Learning as Metamorphosis

Layering the Learning

Australia

has one of the weirdest insects on earth - the walking stick. Like other stick insects, the walking stick evolves through several stages. It starts off as an egg, which the adult drops from a tree. Through evolution, the egg has been engineered to look like a seed loved by ants. The seed has a tasty, nutritious section at the top called the eliasome. This tiny, white extrusion is mimicked at the top of the walking stick egg and is called the capitulum. Like a stowaway, the egg grows in perfect humidity, away from predators in the ant nest. In its own time, it hatches into a nymph with a red head and green body. Why the head red? This is another masquerade. It mimics a red-headed spider ant as it scuttles to safety. Both red-headed ants and the nymph taste like bad cheese, so most predators avoid them. Once the nymph finds a haven in a tree, it moults six times to reach its final form. The nymph moves like an ant, whereas the adult walking stick has a flowing side-toside motion like a gently fluttering leaf. It grazes all day on eucalyptus leaves and after mating, lo’ and behold, more seeds drop from the tree to start the process all over again. The walking stick doesn’t have to walk much because the ants it has surreptitiously made part of its cycle become the eggs’ transporters. Beside being a fun insect, the walking stick’s life cycle is similar to children’s learning. Deep learning never happens in one stage, but in several stages over time.

Moving Beyond One Stop Activities

In some early years’ rooms, children may be offered an activity that lasts for a single session. Their effortful products are collected neatly in their portfolios or go home for display on the fridge.

I was one of the educators who offered children one stop activities until I visited the preschools and infant-toddler centres on a study tour to Reggio Emilia in northern Italy. A whole new vista opened to me about how children could be inspired to learn and to keep evolving through ever more complex iterations. Learning there is described as a spiral, moving upward and outward over time.

Since that trip, no matter what I design for children or how they are occupied, I always look for the next extension. It could be linear thinking, adding something on at the end, or it could be vertical thinking, going a little or a lot deeper.

Lending a Skill

One day, in the middle of an academic year, a new child joined my four-year-old group. When asked to draw alongside other children who just got on with it, she sat frozen. She stared at the page. When I enquired, she said, “I can’t draw.” I asked her what she would like to draw and she stated she didn’t know. I dug further and asked after her favourite things. Her eyes brightened and she said, “Butterflies.” I continued the questioning line by asking what butterflies looked like and if she would like to try and draw one. As she drew, I scaffolded her success by “lending a skill.” We began with drawing a closed figure, a rough circle. Then we changed the shape of the figure. When she had confidence in making circles and ovals of different dimensions, we tackled the butterfly.

I had expected her to use a skinny oval in the middle and two fatter ones on either side, but she had a different idea. She drew two ovals one above the other and then drew a straight line down the middle. There emerged the first butterfly she had ever drawn. Filled with enthusiasm, she immediately added antennae and wanted to colour it. She never looked back.

Inspiring the Group

During the process, we gained some bystanders. They watched as she coloured the wings — and wings became a focus in their thinking. This encounter was a formative stage of an ongoing project into wings and flight that lasted months. Dragons, dragonflies, butterflies, birds and even planes entered the arena.

Drawing with Both Memory and the Senses

Children often draw from memory rather than from observation. I love them to move outward, use their external senses, observe closely and then move back into their minds to think again using the additional information they’ve assimilated. New thinking lays the groundwork for further creativity, including thoughtful statements and ideas, such as, “Birds, dragonflies, butterflies...all have wings. But the dragonfly’s wings are thinner than the butterfly’s.”

When closely observing, the children understand something not as a simple entity, but as an entity with parts that are related. They learn the function, relevance, structure and interconnection within the whole.

Creating a Learning Spiral

The student who started the project continued her work. From the three enclosed shapes, she and the other children in the group moved on to careful observation of models of butterflies and ‘read’ about them in books. Over time, their work became very detailed. Then, the original child indicated she wanted to do a ‘close-up’ of just part of the wing. The children loved the idea. The drawings and paintings they produced are spectacular. The process went from the whole butterfly to close-up to painting.

The Arts Contribute to Conceptual Understanding

Besides being able to paint and draw, the group became knowledgeable about different kinds of animal flight. They learned about habitats, life cycles, ecosystems and the interdependence of creatures within the worlds of plants and geology. They could recount numerous stories and act out different kinds of locomotion.

At the end of the year, they wrote a beautiful story called Bringing Back the Water which was an interweaving of dance, music, biology, indigenous culture and modern science. Butterflies are featured along with other Australian fauna.

Conclusion

Like the walking stick, the first butterfly morphed through several iterations to become something truly amazing. I call this kind of learning “layering.” Each time the spiral turns, a new layer is added. What occurs between each layer is that children’s conceptual understanding of the world becomes more complex. They see the relationships between things and they spontaneously transfer the knowledge to new situations.

I wish you and your students joy as your journeys of metamorphosis unfold.

Lili-Ann Kriegler (B. A Hons, H. Dip. Ed, M.Ed.) is a Melbourne-based education consultant and award-winning author. Lili-Ann writes to share the wisdom she has acquired through her training and 30 years of experience in education. She is a child, parent and family advocate who believes that education is a transformative force for humanity.

For more information, visit www.kriegler-education.com.