Aliens, Zombies, and a Volcano

ALIENS, ZOMBIES, AND A VOLCANO: EMBRACING THE UNEXPECTED IN CONDUCTING RESEARCH WITH YOUNG CHILDREN Everything was going well. I had successfully completed my first round of interviews with my K-5 student participants in my doctoral research study. The data was providing insight into how students construct meaning through dance experiences in school. Conducting a case study of a dance artist-in-residence that utilized dance as its primary mode of inquiry and expression to explore science and social studies curriculum, I collected qualitative data, including: observations, interviews, student drawings, curricular artifacts, photos and video documentation (Leonard, 2014; Leonard & McShane-Hellenbrand, 2012). During a 3-week residency, a dance artist/educator worked with each grade on curricular content chosen by the school and explored it using creative movement. Based on each grade's curricular topic, the students, with the artist/educator, collaboratively choreographed a grade-level dance piece that exhibited their scholarly and artistic work. For example, the first-graders were studying the concept of balance in science. During movement activities facilitated by the artist/educator and inspired by physics in architecture, the students played with the differences between stable and unstable shapes with their bodies. At the end of the residency, the first-graders showcased their physics-inspired choreography during the school's culminating final performance (Figure 1). Throughout the residency, I conducted interviews at three intervals with a cross-section of 13 students. At the start of the second interview with my two first-grade participants, I gave the students paper and drawing utensils to use to respond to my prompts as I had done previously. I hoped this would ease them into the interview process and that the drawings might also yield interesting data. However, this time they did not draw images depicting their dance experiences as they had during the first interview. Instead, they drew aliens, zombies, and a volcano. What's more, all Luke and Jacob (pseudonyms), wanted to talk about were the aliens, zombies, and volcano (Figures 2, 3, 4). No matter how hard I tried, I could not refocus the discussion onto the topics that I was investigating: Interviewer: "Tell me about your drawings." Luke: "Are those aliens clapping hands?" Jacob: "No, this is a blue, evil dude destroying the other." Interviewer: "Is this evil dude from our dance performance?" Jacob: "No, evil dudes don't clap. He's destroying him!" Luke: "Oh! I forgot the zombies and the volcano!" Jacob: "The volcano! And dead people!" [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Immediately, I began to question the worth of my data and my ability to conduct interviews with children. Just as I was beginning to think that this crucial second interview, out of only three interviews, was a total failure, I realized that I had to stop looking for what I wanted out of this interview and start looking for what was there. Rather than continue to try to steer the interview, I let Luke and Jacob carry on, occasionally asking them questions that pertained to what they were talking about. At one point, I asked if the aliens and zombies danced. Jacob responded, "No, but they are clapping. See?" He and Luke then discussed how the aliens were coming to the school's final performance and were clapping in the audience. When Jacob finished his drawing, he then labeled it, "peipil claping [sic]" (Figure 4). As they continued to talk, interspersing descriptions of alien combat, they began to make additions to the drawings that related to what they had just experienced in their dance session. Similar to how they were creating building-like shapes to express the concept of stability with their bodies, the aliens were given bodies in the form of "building-shapes." As they drew, Luke and Jacob began demonstrating their favorite shapes from their dance, acting out being on-balance and physically how to push themselves off-balance. …