As a school, we use video documentation to guide our work with children. One crucial piece of working with video is revisiting the video, analyzing it to pull out questions for further research or to reach new understandings of children’s and teachers’ motivations. We practice analyzing videos with interns and mentors.
Below is a video and write-up that we have shared with Videatives, an organization with whom we partner.
“[Study] results indicate that children may sometimes be confused about the nature of imagined objects, although these confusions do not occur all the time. Thus, it is not the case that children are either perpetually confused or perpetually clear about this distinction between imagination and reality.” – Weisberg, D. 2013.“Distinguishing Imagination from Reality.” The Oxford Handbook of the Development of Imagination. P. 82
The video opens on a child, Oliver, 3 years old, sitting inside a structure composed of fabric and piping. It is a little hard to see in this video, but there is a projection of a space scene on the fabric in front of him.
He is holding his hands about “steering wheel distance” apart and making a steady hum engine noise in his throat. About 15 seconds in, the sound in his throat catches. He continues with the sound, now a broken hum (we will use the onomatopoeia “hm-hm” for the broken sound), for about four seconds. At this point, Oliver’s eyebrows knit together, and he looks down.
“Why did it just go “hm-hm”? He picks up a block and, while examining the block says, “We need to stop it for a sec. We need to stop it because it just went ‘hm-hm’” He makes the broken sound again a few times.
His teacher, Charlotte, who is holding the camera, asks, “That’s not how it’s supposed to sound?” Oliver shakes his head, no.
Charlotte asks, “Alright, are you going to fix the engine so you can keep traveling to the moon?”
Oliver looks to the projection of space. He points to a spot, “Maybe to that over there. I’m supposed to drive over there.”
He then arranges a series of loose parts (pvc type piping) in front of him and says, “Beep-beep- beep-beep,” while poking at the blue block he was holding earlier.
Charlotte holds up another loose part, “Oli, here’s some tools.” He takes them from her and proceeds to touch them to the piping, concentrating intently on his work.
A question to consider is, how did Oliver write the script for his play? From his initial actions and his teacher’s initial attempt to redirect him to flying to the moon, it seems that the script was to fly a spaceship to the moon.
Did Oliver’s voice break, causing him to hear the engine as breaking? Or was that intentional? His initial look of confusion implies that for a moment, he may have truly believed the spaceship was broken. Did he temporarily forget that he had control over the script?
As Weisberg noted in her study (link above), “It is not the case that children are either perpetually confused or perpetually clear about this distinction between imagination and reality.” Where did Oliver sit in this distinction?
Boulder Journey School Teacher Education Program 