Dress like a winner: mathematical investigations in a design workshop in an early childhood education teacher education programme

ABSTRACT

This article investigates alternative ways doing of mathematics in an Early Childhood Education Teacher Programme using aesthetic forms of expression, the body and reflections on ethics, gender and responsibilities in the transition from student teacher at university to a qualified preschool teacher of children aged 4–5 years. The purpose of the article is to explore an interdisciplinary mathematics workshop in which student teachers investigate mathematics with body- and hands-on crafting to better understand how young children experience learning situations. The research design draws on feminist activist social science research, including in-making and crafty research methods. Theoretically and methodologically, inspiration is drawn from relational materialism and Donna Haraway’s scientific engagement with ‘speculative fabulations’ and Anna L. Tsing’s development of ‘arts of noticing’. The study shows that learning mathematics through the body, concrete materials, scientific concepts and fiction can be helpful in the transition from student teacher to preschool teacher.

KEYWORDS:

• Mathematics
• teacher education
• preschool
• gender
• the body

Introduction

A Swedish report from 2022 on new teachers’ experiences of the transition from student teacher to teacher shows that the changeover is challenging and difficult (Muhrman, Örtenberg, and Jahic Pettersson 2022). The transition not only involves what to teach and educate, but also how to teach. In relation to the subject of mathematics, and in connection to what and how, it has been suggested that student teachers in Swedish Early Childhood Education (ECE) Teacher Programmes should be given opportunities to learn and explore what mathematics and mathematical processes in the preschool can be and become (Sumpter 2015). Hence, the overall intention with this article is to investigate a creative and interdisciplinary mathematics design workshop in Stockholm University’s ECE Teacher Education Programme. The design workshop relates to previous research on interdisciplinary and aesthetic learning in mathematics (de Freitas and Sinclair 2014; Ernest 2008; Palmer 2010a) as well as the field of ECE mathematics (Björklund and Palmér 2018; Helenius et al. 2020). It also involves theories of how gender, ethnicity and social class could affect children’s and adults’ performances in mathematics (Ernest 2004; Ghasemi and Burley 2019; Smetácková 2015; Walkerdine 1998).

Against this background, the purpose of this article is to investigate the possibilities of doing mathematics using multimodal and practical-aesthetic forms of expression, the body, hands-on crafting, reflections on ethics, gender and responsibilities in relation to the transition from a student teacher at university to a qualified preschool teacher working with children aged 4–5 years. A question guiding this article concerns how mathematical concepts and methods connects to and intertwine with creative explorations. The workshop was an opportunity for student teachers to investigate mathematics in concrete ways by measuring, estimating, calculating and cooperatively discussing and negotiating how mathematical concepts and thoughts could be used as tools to solve a challenging assignment. The task in the workshop was to design and create full-size clothes in newspaper that would be suitable for an imaginary Nobel Prize banquet at a (fictional) City Hall in Stockholm. By collaboratively measuring and estimating using eye-hand-coordination and perception as tools, the student teachers designed newspaper clothes suitable for an adult body at an imaginary banquet. The workshop aimed to prepare the student teachers for their forthcoming professional work with mathematics in the preschool and encouraged them to investigate mathematics in similar ways with young children by making use of their imagination, different crafty materials and facts.

At this point it is important to say that making clothes out of newspaper can be an exciting mathematical activity for preschool children between the ages of 4–5 years if they are supported and encouraged by committed teachers. However, when running this kind of workshop with children, it should ideally be framed by a different and more understandable topic than the Swedish Nobel Prize banquet. The idea with this exploratory workshop was that student teachers would both experience and investigate a matter of interest to themselves and engage in cooperative and creative explorations. After their involvement the student teachers would be more prepared to redesign such an assignment in a way that led to active and creative mathematical practices with young children. In other words, the workshop challenged the student teachers to consider their own experiences as adult learners and reflect on their transfer from the university setting to the preschool classroom (Ovens, Garbett, and Hutchinson 2016). Moreover, in the workshop the students were encouraged to investigate the potential of involving formal and informal mathematics in their future teaching practices (Björklund and Palmér 2018).

The research design itself draws on activist social science research methodologies (Renold 2019; Renold and Ringrose 2019), including ‘in-making’ and crafty research methods that could offer new ways of understanding mathematics in educational settings, in this case with student teachers in a maths course design workshop. In the design workshop the ECE educators and authors of this article, Anna and Teresa, were not only organizers or/and observers of the event, but were also actively involved in the social interactions in the classroom and fully engaged in the in-making and crafty work in order to address the complexities of the teaching situation (Renold 2019). More specifically, as shown below, this workshop was designed as a joint exploration in which we, as educators, communicated with the student teachers, supported them by distributing materials and tools and asked productive questions, even if we did not always have the answers. Our task as educators was also to engage in the creation of what Kevin Kumashiro (2000, 2015) calls a safe learning space. Creating safe learning spaces is about allowing for idea-sharing and creativity in a joint learning assignment, and at the same time reflecting on what it feels like to be involved, how the power balance operates and whether all the group members are included and engaged (Kumashiro 2015). It is also important to note that as educators we did not grade or evaluate this specific course group.

In theoretical and methodological terms, this article and the design of the workshop were inspired by relational materialism (see below) and the feminist scholars Donna Haraway’s (1997, 2008, 2013, 2016) and Anna L. Tsing’s (2015) scientific engagement with speculative fabulations (Haraway) and the arts of noticing (Tsing). These concepts functioned as scientific tools to challenge and support creative interdisciplinary investigations with the student teachers and guide the transition from the university classroom to pedagogical work with preschool children. According to Haraway (2016), speculative fabulations often start in creative processes by posing hypotheses, making forecasts and being repeatedly tested in accordance with research procedures within the natural sciences and mathematics. In this playful way of learning and teaching, facts may be stretched and twisted to form new strategies and ideas about what is currently being explored (Haraway 2016). In this study, we investigated how and whether speculative fabulations challenged the teaching of mathematics with student teachers and how they facilitated the transition from the university classroom to pedagogical work with preschool children.

When exploring the arts of noticing (Tsing 2015), we immersed ourselves in what was happening in the classroom and in the empirical material, written notes and drawings from student teachers and our own research diaries. In the workshop we focused on mathematics and how the student teachers observed and elaborated well-established mathematical concepts and theories, together with fiction, emotions and hands-on crafting. By paying close attention to the details, both in the workshop and the empirical material, we noticed mathematical concepts, relationships, gendered assumptions, minor stories within major ones, multiple temporalities and complex and simultaneous interactions (Tsing 2015). We also paid attention to how facts and fiction were connected to and associated with the creative process. Through Tsing’s (2015) writings on the arts of noticing, we began to pay attention to things and matter that might otherwise have eluded us. This way of working and noticing gently pushed the learning process in mathematics in alternative, and sometimes unexpected, directions. In addition, we investigated what happened when we introduced questions like ‘what if?’ and ‘what would happen if?’ (Haraway 2016) as teaching tools in the workshop, as a way of understanding how speculative fabulations in relation to playful explorations led to surprises and amazement. This is explored in a later section with examples from the workshop’s empirical material presented as a narrative entwined with analysis.

The arrangement of the workshop

The workshop examined in this article can be regarded as an example of investigative pedagogy; an interdisciplinary and critical pedagogy that has influenced Swedish preschools and ECE at several universities in the last 30 years (Dahlberg, Moss, and Pence 2001; Lenz Taguchi 2005 [2013], 2009; Aberg and Lenz Taguchi 2005[2018]). The workshop is part of a course in ECE focusing mathematics and technology, which included lectures, text-based seminars, investigative workshops, individual and group assignments. The student teachers in this particular course were aged between 22–35 years, 80% female and had diverse ethnic backgrounds. The workshop has developed from the Swedish ECE course offered at Stockholm University entitled Investigative Pedagogy – Dialogue Reggio Emilia (2004–2012), which adopted a feminist post-structural approach based on critical pedagogy and deconstructive theory (Lenz Taguchi 2000, 2005, 2007, 2009; Palmer 2009, 2010a, 2010b). Investigative pedagogy, as implemented in this mathematics workshop, relates to a feminist educational research tradition (Ellsworth 1992; Lather 1991, 2007; Lenz Taguchi 2000; Walkerdine 1998) that begins with sharing experiences, acknowledging the existence of unequal power relations, intervention, speculative fabrications and emotions, and has developed together with a multidisciplinary theoretical framework and concepts from philosophy (Lenz Taguchi 2022; Palmer 2022). This is a way of organizing and employing pedagogical activities that involve student teachers in mathematical reasoning together with creative forms of bodily and aesthetic expression, such as dance, music and/or, as in this workshop, creative hands-on crafting and negotiations around the impact of power and gender (Kumashiro 2000, 2015).

The three-hour long workshop was held with six groups of student teachers, with 6–7 students in each group, to collectively solve problems using mathematics as working tools, make decisions and document both the process and the resulting work. At the end of the workshop, all six groups presented a complete newspaper outfit consisting of a hat, top and bottom and an accessory suitable for an imaginary Nobel Prize banquet. Each group was assigned one of the following areas: chemistry, physics, economics, literature, physiology or medicine and peace, all of which are honoured each year at the Nobel prizegiving ceremony.

The groups were provided with newspapers, staplers, tape and a digital tablet for fact-finding and pedagogical documentation. Pedagogical documentation is a methodological tool for learning which can be used by children, preschool teachers, student teachers and teacher educators to understand their own learning (Lenz Taguchi 2009). In this workshop pedagogical documentation provided the student teachers the possibility to revisit their own experiences and those of their classmates, add new questions to be investigated as well as reflect on their own mathematical learning.

Before they started, each group decided who would model the Nobel creation, who would document the work, who would do the hands-on measuring and creating and who the group leader would be, as a way of practising different roles as part of their future teaching profession. The student teacher who acted as a mannequin for the clothes was directly adorned with pieces of newspaper. We educators encouraged the student teachers to talk about their ideas for the creation, use the digital tablet for inspiration or fact-finding and to document the work using images, drawings and written texts.

Our intention was to give the student teachers an opportunity to cooperate, negotiate and compromise over what they imagined the outfit would look like, use informal mathematics, such as their bodies, arms, legs, eyes or thumbs to measure and estimate, and practise eye-hand-coordination and perception (Björklund and Palmér 2018) to make the clothes fit well. They were also encouraged to reflect on how their transition from the university to the preschool might be done, using questions like: What if young children were invited to do this type of work? What might happen then? How would you adapt such workshop for children aged 4–5 years?

Creating narratives and ethical considerations

The empirical material included in this article consists of 20 short stories/notes and drawings from 30 student teachers, from their work with pedagogical documentation, and our own research diaries from which we have formulated the narrative that follows. All the documentation from the workshop was posted to and stored on the university’s web-platform, which was accessible to the educators and the student teachers enrolled on the course. The names in the article have been changed to protect the students’ identities. In addition to the stories from the classroom, the article also includes stories from other disciplines, the media and fiction that were collected by the student teachers from books or the internet during the workshop.

Departing from the empirical material, we educators engaged in different parts of the workshop and with different groups of student teachers and collaboratively composed the narrative. The narrative that we present here focuses mainly on the group working with physics (for reasons of space) and their collaborative processes. Configuring stories into a narrative is a way of organizing a cacophony of actions, speculations and scientific facts from diverse disciplines into a complex yet cohesive story (Tsing 2015). Working with storytelling requires knowledge about those telling the story and the practices and environments in which the stories develop (Tsing 2015). As educators, our knowledge about the aims and scope of the mathematics course influenced our analytical work. However, we were surprised by what we encountered in the empirical material, in that many unexpected happenings occurred in the workshop that we were unable to foresee. Thus, the narrative portrays a locally situated here-and-now-involvement that cannot be forecasted, recreated or reiterated in a similar way elsewhere.

With the student teachers’ consent, and in line with the ethical guidelines we followed (Swedish Research Council 2017), written consent forms were distributed to be read, signed and returned to us before the workshop began. Participating experimental projects often involve potential ethical challenges that are not always easy to prepare for, such as an awareness of gendered attitudes in relation to mathematics (Palmer 2011[2020]), being aware of emotional reactions and the effects of sometimes invisible power structures in educational situations (Kumashiro 2015). This in turn requires ethical sensibility to be woven into all the activities and phases of the event, such as acknowledging the importance of asking for consent before taking photographs (Palmer et al. 2019) and before touching a fellow student when fitting the newspaper clothes. Moreover, and as already mentioned, we as educators did not grade or evaluate these specific course groups – a strategy that we used to minimize possible power relations.

Thinking with theory and method

This study takes its starting point in relational materialism, which encouraged us to carefully attend to storytelling, materialities and their mutual relations. Relational materialism is an umbrella term for a wide range of research that relies on the philosophical idea that human and more-than-human agents are produced and co-exist in ongoing and continuously changing relations to, with and in each other, in what can be called a flat ontology (Bodén et al. 2020). In particular, we were encouraged by the potential of inventive meetings, collaborations and knowledge exchanges between the people involved in the workshop and between the different educational practices and scientific disciplines that produce relational practices. In our analytical work, we engaged in a mutually relational and co-creating process with the empirical material and in the classroom and specifically noted how it connected to mathematics. For us, relational materialism became productive and opened up new and additional educational realities that might make a difference.

We were also inspired by social activist research methodologies, such as those developed by Gabrielle Ivinson and Emma Renold (2013), Renold and Ringrose (2019) and Renold (2019) in their participating experimental research projects with young people living in Wales and England. The emergent social research methods in their work are designed to connect more directly with practice and are inspired by how feminist queer research practices operate at the thresholds of ‘research’, ‘public pedagogy’ and ‘activism’, or what Renold and Ringrose (2019) refer to as the ‘more-than’ of research. In a similar way, we tried to participate actively and curiously and install ourselves in the ongoing relational and material practices in the classrooms. However, our participation was somewhat problematic in that we were not on a totally equal par with the student teachers, but also participated with our personal and previous experiences, viewpoints and visions as well as our power producing professional roles as university educators. The narrative reported on here is therefore not neutral or impartial, but coded, subjective and formed in relation to our aim and research interest.

Closely aligning with Isabelle Stengers’ theorizing (1997), Haraway (1997, 2008, 2013, 2016) develops the thought complex of speculative fabulations, which in this article operates as an innovative tool for thinking and teaching. The speculative is not wild fantasies, but a way of accentuating the everyday storytelling that takes place between people and considers it as scientific. An overarching feminist stance that Haraway (1997, 2008, 2013, 2016) adopts is that many different narratives are assembled within the sciences, and that research can and should experiment more with the rich ambiguity and possibilities of both scientific and conventional thoughts. Speculative fabulation involves an openness to different disciplines, time periods and cultures, as well as a mobility and an expansion of what is considered true. Speculative fabulations include scientific texts, historical documents, science fiction, memory and dream stories and facts. Through her writing, Haraway connects modern technology, politics and economics with the world around her (see for example 1997[2018], 2013, 2016). Supported by speculative feminism, she argues that science is not neutral but gendered, coded, coloured and never unbiased. There is a need for stories other than those that are taken for granted, and, as Haraway (2016) writes, they need to be told differently. As shown below, the student teachers’ speculative fabulations in the explorative design workshop were productive for their learning of mathematics as well as for their understanding of how children think, play and learn.

As noted, we have drawn on Tsing’s (2015) scientific method called the arts of noticing. Tsing explains that the arts of noticing is not just a way of observing but is also an invitation to be imaginative as part of our knowledge production. Tsing (2015, 22–23) offers us an inventive and active form of noticing that involves studying assemblages and their different crossings very carefully. When looking closely at something and noticing details and connections, associations and assemblages, possible ways forward unfold that prompt us to ask questions like: What is it that I see and what is it that I do not (yet) see? How do things, facts, fantasies, identities and disciplines come together? By using the questions what if? and/or what would happen if? (Haraway 2016), we noticed and paid attention to speculative thoughts and to what we did not yet see but could imagine. The questions also encouraged us to keep an open mind to different disciplines, time periods and cultures, and to include scientific texts, historical documents, science fiction, memoirs, dreams and facts in the narrative. The arts of noticing imply a critical, self-accountable and responsible engagement with the world, which consequently requires ethical responsibility for our choices and the analyses we present (Tsing 2015).

The narrative: ethics, integrity and the body in the startup of the group work

In this narrative, we direct our gazes to the student group that was asked to create an outfit inspired by the Nobel Prize in physics: Lisa, Ella, Jenny, Louise, Aisha and Simon. They started immediately by gathering around a pile of newspapers to talk about how to design an outfit for the gala night at the imaginary Nobel banquet. How would they design the clothes, a hat and some accessories inspired by physics? Would they create a long, feminine glittery ball gown or a conventional masculine dark suit? Or why not design something completely different? Perhaps transcend heteronormative and stereotyped patterns and go beyond gendered norms? The discussion then began to focus on gendered notions and ideas, which were also included in the mathematics course, as productive parts of the learning trajectory. The group members were attuned to how their own situated knowledge, race, gender and class, together with strong ideas about what would be suitable to wear at the Nobel Prize banquet, affected this creative practice. In reality, the Nobel banquet is full of gender-related codes, especially in relation to the fashion industry, so it was conceivable that gendered gazes and discussions about queer- and transgender would appear. This was also embedded in the design of the workshop, and something that we as educators had in mind when presenting the assignment to the student teachers.

In the workshop, the student teachers were encouraged to cooperate and support each other, use their hands and eyes as mathematical measuring tools and be responsive to and caring of the others in the group, and especially the model in their exposed position. When Lisa volunteered to be the model, she knew that she had the right to say stop or pause the work if she felt uncomfortable or tired, and the other group members were aware that they had to ask before they touched her or used the camera for documentation. Using bodies, eyes and gazes as pedagogical working tools in a mathematics workshop is not innocent or objective, but rather a concern that needs to be carefully scrutinized and discussed collaboratively in order to prepare for future work in the preschool. The beginning of the workshop was therefore dedicated to reflections and ethical concerns about integrity, in which we as educators engaged, as part of the creation of a safe learning space (Kumashiro 2015). As educators, we worked towards inclusion and a reflective climate as a way of enabling the student teachers to question and challenge stereotyped ideas about the body as a neutral learning object (de Freitas and Sinclair 2014). Here, explorative mathematics were interwoven with bodies, gazes, fashion, gender, documentation practices, counting, estimating and the materiality of the newspaper.

Scientific facts interwoven in the design of a Nobel outfit

The group’s discussions about gendered norms and how to create an outfit from newspaper, inspired by physics, were lively. The student teachers shared ideas connected to the joint assignment. Stories from history were placed side by side with scientific facts from our time, memories and fiction. Louise read aloud from the website: The 2017 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded for the observation of gravitational waves. The signal reveals the first observation of two massive black holes colliding, which proves Albert Einstein right (www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics). Aisha responded: Fascinating! I would like to include gravitational waves in the design and call the created costume The Dark Universe? What do you think about that? Simon answered: Yes, but I would also like to include details from the science fiction TV series: The Dark Universe, where monsters take place in a shared universe. The collaborative knowledge production in the group almost immediately crossed disciplinary borders and related to facts from physics, fiction, monsters and black holes, to the extent that it could be said that science fiction was in the making. After doing a detailed sketch of the outfit’s prototype, Jenny, who was assigned the role of the group’s leader, started to cover Lisa’s body with strips of newspaper to create a jacket and a pair of trousers using tape to stick the pages together.

Up to this point, the group had not included any formal mathematics in their discussions, although they did use informal mathematics by moving their arms and hands around to show each other what a suit might look like, or how a pirouette was done, which was a first bodily attempt at investigating mathematics (de Freitas and Sinclair 2014). After a while they also included the idea of gravitational waves, which turned into a banner/streamer to wear across the breast of the jacket. They also discussed the science behind patterns of gravity, found photographs of ice-skater pirouettes and black holes rotating around each other in outer space and included them as part of the design.

Speculative fabulations and ideas from the field of physics were entwined, for instance in how to create a pair of newspaper spectacles for looking into the future. The boundaries between the discipline of physics, the students’ own experiences of science fiction and the facts gleaned from the internet and books were dissolved and sometimes blurred. At the same time, this creative work was framed by the structure of the workshop, the instructions, the materials and the common problem of creating an outfit in newspaper suitable for the Nobel Prize banquet using mathematical concepts and methods. The student teachers were focused and paid attention to their joint work using mathematical concepts, newspapers, tape and glue with inspiration from physics. ‘The Dark Universe’, the name of the outfit, thus accommodated fantasy, a sense of humour, monsters, dark energy, dark matter and mathematics. The group engaged with the assignment and included established knowledge and speculative fabulations from the world around them, as preschool children often do. Furthermore, notions about gender and heteronormativity continued to intervene: How was the costume gendered? Why did so few women receive the Nobel Prize? How was it possible to link heteronormative thinking about physics to the fashion industry? The knowledge gained unfolded in a transverse and interdisciplinary way and involved mathematics, physics, the mind, body and gendered notions about fashion and clothes.

Documentation practices and mathematics

Aisha, who was responsible for the digital tablet in the physics group documented every aspect of the design work. She asked Lisa and the others for consent before taking photographs. She also made notes on a piece of paper about mathematical concepts and methods and reminded the others to use their bodies to measure and estimate. Aisha used the pedagogical documentation techniques that she had learned in the ECE teacher programme and practised in her vocational training in the preschool (Lenz Taguchi and Palmer 2017). She asked Louise to count how many thumbs the ribbon measured and wrote it down – 66 Louise-thumbs (1 centimetre = 0.39 thumbs). She then asked the group to estimate the circumference of the hat, the length of the tie, how long the straps could be and the size of the slippers. Could they be size 6? Lisa confirmed: yes, she wore size 6 shoes. Mathematics was thus interwoven with fashion, shoesizes, documentation practices, counting, estimating, the materiality of the bodies and the newspaper. When Aisha asked the group: ‘What if’ this hat could fly? they started talking about how preschool children quickly move to other places and subject matter in their counterfactual conversations as they make connections with what they know and think about (Gopnik 2010). In this workshop, noticing differences, similarities and tiny details in the room, making associations and relations with others/other/bodies and matter can be understood as an interdisciplinary way of working.

Another mathematical area to engage the group was patterns, regularity and symmetry, all of which are based on regular and definite sequences (Björklund and Palmér 2018). The group members put a lot of energy into making sure that both sides of the outfit were symmetrical. They talked about the previous week’s seminar on the history of mathematics, in which they discussed how the symmetrical body could be used as a working tool for mathematical calculations and how some bodies – especially male bodies – had been considered as standard (Mendick 2006). Ella reminded the others: I think about how the footmark of King Henry I (1100–1135) was placed on the door of a church to establish the standardized measurement of a foot (one foot equals 12 in.) and his decision that one yard was the distance from the tip of his nose to the end of his thumb of his outstretched arm, which roughly measured three feet. They reflected on this for a while and talked about different connections between mathematics and power, but also how this story about the king was related to the body (of the king in this case) and the ability to rule the world through mathematics.

Noticing and categorizing the mathematical concepts

When all the groups had completed their outfits, they went through all the pedagogical documentation and made necessary additions. They helped each other to notice and categorize the mathematical concepts and ways of reasoning they had used and decide whether more needed to be added (Lenz Taguchi and Palmer 2017). We educators visited the groups one by one to join in the discussions and study each group’s mind maps with different mathematical areas drawn on paper. The student teachers were encouraged to pay attention to and carefully notice which mathematical areas they found most useful. They were also asked to note the different types of measuring concept they had used to communicate length, width, area, distance, circumference and time, and whether or not they had used arithmetic and methods of counting, such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and symmetry (Helenius et al. 2020).

The groups were further invited to discuss where and how interdisciplinary crossroads emerged and how the assigned subjects/Nobel prizes intervened in the process. Moreover, they talked about how they had been inspired by engineering and construction knowledge in their collective work, as well as the relationship between the workshop and the fashion industry. All the students were convinced that the imaginative workshop on the Nobel Prize had been inspiring and that thoughts about their prize invited them to be creative and to fabricate and speculate on inventions, creations and prizes, both real and fictional. The interdisciplinary approach led to new inventions and creations that had never been seen before, which aligns closely with how Haraway (2008, 2013, 2016) describes current and future research, explorations and learning as scientific fiction. New inventions and scientific discoveries are often interwoven with fiction and imagination and, according to Haraway, are absolutely necessary in order to generate new ideas in creative processes. The outfits produced in the groups were unique and situated in the classroom with the student teachers, which to paraphrase Haraway (1997), can be seen as small scientific revolutions against objectivity and predetermined patterns. In other words, new knowledge, new combinations of disciplines and speculative science-fiction-speculative-stories were created. In addition, the collections turned out to be gender-transgressive and norm-critical and bore no resemblance to those worn at the real-life Nobel Prize banquets.

Concluding the workshop: some thoughts and reflections

At the end of the workshop all the models walked down fictional stairs in an imagined City Hall in Stockholm (the classroom). After the catwalk each group presented their thoughts and reflections in relation to doing mathematics using multimodal and practical-aesthetic forms of expression, the body, hands-on crafting and reflections on ethics, gender and responsibilities in relation to the transition from the university to teaching practices in the preschool and work with children aged 4–5 years.

Firstly, the groups agreed that they had been deeply involved in spatial and mathematical numerical problem-solving, the body, relating to the room, things and other people and bodies and solving unforeseen problems that required mathematical thinking, tools and materials. They had experienced how to investigate and think with the body by using their arms, hands and fingers to estimate, calculate and develop different measurement techniques. Using words like left, right, behind, in front of, up, down, symmetrical and so on was a way of concretizing and communicating how the body related to the materials and to other people. Secondly, they had needed to make use of basic arithmetic, such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division during the creative work. Thirdly, they agreed that they had felt an emotional engagement with all their senses. Having fun, laughing and feeling competent, or sometimes incompetent, seemed to be important parts of the workshop. They had also been involved in democratic learning processes in what they considered safe spaces (Kumashiro 2015), such as accepting differences according to gender identity, compromising, negotiating, communicating, changing their minds, finding new solutions to problems together with others, listening to others, adapting to a group’s tempo and rhythm – different in all groups – and sometimes pursuing their own ideas. Ethical dimensions were also reflected on and highlighted, such as the importance of asking before taking photographs and acting responsibly and respectfully towards each other (Palmer et al. 2019). Using the body for mathematical explorations in student teacher groups can be problematic and in the workshop tensions sometimes arose. Simon explained that he sometimes felt uncomfortable about touching Lisa when decorating her body with pieces of newspaper, which led him to repeatedly ask for consent. Gendered notions and ideas were also intertwined in the workshop as productive parts of their learning processes and discussions in the classroom. In the workshop, the student teachers were attuned to how their own situated knowledge, gender and background, together with strong ideas about what would be suitable to wear at the Nobel Prize banquet, affected their creative practices.

All the student teachers reflected, in one way or another, on how their own intersectional, gendered, cultural, embodied and situated knowledge was intricately interwoven with the creative and cooperative work. An example of this is how Ella and Louise discerned that they had been resistant to stereotypical images and beliefs about the long, glittery, expensive dresses and black suits that are standard wear at Nobel banquets. As educators, we understood that the design of the workshop, the course literature, thoughts about speculative fabulations and scientific facts were all important ingredients in the workshop and enabled the student teachers to question and challenge old-fashioned ideas about heteronormativity and gender.

Conclusions relating to the transition from the university classroom to preschool situation

In this article, the arts of noticing has steered our gaze towards how mathematical concepts intertwine with the creation of paper costumes in the empirical material. During the workshop, we actively encouraged the student teachers to combine mathematical facts and notions with speculations and fantasies of worlds yet to come in their creative explorations. We also used scientific concepts as pedagogical tools to show how an investigative and imaginative way of working can be transformed into a preschool setting. In addition, we implemented the notion of speculative fabulation as a fruitful device to encourage them to fantasize, speculate, relate to personal encounters with fiction, books, films and mathematical facts and theories and be collaboratively creative in small groups.

In our experience, doing mathematics, practising speculative thinking, the questions of what if? and what would happen if? and working in groups with classmates and participating educators offer specific knowledge that cannot be learned in other ways. However, these kinds of creative events do not start and expand by themselves. The speculative workshop described in this article was carefully designed and supported by us as engaged educators and conducted and explored in what Kumashiro (2015) describes as safe spaces, where student teachers are encouraged to support and care for one another in creative and relational problem-solving. It is not always easy to be open about what makes us uncomfortable, such as adorning a classmate’s body with newspaper as Simon articulates above. As educators we need to be sensitive to tensions in the room and bold enough to address eventual conflicts related to the pedagogical work.

For preschool children, bodily explorations are part of everyday life and included in most preschool activities, often related to mathematics. In this workshop, the student teachers experienced learning through and with their own bodies, hands and fingers and exploring with concrete materials, all of which could be key tools in the transition from ECE as university students to preschool practitioners. Elizabeth de Freitas and Nathalie Sinclair (2014) theorize on the human body as a relational agent that is not fixed, finished or the only agent involved in learning or teaching, but is cooperatively intertwined with mathematical concepts, things and the learning environment. When mathematical concepts like height or length are read together with relational materialism, fiction, new realities and new ways of understanding mathematics and fantasy – ‘mathematimaginations’ or science fiction – are produced (Palmer 2011[2020]). Personal experiences and practical encounters with mathematics as a student teacher are vital for the forthcoming profession as a preschool teacher, and can be used when planning, carrying out and evaluating investigative activities with children. Although this workshop was designed to suit an adult group of students and enhance their interest and curiosity, the student teachers expressed that they saw various ways of adapting it to a preschool class with children aged 4–5 years and taking the local preschool, materials and the children’s interests into consideration. Even though many leaps need to be made in the journey from adulthood to childhood, from advanced facts from mathematics, chemistry and medicine and adult fictive references from films and books to children’s facts and fiction, they may still be feasible.

Hence, the practice of being fully involved in a creative engagement as an adult is crucial for understanding how a learning situation can be experienced by a young child. Just as children enter new paths in their creative investigations in the preschool, the adults in the workshop gained experience of being drawn towards new directions that could be deepened and investigated further with the support of mathematical concepts, speculative fantasies or science fiction. Participating in an investigative workshop can expand the repertoire of what is familiar and at the same time encourage a becoming preschool teacher to choose paths towards as yet unknown pastures. This could contribute to a greater sensitivity and empathy in the work with preschool children, both of which are important skills for any teacher. This sensibility also includes what Kumashiro (2015) describes as ethical engagement, where teachers’ personal experiences can be used to address the uncontrollability that is always present in investigative learning practices. Not knowing exactly what will happen next and engaging emotionally in education practices require courage and responsiveness, which the student teachers in this workshop had the chance to explore together with us (Renold and Ringrose 2019). Despite this, the learning situation can be somewhat complicated, in that vulnerable or oppressed group members may not feel that they have the ability or power to opt out of this space, given that the workshop is part of a teacher programme and not a voluntary undertaking.

To conclude, in this article we have described a workshop that has been conducted a few times with different groups of student teachers in an ECE context, with the fabulous theme of creating clothes out of newspaper for the Nobel banquet. In each workshop, new fantastic, fun and crazy ideas and creations have been invented that have always surprised us. In these innovative workshops, we educators and the student teachers have experimented with what it is like to leave our comfort zones and try something new, unexpected and surprising. We are aware that daring to expose oneself, explore and create in safe spaces together with friends or colleagues in ECE and children in the preschool require courage, motivation and persistence. We hope to continue this dazzling adventure and have hopefully inspired our readers to try something similar in both teacher education and the preschool.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the student teachers for taking part in this experimentation with paper, Nobel laureate, staplers, tape, emotions, documentations, reflections and make important contributions to this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anna Palmer

Anna Palmer is an Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education and Care at the Department of Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University. Anna’s research interest concerns co-productive and creative methodologies related to feminist new materialist thinking and posthumanism, in practice-oriented engagements with teachers, student teachers in ECE and children in the preschool.

Teresa Elkin Postila

Teresa Elkin Postila is an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education and Care at the Department of Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University. Teresa’s research interest involves environmental issues and climate change related to feminist posthumanist new materialist theory and methodology. Teresa currently teaches courses related to Natural Sciences and Sustainability, Mathematics and Technology in the teacher programmes.