The inseparable role of emotions in the teaching and learning of primary school science

Abstract

In this paper, we seek to explore the inseparable role of emotions in the teaching and the learning of science at the primary school level, as we elaborate the theoretical underpinnings and personal experiences that lead us to this notion of inseparability. We situate our perspectives on the complexity of science education in primary schools, draw on existing literature on emotions in science, and present arguments for the necessity of working towards positive emotions in our work with young children and their teachers. We layer our own perspectives and experiences as teachers and as researchers onto methodological arguments through narratives to emerge with a reflective essay that seeks to highlight the importance of emotions in our work with children and their teachers in elementary school science.

Full text

Guest Editors: S. Ritchie and K. Tobin.
This article is part of the Special Issue on Researching Emotions in Science Education.
Christina Siry ( )
The University of Luxembourg, 2 avenue de l’Université, L-4365 Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
Email: christina.siry@uni.lu
Michelle Brendel
The University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
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The Inseparable Role of Emotions in the Teaching and Learning of Primary
School Science
Christina Siry and Michelle Brendel
Author’s pre-print copy of accepted version of manuscript. Print version
available at: http://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11422-016-9781-1

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The Inseparable Role of Emotions in the Teaching and Learning of Primary
School Science
Christina Siry and Michelle Brendel
Abstract In this paper, we seek to explore the inseparable role of emotions in the
teaching and the learning of science at the primary school level, as we elaborate the
theoretical underpinnings and personal experiences that lead us to this notion of
inseparability. We situate our perspectives on the complexity of science education in
primary schools, draw on existing literature on emotions in science, and present
arguments for the necessity of working towards positive emotions in our work with
young children and their teachers. We layer our own perspectives and experiences as
teachers and as researchers onto methodological arguments through narratives to
emerge with a reflective essay that seeks to highlight the importance of emotions in
our work with children and their teachers in elementary school science.
Keywords dialogue · embodied science · doing science · elementary science
Resume Dans cet article, nous allons explorer le rôle inséparable des émotions dans
l'enseignement et l'apprentissage des sciences à l'école primaire. A cette fin, nous
élaborons les fondements théoriques ainsi que les expériences personnelles qui nous
mènent à cette notion d'inséparabilité. Nous situons notre vue de la complexité de
l'enseignement des sciences dans les classes de l'école primaire, en nous référant à la
littérature existante sur les émotions en sciences et présentons des arguments qui
mettent en évidence la nécessité de favoriser les émotions positives dans notre travail
avec de jeunes enfants et leurs enseignants. A travers une approche narrative, nous
confrontons nos propres perspectives et expériences comme enseignantes et
chercheures à des arguments méthodologiques afin de faire émerger un essai réflexif
qui cherche à mettre en évidence l'importance des émotions dans notre travail avec les
enfants et leurs enseignants dans l'enseignement des sciences à l'école primaire.
I needed to know that somebody else believed that my work had promise and
direction, and I have often been surprised that others had faith in me when I
had very little in myself. (Bateson 1971, xix)
We consider learning as expanding the possibilities to have the world at one's disposal
(« Verfügung über die Welt », Holzkamp 1995). Perceiving of the world as social and
physical, of science as the understanding of phenomena, of culture as a system of
beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that are used in a society, enables us
to find one's way in the world, one's place - or not - in the community. To this end of
expanding possibilities, we heed Gregory Bateson’s point to ‘believe’ in the promise
and direction of our students’ work. Learning plays a key role in the transmission of
culture from one generation to the next, and in some ways, so does teaching and
schooling. Central to these complex processes is the role of emotions, which we frame
as deeply connected and woven together with teaching, schooling, and learning.
Emotions are fluid and complex, and it has been suggested that there are three reasons
that there has been a dearth of research on the role of emotions in education; first, that

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they are fluid and more difficult to describe than cognition, second, due to the
dominance of cognitive psychology over research in education, and lastly, due to the
legacy of dualism that has positioned reason in opposition to emotion (Zembylas
2005). In this paper, we seek to explore the inseparable role of emotions in the
teaching and the learning of science at the primary school level, as we elaborate the
theoretical underpinnings and personal experiences that lead us to this notion of
inseparability.
Young children’s science learning
Learning is a basic and ubiquitous human activity. Society is based on
learning; communities are held together by learning; and people construct
identities through learning. Yet learning becomes problematic in school,
where it is assumed that some people will learn and others will not, and where
it is assumed that learning is something that kids will only do under coercion.
(Eckert, Goldman and Wenger 1997)
Certainly, learning is a core component of societies, yet there is a contradiction that
can be found when teaching and schooling itself are structured in the problematic
ways introduced in the quote above. In the sections that follow, we situate our
perspectives on the complexity of science education in primary schools, draw on
existing literature on emotions in science, and present arguments for the necessity of
working towards positive emotions in our work with young children and their
teachers. We layer our own perspectives and experiences as teachers and as
researchers onto methodological arguments through narratives to emerge with a
reflective essay that seeks to highlight the importance of emotions in our work with
children and their teachers in elementary school science. We regularly experience
children engaged in everyday, non-school activities, that show scientific thinking
(Bruner 1986), expressed by children’s understanding of evidence, their ability to
distinguish between the physical causes of an event, and a person’s reasons for
believing something.
On a walk through the woods 4-year-old Lia and her friend Martha were
running down a little hill, when they stopped where the track flattened and
looked down the valley. Martha exclaimed, "I did not see how beautiful it is
here, did you, Lia?" "No!" said Lia, "I think, when you run as fast as you can,
you don't see anymore. Let’s test, you see that big tree ahead? Lets run as fast
as we can." Arriving at the tree, Martha said: "I did not see anything around
me, did you?" Lia replied "No!" as Martha said to Michelle, "Michelle, when
you run as fast as you can, you don't see anything anymore!" And they walked
on, discussing how when you focus on your running, you don't always notice
your surroundings.
This moment between Martha, Lia, and Michelle (the second author of this paper)
provides an example of something that those who interact with young children have
no doubt experienced countless times; that is, children observe their environment and
theorize the ways in which they interact and experience their surroundings to arrive at
observations about causes and effects of specific phenomena, such as how Lia and
Martha sensed their environment based on what they were doing in a given moment.
Terry Eagleton has written that young children are wonderful theorists, as they have

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not yet been educated into the social practices that assume what is the norm, and in
turn, ask questions of the routine, as “they do not see why we might not do things
differently” (1990, p. 34). As researchers we regularly have discussions with
colleagues, who draw on Jean Piaget's developmental stage theory (1950) to ground
their explanations that children under 11 years are not able to show hypothetic-
deductive scientific reasoning, and thus are not able to form hypotheses and carry out
experiments. We work in the European country of Luxembourg, where Piaget's
understanding of the interrelationship of intelligence and affectivity in children's
development (1954) still serves as an implicit foundation of the school science
curriculum, which, as we will elaborate later, constitutes a dilemma for teachers when
they collaborate with us. Our work is grounded in sociocultural theoretical
perspectives (e.g., Sewell 1992) and we examine the complex individual as well as
collective ways in which children engage in describing and exploring natural
phenomena – as such, we are troubled by strict notions of what children can, and
cannot, do in science. When we consider our colleagues’ strong commitment to
adopting a perspective of the concrete stages of children’s development, we wonder
how this contrasts with what we hear when we adopt critical approaches to radically
listen to children in schools, as well as in non-school activities, and “believe” in them
in the ways that Bateson has described in the opening quote above.
Science as embodied and “done"
Through the frameworks and perspectives that ground our work in educational
research, science is an enacted and embodied process, one that is lived in the practice.
We have written previously about science as something that is “done” (e.g., Siry,
Ziegler and Max 2012) in discursive interactions. We currently are co-PIs on a
research project that situates the assessment of science processes and understandings
through dialogue (“Assessing Science Processes in Narratives”, ASPIN, 2013-2016).
Through this project, we work closely with teachers of early elementary students to
examine their own praxis as well as the practices their students engage in as they “do
science.” This and other previous work we have done with young children and their
teachers provides us with a specific lens on the deep connections between emotions
and science learning and teaching, one that goes far beyond the cognitive dimensions
of learning alone. The linear, rational model of science has been critiqued in the
literature (e.g., Roth and McGinn 1997), and there is a body of literature that has
emerged in particular over the past decade that argues for students to be engaged in
authentic science learning practices (e.g., Quigley 2014). We seek to gain
understandings of the complex ways in which children engage in the practices of
doing science, to provide us, as teachers and as researchers, with a particular lens on
how these understandings mediate our work with teachers in professional
development.
Common in many early childhood and elementary classrooms internationally
are investigations around the topic of water, and we have previously written about the
possibilities for constructing teaching and learning experiences from children’s
wonderings around water investigations (e.g., Siry and Max, 2012). We now draw on
narrative examples of students investigating water as they interact with volume
capacities of different containers to highlight the ways in which emotional
engagement is inherent to, and inseparable from, learning and doing science. We have
constructed narrative “impressionist tales” (van Maanen 1988) to guide our theoretical
and interpretive reflections that follow.

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A Kindergarten class is outside the school building and children are spread out
around the schoolyard. The teacher has set up a variety of large basins filled
with water and containers of different shapes and sizes. At one of these basins,
a group of five children stands around the edge, all looking into the water with
their hands in the water, splashing vigorously. As they splash around, the
water sprays their faces and, as they laugh collectively, there are shrieks of joy
as the sun shines and the water glistens.
Five-year-old Jan takes the largest container, scoops up some water, and turns
to his classmate Nina standing next to him. “I’ll put it in yours, then you put it
in mine” he says, as he pours the water from his container into her (smaller)
container. “Yes!” Nina shouts “Again! Again!” As the water from Jan’s
container overflows in hers, she grabs his hand smiling and pours the water
back into his. Jan’s face is lit up in a huge smile as he raises his eyebrows,
looks at his container and starts to jump and up and down eagerly. “First in
yours, now in mine! Let’s try it again!” he says. Suddenly the other children
around the basin all begin pouring water from full containers to empty ones, as
they giggle, bounce, and enthusiastically move water around from one
container to another.
At the heart of the “doing” of science is wonder, curiosity, and risk-taking. A central
consideration of engaging in science is “the relationship between scientific thinking
and larger conceptualizations of the world, and indeed the universe, as an object of
wonder and questioning” (Gallas 1994, p. 77). Jan, Nina, and their classmates
exchange utterances imbued with excitement, and these utterances are filled with
sounds of wonder and playfulness. Their curiosity is embodied, as they use their
gestures, expressions, pitch, and tone to emphasize their discoveries. The interaction
is filled with children saying “Let’s try this …” and “now in this one …” as they laugh,
smile, and bounce up and down on their toes. Much has been written in the field of
science education on the value of engaging students in the practices of science (e.g.,
Liljeström, Enkenberg and Pöllänen 2013)) and the focus on inquiry and science
practices has been written about for generations (e.g., Dewey 1910). Such authentic
practices are evident, and indeed central, when elementary aged children engage
multimodally / multisensorially in science investigations. Focusing on embodied
science (doing science as well as talking about science) provides a lens for teachers,
researchers, and the students themselves to reflexively consider not only what is
known, but how it is engaged in as an enacted (i.e., emotional, lived) practice. In the
next sections, we highlight several questions for reflexive consideration; How is
science learning an emotional practice? In what ways do science understandings
evolve in the emotions and science relationship? How do listening, belonging, and
becoming connect to this relationship? As we engage with these questions, we
wonder (and ask readers of this essay to do the same); where is the joy? Where is the
love? In the exploration of these questions, we hope to provide a lens on the
emotionally embedded ways in which children and their teachers engage with science
practices and concepts.
How is science learning an emotional practice?
Emotions are as ubiquitous as breathing. (Radford 2015)

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This special issue of the journal Cultural Studies of Science Education illustrates an
international focus across the papers on researchers’ emphasis on emotions in their
work in science education. Emotions are contextually situated in time and space, and
in our work in elementary schools we often witness students’ embodied emotional
performances as they engage in science investigations, such as those of Lia, Martha
and Michelle, as well as those of Jan and Nina. These moments are mediated by
individual as well as collective emotional energies. Emotions are relational, and as
cultural constructs they are socioculturally as well as historically constructed. Jan and
Nina’s interaction around the pouring of water into differently sized and shaped
containers is filled with collective effervescence and collective laughter, which has
been theorized as the social glue that holds groups together (Collins 2005).
Our collaborative research with teachers is guided in part by Margaret Carr’s
(2001) approach to learning stories, in which she accentuates the importance of
wellbeing and the feeling of belonging to the community in children's learning. There
is a necessity of a mutuality of positive feeling and a mutual affection in order to
facilitate learning (Bronfenbrenner 1979). To meet Bronfenbrenners' claims, in such a
learning community, all members are considered, and consider themselves, as
learners, and thus form the community of learners (Rogoff, Matusov and White
1998). In short, children ought to be considered experts of their own learning, which
requires a shift in framing the roles and power relations in the classroom. This shift in
the balance of power Bronfenbrenner is speaking of also corresponds to the notion of
responsibility emphasized by Barbara Rogoff, Eugene Matusov, and Cynthia White,
who have elaborated that:
In a classroom functioning as a community of learners, organization involves
dynamic and complementary group relations among class members who learn
to take responsibility for their contribution to their own learning and to the
group’s functioning. (…) (T)he organization involves a community working
together with all serving as resources to the others, with varying roles
according to their understanding of the activity at hand and differing (and
shifting) responsibilities in the system. (1998, p. 397)
It is precisely this mutual sense of belonging to a community of learners, and the
sense of responsibility of all the members of the community to work collectively
towards positive, mutual, feelings of belonging, that we hope to work towards in our
interactions with children and their teachers around the learning of science. As we
hear children’s ideas, as with Lia and Martha’s observation on how what we see is
shaped by how we interact with our environment, it is critical to take these ideas
seriously and to set aside any assumptions and expectations on what they “should” be
saying relative to cause and effect, for example. Inspired by radical listening (e.g.,
Tobin and Kincheloe, 2010), humility and openness are necessary to listen to, and
respect, the theories and questions that emerge from children’s observations and
interactions. We hope that in doing so we can push back against the prevalent notions
of strict stages that define what children can, or should, say and do at a level of
schooling, and instead create spaces in which each child can develop and grow in
ways that are most suited to them. Lois Holzman has written about young children’s
development and noted that, “the process of learning and the product of learning are
created together” (2009, p. 18). We embrace this notion of the unification of learning
and developing, and next elaborate how we have ‘seen’ science understandings evolve
in the emotions and science relationship.

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In what ways do science understandings evolve in the emotions / science
relationship?
The sense of wonder vividly apparent as youngsters gaze enthralled at art, at
nature, at falling leaves, reminds us of our responsibility to keep that feeling
alive, to amplify and mirror it as valuable and humanizing. (Arnold 2010, p.
41)
This sense of wonder that Arnold alludes to is a central component of engaging in
science, and we have written previously about the possibilities in building science
curriculum from students’ wonderings (Siry and Max 2013). The term “wonderings”
is one that we use to encompass the embodied, often non-verbal, ways in which
children interact around their questions and discoveries of science phenomena.
Children such as Jan and Nina, and myriad others we have encountered through the
years, try something out (like pouring water from a bigger container to a smaller one),
observe what happens, and then typically try again (and again and again as in Nina
and Jan’s case). As they engage in such ritualistic behaviors, their ideas shift and
change, which can be seen in the new ways in which they try their next investigations.
When such rituals in a group are positive, members of the group can experience
positive emotional energy, which over time supports a sense of belonging (Collins
2002). This sense of belonging supports children’s inquiry, as each moment of
children’s positively-infused wondering can lead to new ones – new questions, new
ideas, new explorations. This act of wondering is one that we see as central to the
processes of inquiry – in fact, it is perhaps the most central aspect of doing science –
and it is often only visible in examining nonverbal engagement of children. We now
return to Jan and Nina to explore their wonderings around the water containers of
varying sizes.
Jan has said to Nina “First in yours, now in mine! Let’s try it again!” She
smiles, nods, and turns her container upside down. She taps the bottom of the
container, presumably to get all the water out. Turning it back right-side up,
she nods and smiles at Jan. He fills his (larger) container as full as he can
manage, and makes eye contact with her, eyes wide open and eyebrows raised.
Tilting his head, he holds her hand with her container steady, and pours the
water from his container into hers. She leans over, concentrating as she
watches what happens as the water fills her container and overflows into the
basin and over her and Jan’s hands. Her eyes get wider and wider, until Jan’s
container is empty. They both pause briefly, bounce up and down on their toes
while turning their heads to make eye contact and their faces burst into smiles
as they giggle and move back and forth from side to side. “Again?” Nina asks.
“Yes, but different?” Jan replies, and the both begin to laugh again.
As Jan, Nina and their classmates explore the containers and the differing amounts
that they can hold, they refine their approaches to pouring and filling as they go.
Hands are held more steady, often with the help of another, as in the vignette above.
Giggling and dancing around is balanced with holding very still as new methods of
getting as much water as possible into the different containers are tried. Very few
words are exchanged, and no words are exchanged that directly refer to water or
volume or water flow, yet by looking and listening closely to the embodied emotional

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ways in which the children are investigating, it becomes evident that they are
wondering how to get as much water as possible into the different sized containers. It
also is clear that the children are enjoying their interactions and their investigations, as
evidenced by laughter and shrieks of joy, and expressive movements such as dancing
and jumping on their toes. Despite the fact that there are very few words used in this
interaction, the children’s wonderings about the relations between the size and shape
of the containers and the amount of water that they can hold are evident. While we
can of course not “know” what the children were thinking, we can examine the
interaction for clues to children’s interests and questions, and in doing so, we focus on
the embodied, joyful ways in which children demonstrate and develop their science
understandings. While it is beyond the scope of our research to frame our work
around students’ “thinking,” we take inspiration from Lev Vygotsky’s latest works, in
which he reflected on the relations between thought, affect, language and
consciousness
(Thought) is not born of other thoughts. Thought has its origins in the
motivating sphere of consciousness, a sphere that includes our inclinations and
needs, our interests and impulses, and our affect and emotions. The affective
and volitional tendency stands behind thought. Only here do we find the
answer to final 'why' in the analysis of thinking. (Vygotsky 1934/1987, p.282)
Mahn and John-Steiner expand on this often neglected aspect of Vygotsky’s work,
emotions, by drawing on their own work (e,g., Mahn 1997; John-Steiner 2000) and
other scholars (e.g., Damasio 1999) who describe emotions as coming into being
through the interplay of interpersonal and intrapersonal dynamics. They describe the
zone of proximal development - the distance between the learner's actual
development level and the level the learner could reach through collaboration - as a
complex whole, in which negative affective factors diminish the zone in which
effective teaching and learning can occur (Mahn and John-Steiner 2002). We consider
a range of positive emotions as being not only critical for such effective teaching and
learning, but just as importantly, for supporting students’ sense of belonging to a
community of science learners. As we perceive of emotions and emotional energy
along a continuum, then positive emotions are a motivating force that can lead to
feelings of happiness and solidarity among a group (Collins 1990). Randall Collins
has theorized that people seek out situations in which they expect positive emotional
energy, and thus experiences that can lead to higher levels of positive emotions are
motivating, as these emotions “serve as a powerful means to connect children to their
learning” (Hughes 2013, p. 12). As Jan, Nina, Lia, Martha, and Michelle investigate
with positive emotions their science understandings may grow and evolve, as they are
positioned to take risks and pursue their wonderings.
“Critical reflection on my experience as a student in unexciting classrooms
enabled me not only to imagine that the classroom could be exciting but that this
excitement could co-exist with and even stimulate serious intellectual and / or
academic engagement” (hooks 1994, p.7) As bell hooks has captured through
reflection on her own experiences as a student, classrooms filled with moments of
excitement can stimulate serious growth and engagement. Thus, focusing on positive
emotions is not an add-on to the teaching and learning of science, but rather is an
inseparable component that mediates children’s and teachers’ meaning-making.

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How do listening, belonging, and becoming connect to the relationship of science
learning and emotions?
Education through our lenses is a continual process of being and becoming (Siry,
Brendel and Frisch in press) and we hope that this process mediates learning science;
in particular, learning science as part of having the world at our disposal (Holzkamp
1995). Earlier we suggested that radical listening is central to working with research
participants, and indeed, we believe that ethical, compassionate, critical approaches to
research can be accomplished through providing spaces in which participants can
engage in dialogue around their experiences and perspectives. In these dialogic
encounters, listening is central. To hear each other, to listen to one another, is an
exercise in recognition (hooks 1994). As we listen to what the other says, we open
ourselves up to the perspectives of those that might be very different from our own, in
an effort to understand the positionalities and perspectives of those we work with.
We believe that we need to not only “give voice” to participants in our research, but
we need to listen to, and act on, these voices that we hear. This in turn can lead us to
more ethical, empathetic, work with research participants and engage them in
processes of teaching, learning, and researching in ways that connect to the emotional
practices of belonging to a community. “As a classroom community, our capacity to
generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one
another’s voices, in recognizing one another’s presence” (hooks 1994, p. 8).
Becoming a member of a classroom community is a deeply emotional experience, one
that is grounded on trust, respect, and the ability to take risks and feel safe, heard, and
recognized by the community. Part of this process, we contend, is built upon
experiences (which in our work are situated in science classes) in which children and
teachers together open themselves to what the other has to say. We contrast Nina and
Jan above to another narrative elaboration of a lesson in a similar Kindergarten class.
Children are seated at their desks, which have been arranged into groups of
four. In the center of these now-larger tables created by the four desks are
three containers of varying shapes and sizes. “Which one holds the most
water?” The classroom teacher asks. Six-year-old Tessy and Dylan exchange
glances with furrowed brows as they then look at and point to each of the
different containers in front of their group of four children. Tessy holds up one
and looks at the group with a quizzical expression, as if asking a question of
the group. The other children raise their eyebrows, look at the containers, and
slowly each of them nods. Tessy then holds up the one container proudly and
shows it to the teacher. “You predict this one Tessy? Try with your group now
to see if you are right” the teacher says while smiling. “Take them to the sink
and try to pour water from one to the other to see if you are right that this one
is the biggest one” she instructs them next.
The four children go to the sink with the containers. They stand for a moment
and look at the containers and the sink, with their mouths tightly closed and
their brows furrowed. Their teacher comes over and suggests they take the one
they think is the smallest and pour it into the next one, and so on, to see if they
are correct in their guess. The children then order the three containers from the
shortest to the tallest (important to note is that the containers vary greatly in
width, and thus the shortest is not the one that holds the least amount of
water…) and they begin. No words are exchanged, and the children stand

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quietly and watch intensely as Tessy fills the first container and pours it into
the next one. Indeed, the first is smaller than the second, and the children
collectively smile and exhale making sounds of “phew!” as they have had
apparent success. The next try is to take the second container and pour the
water into the one that Tessy predicted was the one to hold the most water.
Again the children are deeply focused, wordlessly watching and holding very
still as Tessy pours the water from the second to the third container. However,
with this try, the water overflows, as the third container does not hold more
water than the second. Tessy’s facial expression shifts to one of
disappointment, and her shoulders drop. “Why’d you choose the wrong one?”
Dylan asks her “Now we don't have it right!” he scolds her.
We question whether in classroom moments that are imbued with negative emotions,
such as this one with Tessy and her classmates, children develop a sense of belonging
that can support their science investigations in ways that allow them to take risks and
express and pursue their wonderings. Transient negative emotions, including
embarrassment, fear and anger during interactions have an influence on people’s
levels of emotional energy (Turner and Stets 2005). As we position one of the goals of
education as learning to have the world at our disposal, we hope for educational
experiences that inspire children to pursue their curiosity and wonder. With this as an
overarching goal, moments like these with Tessy and her classmates, which focus
solely on achieving one correct answer, can act to counter a goal of supporting
children’s open exploration and pursuit of wonderings. We echo a question posed by
Wolk, as she asks “Is it really possible to inspire people to live a life of learning and
wonder, if throughout their schooling children are always told what to learn, when to
learn, and how to learn?” (2007, p. 652). Belonging to a learning community requires
a commitment to engaged pedagogical approaches that focus on the well-being of the
children and all the participants in the classroom, in order “to educate as the practice
of freedom is a way of teaching that anyone can learn” (hooks 1994, p. 13).
Classroom teachers as well as we as researchers are members of the children's
learning community, and thus in considering engaged pedagogical approaches and the
role of emotions in learning, we ask, how are we, as researchers, positioned in this
community? Are we inadvertently representing the teaching-as-usual the classroom
teachers may know and expect from their training and experience; the mainstream
science education research approaches that perpetuate positivist expectations of
research processes? Rich normality requiring that "(w)ithin an environment and a
society that are made of exceptions and special cases, the design and didactic result
should be that of dynamic normality" (Ceppi and Zini 1998) the Other to the norms
defined by the national curriculum? Margery Wolf stresses that "(N)o matter how
careful, I fear all of us who do research must be prepared to be the represented Other
to the "objects" of our study" (1992, p.13). The teachers participating in our study
may feel torn between the community of Luxembourgish teachers, in which the
competent teachers are positioned to know and transmit solid knowledge to their
students on one hand, and the research community we belong to in which all
members, children and adults, are positioned as learners in the "doing" of science on
the other hand. Thus, collaborating in research becomes destabilizing, confusing, and
evokes feelings of uncertainty and lack of confidence. The teachers' emotional need to
be positioned as competent teachers by the other members of the school community
competes with their desire to be recognized by the members of the research group,
entailing the loss of their feeling of belonging to either of these communities.

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We have heard teachers express this contradiction countless times in our work
with them, as teachers express their frustration about wanting to engage in new
pedagogical approaches, but feeling confusion about how to do that and still have
their students emerge with the “right” conceptual understandings relating to science.
For example, one teacher we recently collaborated with summed this feeling up when
she said “but if the students are investigating on their own, I still need to be sure they
know the right facts at the end.” |As pointed out by Walsh (2005, p. 42), "(T)he deep
retention of Piaget’s theory long after the shortcomings have been identified is
curious. (...) (The) focus on development, rather than on other areas of schooling, for
example, curriculum, instruction, and assessment, has remained dominant in the
field.” We have noted that for our participating teachers, theoretical frameworks are
not considered as tools that might be useful for the development of teaching and
learning, but as truth to which the own practice needs to correspond. A Piagetian
understanding of young children's developmental levels calling for teachers who
structure the children's learning and provide the right knowledge is in conflict with
perspectives that position even very young children as authors of their own learning in
a community. Tessy makes a wrong assumption about the different sizes and volume
capacity of the containers, and is scolded by Dylan – how do we avoid this in other
work in classrooms? We look for approaches to support our participants to become
attuned to the emotions of those they are interacting with – the emotional landscape of
the classroom. In the focus on right and wrong, instead of the process of learning and
investigating, the interaction became negative and the one point is achieving solely
the right answer.
In childhood, emotions are linked to experiences of attachment, happiness,
need, and anger. Sometimes a child's needs are not met, s/he doesn't feel bonds of
attachment or belonging to the community; then an awareness of helplessness may
become overwhelming. The remnants of negative childhood experiences may lead to
a re-emergence of feelings of despair and loss in adults. Not only are the students’
emotions inseparable from their learning experiences in science, but teachers’
emotions are also intertwined with successful learning in the classroom. We risk
neglecting that teachers go through an emotionally highly demanding process of
learning when changing their teaching practice in science. We might adopt Bronwyn
Davies' definition of intra-action, "where "intra-action" refers to more than interaction
(a meeting of two pre-existing entities); it is an encounter where each participant
affects, and is open to being affected by, the other (Barad 2007: Lenz Taguchi 2010)"
(Davies 2014).
Where is the joy? Where is the love?
What avail is it to win prescribed amounts of information about geography and
history, to win the ability to read and write, if in the process the individual
loses his own soul? (Dewey 1938, p. 49)
We have experienced countless times, as teachers and as researchers, the
performative, playful, and joyful ways in which children engage in science
investigations – in particular, when children are given the space to pursue their
wonderings and questions; individually or collectively, in classrooms or informal
settings, guided or free. The boundaries that are set by structures such as science
curriculum policy are porous, and a focus on enjoyment, and ideally on happiness, can
serve as an approach to transgress such boundaries. “To teach in a manner that

12!
respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the
necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin” (hooks, p.
13). Moments such as Lia and Martha’s discoveries and amazement as they explore
the movement of their bodies in space and time and their related sensory perception,
as well as Jan and Nina’s water filling and pouring, are filled with emotional
effervescence and enjoyment, which can support positive emotions within science-
related investigations. We hope that these positive emotions towards science leads to
further science explorations and we take inspiration from Jonathan Turner and Jan
Stets, who have written that “people pursue lines of conduct because they bring about
positive (emotional) outcomes, while avoiding those that lead to negative (emotional)
consequences” (2005, p. 22). It has been suggested that happiness ought to be a main
aim of education (Noddings 2003), and we believe that radical listening and love and
caring are necessary to work towards this aim in ways that facilitate children’s sense
of belonging to a community of learners and mediates their developing science
understandings. In our conceptualization of the value of caring and happiness in
education, we are reminded of Freire’s (1998) point that teaching is an act of love,
one that is requires a “well-thought-out capacity to love” (p. 3). His work draws on
such love as central for true dialogue. Love has been theorized as a “transformative
and revolutionary force” (Zembylas 2015, p. 32) yet caring is often perceived as being
soft – not rigorous or technical – and thus is often considered to only be perhaps for
teachers at the Kindergarten and pre-Kindergarten levels. Our work through the years
with teachers and their students as they engage in teaching and learning science has
reinforced our commitment to dialogic practices that are grounded on listening,
humility, and dialogue.
Radical listening, in which we try to put aside our own perspectives and open
ourselves up to understanding the perspectives of those that we work with, can
position us to imagine new possibilities for science education, as we are positioned to
experience children’s investigations and perspectives in different ways. “Working
with young children requires being able to begin to see them in all their possibilities
and potentials.” (Walsh 2005, p. 46). As we open ourselves up to radically listen to
what children say in science, we draw on Freire’s conceptualization of dialogue and a
foundation of radical love, which he explained, “love is at the same time the
foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself” (2000, pp. 89-90). Radical listening is a
humble approach to respecting those we work with, one that positions participants,
ourselves included, to work towards horizontal power relationships and to try to truly
understand perspectives that might be very different from their own perspectives or
expectations. As participants are positioned, and position themselves, to engage in
dialogic practices, there can emerge a space to understand each other; a space for
dialogue, reflection, and ideally for action. Enacting radical listening and embracing
radical love highlights for us the inseparability of emotions from the practices and
processes of teaching and learning science, an approach that supports our own critical
pedagogical practices and one that we hope provides spaces for children to question,
to learn, and to develop their sense of belonging to a classroom community. Once we
find the love in the classroom, the students can be situated to find the joy in science
learning and exploration and we hope that it positions them to engage with each other
and with the discipline in new ways.

13!
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Authors’ biographies
Christina Siry is an elementary science education researcher and teacher educator, and
she has worked in the US prior to relocating to Luxembourg, where she is currently a
professor of learning and instruction at the University of Luxembourg. Her research is
grounded in critical theoretical approaches and she draws on participatory and visual
methodologies in her work with teachers and children around the teaching and
learning of science.
Michelle Brendel is a trained in family therapist and Gestalt-therapist. She worked
with children in foster care before she joined the initial teacher training for preschool
and primary school at the University of Luxembourg, where her research interests are
collaborative teacher research, inclusive education, and portfolio approaches.