Barad 2007<\/a>) to the same mode of encountering which started the session: seeing and listening to one another in a circle. There are multiple ways to approach this closing phase, all of which aim to foster a reflective-diffractive exchange and shared meaning-making of the experiences. Tentative or uncertain expressions—whether through speech, sound, movement, drawing, or writing—are equally valued. Silence, too, is listened to and appreciated as a form of response.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn a dance session, a brief cooling-down moment often bridges the shift from the active, high-intensity phase of sharing to the reflective phase. In the same way, I invite you, the reader, to pause and cool down with me before moving into reflection. The exercise may be followed either in audio form or via the written transcript.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/audio>Audio 6.1 Cooling down<\/em> Text: Tuire Colliander<\/b> Recording: Miika Colliander<\/b><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nView transcript<\/summary>\nFind a comfortable position. Close your eyes, breathe deeply, and allow your body to begin releasing its tensions. With each breath, let your body grow softer and heavier, as if giving in to gravity and melting into the floor, chair, table—whatever is supporting you in this moment. Notice how your breathing gently moves your body, along with any other sensations that arise. You may shift your position if you feel the need. Continue releasing, softening. You may return to your experience of being-with this thesis; observe your thoughts as they move and take shape. How does the dance of your thoughts choreograph your body? If your body wishes to shift, stretch, or turn, let it happen. Soften and release even more. Finally, take a rest. When you feel ready, gently open your eyes and reawaken your body.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n
You may also choose to take a pen and paper and reflect on your experience using the Verbs and Lines exercise. You can begin with either verbs or lines, or explore both modes of reflection simultaneously. Allow your body to guide the pen and the quality of the drawn lines, embodying the experience. Record your experiences as verbs during this process. Pay attention to how the experience resonates physically, letting it settle in, and allowing the verbs and lines to flow on the paper. Instead of forcing it, give yourself time for this activity to unfold organically. When you finish, put the pen down and review what you’ve created. How do the lines and verbs relate to each other? How do they relate to your current circumstances and your time with this thesis? What else can you notice?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this section, I bring together and critically reflect on the central findings of my long-term artistic–pedagogical inquiry into early childhood educational and artistic research practices. I ground the discussion in my overarching research question of how improvisation-based, intra-active dance pedagogy can transform prevailing approaches to dance education and support its fuller integration into the embodied, play-based, and holistic learning environments of ECEC.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nBuilding on the research propositions, I draw on practice-based insights from the fieldwork to examine what emerges when a dancer–pedagogue–researcher immerses herself for several months in an early childhood education context, using her artistic expertise creatively and intuitively in child and adult encounters, allowing time for discovery, to see and to become seen, to listen, to move and to be moved, to dance, to play, to be with, and to not know.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe discussion unfolds through three openings that emerged during the process of diffractive reading: dancing–drawing assemblages, the practice of dancing-with, and overspills of research. Together, these openings present context-specific and practice-based research methods and insights, which extend the scope of dance pedagogy and propose new ways of thinking, practising, and researching within ECEC and beyond. The findings I present here are situational and context-specific and are therefore not offered as universally applicable methods for education or research, but rather as a basis for further development and as impulses that invite continued inquiry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I begin by examining how dancing–drawing assemblages can offer inclusive, multimodal methods in dance pedagogy. I then introduce dancing-with as an intra-active approach that deepens improvisation-based pedagogy and supports the integration of dance into diverse educational settings. Finally, drawing on Millei and Rautio’s (2017) notion of overspills of research, I envision possible future trajectories for arts educational research. I conclude the section with a critical evaluation of my movement toward new knowledge and consideration of the limitations and possibilities of the theoretical and methodological choices I made along the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
‘Reflecting’ I conclude dance sessions by re-turning (Barad 2007<\/a>) to the same mode of encountering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chapter-6","category-dance-at-play"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1712,"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/1712"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}