”Embodied Voices and Voicing Embodied Knowing: Accessing and Developing Young Children’s Aesthetic Movement Skills”.

The purpose of this study is to illustrate how children aged one to two years through non-verbal communication are able to express themselves as competent individuals without necessarily having a language through which they can communicate their understandings. An overall theme in the study therefore relates to the relationship between verbal and non-verbal communication and the children’s aesthetic and bodily development (their aesthetic movement skills).

The authors point at three situations which are important to involve in work on developing the aesthetic and bodily competences of very young children. Firstly, it is important for child carers to create situations in which children can express themselves in a non-verbal way. Secondly, the study shows that it is important that child carers communicate verbally with the children as an approach to developing their bodily and aesthetic competences. Thirdly, the authors point at a neglected pedagogical principle: that during some activities child carers and authors encourage children to do the opposite of what they are doing in order to get an insight into the children’s understanding of their aesthetic movements. For instance, this may be to encourage the children to dance in a different way. The study also concludes that play enables children to have their competences recognised and permits them to express their competences.

The empirical material comprises video footage of child carers and children. Two recorded activities from the daycare centre are used as illustrations, on the basis of which there is analysis and discussion on how child carers can create activities in which children, who are not able to express themselves orally, can be recognised as competent. Development pedagogy is the theoretical framework within which the empirical examples are analysed and discussed, and the child carers participating as part of the project read publications about development pedagogy.

Wallerstedt, C., Pramling, N. & Samuelsson, I.P. (2011). ”Embodied Voices and Voicing Embodied Knowing: Accessing and Developing Young Children’s Aesthetic Movement Skills”. Educational Research with Our Youngest. International Perspectives on Early Childhood Education and Development, 5, 87-102.