Children’s sense-making through exploration

Grasping physical and virtual materialities

Authors

  • Lovise Søyland Universitetet i Sørøst-Norge

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7577/formakademisk.3534

Abstract

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

Author Biography

Lovise Søyland, Universitetet i Sørøst-Norge

Doctoral Research fellow
Department of Visual and Performing Arts Education
University of South-Eastern Norway

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Published

2020-09-25

How to Cite

Søyland, L. (2020). Children’s sense-making through exploration: Grasping physical and virtual materialities. FormAkademisk, 13(3). https://doi.org/10.7577/formakademisk.3534

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