Choreographies of Care: Small Group Relations as Mediating Larger Group Sense-Making

• In Event: Designing for Dignity Affirming Experiences: Leveraging Embodied Learning Toward Equity in Interaction

Abstract

Purpose:
In exploring how the design of movement-forward learning environments support dignity affirming experiences, it is not only activity structures and teachers who have the power to affirm students' selves in their participation. We have found that in developing close relations with each other, students attune to each others’ contributions physically and verbally in supportive and affirming ways. In this analysis we look at how a group of four boys embodied caring relationships with each other in their participation in a choreography and coding activity. We argue that one of the affordances of allowing learners to leverage their whole bodies in collective forms of participation is that they can further develop fullness in their relations with each other as a way to mediate their participation in larger groups. Thus, we have found ties between learners’ physical participation and the care they have for each other, enacting what we call “Choreographies of Care.”

Framework:
This analysis draws on notions of intercorporeality and intercorporeal trust (Hahn & Jordan, 2017) as evidence of withness developed when people move together. Looking at how moving with can transform relations and learning through care is the focus of this analysis.

Methods & Data:
The data analyzed in this poster came from a one-week Art & Coding camp designed by the authors (learning scientists & dance artists). Our goal was to support middle-school campers’ mathematical and computational thinking through movement (e.g., coding movable agents to perform and creating choreography to perform). Analysis focuses on the Soup Game, an activity in which campers developed names and movement rules to enact (e.g. students decided that “walking” meant “take 10 steps forward”) (Authors, 2021). We show how one group of boys remained physically and relationally close as they participated in the game, which mediated their interactions with the larger group through caring stances. Video recordings were analyzed using Interaction Analysis (Jordan & Henderson, 1995; Hall & Stevens, 2015) to explore the micro and multimodal nature of this phenomenon in interaction.

Findings & Significance:
Throughout the camp, learners developed new relationships, repeatedly sitting in groups to code and joining together to create computational choreography. Furthermore, through close analysis we found that these relations were not ancillary to their learning, but created a context from which they could respond to each other and participate in the larger camp group.
In particular, when looking at a quartet as they participated in the Soup Game, these boys became more fluid in moving as a unit (Figure 8A-B). Carefully tracking each others’ movements in real-time, even when spread out, they anticipated where the group would move next in response to where other campers were located in the space, developing their intercorporeal trust through movement. When they stopped locomoting, they almost always returned to a close formation (Figure 8C-D). This care and attention further developed into volunteering each other to contribute to the group-level activity (Figure 8D). These boys simultaneously remained closely aware of each other, while responding to the larger group, and caring for each others’ contributions physically and verbally.

Authors

• Lauren Vogelstein, Vanderbilt University

• Corey Brady, Vanderbilt University

• Curtis Thomas

• Rebecca Steinberg