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The aim of this chapter is to discuss the findings of a longitudinal international study that sought to explore and understand the ‘habitus conditions’ that had the potential to give rise to creative experiences. The notion of habitus was used as a key axiomatic lens as, for us, it carries the sense that the patterns of thinking and predispositions to be creative arise out of deep familial or familial like patterns of ‘connectivity’. Through a series of qualitative-narrative projects young children, adolescents and adults who were either immersed in supposed creative experiences or who had demonstrated creative output were asked to reflect on the sources of these experiences. Emerging out of this ten-year project involving respondents in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, a ‘grounded theory’ of how creativity can be fostered has begun to emerge. While Cambourne’s concept of the Conditions of Learning were a constant set of emergent themes, the data facets in these ongoing investigation suggests that an existential drive lies at the core of each of our respondents and that the Conditions of Learning were the means which facilitated this drive. Indeed, other conditions for learning and creativity emerged from the data, largely related to socio-emotional awareness. This existential or spiritual awareness appears to be process of reflective inquiry, which also becomes empowered through a mentoring relationship. This web of mentoring social support provides access to the development of visualization and understanding the symbolic within their context of situation, which in turn aids in an emancipatory world view.
This chapter seeks to explore and extend the classroom based research of Nemme regard to the ‘day to day’ surfacing of spiritual ‘sensing’ elements’ While Nemme extended the classic work of Gardner and the ensuing work of Haye and Nye revealing that indeed children were aware of spiritual issues and categories such as ‘State of Being-Awareness, State of Being – Mystery-sensing, Concern for existential issues-Mystery sensing and Concern for Existential Issues – Value sensing’, our belief is that her study, while ground breaking, was limited in several ways. Although Nemme’ qualitative investigation revealed that children reflect deeply and asked spiritual questions, our concerns are that this study was not a sustained daily investigation, but involved several sites that were not connected and involved selected students in its second phase. Thus, we believe that there is a possibility that actual day-to-day surfacing of the previously mentioned spiritual elements represent only a fraction of the actual spiritual facets of children’s lives. Thus this chapter describes and discusses a long-term study that was grounded in one middle school classroom in Santa Barbara, California. In this the class the teacher worked in school milieu of spiritual intelligence, albeit not explicitly stated, and had a specific intention of developing spiritual intelligence. For this teacher, this notion was grounded in philosophic notion of ‘kindness and gentleness’ as a means of praxis. What emerged from our bounded investigation was that ‘spirituality’ or ‘spiritual sensing’ was grounded in making socioemotional connections, as well as sensing ‘State of Being – Gaining personal groundedness’, ‘State of Being - Understanding change’ and ‘State of Being – Coping with difference’ and ‘State of Being – Knowing beyond the borders’.
This chapter seeks to explore Hay and Nye’s concept of ‘relational consciousness.’ While recognised as one of the corner stones that explain the ideals of ‘what’ children connect with in their reaching for spiritual understanding Hay and Nye also frankly admit that it in regard to researching spirituality and children, it is difficult to know when they have extended themselves beyond their personal limit or boundary and engaged with a ‘sense of awe and wonder.’ We speculated that understanding ‘when’ children connect could provide a more holistic awareness of children’s connection to spirituality in general and the concept of children ‘reaching beyond themselves’ in particular. Thus we sought to understand this entire process by utilising a methodological ‘bricolage’ of participant observation, semi-structured interview and a reflective survey. Each component of this research pastiche sought to explore spiritual engagement by asking ‘what did children initially notice,’ ‘when was it noticed,’ ‘how it was noticed’ and ‘where did this come from’?
This chapter seeks to explore and extend the classroom based research of Nemme regard to the ‘day to day’ surfacing of spiritual ‘sensing’ elements’ While Nemme extended the classic work of Gardner and the ensuing work of Haye and Nye revealing that indeed children were aware of spiritual issues and categories such as ‘State of Being-Awareness, State of Being – Mystery-sensing, Concern for existential issues-Mystery sensing and Concern for Existential Issues – Value sensing’, our belief is that her study, while ground breaking, was limited in several ways. Although Nemme’ qualitative investigation revealed that children reflect deeply and asked spiritual questions, our concerns are that this study was not a sustained daily investigation, but involved several sites that were not connected and involved selected students in its second phase. Thus, we believe that there is a possibility that actual day-to-day surfacing of the previously mentioned spiritual elements represent only a fraction of the actual spiritual facets of children’s lives. Thus this chapter describes and discusses a long-term study that was grounded in one middle school classroom in Santa Barbara, California. In this the class the teacher worked in school milieu of spiritual intelligence, albeit not explicitly stated, and had a specific intention of developing spiritual intelligence. For this teacher, this notion was grounded in philosophic notion of ‘kindness and gentleness’ as a means of praxis. What emerged from our bounded investigation was that ‘spirituality’ or ‘spiritual sensing’ was grounded in making socioemotional connections, as well as sensing ‘State of Being – Gaining personal groundedness’, ‘State of Being - Understanding change’ and ‘State of Being – Coping with difference’ and ‘State of Being – Knowing beyond the borders’.
In the educational research literature arising out of the United States, it is generally accepted that the transition from elementary to middle school is challenging for students. These challenges appear to range from issues regarding space, pubescent changes, sexuality, emotional forces, friendships, and interaction with adults. However, while there is a great deal of literature focusing on this period of change that ‘middle school children face, and an almost universal acceptance that it is perhaps ‘one of the most critical time frames, there appears to be little research grounded in how these students themselves see and understand this period.’’
This study seeks to address this gap by using the middle school class at San Roque School, Santa Barbara, California as respondents. Through a series of semi – structured reflective interviews the students at this school believed it was a period with greater emotional and psychological gravity than previously reported. In summary, for this cohort of respondents this transition was a time of ‘learning how to be’ in which they needed emotional guidance, security and opportunities to unpack and discuss their issues. For those who had the opportunity to reflect and move on reported a heightened sense of personal well being and a growing into themselves.
This chapter deals with an investigation into how one cohort of avid middle school writers understood the notion of the writing process. It unpacks their insight and personal transactions and reactions to the ‘reader-writer’ response process modelled in their classroom, the own individual ‘habitus’ developed from their socio-familial environment and their reflections on writing engendered as a natural part of their writing development. What emerged from this ‘ethnographic’ study was a model of writing as ‘identity’ reaction. For these young writers, this process of making meaning through print was a deep reflective engagement with the language of text and their sense of self within the confines of their personal growth towards socio-emotional awareness. In essence writing was a reaction to becoming ‘connected’ to an understanding of ‘self.’ In other words, writing was the means by which they analysed the forces impacting on their sense of writing being a driving force in their school experience as opposed to a ritual mechanism For this cohort, writing was a reflection of their growth into ‘identity.’
This overall aim of this chapter is to discuss the processes of ‘framing’ and ‘mythic framing’ as the means by which ‘national identity’ is visually narrated as newspaper reportage. In particular, this chapter will focus on how the signs, symbols and metaphors of arguably Australia’s key foundational mythic narratives, Anzac Day, were visually ‘framed’ in the Australian newspaper in 2011. Although the commemoration a military defeat at Gallipoli in World War I, this campaign now portrayed as ‘sacred,’ has been recognised as the perhaps the key impetus in generating Australia’s socio-cultural narrative in regard to ‘national identity.’ However, the print news media, social commentators and researchers believe that at this present time this concept of national identity is in a state of flux, and therefore have asked the question how is the cornerstone narrative also being perceived? Through the lens of ‘framing’ the dominant headline photograph, and the constellation of smaller photographs in the April edition of the Australian appear to carry the dominant themes of this ‘sacred mythology’ portraying the notions of the ‘digger,’ ‘mateship’ and determination. However, a ‘framing’ examination of these visual texts using the tools of visual literacy revealed a more ambiguous and tenuous ‘identity narrative,’ one still enmeshed in hegemonic structures of masculinity, patriarchy and imperialism.
This paper discusses the notions of evil found in the recent film ‘Twilight’. As understood by one cohort of ‘middle school’ aged students at San Roque School, Santa Barbara, California. Through ‘open ended’ questioning in individual and group ‘semi structured interviews’ focussing on the cinematic and text based forms of Twilight, the emergent data suggested that rather being lost or entangled in multimodality as has been suggested is the case, students in this age group are not only able to make deep ‘intertextual’ connections to the concept of evil, but make ‘text analyst’ connections linking evil to other emotional concepts such as love and compassion. In doing so they had created a web of highly sophisticated definitions relating the notion of evil as being the antithesis of forming genuine relationships and genuine care.
Abstract
Using a bricolage of design and methodologies, the research findings unpacked in this paper emerged out of a qualitative project that sought to illuminate a key aspect of the ‘four resource model’ of writing. This critical point of speculative focus was the notion of the habitus-writing connection, and how, if at all, it arose within the writing of twenty-six grade six students in one Catholic school in northern California. The ‘four resource model’ takes up Bordieu’s 1 concept of habitus as being internalized predispositions, which are the ‘product of a shared history in a child’s family’ 2 In regard to writing, it has been ventured that young children are subject to both the home life literary influences, as well as the literary aspects within their socio-cultural spheres. However, these influences are not set in cognitive-concrete, as they also appear to place their own perspectives into the texts they create: innovating and exploring as they write. While initial interrogation of the data revealed evidence of a habitus related to genre, ensuing ‘focused coding’ revealed evidence of a secondary layer of reflexivity underpinning the surface features of their texts. This layer of meaning making had characteristics of a melding of attachment and the spiritual notion of ‘relational consciousness.’ It would appear that, for these children at least, a key component of personal writing is a connectivity grounded in relationships.
This paper discusses the notions of evil found in the recent film ‘Twilight’. As understood by one cohort of ‘middle school’ aged students at San Roque School, Santa Barbara, California. Through ‘open ended’ questioning in individual and group ‘semi structured interviews’ focussing on the cinematic and text based forms of Twilight, the emergent data suggested that rather being lost or entangled in multimodality as has been suggested is the case, students in this age group are not only able to make deep ‘intertextual’ connections to the concept of evil, but make ‘text analyst’ connections linking evil to other emotional concepts such as love and compassion. In doing so they had created a web of highly sophisticated definitions relating the notion of evil as being the antithesis of forming genuine relationships and genuine care.