Keywords

1 Introduction

In a cultural-historical tradition, an experiment is regarded as a dialectical-interactive method through which an intervention is applied in practice as specific conditions for child development (Hedegaard, 2008b). Situated within the cultural-historical wholeness approach, an educational experiment 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” (Hedegaard, 2008a, p. 185). It consists of formulating and revising planned activities by the researcher and the teacher, where a theoretical problem, not just a problem of practice is considered. The researchers and teachers implement the planned activity in the class as a whole, and evaluate the children’s learning activities in relation to how this affects changes in the children’s motives, thinking, and knowledge acquisition (Hedegaard, 2008a). In other words, it is a synthesis of pedagogical intervention and research method, with the purpose of investigating how teaching activities as a planned pedagogical intervention impacts on children’s learning and development (Hedegaard, 2008a). In an educational experiment, study conditions are created to examine child development in a way that is “amplified in intensity and condensed in time and place” (Fleer et al., 2020, p. 49). It requires a theoretical system in addition to a planned pedagogical outcome, in other words, a key relation between practice and concepts (Davydov, 1998; Hedegaard, 2008a, b). This is where the fundamental difference lies between an educational experiment and action research (Hedegaard, 2008a). Action research is primarily a context-specific, “practice-changing practice” (Kemmis, 2009, p. 464), where an educator initiates changes in their own workplace in order to solve an existing problem at the local level (Cohen et al., 2018; Kemmis et al., 2014). In contrast, an educational experiment is primarily used to generate and develop theoretical knowledge, and does not aim to solve a specific empirical problem (Hedegaard, 2008a). It requires that researchers work together with educators in their planning and implementation of the teaching activities (Hedegaard, 2008a). Thus, an educational experiment is theoretically driven, relying heavily on the theoretical and dialectical knowledge of teaching, learning, and development (Hedegaard, 2008a).

The role of the researcher in the educational experiment, as an insider and outsider (Li, 2014), is consistent with a cultural-historical understanding of research, and where the researcher’s involvement and instructions are collected and analysed as data because these are “the decisive moment of the experiment” (Vygotsky, 1997, p.36). The researcher is situated inside the social reality of the teacher and the children, allowing for a better understanding about the process and conditions for development (Hedegaard, 2008c). In certain circumstances, however, instead of collaborating with educators, the researcher assumes an integrated role (Lewis, 2020) as the teacher-researcher. Research by Lewis (2020) and Meng et al. (2021) show that simultaneously working as the only teacher onsite and conducting research as the researcher offers a double perspective. It means one can be fully engaged in the everyday practices of the institutional setting as an educator, while undertaking data analysis and gaining understandings about the children’s development and play practices.

Being an educator-researcher is beneficial in a number of ways. First, the integrated role enables the researcher to offer expertise and intellectual resources when needed in the process, and to maintain collaboration and partnership with the other participants and stakeholders in the community, which is different from the more traditional research role (Berg & Lune, 2012). Second, being able to be fully engaged in the everyday life of the research context as an educator enables the researcher to collect a lot of first-hand experience and deep insights into the motives, demands, practices, and perspectives in the research site. As Hedegaard (2019) suggested, the prerequisite for researchers to gain the child’s perspective is to be fully immersed in the child’s everyday institutional practice and activity settings. Third, being an educator-researcher means that trust has already been built between the researcher and the child participants well before data collection, which could reduce the intrusiveness that a stranger as researcher might bring, especially when vulnerable children are involved (Meng et al., 2021). Lastly, in studies where emotionally charged situations are an integral part of the research process, a well-established relationship between the children and the educator-researcher supports the children to feel safe, and helps the researcher notice and respond quickly and appropriately if a child has an emotional reaction.

Of course, this integrated role inevitably poses some special challenges that should be delt with carefully and ethically, including potential conflicts of interest and power imbalances as the educator-researcher collects data in their workplace (Meng et al., 2021). Concerns can also be raised in terms of trustworthiness of the data (Meng et al., 2021). Although the collaboration appears to be conducted by the educator-researcher alone, in fact, the collaborative nature of the educational experiment is also shown through the active engagement of an expansive community of researchers in the theoretical discussions, data analysis, and even personal reflections.

Whilst an educational experiment offers unique possibilities and insights into children’s learning and development, little is known about the educator-researcher’s experience in the research process. Therefore, this chapter considers the conditions and crises of an educator-researcher in the process of undertaking an educational experiment.

2 Method Used

The educational experiment discussed in this chapter sought to discover how a playworld (Lindqvist, 1995) supported the development of emotion regulation in young children living in an institutional care setting in China. Data in this study were collected from a social welfare institute in a medium-sized city in China. The data-collecting researcher was also the only educator in the child-care programme under study (Meng et al., 2021). During the 10-week educational experiment, a playworld was implemented, where the educator-researcher with ten participating children and five staff members (three caregivers, one physiotherapist, and one manager) assumed a play role based on the children’s book, My Little Bunnies, and played together in jointly created imaginary situations. More specifically, based on the knowledge about the children’s competencies and interests, as well as the everyday practice of the institution, the educator-researcher designed three different variations of the playworld. They included: a pop-up (Fleer et al., 2022) pretense practice during the evening circle times, a focused play sessions for a small group of children (while the others were receiving special care), and a full-scale playworld. Then, during implementation, the educator-researcher was fully focused on her role as the educator so she could model and lead through her play role. Meanwhile, data were collected through digital video observation as is now discussed.

In this study, two cameras were employed as tools for digital video observation, and their positions are illustrated below in Fig. 4.1. First, a GoPro was fixed onto the wall to capture what was happening in the whole Activity Room, where the children spent a large part of their waking hours. Designed as a wearable action camera, a GoPro is conventionally used to record still and moving images during sports. In this study, however, it made data collection possible when no research assistant was allowed inside the institution and no safe spot was found for a handheld camera on a tripod anywhere in the activity room. It allowed the educator-researcher to be fully present with the children and the caregivers/educators, and to collect data for analysis as a researcher. As the GoPro also captured the educator-researcher as part of the children’s social situation, it enabled her engagement in the teaching process to be included in the data for analysis too. The other camera used in the study was a handheld digital video camera, mounted on a tripod for focused play sessions in the children’s bedroom, and held by the educator-researcher during outdoor play.

Fig. 4.1
A schematic of rooms. At the left, the children's bedroom at the top, has windows with cameras on it. The bedroom door connects to the storage room at the bottom left. At the right, the activity room at the top has a GoPro on its wall. The bedroom and activity room door lead to dining area, connected to bathroom.

Positions of the digital video observation tools in relation to the layout of the unit

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After data collection was completed, data were discussed and analysed systematically by the educator-researcher and her three PhD supervisors, and each meeting was audio recorded with the supervisors’ consent and transcribed for further reflections. Peer reviews of the data analysis were also provided regularly by the Conceptual PlayWorld research team and the wider cultural-historical research community at the faculty. Different aspects of the data and their analysis were presented and critiqued during the monthly PhD day meetings, as well as cultural-historical seminars, workshops, and conferences, such as the International Society for Cultural-historical Activity Research (ISCAR).

3 Example of Data Generated

The vignette below shows how, with the help of digital video observations, a shared understanding of “chaos” in the playworld was achieved interpsychologically, which supported a renewed interpretation of the data set for the educator-researcher. It is excerpted from the first meeting with the PhD supervisors after the educator-researcher came back from data collection. Before the meeting, the educator-researcher was in an “intellectual crisis” and planning on withdrawing from her study, because she believed the playworld implementation was a total failure, messy and chaotic. During the 2-h discussion with her supervisors, she started to understand and even appreciate the “chaos” as a developmental force for her own understanding of the practices and traditions in which she was acting as a educator-researcher.

At the beginning of the meeting, the educator-researcher explained the everyday practice of the research site, and the medical backgrounds and personal history of the participating children. She shared a video clip from the first few sessions of the playworld, where the children were unable to get into their play roles. She was frustrated because the children’s responses were not what she had imagined, nor was her playworld as organised as those implemented by educator-researchers elsewhere, such as Lewis’ (2020). She said, “My playworld is totally chaotic, it’s hopeless.” On hearing this, Marie commented, “Chaos doesn’t mean hopeless.”

The educator-researcher continued showing different scenes in the video and talking about how the children often appeared out of control and were unable to carry out any play pot during a playworld session.

Marilyn said, “It will always be chaotic, because you have got children with models of practice in their head which was totally [different from children living in family homes]. But it is what they do and what they consider as everyday life and practice … So that’s what they are bringing to us. So of course it’s always challenging space for you as the educator, because they are never going to respond in relation to how Rebecca’s children respond… They are responding with what they see around them. That’s all they can bring to this, because that’s their world…”.

Marie added, “You are absolutely right. It’s their real world. It’s chaotic. So of course the playworld is going to be chaotic by definition.”

This first discussion about “chaotic” helped the educator-researcher realise that “maybe being chaotic is a must, a characteristic of the playworld for the children” in her study. As she showed her supervisors more video clips, Marie discussed the meaning of “chaotic” further, “I think when you talk about the chaos, I’m really interested because you keep saying it’s chaotic in the playworld, but I don’t think it is chaotic at all. I think the chaos is in the tension between what you thought it’s going to be, based on what you have observed in how was Rebecca’s playworld and Marilyn’s, and the reality of the playworld. But the playworld that you have created, I think is every bit as rich and organised, given the context. So I think it’s correct to make that distinction. Give yourself a break, apart from anything else, and not beat yourself up, because I think it’s every bit as organised in that way. Even what these children bring here, bringing different reality, and bringing in different life experience to it. But they are still doing it. See how the children do.”

What the supervisors brought to light is that “chaotic” signifies the discrepancy between the educator-researcher’s initial understanding of an “ideal” playworld and its real form in her study. The understanding of “chaos” shared interpsychologically inspired the educator-researcher to look at the children’s life and their original institutional practice to understand children’s initial reactions to playworld. Thus, to the educator-researcher, the word “chaos” stopped carrying a negative implication, but was representative of the children’s relations with the unique social situation of an institutional care facility. Collectively, the supervisors and the educator-researcher started to reveal how the implementation of the playworld stirred up drastic changes in the children’s relations with their social environment, and how development might emerge through “chaos”.

The educator-researcher reflected, “As playworld continued, I realised that maybe they didn’t know what to do with this freedom, because in their life, it is very structured, very restricted and not much choice. So when playworld gives them so much freedom, so many possibilities, they are lost. … Therefore smaller doses of the playworld too.”

To this, Marilyn said, “That can be part of your new model of playworld…what you have just described is in the literature in other institutions, where people change pedagogical practices for students because it’s suddenly not what they have expected, and they don’t know how to do it yet. But the repetition of what you are doing gives them the context in which to build… you are building a safe structure of a playworld for them. The storyline gives the narrative that is safe, and within that they then feel safe to actually explore the challenges they bring into it…”.

In this vignette, the shared viewing of the playworld through digital recording and the intellectual discussions together supported the educator-researcher to re-consider her research model not as a failed attempt, but as generating unique outcomes because of the unique social situation.

4 Conclusion

This chapter presents a new way of conceptualising the role of the researcher in an educational experiment. The method includes an individual educator-researcher, digital video observations, and an expansive community of cultural-historical researchers (see Fig. 4.2). The current study furthers Lewis’ (2020) integrated educational experiment by foregrounding the use of digital video observations and the important contribution of an expansive research community. Digital video observations allow for shared viewing and re-viewing, which enables co-experiencing of what happened in the playworld. This makes it possible for the expansive research community to provide insights and different perspectives for the educator-researcher. The educator-researcher was able to interact intellectually with an expansive community of cultural-historical researchers. The intellectual exchanges, as illustrated in the vignette, shows how theoretical discussion and data analysis on the interpsychological level enabled the educator-researcher to have a renewed understanding of the data set at an intrapersonal level. As the individual and collective minds interact, the educator-researcher was able to re-experience the critical moments of the playworld through the video clips with a deepened theoretical understanding about the data. It reshapes the educator-researcher’s understanding about the research outcomes, and enabled her to answer the research questions of the original study. For the educator-researcher, this new model of the educational experiment also creates conditions for the renewal of her identity as a researcher, which, in turn, empowered her to continue, and eventually complete, her PhD project.

Fig. 4.2
A, 2 way cyclic chart. It includes educator-researcher, expansive intellectual community, and digital video observation.

A model of an integrated educational experiment

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