Historical Roots of Exploration – Through a Fröbelian Third Space

Abstract

References to Fröbel are often seen in early childhood educational research, especially in introductions to topics such as play, learning and pedagogical ideals, and in the origin of early childhood pedagogy, there is however, to our knowledge, not earlier given much attention to the pedagogics of ‘exploration’ in Fröbel’s texts. This chapter will add to body of knowledge that find new interpretations and inspirations in historical roots of pedagogy. The main question we explore in this chapter is: How does the practice of ‘exploration’ appear in Friedrich Fröbel’s texts from the perspective of a Fröbelian ‘third space’? We have selected two texts for this purpose: The Education of Man (Fröbel, Die Menschenerziehung, die Erziehungs-, Unterrichts- und Lehrkunst, angestrebt in der allgemeinen deutschen Erziehungsanstalt zu Keilhau. (Original manuscript). Bayerische Statsbibliotek, Leipzig, 1826, The education of man, trans Jarvis J. A. Lovell & Company, New York, 1885, The education of man, trans Hailmann WN. University Press of the Pacific, Honolulu (Original work published 1885), 2005) and Pedagogics of the Kindergarten (Fröbel, Fredrich Fröbel’s pedagogics of the kindergarten, or, his ideas concerning the play and playthings of the child, trans Jarvis J, vol 30. D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1909). This chapter see texts as a mediated artefact that creates conditions for thinking, understanding and practice, and thereby one of many conditions for what kinds of activities kindergarten teachers and children are allowed and encouraged to do.

We will give special attention to how activities are articulated and proposed as explorative practice in classical texts by Fröbel, and we will also draw on the narrative of a Norwegian kindergarten teacher who grew up attending a Fröbelian kindergarten as a child and in order to illustrate exploration as a pedagogy of a third space. We will trace and discuss how Fröbel’s ideas and ideals meet past and current educational challenges for the kindergarten teacher and we will argue for exploration in early years’ pedagogy for the future.