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The study involving ECE students indicated that the opportunities to experience different materialities simultaneously and to combine them in different ways by using their own bodies, senses, materials, and digital technologies resulted in a distinct process of sense-making.

Central in this process were the transformations and potentials of combining different materialities. The unforeseen had a key role in this process. An example of this was how one student’s gaze, body, and emotions were understood to be in a close, intimate relationship with a macro lens attached to a touch device during intensive haptic exploration and enthusiastic engagement with materiality. Something new and different arose during her explorative process. The student was making new discoveries, engrossed in the process. In an explorative process with students and children, it is crucial for teachers to have an open-minded and explorative approach to materiality so it becomes possible to make new discoveries and artistic expressions. A creative process exploring materiality is a non-linear process that requires an openness to not knowing what the outcome will be. This process can create a feeling of resistance, and it takes courage to be in such an explorative rhizomatic process. This study indicated that sense-making emerges when students combine different materialities into new artistic expressions, and when digital technology is used to discover new aspects of materiality.

When the material world is mediated through digital technology, as in the example of different

fluids blending, other properties of the materiality are being experienced such as fluid moving in slow motion. Such properties are difficult to experience without digital technology. The sense-making processes described above took place in collective explorative processes that shot out in different directions like a rhizome.

Two potential core paradoxes concerning sense-making and a person’s physical engagement with the touch device and software of the picturebook app were found in Case 2.

These can be defined as the paradox of materiality and the paradox of interactivity. In this context, touch and memory of touch were identified as central to bridging the gap between the physical and the virtual. Through the study, I developed insights into what facilitates being immersed in a virtual world. Moreover, previous tactile and haptic experiences of materials from the physical world revealed to be significant factors. In this process, virtual materiality and technological features evoked past experiences of physical materials and spatial experience.

In this context, emotions were central in the sense-making process through haptic and tactile experiences in interaction with the app. Also, imagination played a central role in being able to imagine the feeling of, for example, haptic perceptions of a specific materials. The feeling of being immersed also aroused emotions and feelings of empathy and the interaction with the picturebook app evoked particular reactions and emotions. During the study, I found limitations in interaction with the app related to exploring predetermined possibilities for acting, and how the device influenced sensory perception. During the interaction, there was not an opportunity to create new solutions. I found that the app provided rich opportunities for cooperation;

however, this cooperation extended only to co-option, not to co-creation. This is problematic given that sense-making is closely connected to the co-creation and creation of opportunities for imagination and interaction. The illusion of collaboration is more a requisition (co-opting) of certain actions. These findings are important for teacher’s decision-making in facilitating children’s sense-making processes with similar technologies.

Children used their past experiences of tactile and haptic perception of materials and their emotions and imaginations in their exploration to make sense of virtual materiality. The findings in Case 3 also indicated that children use their past experience of touch interaction with digital technology in their play to make sense and create new experiences in their physical environment. Through the study, I found that children used similar strategies to explore both physical and virtual materiality, although those materialities had different properties. The study also revealed different ways that virtual materiality can contribute to children’s sense-making.

One way is that virtual materiality can be a representation of a physical object, which affords

materiality that is possible to shape and explore. It can be shaped by moving material objects in an environment, by moving bodies, and by adding other types of materiality such as light.

During the explorative interaction, children were offered rich opportunities in their sense-making process to influence their surroundings, to make artistic expressions, and to make their own choices in relationship to and in interaction with different materialities, each other, and the adults. The main finding of the study was that the children’s combination and experiences of different materialities offered them new opportunities for explorative touch interaction, transforming and shaping their experience of the world through joint sense-making.

In Cases 2 and 3, I developed an understanding of how I was able to make sense of a group of children’s and my own movements in physical and virtual environments through my a/r/tographic approach. I found that haptic visuality—embodied photos and video—are central in making sense of movement. Thus, I learned how haptic visuality and imagination are central to gaining an insight into a child’s touch experience of different materialities. A memory from my own childhood became a vital part of developing this understanding. Audio-visual footage captured part of my embodied mode of engagement during interaction. The headband camera captured my bodily movement, rhythm, and sound in interaction with the picturebook app and in interaction with the children. This empirical data provided a means to understand what characterizes both my own and children’s sensory experience. I also found that my own and the children’s participation through photography became an integral part of our sensory experiences. I also gained insight into how an artistic form of exploration such as making digital collages can play a major role in making sense and expressing an understanding of movements in physical and virtual environments. During artistic processing, photos of bodies in movement, and features such as tempo, movement, lines, texture, and rhythm, which are closely connected to tactile and haptic ways of knowing, were used to express understanding of movement and make it accessible to the viewer.

6 General Discussion

The research question of this dissertation is: How can explorative touch interactions with physical and virtual materialities facilitate processes of sense-making? Based on the main findings of this study, I have identified six themes that form the basis of the general discussion. These themes are: (1) Tactile and haptic dimensions of materiality bridge understanding of the material to the virtual, (2) Emotions and imagination are embodied sense-making faculties during interaction with virtual materialities, (3) Virtual materiality can initiate new discoveries and shape the experience of the material world, (4) Digital

technologies and strategies that provide opportunities for co-creation and exploration are essential to sense-making, (5) Joint exploration influences the process of sense-making with digital technologies in interaction with the physical environment, (6) Haptic visuality and artistic forms of exploration can deepen understanding of sense-making and touch interaction.

Findings for themes 1–5 are related to the understanding I have developed of the sense-making process in interaction with different materialities; findings for theme 6 are related to the understanding I have developed through the ABR process. After discussing these findings, I will reflect on how these can have theoretical and practical implications for education. At the conclusion, I will reflect on the methodology of this study and then present suggestions for further research.