Aesthetic exploration of what materials do

"I think it's important to give one-year-olds the freedom to do whatever they want," says Nina Odegard, a recent PhD graduate in educational science, after sharing her thoughts, experiences, and, not least, her thesis with Modern Barndom during a long interview. Aesthetic Exploration with recycled materials: Concepts, ideas, and phenomena that matter, and all the new questions it raises. But let's start at the beginning. Nina Odegard has worked for many years in Norwegian preschools and in a recycling center, and has written Reuse as a creative force, a book that quickly led to a Swedish translation and lecture tour in Sweden before her curiosity about children, recycled materials, aesthetics, exploration, learning, and sustainability took her on to academic research.

– It has been incredibly exciting! But I think the most important thing about my thesis is that I have explored the concept of aesthetic exploration, which I feel has existed in the Reggio Emilia world for a long time but which has not previously had a specific content in academic research. When I started exploring it, I had no idea that it would become so central to my thesis. It was only during my mid-term evaluation, when Karin Hultman said that there were two paths for me to take, either towards a more sustainable ecological direction or children's aesthetic exploration, which she recommended. I began to raise this idea with others, to conceptualise the concept of aesthetic exploration, and then I saw that this was the common thread in my research articles.

Nina Odegard's thesis falls within the field of posthumanist pedagogy, which has been enriched by this thesis with important knowledge, not least about children and materials, and the interweaving between them, as one of the opponents also pointed out.
"Perhaps it can make more people less afraid, to see that it is not about removing the human element, but about humans also being part of the material world. About how children are in the world they live in and which is theirs, and the relationship they create with everything there, both living things and objects. If we adults could take that in, the world would look different. If we realized that we can learn from and together with animals, insects, sand, trees... we would also understand the value of taking care of them, says Nina, adding:

Children form relationships with materials, and if they are allowed to do so with recycled materials, it may even influence how they view and interact with things in the future.
Forming relationships with objects is something Nina herself has experience with, which she writes about in one of the articles; about all the preparatory work she had to do with the recycled materials, everything that had to be washed before she could offer it to the children.

– It really gave me more knowledge about the materials and their possibilities. Yes, a different relationship with them and an understanding that they have a history and that it is important to bear that in mind. But when it comes to content and chemicals, I couldn't develop that part as well, because research requires restrictions in order to stay focused.

Nina Odegard has nevertheless deviated from this to a greater extent than is usually possible. Not because she was unable to immerse herself in a monographic thesis, as she had intended when she applied for a doctoral position (in connection with the closure of the recycling facility where she worked) and found a position at Oslo Metropolitan University that was perfectly suited to her field of study, but because it meant that she had to publish several articles in various international scientific journals. It is these that she has now brought together and further developed into a solid dissertation.

Although Nina Odegard only uses bricolage as a research method in one of the articles, the thesis as a whole is extremely complex. As a reader, it is therefore easy to understand both her fascination with all the exciting data, theories, tools, and experiences she wants to investigate and test, but also how overwhelming it becomes, as she herself writes:

By using different analytical tools, I tried to break down hierarchies and recognize "everything" that could affect the situation or experience, which made the research endlessly fascinating but at times overwhelming.

“The coat is complex because it brings together all the articles,” confirms Nina in her house on an island in the municipality of Porsgrunn, from where she teaches at OsloMet (a 2.5-hour drive away) and works on a new research project. But also on Modern Barndom's screen in the old senior physician's villa, which the Reggio Emilia Institute rents on one of Stockholm's islands, where we met just over five years ago. At that time, Nina was here for her evening lecture on reuse as a creative force – and"Nerd on the other side"was the headline of the interview in Modern Barndom (no. 4/15). PerhapsDoctor on the second throwthis time?
No, that would be too narrow and misleading for the richness that Nina shows that aesthetic exploration with recycled materials can enable.

– I have worked very intuitively in this area. Situated knowledge is not just one thing, but many. My own situated backpack consists of my upbringing, all my years in preschool and recycling, children and materials, Reggio Emilia inspiration, research, and academia. But also other things, such as my desire to live ecologically, the fact that I have solar cells and bees. All these things are combined in me. But when I started researching, I was not familiar with the concept of situated knowledge, which Haraway had already described in the 1980s. That there was even a possibility to do research like this.
What Nina did know, however, was that she wanted to take a closer look at exploratory encounters between children and recycled materials in one or more recycling centers or ReMida, which led her to contact several such centers in Norway and Sweden at an early stage.

– But I didn't know that ReMida, which I got in touch with, was going to start a new project with ablack box. It was a real surprise! The black box turned out to be a fantastic coincidence, as I got to be part of such a new and challenging period. At the same time, it wasn't difficult to draw parallels with preschools that have rooms where they can offer children a lot of this, such as working with light and shadows, digital projections, recycled materials...

I was also surprised by how much material I gathered. It was only intended to be a pilot, but soon I had many hours of film, thousands of photos, enormous amounts of notes, partly of what the children said and did, but also what the adults said and did, my own thoughts... There was a lot of dialogue about this with my supervisors, about whether there was enough material.

That's it. Who hopes Nina will read this?
Here, a "portal" seems to open up when Nina's laughter rolls out of Modern Barndom's screen.

Who reads dissertations? More than just us researchers, of course, and perhaps some students.
However, it turns out that her articles have already attracted some international interest, especially outside the Nordic region, so writing in English has been valuable.

– But it was hard work. The advantage is that my English has improved a lot.
She also had the opportunity to visit New Zealand and Australia, meet fellow researchers there, give lectures, hold workshops, and visit preschools for 3.5 months, as well as the Reggio Emilia network.
Nina has been in dialogue with Reggio Emilia for many years, but she emphasizes that her thesis is not Reggio research, even though it can certainly be valuable in these contexts. If anyone wants to read a thesis in English, of course, she adds, and then mentions that she has actually started writing a more "popularized" version.

Not that I don't think people in preschool can read it, but I think I want to make it more readable for practical purposes, to show how they could work with this.
When it comes to Norwegian practice, Nina highlights a trend she has observed, which she is not alone in noticing among researchers there, namely that materials have generally declined in Norwegian preschools over the past twenty years.

– I think it may have to do with the schoolification of preschool, not least here in the global north. This has been driven by an increasingly strong new public management approach. As a result, the individual child is no longer as important, and a more normative pedagogy has taken precedence at the expense of aesthetic materials. I believe my research can serve as a counterbalance to this.

Perhaps also in other respects, such as Nina not specifying the children's ages and genders?
– Class, culture, gender, etc., can be very important for research, especially in posthumanist pedagogy. In my research, I chose to remove these categorizations because this way I could force the reader (and myself) to see what children can be, become, and do without being placed in specific categories.
This really encapsulates the desire that prompted this interview – to open up the possibility for a one-year-old to do anything – even though Nina only mentions it when we are about to log out, and we are not quite there yet.

Nina Odegard says that she has just begun collaborating with Åsa Bakken and Tina Selinger on the project "The Power of Space," which will examine the significance of space and materials for education and a sustainable future, and which includes many preschools in Oslo.

“I hope we will be able to see how different materials are also partners, that they play a role, that‘matter matters’, and that we give it more space in education. It’s very much about pausing and leaning back a little to see what happens, and not just using our eyes and ears but exploring with all our senses. I think the concept of aesthetic exploration can be an important contribution here, says Nina, adding: Aesthetic exploration is not about what thingsare, but what theydo. If we see that, they take on a different meaning.

– Here we can see that there are clear parallels between remida materials and natural materials. But don't misunderstand my focus on these materials, because my focus is also on children. And children are actually more competent than us adults when it comes to seeing the possibilities in materials like these. They have an openness, yes, they enter into a contract with the materials that they can become anything.

Text and translation: Maria Herngren
Image: Nina Odegard & Øyvind Risberg