Open AccessChildren’s sense-making through exploration
Author(s) -
Lovise Søyland
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
formakademisk
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.225
H-Index - 3
ISSN - 1890-9515
DOI - 10.7577/formakademisk.3534
Subject(s) - materiality (auditing) , sensemaking , embodied cognition , documentation , psychology , the arts , sense of place , virtual reality , aesthetics , sociology , human–computer interaction , computer science , visual arts , art , artificial intelligence , programming language , social science
A child’s sense-making is grounded in his or her bodily interactions with the environment and tied to the body’s sensory experience. Digital technologies are being introduced into children’s learning environments and they experience virtual materialities to a greater extent now ever before. This study aimed to uncover how young children make sense of the world through explorative touch interactions with physical and virtual materialities. Children’s sense-making was studied through an explorative inquiry that was supported by video documentation. This article discusses how the combination of materials, digital technologies and experiences of different materialities offers new opportunities for explorative interaction, transforming and shaping children’s experience of the world through joint sensemaking. It also identifies how children’s past experience of material touch is important for them in their process of grasping virtual materiality.
Keywords:sense-making, touch interaction, virtual materiality, arts and crafts education, embodied cognition