Interaction Geography: Early Childhood Education
The video animations on this page use interaction geography to animate gestural energies and choreographies from a well known two-minute video of classroom interaction collected by Kris Gutiérrez, Fred Erickson, and colleagues that shows the teaching of a key idea in the physics of matter — that matter occupies space — in a kindergarten-first grade bilingual classroom.
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Shapiro, B.R., & Silvis, D. (2023). Animated Movements, Animating Methods: An Interaction Geography Approach to Space and Affect in Early Childhood Education. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. PDF
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This work draws from the collective work of the learning how to look and listen workshop and the work of Kris Gutiérrez, Fred Erickson, and colleagues (see: https://www.learninghowtolookandlisten.com)
This animation shows the movement of a teacher’s hands during a two minute activity in a bilingual elementary classroom. The movement of the teacher's hands is shown as a purple path (right hand) and orange path (left hand) as they unfold upwards in a space-time view over the two minute activity. In this space-time view, the z-axis encodes time, and the x/y axes correspond to the image. Thicker lines indicates when the teacher is not moving or resting her hands.
This animation shows the movement of a student and teacher's hands during the two minute activity. The movement of the teacher's hands is shown as grey paths while the student's gesture is shown as brown paths and green path segments indicate when the student is talking.
This animation shows the movement of pieces of paper held by students and the teacher during this same two minute activity. Movement is shown as colored paths and as it unfolds upwards in a space-time view over the two minute activity. Pieces of paper are also highlighted on the image in black.