Session 2: Play Experiments as a Child Sensitive Research Method
Anette Boye Koch, Henriette Blomgren, Hanne Hede Jørgensen
VIA University College
The workshop draws on experiences from the project TRoLD, in which researchers and pedagogues use play experiments as a child-sensitive research method to explore children’s (3 years) knowledge on play and flourishing. In the workshop, we will frame play experiments and invite you to explore your own participation and agency in play - as well as the material’s agency. We will also share narratives from the TRoLD project with you. Together we will explore and discuss the potential of play experiments in research, policy and pedagogical practice.
Come join a play experiment – a co-creative knowledge making process where perspectives of all participants can unfold!
Max. participants: 30
Session 3: The Pirate Game
Heidi Stensman Pugh
VIA University College
In this workshop, we will engage with “The Pirate Game,” an experiential activity that incorporates speech, physical movement, role-play, and narrative exploration. Through this interactive format, we will examine the interrelation between the conference’s keywords: courage and agency. “The Pirate Game” serves as a dynamic framework for investigating how these themes manifest in practice and dialogue and is a framework based on playful approaches in higher education.
Max. participants: 30
Session 4: The Potential of Walking: Social Pedagogical Practice and Research in Motion
Peter Hornbæk Frostholm, Frederikke Dybdahl
VIA University College
This presentation explores the social pedagogical walk as a situated, phenomenologically informed practice through which relational work, ethics, and embodied judgment unfold in motion. Such an open and context-sensitive approach demands presence, relational competence, and -crucially - pedagogical courage of the social workers to act decisively in the here and now.
Building on this, we examine how the professional football club Randers FC acts as a pedagogical setting and how that it being an unconventional pedagogical institution fosters a different kind of involvement among young people, and how its embedded practices may succeed in outsourcing agency, activating courage to act, and sparking motivation in the young people it engages.
Drawing on a short film from Randers, Denmark we introduce a concrete practice involving social pedagogical staff member Dennis P, whose work has informed our research. We discuss walking both as a methodological approach in social pedagogical inquiry and as a practice that mobilizes presence, reflection, and ethical resonance. Who knows - perhaps Dennis P will join us, and perhaps we will experience social pedagogy in motion ourselves?
Max. participants: 30
Session 5: A Courageous Walk in the Rain – Participatory music making that inspires courage and develops agency
Sofie Holm Egense
VIA University College
The intimate relationship between early childhood education and music has a long history, and many people will think of music as a natural part of children’s life world and the daily activities in early childhood education. Nevertheless, recent studies point to an increase in people who experience themselves as musically incompetent and who lack the courage to explore the world of music as active music makers. This increase is particularly prominent amongst students and professionals in early childhood education.
Opening our senses, feelings and minds to musical communication takes courage. When we open ourselves to others in music, we connect with and expose something that can be intimate and personal.
The workshop is created with inspiration from the concept of participatory music making, which Thomas Turino defines as “sense of actively contributing to the sound and motion of a musical event through dancing, singing, clapping, and playing musical instruments when these activities are considered constitutive of and crucial to the performance” (Turino, 2016, 302). Participatory music builds on a critique of capitalist value and social structures and can be resource for social change and offers alternative ways of citizenship through voluntary, egalitarian communities of practice.
In this workshop we will engage in different kinds of participatory music making practices. We will sing together, explore the spring rain through easily played instruments and we will build our own music using non-musical materials.
Max. participants: 30
Session 6: Unexpected Events: Scenario-Based Learning as a didactic approach for practicing courage in Higher Education
Janni Skjøtt Walker
VIA University College
This workshop explores how scenario-based learning can be used as a didactic approach to strengthen students’ ability to act, reflect, and engage with complex and emotionally challenging topics. Through scenario-based learning, students work within situations that require problem-solving, critical thinking, power of judgment, and above all courage. The courage to confront the unknown and to recognize learning and developmental potential within the scenarios.
The workshop will consist of a short introduction to the theoretical framework of scenario-based didactics and its application as a teaching method in higher education, followed by practical exercises and collaborative exploration. Participants will be encouraged to engage actively, challenge assumptions, and experiment with different ways of responding to the scenario in the workshop.
Join this workshop - Expect the unexpected – And courage will follow.
Max. participants: 30
Session 7: Embracing chaos – encouraging agency: the chaos scenario
Nadja Aagaard Færgemand, Hanne Møjbæk Duedahl Nørgaard
VIA University College
“How do you dare?” That has often been the first response we’ve received when telling colleagues about the course we call “the chaos scenario.” In this course, we begin by placing our students in a chaotic, almost dystopian future, where they are grouped and faced with various tasks under time pressure and existential dilemmas.
From there, we bring them back to the present and into another possible future, before finally working with their hopes and possibilities for action. The course is designed with inspiration from dark pedagogy, scenario-based learning, and futures literacy, and was originally developed for nursing students.
In this workshop, participants will themselves experience the different steps of the chaos scenario, and we would like to conclude by inviting a brief reflection afterwards on whether you dare to embrace chaos.
Max. participants: 30
Session 8: Enacting Movement Integration
Kasper Lasthein Madsen, Lise Reol
VIA University College
The workshop presents an embodied education approach, which comprises categories of bodily practices: to mime, dramatise, gesticulate, shape, imitate, and sense. The approach is informed by the theory of enactive cognition and developed through action research in Danish primary schools, where teachers and researchers collaboratively developed movement activities in teaching. The bodily practices yield impressions and experiences of a sensory-motor, affective, and intersubjective nature, providing an opportunity to work with and process academic concepts. The workshop comprises practical examples of bodily practices as teaching activities within the curriculum.
Max. participants: 30