A portrait of Harriet

Harriet was a Grade 6 girl who chose to investigate the question of “How does hair grow?” Table 4.1 contains the transcripts of Harriet’s three videos.

Table 4.1

Harriet’s video transcripts for “How does hair grow?”

Introducing Harriet and her topic

Harriet’s rationale for her choice of topic was stated in her director’s commentary about being “interested in how hair grows”. In retrospect, the cyclical nature of Harriet’s topic escaped both Harriet and myself. This issue will be revisited after discussing Harriet’s experiences within the ZPD.

Creating the ZPD with Harriet

Harriet was the most independent child out of all of the eight participants. She noted in her director's commentary that I asked her questions to keep her learning. These questions helped create the ZPD for Harriet as she begun to seek more detail about the structure of hair. One of my suggestions was that Harriet should create some cross-sectional imagery. Figure 4.3 is a screen shot from a labelling sequence where various components of the scalp and hair shaft were introduced.

Figure 4.3. Screen shot from “How does hair grow” animation.

Harriet had encountered some information that I had never heard of such as “sebaceous glands”. She appeared to be engaged and eager to research new terminology. As such, Harriet essentially directed her own progress. I was grateful for Harriet’s self-motivation, as there was always at least one of the other children with their hand up, wanting help.

Harriet’s conceptual journey

In many ways Harriet was the model student as she was diligent, focused, engaged and making steady progress. She only sought my assistance for technical animation advice rather that specific content knowledge. Figure 4.4 is an example of how we applied the attributes of various hair types to the text itself as a creative way to augment meaning through the enhanced use of on-screen text.

Figure 4.4. Concluding screen shot from “How does hair grow?” animation.

Harriet was wise to have noted the limitations of her topic by including the word “genes” without attempting any explanation:

Genes was my answer to different colours and curly, straight and wavy but I didn’t really get into any of the details because that’s not my topic (“How does hair grow?” director’s commentary).

I have continued to reflect on Harriet’s work over the past few years. My most recent reflection is that the topic that Harriet presented could have been more accurately described as “What is hair made of?” To further explore the system qualities of hair growth, we should have looked into the variables that affect the hair growth cycle. I soon learned that there are three distinct stages of the hair growth cycle which is significant because Harriet and I never encountered any of these terms during the project. The absence of this key information accounts for our failure to identify the system qualities of hair growth. These three stages could also be called phases as the Oxford English Dictionary defines a phase as “a particular stage in recurring sequence of movements or changes”. The three phases of hair growth are:

1. Anagen (active phase lasting between 2 - 6 years)

2. Catagen (transitional phase lasting around 2 weeks)

3. Telogen (resting phase lasting between 1 - 4 months)

Harriet’s portrait was unlike any of the other seven children as her animation could be characterised as an animated poster with annotated diagrams and corresponding narration, rather than an explanatory narrative. This is because Harriet’s voice-over script described elements rather than explaining relationships between them. My own understanding of Harriet’s topic and my assessment of her animation have changed dramatically since Harriet completed her work in 2011. Table 4.2 is Harriet’s conceptual consolidation rubric with my 2011 assessments shaded in grey and my updated, 2014 assessments shaded in orange.

Table 4.2

Harriet’s final conceptual consolidation rubric

The reason why my original assessments (in grey) were not higher is that Harriet didn't discuss any factors that influence hair growth or health. Harriet’s new orange shading in Table 4.2 indicates that she hadn’t identified these key phases as neither Harriet nor I had encountered any of these words during the construction of her animation. I’m confident that we would have discovered these phases if we had amended the title to be “The hair growth cycle”. Possible metaphors to generate discussion could have been grass growing, or finger nails growing. The hair growth cycle would have lent itself to animation as the duration of the anagen stage explains why some people can grow longer hair than other people.

The ZPD diagram presented at the start of this chapter as Figure 4.1 (with the overlapping red spikes where the child’s development surpasses the helper) was inspired by my work with Harriet, particularly near the beginning of the project where she started using terminology that I had never heard of. I would have quickly discovered these terms if I had done any of my own research but this was the one case where a child did all of their own research. This further caused me to reflect on my role as a teacher working in a primary school. The old adage the squeaky wheel gets the grease is characteristic of the way that the most demanding children usually receive the most assistance from their teacher. In future I will seek to create opportunities to extend the learning of the competent, independent children with suitable questions and challenges. Harriet’s failure to identify the three phases of hair growth was really my own failure to ask her the right questions such as “What is the hair growth cycle?” A summary of Harriet’s conceptual journey is presented in Table 4.3.

Table 4.3

Summary of Harriet’s conceptual journey

Proceed to the next Portrait of Sunny

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