under various headings, prevalent in contemporary society.

Emphasising the importance of de-reifying key terms in research on learning and development, it is important to realise that we cannot avoid reification. The attentive reader will have seen many examples of it in this very text. Hence, while we cannot avoid reification, we argue that it is important to be mindful and communicate about (i.e., metacommunicating) key concepts in these kinds of projects, such as knowledge, language, and communication. We do not suggest that people are commonly aware of these features of language use; much communication follows the path of least resistance. Hence, we are not aware of much of our language use and what it implies, taking for granted that this is what we say or this is what it is (Bateson, 1972/2000; Nachmanovitch, 2009). Still, our languaging semiotically mediates (Wertsch, 2007) our thinking and perceiving. Thus, changing our ways of communicating changes how we think about and perceive the world. In communicating, Shotter (1993) argues, ‘what matters is not so much the conclusions arrived at as the terms within which arguments are conducted. For to talk in new ways, is to “construct” new forms of social relation’ (p. 9). Hence, new ways of speaking also mean constituting new social relationships, which is integral to achieving mutual knowledging among different professional groups such as ECEC teachers and researchers.

While the phenomena of nominalisation and the associated reification are not new to scientific theory (Bateson, 1972/2000; Woodworth, 1940), in the present text, we have recontextualised them in relation to collaborative research between educational personnel and researchers. In doing so, we have suggested some unfortunate consequences of this process:

  • That it constitutes a perspective on knowledge as if it is already there beforehand.

  • That this knowledge can be transmitted from one (group) to another (sender to receiver).

  • That it hides authoring, thus hiding participants’ voices (agency) and potentially also hiding power hierarchies that need to be made visible and be managed in order to facilitate all participants’ possibilities to be genuine contributors to mutual knowledging.

Communicatively constituting, simply through unreflectively reproducing common ways of speaking about, knowledge as objects that are already there (as things these are localisable in space) and available, through communication as a conduit, to be transmitted or transferred from knower to receiver, means positioning ECEC personnel – and the members of this group positioning themselves – as receivers, lacking knowledge. Such a (self-) view of participants is entirely contrary to the ambitions of research collaboration and antagonistic to promoting the empowerment of ECEC personnel to be recognised and able to take on the role of professionals with collective agency over their profession.Footnote 4

In response to this analysis, in this text, we have suggested knowledging as a term to avoid the reification of knowledge. This mirrors other attempts to find ways of speaking that are more responsive to the dynamic features of reasoning and knowledge-building, such as languaging (Linell, 1998, 2014) and knowing (Dewey, 1938/2008). In this text, through theoretical analysis, we have contributed to the methodology of a particular and critical part of collaborative research between researchers and ECEC personnel: the workshop. In doing so, we have built on insights from philosophy and theory of science, concerning nominalisation and reification – that is, the processes of transforming verbs or adverbs into nouns, and the ensuing transformation of activities and processes into things. Here, we have recontextualised these processes and argued that it is decisive to be mindful of, and metacommunicate about, them in research in which different professional groups collaborate. We have argued that metacommunicating about nominalisation and reification and why these transformations are problematic is instrumental in demystifying knowledging, by avoiding making knowledge and language into things that are already there to be transmitted and taken over, and in acknowledging participants’ contributions, issues that are decisive for research projects co-constituted by different participating groups.