Abstract: Ronny Agustinus is the founder of Marjin Kiri, an Indonesian publisher that started to translate and publish children’s books from Latin America.

Baserat på klassrumsobservationer och lärarintervjuer undersöks hur lärare och elever i årskurs 2 tolkar och använder den textlösa bilderboken Migrants i en undervisningspraktik. Med stöd i teorier om läsrespons, litteracitets-praktiker och skrivdiskurser visar resultatet att den textlösa bilderboken öppnade upp för olika tolkningar och kreativa uttryck hos elever och lärare, där elevernas tolkningar präglades av egna intressen och erfarenheter samt uppmärksamhet vid visuella detaljer. Som ett uttryck för sin didaktiska läsning försökte lärarna styra tolkningarna mot bokens migrationstema, som dock blev relativt perifert när eleverna skapade djurfigurer och skrev egna berättelser med inspiration av Migrants. Däremot tog eleverna fasta på förevisad genrestruktur samt moraliska värden lärarna poängterade, såsom snällhet och hjälpsamhet Lärarna uttryckte att den textlösa bilderboken gav eleverna utrymme för fantasi, muntligt deltagande och stolthet över det egna skapandet, samtidigt som de såg skrivandet som nödvändigt för att motivera arbetssättet. Med utgångspunkt i Bernsteins begrepp rekontextualisering belyses hur arbetet med den textlösa boken både öppnade upp för kreativitet och behövde anpassas till ett undervisningsparadigm som värderar genre-kunskaper och skriftliga förmågor högt. 

Based on classroom observations and teacher interviews, this study explores how teachers and second-grade students interpret and use the wordless picturebook Migrants within a teaching practice. Drawing on theories of reading response, literacy practices, and writing discourses, the findings show that the wordless picturebook opened up space for multiple interpretations and creative expression among both students and teachers. The students’ interpretations were shaped by their own interests and experiences as well as close attention to visual details. As part of their pedagogical reading, the teachers attempted to steer the interpretations toward the book’s theme of migration; however, this theme remained relatively peripheral as the students created animal characters and wrote their own stories inspired by Migrants. Instead, the students picked up on the demonstrated genre structure and the moral values emphasized by the teachers, such as kindness and helpfulness. The teachers expressed that the wordless picturebook allowed for imagination, oral participation, and pride in student creations, while also stating that writing was necessary to justify the pedagogical approach. Using Bernstein’s concept of recontextualization, the analysis highlights how the work with the wordless book both enabled creativity and had to be adapted to a teaching paradigm that places high value on genre knowledge and writing skills.

We would like to invite everyone to reverberate between sense

and nonsense through walking and getting lost together in the city, or a part of

the city. Taking the inspiration from Frederic Gros’ argument that walking is a

thinking/inquiry method which allows us to experience “suspensive freedom”

(Gros, 2014: 15)—a thinking space free from regularities and daily norms, this

workshop aims to re-evaluate and re-maps the boundaries between sense and

nonsense.

The walk is also expected to activate the “wandering mindset” (Smith, 2016: 11)

wherein a person enters “a complete immersion in the current situation, a

willingness to be open to whatever comes up, whatever you find in front of you at

the moment.” To further facilitate the wandering and reverberation between sense

and nonsense, several verbal quotes from literary texts related to the setting of

the arena are used to stimulate the senses with overlapping logic and information,

leading into the overload of spatial cognition (see Nikolajeva, 2024).

Standing in and vibrating between sense and nonsense, the participants are

expected to map their entanglement and confusion using creative process, involving

spontaneous creation of artworks in nature and the use of mapping technology to

further blur the boundaries between sense and nonsense, between analog and

digital, and between objective and subjective spatial understanding.