Page 117 - To know things we have to have the world inside us

When we start by seeking to discover patterns between things~objects~materials we start to

discover the “pattern which connects” (2002, 8). Bateson referred to the sensitivity to these
patterns as aesthetic.

We were unsure about offering something as seemingly everyday as ‘found materials’ to our
teacher~researchers and we wondered whether or not these materials could generate the
interest necessary to sustain engagement and ongoing research. On reflection, there were a few
factors that worked in their favour. The first was asking the teacher~researchers to choose

materials to bring to share with the group and to reflect on the choosing process, meant that in
many cases, relations with particular found materials were already forming before we met for
the first time as a group. Another strategy that invited engagement was the quantity and
diversity of found materials that were offered to the group on our first encounters together.

Many of the materials came with a story that helped to connect teacher~researchers who
didn’t know each other. Whilst there are many other strategies that contributed to
teacher~researchers forming relations with the things~objects~materials and with each other,
one that really surprised us was the camera. For most adults today, the smart phone is a friend.
The camera-phone as both a camera and ‘lightbox’ generated surprising outcomes for

teacher~researchers. Where many were initially reluctant to draw, they were comfortable
tracing images on their phone screens. Photos on a smart phone can be enlarged – generating
startling and often beautiful perspectives – helping us to see unexpected details, and to create
new connections and links. By the end of the project, we noticed that teacher~researchers were
noticing subtle details and qualities through their photography and other expressive media and
were approaching drawing with much more confidence.

This project reinforced for us our own sense that listening, noticing and giving attention are
relation building strategies. Carla Rinaldi once described documentation as an act of love
(personal notes) and the German philosopher Martin Buber (1970) described attention as “the

rarest and purest form of generosity”. We chose the strategy of noticing as our ‘way finder’:
noticing as an act that seeks to give attention to both the exterior and interior worlds without
expectation. We tried to create contexts for noticing: contexts that allowed time, that encouraged
playfulness and appreciation of the elusive qualities of things~objects~materials that we often
take for granted. We began to notice how things~objects~materials and people are different in

different relations. Working individually and in small and large groups, teacher~researchers’
own coming~to~know was influenced by the noticings of those around them. Sharing noticings

became a gift of an individual to the group. We observed shared pleasures when one
teacher~researcher discovered different relations through listening to another. The meaning of
socially constructed learning became part of the lived experience.

By intentionally setting out to notice and to sensitise ourselves to relations between
things~objects~materials and subjects, we discovered that the object of our noticing is both a
whole in itself and a part of a larger whole, and that the borders between these wholes and
parts are porous, flexible, and often arbitrary. In reflecting back on the project, we have come
to see more clearly the way complexity grows through noticing connections between parts,
wholes and more parts…
Whilst we were cognizant of Bateson’s proposal that contexts of learning involve concepts of

shape, pattern and relations between systems, and that the more an organism is able
to recognise wide relations between systems, the deeper the learning, the aha moment for us

was when we actually realised that this is what the teacher~researchers were doing.

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