The aim of my qualitative research has been to make a meaningful contribution to the children, teacher students’, and my own experience of exploration of materialities (see Stake, 2010, pp.
56–58). In qualitative research, the findings cannot be applied directly, but they can be useful and relevant in related situations. In this section, I discuss four themes that I consider having practical implications for ECE and ECTE. They are as follows: 1) Physical materials and manual technologies are needed in education, 2) It is central that teachers apply digital technologies and strategies that invite others to participate in joint exploration and co-creation to facilitate sense-making, 3) It is important that teachers in both ECE and ECTE develop a material–digital explorative practice, and 4) It is important to continue to develop and apply arts-based methods that can contribute to understanding sensory experience in interaction with digital technologies. The fourth theme is related to suggestions regarding research practice.
The first practical implication of this research is that physical materials and manual technologies are needed in education. In a time when children experience virtual materialities more often than ever before, it is important that children experience rich sensory experiences with their material surroundings from an early age (including using manual technologies to explore materials). This is important for their development and for the value of material exploration itself, and for being able to connect virtual materiality with the experience of
physical materiality to make sense of it. This understanding is important for ECE teachers, and I recommend this to be a central issue in ECTE. The surface of a digital technology provides less sensory information than a surface of a physical material such as the bark of a tree. A virtual materiality of a tree cannot be grasped – it is not possible to move around it, climb it, or lie down under it. This knowledge is crucial to be aware of when teachers facilitate children’s sense-making process with digital technologies. Therefore, it is indispensable that tactile and haptic experiences from the material world are brought into exploration of virtual materialities and vice versa – that is why it can be said that tactile and haptic experiences bridge the gap between the physical and the virtual.
The second practical implication of this research is that it is essential for teachers to apply digital technologies and strategies that invite children and students to engage in joint exploration and co-creation. Initially, I stressed that there have been few empirical studies on what significant benefits digital technology has for children’s learning when it is used wisely (Bølgan, 2018, p. 15; Chaudron, 2015; p. 11; Johansen, 2015, p. 32). To use it wisely is a question of definition; however, the exploratory and creative aspects of the digital practice in ECE have been highlighted its value (Bølgan, 2018). I consider it important to apply digital technologies that are open-ended, and which promote co-creation where it becomes an opportunity to influence the outcome of an explorative interaction. This implication requires that ECE and ECTE teachers have the knowledge about which kinds of digital technologies should be included in education. During this study, I found that elementary digital technology, such as a camera, a video app, and a projector, can create opportunities for being explorative and co-creative. This means that technology does not necessarily have to be particularly advanced to facilitate sense-making processes with children and students. What teachers should rather focus on is the action potential of the technology and how the technological affordances can be explored through joint interaction, in other words, how to use digital technologies in explorative ways, including their haptic, material, and spatial considerations. I consider this to be a digital practice that takes the importance of experiential knowledge into consideration (see Table 7 for sense-making strategies and suggested strategies). The explorative and co-creative aspects are important in the discussion of digital practice that can be developed into what Letnes (2014, p. 8) terms a reductionist understanding of digital competence, which can be limited to something predefined and measurable within the scope of subjects. There is also an imperative in digital technologies where the goal is to increase pace and efficiency in children’s learning and to eliminate the complexity of a phenomenon. I think that this imperative is largely opposed
to the most important values and perspectives in arts and crafts education, which often is about slow, deep, and present processes.
I believe that teachers in both ECE and ECTE should see teaching with digital technologies as an invitation for exploration. And, I suggest that it is taken into account that the tactile and haptic perceptions are the most important senses for making information available through exploration (see Michaels & Palatinus, 2017, p. 23). Explorative practice should have an agenda that, for example, includes the in-depth study of a phenomenon rather than having specific goals or learning outcomes. Teachers should practice improvisational teaching with digital technologies and be able to see possibilities that are not actual and base their actions upon this. In this way, the encountering the unforeseen and making new discoveries can be included in practice. I would argue that the presence of teachers is important in both ECTE students and children’s interaction with digital technology. Both ECTE and ECE teachers must dare to get a bit lost in explorative processes together with students and children. Teachers must practice going beyond what can be controlled and be open to what may arise during an explorative process. This is what Biesta (2013, p. 2, 2018) means when he stresses that education is about lightning a fire and not filling a bucket. Thus explorative practice can include the unforeseen – which Brunstad (2013, 2018) argues as being intrinsic to education. My interpretation is that a digital practice would benefit from a focus on joint explorative interactions between ECTE teachers and students and between ECE teachers and children. An example of this is how I often have experienced that, when I talk with ECTE students about artistic and explorative processes, it is sometimes hard for them to understand what I mean.
However, when I do something, such as moving a projection onto the ceiling of a room, or curling up a big piece of paper instead of talking about the material properties of paper, they understand in an emotional-physical-cognitive way. This kind of practice can create impulses to engage in new interactions and explorations, which in turn can provide new discoveries. I would recommend being aware of how students can benefit from joining explorative processes together with fellow students and teachers in digital practices that include explorative elements.
This way of interacting with the environment together with children in ECE is normal, but perhaps it is not so prominent in exploration including digital technologies. I consider it to be crucial for both ECE and ECTE teachers to have an open-minded and explorative approach to materiality so it becomes possible to make new discoveries and artistic expressions.
The third practical implication is that I recommend teachers in both ECE and ECTE to develop a material–digital explorative practice. Initially, I described a digital–material
digital and material as two different concepts and that this is seen as problematic (Pink et al., 2016, p. 6). In section 4.1.2, I also described my personal background for doing this research and how it was anchored in an experience of a partial digital–material dichotomy among colleagues in my field when I started working with this dissertation. Based on findings from this study, my interpretation is that the material–digital should be treated as inseparable in explorative and creative arts and crafts processes. This is in line with what Pink et al. (2016, p.
7) describes in the practice-based disciplines of architecture and design. Thus, ECE in general should treat the material and digital as inseparable and consider this perspective in facilitating children’s sense-making with digital technologies. I do not claim that such practices do not exist in ECE and in ECTE, but I think that there still exists a digital–material dichotomy in this field.
I recommend that a material-digital explorative practice should be influenced by the material tradition in ECE and arts and crafts educational thinking. I suggest that we should aim to develop strategies that focus on sensory experience, especially haptic and tactile perception.
In the context of making sense through interaction within a material–digital practice – arts and crafts strategies have a lot to offer. It has been documented that ECE largely pursues a reproduction culture, and that it is necessary to shift the focus from consumer to producer and explorer (Bølgan, 2018; Letnes, 2014; Waterhouse, 2013). The one-sided focus on literacy and mathematical understanding in the use of digital technology in ECE (Jæger & Sandvik, 2019) is restrictive and shortsighted. I think that children should exist in a material–digital culture where teachers are active together with children in joint exploration. Initially, I pointed to how the material turn (Barad, 2007, Lenz Taguchi, 2010) can be understood as a counterweight to the digitalization of materiality. With more knowledge about how the different materialities affect humans, teachers can contribute to breaking down dichotomies such as “for or against technology” (Mangen, 2016, p. 471), and the digital versus the material (Pink et al., 2016, p.
6), and rather exploit potentials to explore and make new discoveries with both physical and virtual materialities. As I noted earlier, materiality is a process; it is relationally conditioned, and not something defined but a process which emerges through our sensory perception (see Damsholt & Simonsen, 2009; Ingold, 2007; Pink et al., 2016). Barad (2008, p. 120) famously stated, “The only thing that does not seem to matter anymore is matter,” and this put the importance of materiality on the agenda. I would argue that teachers also must pay attention to how virtual materiality matters. The most important aspect of a material–digital practice is the explorative potential in experiencing how virtual materiality can be shaped by moving material objects and bodies in a room (spatial–temporal potential), how artistic expressions can be made in different combinations of physical and virtual materialities, and how this kind of experience
can make new discoveries of the world. This study highlights possibilities for children and students to use digital technologies in artistic exploration. It describes the opportunities to explore, combine, and interact with different materialities and the role of their imagination and emotions in similar contexts. It is noteworthy that the makerspace movement (Burke & Crocker, 2019; Clapp et al., 2016) – where children and students are invited to explore and make things combining materials and manual – and digital technology have a lot to offer in the context of developing a material–digital practice. I acknowledge that this movement can contribute to promoting children and students’ sense-making through exploration and co-creation. It is hopeful for ECE and ECTE that policy documents (MER, 2017) have acknowledged the value in exploration and artistic forms of expressions connected to use of digital technology.
However, it has to be remembered that teachers cannot exactly plan how students and children will explore or make sense in a facilitated material–digital environment. We can try to imagine, and, to some extent, be familiar with the material–digital affordances, but during the sense-making process teachers must be open to embracing the unforeseen. Thus, I encourage ECE and ECTE teachers to work with open-ended processes that include materials and digital technologies.
The fourth practical implication is that it is important to continue to develop and apply arts-based methods that can contribute to understanding sensory experience in interaction with digital technologies. Several researchers within the field of children’s learning with digital technology argue that studies would benefit from greater methodological diversity (Mangen et al., 2019, p. 242; Kucirkova et al., 2019, p. 3). I think it is especially important to continue to develop artistic forms of exploration to develop knowledge in this field (see also 6.1.6.). In this context, I find it valuable to invite children and ECE staffs to be participants in studies so that we can learn from their experiences and understandings. I share this opinion with Clark (2014).
Thus, ECE and ECTE would benefit from close cooperation with each other through, for example, partnerships between universities and ECE, and with a focus on both practice and research. This has been a focus area in the Norwegian educational community in recent years, which I consider to be a positive development for education. The goal in such a partnership should be to further develop a material–digital practice with a focus on the tactile and haptic, co-creative, and explorative aspects. In addition to developing and applying methods such as
“participatory photography,” to study how children’s sense-making can be achieved through material–digital practices.
I will end this section with a warning. I want to stress that a widespread use of digital
only to co-option, not to co-creation, can hamper children’s learning. This means that children should encounter technology in learning contexts that they have the opportunity to use to explore and which can be part of a creative process. I also want to note that teachers must thoughtfully relate to the material paradox of virtual realities in education. This means that we must consider in our teaching how tactile and haptic experience bridge the understanding from the material to the virtual.