Aesthetically sensitive pathways to knowledge in and through action research in Danish kindergartens

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines aesthetically sensitive pathways to knowledge in and through action research with artists and pedagogues in Danish kindergartens. The action research process took place from January 2016 through June 2017 and involved collaboration between artists and pedagogues (pædagoger in Danish). Artists and pedagogues facilitated aesthetic processes located in the kindergartens and became aware of how to support children’s participation in and possibilities for aesthetic experiences. The author understands action research as a messy and lived aesthetically sensitive inquiry, that synthesizes body and mind as one interwoven act and as especially connected to first- and second-person perspectives. Furthermore, this approach includes the researcher as a sensitive participant observer in both workshops with adults and in actions with adults and children. This article focuses attention on the aesthetically sensitive pathways to knowledge in workshops and collaborative analysis. The article contributes to aesthetics as a sensitive kind of knowledge in action research and in the pedagogue’s professional work. Drawing on philosophical aesthetics, the article highlights aesthetics as sensitive experience and cognition and relates it to intuitive and sensitive awareness and attunement and beautiful thinking (aesthetic reflection).