Technological Affordance, Social Practice andLearning Narratives in an Early Childhood Setting

MARGARET CARR

The University of Waikato, Department of Early Childhood Studies, School of Education,Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand. E-mail: margcarr@waikato.ac.nz

ABSTRACT: This paper investigates the relationship between the affordance of the mate-rials and the tools in one activity in an early childhood educational setting and the learningof the group of participating four-year-olds. The affordances are analysed as transparency,challenge and accessibility. The children’s learning is analysed as emerging learning narra-tives that comprise intent, response to difficulty, and patterns of responsibility. Two majorthemes emerged from the investigation. The first is that historically- and socioculturally-determined social practice played a central role in the affordance of the activity. The secondis that the relationship was a transactional process in which, through mediated action, thelearners edited, selected from, and altered the educational setting, while at the same timethe activity changed the learners. The research findings are set within the literature on affor-dance, learning narratives and social practice, with particular but not exclusive reference toearly childhood settings.

Keywords: early childhood, motivational processes, sociocultural perspectives, technologicalaffordance

For six weeks one summer I observed and participated with four-year-olds in an early childhood centre as they used everyday tools and materials– staplers, glue, scissors, tape, card and paint – to make a range of arti-facts. I was interested in the affordance of the tools and the materials inrelation to their learning. Wertsch (1995, p. 56) has suggested that ‘thegoal of sociocultural research is to understand the relationship betweenhuman mental functioning, on the one hand, and cultural, historical, andinstitutional setting, on the other’. He describes this relationship as beinglocated in mediated action, where the ‘mediational means’ include socialand discursive practices as well as the materials and tools available. Thiscase study explores that relationship in an early childhood setting. The paperbegins by outlining the nature of the learning of interest here: the ‘learningnarratives’. It then describes three types of technological affordance thatparallel the learning categories in a learning narrative. The influence ofsocial practice on affordance is discussed. Data from the research documentsthe transaction between the children’s learning and the affordances withinone particular activity: making hats.

LEARNING NARRATIVES

Although I was interested in the knowledge and skills that the children weregaining about or with technology, more generally my interest was in how

International Journal of Technology and Design Education 10, 61–79, 2000. 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

children were conceiving themselves as learners, especially their inclina-tions, strategies and orientations (Ames, 1992; Perkins Jay & Tishman, 1993;Katz, 1993; Smiley & Dweck, 1994). There were three aspects of thiskind of learning that emerged from the case study: first, the intent or thetopic (what the learner appeared to understand was the intent or the topicsof learning episodes here); second, the learner’s apparent response to dif-ficulty or uncertainty; and third, the learner’s responsibility for learning.These were combined together as ‘narratives about learning’, borrowing thenarrative notion from Bruner (1990, 1996) and arguing that, in early child-hood, children are developing some robust narratives about learning thatinclude salient intent, preferred responses to difficulty and uncertainty,and privileged patterns of responsibility. A closely related idea to narrativesabout learning is scripts for learning. A project by Cullen and St George(1996) observed five-year-olds during their first term in a new entrant class-room, and then their classroom experiences a year later. School beginnersviewed learning in terms of procedural matters and classroom routines. Theirteachers emphasised procedural aspects of classroom life, and the childrensocialised each other using the same script. In their second year, the childrenwere shifting away from the ‘acquisition of scripts for classroom life’(p. 16) towards ‘scripts for learning’. Scripts for learning acquired in thesecond year included a much greater awareness of self-regulation, knowl-edge of learning strategies and collaboration with peers. Interpreted as beingin line with Pramling’s (1990) hierarchical model of conceptions of learning,the children’s emergent understanding of learning was given as the reasonwhy children began to construct their own dynamic scripts. A further inter-pretation is that they are also describing a hierarchical model of teachers’conceptions of learning for different ages and for different topics, con-ceptions that have been appropriated by the children.

In this analysis, the label ‘learning narratives’ has been employedbecause, as Bruner (1996) argued, they add the deontic (this is what you’reusually supposed to do) and the possible (this is what you could do if theoccasion is right) to the epistemic (this is what you do here) quality of ascript. They are dispositional, and less local. But, like scripts, they provideone way of mapping the terrain between the individual and the sociocul-tural environment of the early childhood setting or the classroom, themediated action, and thereby help us to better both the individual learnerand the learning environment.

THE AFFORDANCE OF THE TECHNOLOGY: TOOLS AND MATERIALS

The notion of ‘affordance’ has been a particularly useful way to describethe relationship between the learner and the setting (Norman, 1988, 1993;Roth, Woszczyna & Smith, 1996). It refers to the perceived and actual prop-erties of an object or artifact, those properties that determine just how itcould possibly be used (Norman, 1988, p. 9) and how the technology

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facilitates or hinders learning of various kinds (Roth et al., 1996, p. 997).Malone and Lepper (1987) studied the attributes of computer games thatincrease intrinsic motivation: these included control of the activity, inter-activity, immediate results, graded goals, conflict, and moderate uncertainty.I constructed three categories of affordance for the early childhood tech-nological activities: transparency, challenge and accessibility.

Transparency

In its simplest form, transparency implies that the inner workings of anartifact are able to be understood by the learner (Lave & Wenger, 1991,p. 102). Artists and architects in Reggio Emilia early childhood programmesin northern Italy, using the artifacts of their craft, increase for the childrenthe transparency of the technology of design and landscape planning(Forman & Gandini, 1995). Sometimes there is spatial or mathematicalpotential ‘in’ the artifact (cf. Papert’s gears, Papert, 1980; transformationalactivities described for early childhood by Forman & Kuschner, 1978) thatmay encourage connections and transfer, although this may well be trans-parent to the adults but not to the child. If the technology is designed toteach something, as Roth et al.’s (1996) computer programme was designedto teach specific concepts in physics, then transparency can refer to whetherthe tool facilitates understanding of the concept. In their study they reported(p. 1011) that the computer facilitated students’ understanding in impor-tant ways because of the screen’s capacity to display changing vectordiagrams – but that students may easily lose the correspondence betweenthe computer’s ‘microworld’ and events in the real world. In early child-hood programmes screen printing can be challenging, but not transparent:they may not ‘see the point’. Until children become familiar and inter-ested in the process, the form of participation it encourages may be anexpert-novice relationship where each step is perceived as having anautonomy of its own. Roth et al. used the term ‘unready-to-hand’ to describetechnology that is unfamiliar and not transparent. When a tool is ‘unready-to-hand’ it focuses attention on the tool rather than on the task. Theycommented that

many teachers may find it impossible to spend the necessary amount of time to famil-iarize students with the software so that it shifts from a tool unready-to-hand to atransparent device for testing and exploring ideas. (Roth et al., 1996, p. 1012)

Papert (1980) maintained that physical affordances can create ‘mentalmodels’ or metaphors that enhance transparency in other domains. He con-sidered it to be a fundamental fact of learning that ‘Anything is easy ifyou can assimilate it to your collection of models’ (p. vi). For Papert, themodel of gears carried many otherwise abstract ideas into his head: hesaw multiplication tables as gears, and equations in two variables ‘imme-diately involved the differential’.

Immediately appreciable results, as with a jigsaw, increase the trans-parency of an artifact. This is the principle behind many Montessori

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materials: the quality of being ‘autotelic’, where the materials signal tothe learner that she or he is on track or has made a mistake. Many computersoftware packages for young children incorporate a mechanism wherebya sound or a picture indicates success or ‘try again’. The materials providethe feedback.

Challenge

Another kind of affordance is whether artifacts are challenging or not. Earlychildhood educators and toy manufacturers spend a lot of time designingartifacts for young children that will provide optimum levels of challenge,levels that will depend on the user’s ability, experience, and familiarity withthe technology. Familiarity and passionate interest (Papert, 1980, describedhimself as being ‘in love’ with gear systems) alter the perception of chal-lenge. Wertsch (1991, pp. 34–35) illustrated how historical context shapesthe level of challenge of mediational means: he pointed out (pp. 34–35)that the QWERTY keyboard for typewriter and computer was originallydesigned to slow the typist down because the keys constantly jammedwhen letters used in sequence were close together. He concluded that thekeyboard that resulted ‘was thus specifically designed to insure a kind ofinefficiency’.

Another aspect of challenge is flexibility. The physical characteristicsof an object can open up possibilities or close them down, and the open-ended nature of sand, water, clay and blocks is the reason why thesematerials are staple fare in early childhood programmes. Tasks may haveoptimum levels of open-endedness as Jones (1997, p. 89) points out: hecomments that the ‘more open and large the task might be (e.g. designinga playground), the more students can end up getting lost with the multipledemands of the technological problem’, but that if a task is closed andclosely defined this can also limit the potential to learn.

Accessibility

In this paper, the accessibility of a technology refers to the form of par-ticipation enabled, or afforded, by its use. When Lave and Wenger (1991)wrote about communities of practice, they said that the key to legitimateperipherality is access, and that the artifacts provide a good arena to illus-trate the importance of access:

The artifacts employed in ongoing practice, the technology of practice, provide agood arena in which to discuss the problem of access to understanding. In general, socialscientists who concern themselves with learning treat technology as a given and are notanalytic about its interrelations with other aspects of a community of practice . . . theunderstanding to be gained from engagement with technology can be extremely varieddepending on the form of participation enabled by its use (Lave & Wenger, 1991,p. 101).

In an early childhood setting for instance, some artifacts afford peer col-laboration: large pipes and planks that have to be put in place by more

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than one person, trolleys that need one person to push and another to steer.Accessibility is influenced by transparency: an artifact that is not transparent(its purpose or inner workings are not clear to the learner) may becomeaccessible if an expert demonstrates or assists. Roth et al. (1996, p. 1009)described how a computer display ‘affords a possibility for constructing acoherent conversation’ because of the shared physical presence of the objectof talk. They pointed out that in many domains, pictures and drawingsare often central to both sense-making (transparency) and communication(accessibility); concept maps are an example (Roth, 1995). The space aroundthe computer however may lead to the exclusion of some members of thegroup.

SOCIAL PRACTICE IS PART OF AFFORDANCE

Affordance includes the perceived properties of materials and tools, andboth history and social practice are central to perceptions and expecta-tions. Langer (1989, pp. 120–121), writing about ‘mindfulness’ and ‘creativeuncertainty’ in learning, described some experiments that explored theway mindset can alter the flexibility or open-ended nature of materials.Uncertainty resulted in more creative solutions than certainty, and Langercontrasted this conditional way of learning with the way we usually learn.

Research has also illustrated how a sense of identity, or a ‘possibleself ’ (Cross & Marcus, 1994), can influence the learners’ goals, and there-fore the way an activity is interpreted, its transparency. Fordham and Ogbu(1986), in (Goodenow, 1992), described an ‘oppositional social identity’through which children or adolescents took pride in not being like themajority or dominant group. For instance, for some African-Americansthis meant the perceived psychological and social necessity to ‘disown’the goals perceived as prerogatives of the majority culture, in particular openacademic striving and success. Goodenow argued that academic motiva-tion and engagement may need to be enhanced in ways that are not perceivedas compromising these important social dimensions of identity. She added(Goodenow, 1992, p. 182) that:

research in educational psychology may benefit from exploring more explicitly the linksbetween students’ self-categorizations and group identities, on the one hand, and theirbehavior, motivation, and learning, on the other.

Other writers have highlighted the significance of self-categorisations andgroup identities for explaining behaviour motivation and learning. In earlychildhood research, group identities have variously been described as:being a kindergartener (Fernie, 1988; Lubeck, 1988; Kantor, 1988; Reifel,1988); being a friend (Corsaro, 1988; Davies, 1991); or being gendered(Davies, 1987, 1989, 1992; Davies & Banks, 1992; Browne & Ross, 1991;MacNaughton, 1997). Dyson (1989) studied eight focus children in a gradeone classroom, studying the children ‘as individual artists in the company

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of friends’ (p. 276). She described how the process of being a writer wasembedded in their social lives, and their ‘feeling of belonging’ to a com-munity (p. xvii).

A study of the play of five-year-olds by Hatch (1992) and Hatch andGardner (1993) concluded that the art area and the sand area in the earlychildhood centre provided different affordances because of different ‘fin-ishing routines’: in the sand tray the day’s constructions were left intactfor the next day, but in the art area there was clean paper and a ‘new start’prepared for the next day. ‘We argue that we need to expand the scope ofsuch terms as ‘cognition’ and ‘intelligence’ to include the conditions underwhich problems are discovered and solved and within which skills are devel-oped’ (Hatch & Gardner, 1993, p. 165).

Carol Ames (1992) has provided evidence that social practices in theclassroom are an integration of the affordance of the activities together withevaluative practices and the authority structure, and that these will influ-ence whether the children are motivated to respond to challenge and torisk failure. She concluded (p. 264) that ‘The ways in which students areevaluated is one of the most salient classroom factors that can affect studentmotivation’. She cited research that indicated that social practices in whichchildren are compared unfavourably with others encouraged performancegoals and an avoidance of risk taking. Even if an activity is optimallychallenging, children’s use of effective learning and problem-solving strate-gies will depend on whether such efforts appear to be valued (Ames, 1992,p. 265).

Examples of early childhood programmes that deliberately integratesocial practice and affordance with learning in mind are provided in theliterature about the pedagogy in Reggio Emilia. These programmes havebeen extensively documented in written and videoed form (Edwards,Gandini & Forman, 1994; Malaguzzi, 1987; New, 1994; Forman & Gandini,1995; Katz, 1995; Dahlberg, Moss & Pence, 1999). Adults see their mainrole as to keep an eye on transparency (authenticity), uncertainty (theydescribe their role as ‘provocateur’ for example: New & Mallory, 1994,p. 193), and access. Emphasis is on collaboration and discussion, and con-nection with the outside community. When on one occasion the topicfocused on fountains (Forman & Gandini, 1995), the children visited thetown centre and parks to sketch and photograph the fountains, returningto the school to draw and make models with clay, explaining to and ques-tioning each other. When the topic turned to water wheels, the childrendiscussed and argued about how water wheels work, made drawings (dis-cussed with the teacher and other children, who asked questions aboutwhy it is like it is), made models with paper and clay and straws, and par-ticipated in a joint construction of a water flow inside before assistingin constructing a water wheel as part of a park they were constructingtogether outside. In an interview in Forman and Gandini (1995), Malaguzzioutlined the three criteria of a good project: (i) an interest, initial motiva-tion, from discussions with the children on a theme (a perception of what

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might be interesting and challenging), (ii) an awareness by the adults ofwhat could be done (access) and (iii) an awareness by the adults aboutthe paths that children can enter, their capacity to predict and develophypotheses (transparency). These affordances have been built into the socialpractice. A key role is played by the resident artist, who assists and demon-strates the drawing, designing and modelling: in the park-building projecthe represented the community of practice of designer, architect and artist.Similarly, a bird expert was also called in to advise about bird houses. Inthe Reggio programmes, the classrooms and centres are described as a com-munity of learners with ‘a set of routines, rites, and rituals that assist theparticipation of individuals and provide avenues for a continuing sense ofbelonging and contribution to the larger group’ (New & Mallory, 1994,p. 195).

TRANSACTIONS BETWEEN NARRATIVES ABOUT LEARNING AND THE

AFFORDANCE OF THE TECHNOLOGY, A CASE STUDY IN AN EARLY

CHILDHOOD SETTING

The research context

The context chosen to observe four-year-olds hat making was the con-struction area in a kindergarten (a sessional state-funded half-day programmefor three- and four-year-olds) in New Zealand. At Barclay Road Kinder-garten (not its real name) children started attending kindergarten threeafternoons a week when they were aged between three and three and ahalf years, depending on the waiting list. Children left for school fromthe morning sessions on their fifth birthday, and as vacancies occurred inthe morning session so children ‘graduated’ to morning kindergarten fromthe afternoon session. Children at the morning session at Barclay Road wereaged four years three months to five years. Seven children left for schoolduring the observation period, and seven children moved in to the morningsession from the afternoon. The catchment area for the kindergarten includeda range of socio-economic areas, although it was sited in a middle classsuburb of well-established housing. Some children came from nearby ruralareas and some from a nearby lower-income housing area. There was aroll of 45 children, with three teachers. The data was collected during thefirst six weeks of the first term. I observed the construction table (and nearbyfloor and screen printing area) every morning session from after ‘mat-time’ (a period at the beginning of the day, about 20 minutes, when childrenand a teacher or teachers gathered together for stories, songs, notices anddiscussions) until ‘tidy-up time’: about two or two and a quarter hours aday. This was a ‘free play’ time when children were allowed to playanywhere, so most of the activities were self-chosen and self-directed,with adults and peers either helping or alongside. I was a participantobserver: I wrote field notes, audiotaped the talk, videotaped the action, and

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assisted sometimes, usually when requested by the children. In this study,the first decision was to combine the field notes, audio-transcripts, and videonotes and divide the data into ‘episodes’. An episode was an event, definedby the nature of the activity and the child involved; if an adult arrived orleft, it remained as the same episode. If the child abandoned one activityand started another, this was a new episode. There were 42 episodes ofhat making. Episodes or events have formed the context for a range of inter-pretive research studies, particularly those that focus on action or activity(Stodolsky, 1988; Csikszentmihalyi & Rathunde, 1992; Hatch, 1992; RogoffMistry Göncü & Mosier, 1993; Carter, 1994; Smith, 1996).

Transparency and topic or intent

Fifty-one hats were documented (some episodes included more than onehat). Although 18 of these did not have an ascribed purpose, 11 were madeto take home for members of the family (including cats and babies), ninewere birthday hats (only Jason made one for his actual birthday), three were‘princess hats’ or ‘tiaras’, and four were made for more complex purposes(one with a ‘sun visor’ attached, two with ‘flashing lights’ attached, andone to apparently express movement).

The physical affordanceThe construction ‘area’ comprised two construction tables and a screenprinting table as well as the surrounding floor area where the childrenmade things. Paper, card, cardboard boxes, scissors, staplers, glue, paint,rollers, brushes, pens and materials for collage were all readily availableon nearby shelves or tables. The shape of the cardboard depended on thesupplier (they were all offcuts, surplus or reject stock from manufacturers),and for a period shaped strips encouraged ‘tiaras’ because one side had asemi-circular shape. The size and shape of the card changed every nowand then. There were large shaped pieces of card that were originallydesigned by an advertiser or event promoter to be turned into cowboyhats, a complicated process that needed a great deal of adult help. Adultswere reluctant to provide this help, and the children made them into wings.At the time of the observations, there was a plentiful supply of strips ofcard, too short to go around a four-year-old’s head, but just wide enoughto suggest a cylindrical hat.

The influence of social practiceMany hats were very simple constructions that would take a dedicated hatmaker only a minute or so. A few, however, were complex and time-con-suming. The children’s goals, or intent, could be analysed in terms of threemajor social identities. These social identities influenced the way thetechnological task was interpreted, and the problems that were tackled.They were labelled ‘being nearly five’, ‘being a friend’, and ‘being atechnologist’ (sub-group: ‘being a hat-maker’).

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Being nearly five. Nine of the 42 hat episodes produced hats that weredesignated as ‘birthday’ hats, and the topic of age and birthdays was neverfar away: birthdays, being four or being five, and other comments on age,appeared in 17 of the episodes. For these children their next birthday wasa rite of passage of great significance because in New Zealand most childrenstart school on their fifth birthday. This means that ‘being five’ was of greatsignificance, and many children are practising and preparing for the event.On March 8th, for instance, Tony started to prepare for his fifth birthdayin the middle of June:Tony: Yoo hoo. Yoo hoo.Amy (teacher): Yoo hoo yoo hoo. Were you calling Tony? (Tony: Yeah)

Calling me?Tony: I want you to help me be a birthday hat.Amy: A birthday hat?Tony: Yea.Amy: Whose birthday is it Tony?Tony: Mine. I just want to make it for June.Amy: For June.Tony: Yep. So I won’t have to do it then.It seemed that a lot of time was being spent preparing to exit from ‘beingfour’ and enter ‘being five’. The teachers were somewhat uncertain aboutthis anticipation of the next birthday. It increasingly involved the borrowingof the teachers’ ‘special 5’ template, kept in the office for genuine fifthbirthdays, to draw a number five on the front of the hat. They questionedthis practice, and suggested ‘four’ as an alternative, but the alternativewas resisted.Ann (teacher): Why’re you putting a number five then? How old are you?Linda: Four.Ann: Wouldn’t a number four be better then? (Linda takes no notice).

. . .

Being a friend. Frequently, all of the cognitive effort appeared to be chan-nelled into conversation and friendship formation and maintenance, usuallycharacterised by comments of social support. There were 20 episodeswith two or more children for which there was a transcript. In 13 ofthem the children were giving each other support in some way. On fiveoccasions this was advice or suggestions about what to do next; moreoften it was in the form of friendly affirmation (or requests for it). Examplesincluded:

Nice one eh? How’s my hat Haley? (Reply: Good)Look at Myra’s hatWe’ll look beautiful eh?How does my tiara look? (Reply: Good)

Comments that indicated that the topic was friendship were in three cate-gories: discussion about proposed action (Peter: ‘Hey, my, Robert’s coming

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to my house tomorrow’ and Nell’s ‘We might invite you to my birthday’which combine being nearly five with friendship); current action (helpingeach other: Samuel says to Nick ‘Why aren’t you playing with me?’ andwhen Nick replies ‘I’m gonna make a hat’ he adds ‘Oh. Can I help you?’);and a sophisticated discourse that was being practised by the girls thatincluded many different ways of taking on the other’s point of view whileat the same time expressing their own.

Being a technologist (sub-category hat maker). It appears from theliterature that for the children at Reggio Emilia, the intent of much oftheir work is to ‘be a technologist’ (and that included, at Reggio, co-construction and discussion). At Barclay Road, there were five episodesof hat-making in which children appeared to be firmly focused in the taskof ‘being a hat-maker’ (but this did not necessarily include co-construc-tion and discussion). Molly spent 40 minutes working away at cutting outthe pictures on a health food packet and carefully positioning them on acylindrical hat. Meg worked on her own for 33 minutes to complete a hatwith a coloured visor (perhaps incorporating sunglasses). Jason spentsome time adding strips of thin paper to a cylindrical hat, with sellotape,to make a long ‘fringe’ that bounced and waved when he moved around:the enterprise was not timed, but it came after a series of focused self-chosentasks in which he appeared to be exploring ways in which to representmovement (a kite, for example, and a painting in which he had blown thepaint around with a straw). This theme had absorbed him for most of onemorning. Trevor spent 24 minutes trying a number of strategies to solvethe measuring problem of making his hat fit around his head. On other occa-sions, observations indicated that he was interested in mathematicalproblems, spontaneously counting the staples on a construction and countingthe motors on a boat (on this boat-making occasion, as I struggled tounderstand his language, he talked about the number of outboard motorshe would need and told me the horse power of the motor). Of 11 episodesrecorded with Trevor at the construction table, six (including this one)involved specific measuring problems, or specific mention of numbers.Molly and Myra had attached plastic bottle tops to the front of elaboratelydecorated cylindrical hats, and explained to me that they were ‘flashinglights’: Observer: What d’you think you might need the flashing lights for?Molly: So Daddy can see at night. Observer: See at night? Very handy.Molly: Yeah. If we forget the mail.Myra: Yeah.Observer: If you forget the mail.Molly: Late at night. Cos our Dad likes getting the mail.Observer: Oh right. You could go out with your flashing light.All five examples were from children who had spent a great deal of timein the construction area: they were experts in the technological processes

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involved. All except Myra were part of the group of six ‘major players’ whohad been involved in three or more episodes of hat-making.

Challenge and responses to difficulty or uncertainty

Physical affordanceThe process of making a hat could be acquired by observation: there wereno hidden tricks or elaborate techniques, and children could, and oftendid, work on a collage or a painting at the construction table and care-fully observe the hat makers; later they were able to make a hat withoutsupport or tutoring. Most of the hats made were a standard ‘basic’ cylin-drical style and the very basic hat took a minute or so to make. This designhad been determined to a large extent by the artifacts: the shape of thecardboard and the means available to make strong joins (staplers, andthere are plenty of these, most of the time in good working order: theirworking order is valued, so if they don’t work they are quickly filled orunjammed). The more elaborate hats, made by Molly, Meg and Joshua, wereadaptations of this basic design. It was never abandoned. Hat makingincluded joining processes that provided feedback about success. If thesellotape didn’t hold the join, then this was a measure of failure. Staplingwas an alternative. If the hat didn’t fit, this too was a measure of failure.Field notes made the comment:

Artifacts for hat-making: the strips are just a bit too short for a head. The children solvethis in various ways: staple a bit on and get an adult to measure (Meg, yesterday, afterrefusing a peer’s help), trial and error and then abandon (Nick today), make a hat for ababy (Nell today and yesterday).

Meg made a hat out of paper, more flexible than the cardboard so thatshe could take a pleat in it by pinching it together with her fingers to getit to the right size while it was on her head, and then taking it off andstapling the pleat. She stayed with the basic design, however, cutting stripsout of sheets of coloured paper. Meg’s sun visor hat may have been inspiredby work eight days previously, when she had explored coloured cello-phane provided for making butterflies, and she and Linda had then madetelescopes by sellotaping cellophane across the end of cardboard tubes. Jasonmade hats for his family, but also for himself, and seemed to be able tofit two stapled cardboard strips around his head and then hold them inplace to staple them off his head: he began by stapling the ends togetheron the outside the circle of the hat but gradually came to be able to staplethe hat into an overlapping circle. Trevor had returned several times tothe attempt to make and measure a hat the right size for his head. In thelongest episode he used three methods: holding and adjusting the striparound his head (but he couldn’t hold it in place for long enough to stapleit); adjusting the strip around his waist (as a measure, perhaps, of his head,but he couldn’t get it off his body to staple it); and placing it over Chris’shat, using Chris’s as a model. This last method would have been a goodsolution, but he didn’t follow it through. He persisted, trying several

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strategies, to solve a difficult problem. One week earlier, he had made ahat and as he ran about outside wearing it, it slipped down his head; hehad returned to the construction table and added more staples, not alteringthe diameter of the hat.

The influence of social practiceBy chance or design most of these strips were too short to go around achild’s head. This meant that the being nearly five and hat-maker intentincluded potentially difficult engineering processes: measurement, align-ment, fitting, and joining. However, if the goal for the task was ‘busywork’ that allowed friendship discussions, the measuring was often avoidedby making hats for absent people, babies, or cats. Eleven of the 51 hatsfor which there are notes were made for a baby, a cat, or someone athome. The measurement problem was avoided. Nell, Meg, Jinny and Lindaall made hats for their cats, although Linda and Meg also made hats forthemselves. Linda made three hats for herself and on each occasion sheasked for assistance with the measuring and fitting from an adult. Nellwas one of the experts in friendship discourse, and all of her seven hatswere for cats or for a baby. When I asked Nell if her cats really wear thehats, she replied ‘on sunny days’. She also made hats for her ‘baby’,although she confided to Jason one day that she didn’t really have a babyat home. Anning (1994) described three seven-year-old girls workingtogether to make a traction engine model and added that the researchersfound that girls often did not persevere in acquiring technical knowledge;she suggested that one reason for this was that ‘the role model was absentfrom their lives outside school’ (p. 173). In the language of this paper, ‘beinga friend’ was more salient than ‘being a hat-maker’.

When the children were described as ‘being a hat-maker’, for Trevorthe challenge was a physical affordance: engineering associated with mea-suring and fitting. But three other technological strategies included aninfluence from sociocultural practice: transformation (Molly), redefinitionof function (Meg and Myra), and representation (Jason).

Transformation. The nature of the discarded boxes that find their way toearly childhood centres often include cultural symbols that may provideinspiration for children. In one episode Molly transformed a health foodpacket into a hat, cutting out the pictures that denoted health and well-beingon one side of the packet, and positioning a sun (symbolising health whileon the packet) as a light on the front. To an adult’s eyes it does not seemtoo fanciful to compare these transformations with Picasso’s transforma-tions of a toy car into the head of a baboon (‘baboon and young’ in Read,1964, p. 234), or a bicycle saddle and handle bars into a bull’s head (ArtsCouncil of Great Britain, 1967, p. 55). Transformation of the culture’scast-offs into other artifacts is a theme at a kindergarten’s construction table.Redefinition of function. There were two episodes in which children crea-tively devised new functions for a hat: the ‘flashing lights’ episode, and

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the ‘blue sun visor’ episode. The flashing lights hats may have begun as‘tiaras’, but the notion of a light and its purpose (‘if we forget the mail’)drew on their experience at home and Meg’s understanding of her Dadwho ‘likes getting the mail’.

Representation. Towards the end of the session on the day before his fifthbirthday, Jason made a hat with long strips of paper attached that wavedaround as he moved. He appeared to be very interested in ways of repre-senting and expressing movement. On this same morning he had alsomade a kite by attaching a tail and a long string to a box and then ranabout outside trailing it behind him; he also put dabs of paint onto paintingpaper on an easel and then blew the paint around the paper with a straw,commenting on the tracks it made. On another day he had made a paintingusing a sponge dipped in paint to make footprint-like tracks across thepaper: in discussion he said that they were ‘squirrel feet’ (there are no squir-rels in New Zealand, but they frequently appear in children’s books). Hewas also interested in marble painting, where the ‘painting’ resulted fromthe movement of a painted marble over paper in the base of a cardboardbox.

Accessibility and distribution of responsibility

Physical affordanceMeasuring and fitting difficulties could often be solved only by elicitinghelp from an adult or a peer; this was accepted as legitimate help by bothchildren and adults; unlike writing their names, children were not expectedto measure and fit their hats by themselves although several children (Trevorand Jason for instance) tried very hard to do so and often succeeded. Hatmaking was an individual matter and technical collaboration was infrequent.A teacher said on one occasion ‘I’ll leave you girls to help each other tomeasure and staple OK?’ but substantive help, if needed, usually came froman adult. Three of the four children who made unusual hats or perseveredwith technical problems (Jason, Meg and Trevor) worked on their own,without support, encouragement, or tutoring. Molly, the fourth, workedalongside Myra in a combination of friendship and technologist discourse.

The technical process of making a hat, usually using sellotape or staplesto join a strip or two of cardboard, meant that when completed it couldimmediately be worn or it went into the locker to take home. If it wasnot wet with glue or paint it did not need to be hung on the drying rack,and therefore it did not have to be named. Naming often needs assistance,but a child who could not write her or his name could still legitimatelycomplete a hat all by her- or himself. Children often did write their namesor the names of their brothers and sisters on their hats, and they occasionallyasked an adult to help them, but this was not a necessary part of the process.Adult evaluative comments (7.9% of their total comments) were low(compare 18.7% in another activity, where the children were making a large

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butterfly mural for the wall). Adult praise or evaluation was, in a sense,replaced by the transparent nature of the enterprise: if the hat fitted, itwas a success; if it did not fit anyone here, it could be for someone at home.So the autotelic nature of the materials and tools influenced the socialpractice.

The influence of social practiceIn this activity, two patterns of responsibility, to do with who took theinitiative, were the most common: adult support and peer support. Theseare asymmetric patterns: a child initiated the project, did the decision makingand then an adult or a friend provided encouragement and support. Of the20 episodes that included more than one child and for which there weretranscripts, 13 could be described as examples of peers supporting andpraising each other: peer support. A common pattern was ‘adult support’.In 13 of the 42 episodes one child worked alongside an adult (on fouroccasions this was the observer, once it was a parent) for most of the time,with the adult giving technical assistance, usually requested, or makingcomments of support, also usually solicited by the child. A typical examplewas Peter making a hat, Helen watching, and the observer nearby:Peter: How’s my hat Helen? Helen: Good.Peter: I’m gonna. (to Observer) How’s my hat? How’s the hat?Observer: It’s very good.The adults were playing a similar role to the artifacts: providing the oppor-tunity and some physical help, assisting children with their self-chosen goals.Another typical example is as follows:Tony: Alison.Alison (teacher): MmhmTony: I want to make one of these. A little little.Alison: Is that for you? Is that to go on your head? Tony: It’s too little.Alison: Well, how do you think you could make it bigger? Tony: Get another piece of paper.Alison: OK. You see if you can find another piece.Tony: These?Alison: Right. Now. How are you going to join them up? Right. On only three of the 42 occasions did the adults appear to take the initia-tive with either the sequence, the measuring, or the choice of fastening.On one occasion a parent responded to a child’s request for help by givinga series of instructions.

I looked for the peer collaboration that was such a feature of the ReggioEmilia technological activities but, perhaps because being a hat-makerwas not a salient intent for this activity but being a friend was, there wereno examples of sustained technological collaboration. Seven episodesincluded examples of technical assistance or suggestions: one child offeringa new idea or suggesting to another what to do next. In the first of these

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episodes one of the children asked Peter ‘Are you going to paint yourhat?’ (Peter: Na-oo. It’s not my birthday yet). In the second episode Nellsaid to one of the children at the table who was wondering what to make:‘Hey, why don’t you make a hat? For you’ (interesting, coming from Nellwho never made hats for herself). In the third episode Chris said to Jason:‘That wouldn’t fit your head’, prompting Jason’s ‘No. Haven’t done it yet.Gotta measure it somewhere’. In the fourth episode Meg said to Lindathat she didn’t think the hats would fit them in six months when it wouldbe their birthdays. In the fifth episode Nell suggested to Tony that hemight like to make a hat for his cat. In the sixth episode Molly asked ‘Wheredid you get that gold?’ and Myra replied ‘Here you are, I got you some’.And in the seventh of these peer collaboration examples Myra stapledMolly’s work for her. Molly: ‘Can you staple this?’ Myra: ‘Yep. I will’.

Elsewhere in the observations there was evidence that children whopreferred one particular pattern of intent, challenge and/or responsibilitywere attracted to those activities that are characterised by that pattern.Lisa, for instance, only once made a hat. She appeared to enjoy tutorialswhere adults told her what to do, and during this one hat-making episodeshe asked for permission then twice asked an adult for help with simpletasks: on both occasions the adult did not provide the assistance butexplained how she could solve the problem or find the resource she needed.Four of her seven episodes at the construction table were screen printing,where adults typically provided instruction and direction and assistance.Nell avoided technical difficulty and practised friendship maintenance inother activities; she used the hat-making venue (which was characteristi-cally about friendship) to hone her social skills and she carefully (andimaginatively) avoided the challenges of fitting and measuring. Molly wasobserved in 13 episodes in the construction area (in three of them she wasmaking a hat), and in almost every episode she was thoughtfully tacklingengineering problems; amongst her constructions were a camera and atrailer. Her imaginative hat was true to her favourite technologist topics.Exceptions included Jason who tackled challenge everywhere, used hat-making to explore his current interest in representing and exploringmovement, and at the same time changed the characteristic pattern for thelearning narrative that had become characteristic of the activity. Trevorand Myra may have been exploring new learning narratives. Trevor seldomtackled challenge elsewhere in this early childhood setting; but in this onehat-making episode he persevered, trying to find a strategy to make acylindrical hat fit his head. The activity appeared to add purposeful chal-lenge to his interest in mathematics. Myra, whose favourite topic wasfriendship, was involved in the ‘flashing lights’ episode because she wasMolly’s friend.

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CONCLUSION

In summary, the four-year-olds’ hat-making activity was characterised byflexible materials and a readily recognisable (transparent) product with somemeasures of accuracy (joining and fitting). Learning narratives had becomeembedded in the activity, and two salient learning narratives were observed.In the first narrative, being nearly five and being a friend had becomeprivileged intentions. The preferred response to difficulty or uncertainty wasto avoid technical difficulties by keeping to the basic design, and, whenthe intent was friendship discussions, to avoid measuring by making hatsfor babies, cats, or absent people. The distribution of responsibility wastypically peer support, but adults also gave support and encouragement.In the second narrative (the five episodes from Jason, Meg, Meg and Myra,Trevor, and Molly) the intent was being a hat-maker. Technological diffi-culty was approached with enthusiasm and problems were individuallyinvented and explored through some or all of the following strategies: trans-formation, redefinition of function, representation, and engineering. Thesefive children’s experience illustrated the value of a richly resourced earlychildhood centre, with plenty of time for children to explore their ownmetaphors and interests. Jason had been exploring movement over at leasttwo days. Molly’s ‘sun visor’ hat came eight days after she had exploredthe affordance of coloured cellophane. Trevor’s persistence with measuringcame almost a month after a teacher had helped him to fit a hat and talkedwith him about ‘measuring’, and seven days after he had unsuccessfullytried adding more staples to a hat that was too big for him.

The case study illustrates a transactional model of learning (Sameroff,1975; Scarr & McCartney, 1983; Woodhead, 1988; Salomon, 1993) andthe power of both the physical affordances and the social practices thatcan reframe them. Learners bring learning narratives to the setting: thesenarratives provide a means whereby they edit, adapt and select from thelearning opportunitites available. The technology affords and constrainslearning narratives via transparency, challenge and access; and the affor-dance of the technology includes familiar social and cultural practice. Thechildren’s learning narratives change the affordance, and their learningnarratives are in turn changed by the affordance via episodes of mediatedaction. The technology afforded, and allowed the tackling of technolog-ical challenge, and the acquisition of knowledge and skill in transformation,redefinition of function, representation, and engineering. But an historicallyand socioculturally available social intent – being nearly five – afforded,allowed and encouraged ‘belonging’ goals which constrained exploration.Another historically and socioculturally available social intent – being afriend – afforded, allowed and encouraged the tackling of social challengeand the acquisition of knowledge and skill in friendship construction andmaintenance. It was the social practices that were the more compelling.

This is a case study of an activity, not of the children’s total early child-hood experience. At the same time as they were involved in hat-making,

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the children were also participating in other construction activities, in playand work outside in the sandpit and climbing area, and in sociodramaticplay throughout the kindergarten programme. There was a constructionactivity in the kindergarten that was characterised by co-construction andchallenge, notable an activity called ‘marble painting’ where the childrenrolled marbles around in a shallow box to make paintings: typically theyconstructed their own boxes, solved difficulties in so doing, and gave eachother technical assistance and advice. It was within this activity that Nelltook her first steps towards technical challenge: assisted by Jason’s lead-ership in the matter of technical collaboration, she asked his advice:’D’youknow how you can cut it? ‘Cos I don’t’. Jason gave advice, and later Nellgave technical instructions to her friend Jinny. Within her favourite activity,screen printing, Lisa was beginning to complete an activity without atutorial. Children were defining their own learning paths: making senseof both the physical and social world from their own personal and socio-cultural perspectives, edging their way towards tackling challenge in at leastone domain, and trying out different patterns of responsibility. They wereshaping the physical and the social world as well as being shaped by it,and it was the well-resourced environment and respectful adults who wereassisting them in that project. We can conclude that those activities thatare transparent, challenging and accessible – with few competing socio-cultural goals – are effective activities for technology education.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to the children, families, staff and management at the earlychildhood centre. This research and the writing of this paper were supportedby funding from the Research Division of the Ministry of Education andthe University of Waikato’s study leave programme.

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