Unpacking Digital Educational Experiment in the Home Setting: Crisis, Relational Proximity and Distal Participation in the Times of COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

There are methodological challenges of studying children’s development in-motion, these challenges were further accentuated in the times of COVID-19 pandemic. The challenge demanded novel thinking from researchers in responding to the crisis and also preparing for new realities post-pandemic. This section has chapters that extends this discourse and further theorises the role of digital tools in capturing children’s development as a dynamic and dialectical process. The methodological argument presented here shows how educational experiment were conducted via digital tools to create motivating condition for children’s STEM concept formation in the home setting in Australia. This chapter especially reports on the methodological aspects of developing digital educational experiments and the changing ‘role of researcher’ as a distal participant. During the pandemic our object of inquiry, children’s home practices underwent a transformative change. In these changing material conditions digital educational experiments were developed as a methodology to work in collaboration with families so that we can continue to offer children in early years a new motivating condition for learning. While working with families a number of digital tools were used to build common knowledge that was used to develop a responsive and relational pedagogy for children in early years.

1 Introduction

Crisis as a methodological principle is not a self-explanatory concept but needs to be developed. This development demands philosophical unpacking and discerning the idea at the level of praxis. This chapter makes an attempt to start engaging with some of these ambitions around the concept of crisis and use of digital tools as a tool to transform our social situations.

It is worth going back to Vygotsky’s valuable insight that at the base of ontogenesis lies the complex merging of two lines of development- the biological and socio-cultural (Vygotsky, 1998).

only man in the process of historical development has risen to creating new driving forces of behavior, only in the process of historical, social life of man did his new needs arise, form and develop; the most natural needs underwent a deep change in the process of man’s historical development. (Vygotsky, 1998, p. 11, emphasis added).

The COVID-19 pandemic and the cascading effect of the it has brought some of the deep changes in our social practices and hence also ways of researching. This demands further methodological theorisation to think about the role of the researcher. Being close to the field and collecting data on participant’s everyday live while being immersed in the setting was considered probably one of the best ways to develop a wholistic understanding of a phenomena but that opportunity of being in the field became practically impossible with the multiple lockdowns and regulations and lack of access to early learning centres, schools and families. The argument presented in three chapters in this section suggest that in these challenging times Conceptual PlayWorld, a model of intentional teaching developed by Laureate Professor Marilyn Fleer offered a possibility of developing relational and responsive pedagogy for children in their early years. The work uses methodology of educational experiment which builds on collaboration with the researched person/s and having a boot strapping model where participants could also contribute in shaping the new developmental conditions. While emphasising on the role of the researcher as central to such a methodology the chapters in this section (Chap. 13, 14, 15, this volume) shows that even when researcher/s participated as a distal participant they developed a relational proximity with the participants.

There is a need to move away from conceptualising children’s development as genetically determined and fixed in age-gradation. Challenging this ontology Piaget argues that “what is needed instead is a radically cultural conception of childhood, one that acknowledges the historicity of the conception, and therefore also the extent to which the category essentially transcends the biogenetic characterization; and that also acknowledges the extent to which the biogenetic characterizations themselves mirror different cultural and historical norms” (Wartofsky, 1979, p. 192).

2 Crisis: A Concept to Navigate and Understand in-Flux, Plurotemporal World

The COVID-19 pandemic created a state of crisis at societal level that led to new demands. These demands were created as our fundamental ways of human functioning and organising life in physical proximity in institutional spaces had to be changed due to the COVID-19 virus. The demands of practice itself i.e. schooling, learning, teaching etc. did not go away but the way of responding to this had to be changed. It was becoming evident that most of the existing social demands underwent deep change. Both the material conditions and processes used to respond to them had to be responsively developed using digital technology. It is worth highlighting at the outset that crisis is not only a positive force but also a painful and excruciating phase. One of the challenges in the moment of crisis is that our most natural needs are thwarted or are forced to transform. The COVID-19 pandemic brought a set of guidelines on physical distancing and uncertainty about human survival and hope. The crisis at the societal level forced changes in needs, tendencies, interests and ways of functioning. It led to a transient and volatile phase which sometimes seemed relatively autonomous from previous ways of living (which we are calling relatively ‘stable state’ for ease).

So, we were living in a transient phase in terms of time where we were worried of the future, navigating present demands and reflexively more aware of previous ways of functioning.

It is difficult to locate crisis in chronological sense of time, it is distinct from past, present and future. It is a time of acceleration, urgency, uncertainty, new demands and new potentialities and transformation. Crisis is not a source or driving force outside of development but mediates and set in motion the processes of development.

The crisis is a moment marked by uncertainty about the future, suspension of existing daily routines and habits. Moreover, it is also a moment of heightened emotional response with an urgency to take action even without fully understanding their consequences. It is impossible to plot all these developments in a single stream of time. Thus, crisis makes us more fully aware of an in-flux and plurotemporal world in motion.

As argued in the introduction to the book (Chap. 1) crisis also demands reviewing our theoretical tools in the context of changing reality. Research practice is a social practice as Kemmis (2009) has argued. The concept of crisis challenges the linear accumulation as knowledge development, it talks about complex relationships in the continuity and discontinuity in human social situation.

The term crisis here is not used in macro-cultural sense but to highlight recurrent demands emerging in the activity settings as researchers were working with families in creating new motivating conditions for their children’s imaginary play and STEM learning (in the Conceptual PlayWorld). These methodological demands of collaborating with families were rough grounds of development of new practices. The chapters in this section shows that

• understanding and engaging with crisis was central to developing new motive orientations as a researcher;

• capacity to think about agentic action as incomplete forms which creates possibility for collaborative action was central;

• building common knowledge (Edwards, 2011; Rai, 2019, 2023) between the researcher and researched person for developing a socially articulated understanding of the commitments of the practice that creates demand on individuals.

3 Dialectical Interactive Approach – a Reflexive Note

Hedegaard (2004) has researched the construction of childhood and development within the framework of the institution, society and the individual. Her work is particularly powerful in that it draws extensively upon Vygotsky’s (1998) seminal critique of child development, but specifically examines contemporary contexts, where there is cultural and linguistic diversity. Hedegaard (2004) views development as the relationship between the child and society to be found in the social situation of development that the child is able to create. To conceptualise a holistic approach to understand children’s learning and development she considers institutional practice and individual activity in the institutional setting as the key. She has argued that “[p]ersonal activities are not systems but processes, and therefore they are not concrete manifestations of institutional practice; they are not inscribed into each other but influence each other dialectically. A person contributes to his own institutional conditions and the perspective of his society; therefore, institution and person both have to be conceptualized as contributing to practice in a theory of children’s development.” (Hedegaard, 2009, p. 65).

In Hedegaard’s work, motives are seen as an integration of demands from environment and from children, into psychological forces in children’s activities. She has argued that studying children ‘s development from a holistic approach should be focused on their participation in the activity setting. The demands children meet in institutional practices are central to understanding their motives (Hedegaard, 2012, p. 18). This theorisation conceptualises a dialectical relationship between the three layers- societal (macro-sociopolitical and economic situation), social situation (as experienced by the individual in their institutional setting) and social situation of development - “a completely original, exclusive single and unique relation between the child and reality” (Vygotsky, 1998, p. 198).

To extend these ideas Hedegaard (2008, 2012, 2020) proposes a model of relations between society, cultural traditions, institutional practices, activity settings and children’s activities and motives. It is worth noting that in the times of uncertainty and emergent crisis new practices were emerging to respond to the recurrent demands. The interesting aspect of crisis is that it challenges our matured functions and ways of functioning. In this ‘transitional state’ where society was still navigating its response to the pandemic some of the new set of demands were emerging from our efforts to satisfy our previous existing needs in the ‘stable period’ and a set of new demands also emerged because of the dramatic turn of events and uncertainty, another important feature of crisis.

These practices do not fit neatly into the previous theorisation. Some of the challenges of the transitional states are mentioned in the model below (Fig. 12.1).

Fig. 12.1

Figure representing relations between society, cultural traditions, institutional practices, activity settings and children’s activities and motives in the transitional state

Crisis blurs the boundaries between multiple institutions and traditional categories of economics, politics, social and moral are all collapsed. So, a multilayered destabilisation is experienced. In her writings Hedegaard (2008, 2012, 2020) and Hedegaard & Edwards (2023) uses three interrelated concepts: (i) societal, (ii) social situation and (iii) social situation of development to encapsulate and make a case for wholistic and dialectical-interactive understanding of the children’s development. These categories are dialectically related and becomes explicit in social practice which are sustained through our social interaction. As the nature of practice changed it also blurred boundaries between practices. It is worth acknowledging in the times of crisis these institutional practices and activity settings have gone through a huge change itself. In stable state preschools and early learning centres are institutions designed and mandated with the purpose of negotiating societal demands of educating and caring for children in early years. The crisis led to creation of new demands where home setting was entrusted to also act as a school, office, preschool in addition to the already existing demands of caring for children (Fig. 12.2).

Fig. 12.2

Figure representing new demands presented in the home setting during the pandemic

The rules around physical distancing created new ways of digital interaction. It also made us rethink about the relationship between the biology, society and our cultural ways of functioning. The question of ‘body’ and its presence in the same activity setting or participating in children’s home setting from distance via digital demands further methodological nuancing. This is not to demolish the boundary of human or digital, observing through technology or being in the setting (self) but to challenge the binary categorisation of human and digital. We have argued elsewhere (Rai et al., 2022) that technology offers a transformative potential for children to explore and imagine collectively with their caregivers in a Conceptual PlayWorld.

From a theoretical perspective if we extend Hedegaard’s (2008) argument the nature of institutional demand and hence the practice itself changed dramatically. While responding to these new demands either transient or long-term new activity settings were co-created by children and caregivers. Hedegaard (2008) argues that setting is a “cultural-material conditions that take the form of city architecture, material characteristic of the institutions, room size, furniture, all sorts of material” (p. 15–16). She further explicates to understand the conditions for development, one must inquire: “What activity settings tend to dominate the institutional practices of modern society? What possibilities for activity are generated and how children act in these activity settings?” (Hedegaard, 2008, p. 17).

4 Digital Educational Experiment – Distal but Relationally Proximal

In educational settings one of the major responses of this crisis was use of digital tools to achieve our previous goals. Something that started as a ‘transient demand’, replacing previous demands of being present physically in the preschools or early learning centres. At Monash University’s PlayLab these challenges new demand influenced our role as a researcher working with families in their home settings and playgroups. The chapters in this section are reporting data from our efforts in working with families using digital technology. Drawing on the work in cultural-historical tradition these chapters used educational experiment as a methodology for designing their research and analysing data (for further details on educational experiment see Chap. 2 in Sect. 2.1). Educational experiment as Hedegaard (2008) explains “is a multifaceted planned preparation of teaching which has, as its goal, the creation of optimal conditions for the learning and development of the participating children” (p. 185). The chapters presented in this section are interested in investigating how Conceptual PlayWorld could create new motivating conditions for children’s STEM concept formation in their home settings.

The design of educational experiment presented in these three chapters are in response to the emerging recurrent demands in the researcher’s social situation. One of the unique and common features of all the three chapters is that the researcher created a new “digital activity setting” using zoom in Chaps. 13 and 14 and using a new app for spatial thinking in Chap. 15. This new digital activity setting in the beginning was laden with researcher’s motive to learn more about children’s STEM concept formation but creation of collective imaginary situation using Conceptual PlayWorld pedagogic model created opportunities for families and children to bring their intentional projects and explorations to this new digital activity setting. Overtime engaging with children’s and families’ intentional projects and everyday practices developed a relational proximity between the researcher and the participant even though the researcher was a distal participant in these activity settings.

A positive picture is possible only if we radically change our representation of child development and take: into account that it is a complex dialectical process that is characterized by complex periodicity, disproportion in the development of separate functions, metamorphoses or qualitative transformation of certain forms into others, a complex merging of the process of evolution and involution, a complex crossing of external and internal factors, a complex process of overcoming difficulties and adapting. (Vygotsky, 1997, p. 98–99)

The acknowledgement of complexity of researcher’s role (visible in Chap. 13 by Sonya Nedovic, complexity of family’s position as a co-researcher (in Chap. 14 by Suxiang Yu) and unpacking the complex narrative of designing digital games for teaching spatial concepts (evident in Chap. 15 by Ha Dang) shows an alignment of motives between the researcher and the researched persons. The researchers were also aware of their mutual relationship with the new digital activity setting which they created and fragile and transient nature of it in the times of crisis. The point was to consider the world in constant motion with mutual relations with other phenomena not as discrete cases. This interdependent and relational view of the world was central to these methodological innovations.

5 Creating New Motivating Conditions: Role of the Researcher

All the three chapters are focused on working with families and children in their home setting. The focus is on creating new motivating conditions for children’s STEM concept formation. Instead of digital tool guiding the interaction, a theoretical formulation of practice guided by dialectical-interactive approach guided the practice in the digital activity setting. One of the prime focus was to create a collective imaginary situation. “Action in a situation that is not seen, but only conceived mentally in an imaginary field (i.e., an imaginary situation), teaches the child to guide his behavior not only by immediate perception of objects or by the situation immediately affecting him but also by the meaning of this situation” (Vygotsky, 1967, p. 11). There are three clear themes emerging in these chapters-.

5.1 Chapter 13: Family’s Positioning in Educational Experiment

Suxiang Yu has worked with families in supporting STEM concept formation for their infants and toddlers. In her research she used Fleer’s Conceptual PlayWorld model to workshop with the families and developed a level of confidence in them to use characteristics of the Conceptual PlayWorld in creating their own PlayWorld. Unlike Chap. 15 where all the families participated in the same collective imaginary situation with the researcher over the zoom session in Chap. 13 families worked on the same book and same science concept but they worked in their home setting on their own and shared digitally recorded data with the researcher. One of the challenges for the researcher was to create an intersubjective space with families where they could understand her research motives. Characteristics of the Conceptual PlayWorld helped in mediating researcher’s intention of data collection and family’s expectation of working for their children’s learning in these digital educational experiments. The new digital setting created through collaboration was not only personally meaningful for the researcher but also for the families participating in the research.

5.2 Chapter 14: Developing Design Principle for Spatial Reasoning App

Ha Dang’s work in this chapter specially highlights the role of digital design in responding to the crisis by creating an app which offers freedom and new opportunities for families in supporting their children’s learning in the times of crisis. Using game as a site for concept formation using digital educational experiment methodology demands researchers to work at multiple planes but the most important of them all is to offer agency which could support parents in supporting their children’s concept formation. The researcher was working alongside families to better understand the nature of children’s engagement in these games.

5.3 Chapter 15: Researcher’s Positioning – Resolving the Dilemma Research Purpose and Pedagogical Purpose in the Educational Experiment

The chapter led by Sonya Nedovic explicates that home setting is a multi-age setting with multiple adults. In the time of pandemic while preparing the design of intervention she was not thinking of one focus child but to engage the entire family. More importantly while working with families using digital tools meant she was moving between the role of researcher and teacher. On the one hand she was involved in developing a collective imaginary situation where she could explore characters of the story, problem situation and concepts with children (thus developing relational proximity), on the other, she was also observing and recording her experiences as researcher (distal observation of the home setting using zoom). She always had to be mindful of this thin line of being a researcher and partner with families in creating new conditions for their children’s STEM learning. As Hedegaard (2008) argues “one has to conceptualise the projects of the researcher as different from the persons being researched and at the same time conceptualise the researcher as a partner in their activities.” (Hedegaard, 2008, p. 44).

6 Conclusion

Meaningful motives are created when children experience new activity setting and gain competences when participating in new activity settings. The crisis created new opportunity where we as researchers became a distal participant in children’s home setting but also developed a relational proximity in supporting their learning. It is worth noting that crisis creates critical moment of a dynamic, contradictory, developmental process (Dafermos, 2018, p. 2020) but it is not mere emergence of new demands which are negotiated by the families but a complex matrix of transient demands and challenges as represented in Figure 01 in the beginning of this chapter need to be negotiated. The chapters in this section highlight collective response to uncertainty. The participation in the collective creates opportunities for the development of individual consciousness which was made possible by digital tools in our research. This model can be represented as follows: “Collective activity-culture the ideal- sign or symbol-individual consciousness.” (Davydov, 1998, p. 92–93)

Vygotsky’s postulate of the major role of collective activity in the genesis of the individual subject brought him face to face with one important problem: the nature of the ideal. For traditional psychology, the ideal (if acknowledged at all) was situated in individual consciousness. Vygotsky, on the other hand, looked at the ideal in a completely different way. The ideal cannot be unraveled and understood at the level of individual consciousness; the ideal is an aspect of culture. Behind the ideal, behind the world of culture, and determining it, is practical activity with objects (above all labor) performed by the social subject in his historical development. (Davydov, 1998, p. 91–92).

Our quest following Hedegaard (2008) suggestion was to develop a wholistic approach to researching children’s development in the time sof crisis. The specific focus being on how can we as an early childhood education researcher formulate a methodology and undertake research where we focus on children’s STEM concept formation, as related to their societal conditions, institutional practice and children’s social situation?

Following Vygotsky (1987, 1997), Hedegaard (2008) and Davydov (1998) a dialectical approach was adopted that followed following three tenets:

• (a) children’s STEM concept formation was examined as part of a developmental process from a wholistic perspective;

• (b) that change does not occur in a linear, evolutionary progression, but through qualitative transformations which in turn meant creating motivating conditions that offers opportunity for children’s agency and imagination in their learning;

• (c) developing a comprehensive understanding of the material conditions that could offer opportunities for new learning for children and their families.