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What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action through action Kevin McDonald Middlesex University

What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

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This presentation formed part of the HEA-funded workshop 'Critical thinking in action: developing analytical skills in Criminology students. An experiential learning approach' The workshop presented research and facilitated discussion on developing critical thinking skills in criminology students. Discussion of research results and use of a case study approach to teaching and learning highlighted how student views/concerns about their failure in developing critical thinking skills can be addressed via new directions in teaching. This presentation forms part of a blog post which can be accessed via: For further details of HEA Social Sciences work relating to active and experiential learning please see: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/disciplines/Soc_Sci/Strategic_2013/ActiveandExperiential

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Page 1: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

What sort of agency is involved in

experiential learning? Learning

through actionthrough action

Kevin McDonald

Middlesex University

Page 2: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

Classical model of experiential learning

(thanks to HEA)

Page 3: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

Characteristics and questions

- emphasis on process

- disconnection from personal narrative of learner, task

focused

- why learn is not addressed

- ‘experience’ is cognitive

- learning is cumulative- learning is cumulative

- absence of affect

- not embedded in social relationships within which

learning takes place

- evokes Herbert Simon’s theory of ‘problem solving’

- experience of ‘doing’ – perform a task – adequate?

Page 4: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

‘Experiential’ learning – but what is experience?

‘Experiencing something means much more than encountering

persons, events, or things of which we merely take notice. In

most encounters, we merely confirm a set of orientations we

have already acquired… But we ‘experience’ something when

the situation is so unfamiliar to us, so novel, that we cannot

apply our familiar knowledge and are surprised by the confused

state of our intentions, knowledge and moods. In situations state of our intentions, knowledge and moods. In situations

such as these, the significance of what we encounter is still

unsettled, and we lack the interpretive tools to get control over

this confusing and multilayered situation…. This is the case

whenever the novelty of a situation captures us… such that we

cannot escape the confusion of our intentions, knowledge and

emotions’, Axel Honneth, 2010 (emphasis added)

Suggests displacement, surprise, and openness

Page 5: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

‘Learning as problem solving’

constructed

against a world

that no longer exists:

- university as institution

- authority based on science

(transcendent authority

reflecting religious origins reflecting religious origins

of university, lecturer as

priest incarnating transcendent)

- strong programme of socialisation (ex patient role, student

role mirroring doctor and teacher)

- institution as ‘other worldly’ – sanctuary, universal values,

where ‘instrumental’ is less worthy

- the institution integrates the students experience and gives a

reason to study

Page 6: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

Today: Students must construct experience through

holding together three fields of agency in tension: (Dubet

2005)Subjectivty

(meaning)

Imagination

Wonder

Passion

Dignity

Autonomy

Creativity

Uncertainty

Self-as-

Loss of meaning

Emptiness

Routine

Self-as-

opaque/incomplete

Strategy

(opportunity)

Competition

Opportunity

Cost/benefit

Career

Purely instrumental

relationship to study

Lack of professional

outcomes

Community

(norms)

Student culture

Us/them

Socialisation

Disorganization

Fragmentation

Disconnection

Hazing

Page 7: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

Disassociation of dimensions of student experience

Page 8: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

Previously:

- institutional power of university meant it could integrate

- student culture

- engagement with labour market

- experience of learning

Today,

- university is deinstitutionalising, its core dimensions are - university is deinstitutionalising, its core dimensions are

separating/transforming:

- student culture � youth culture

- university degree �declining economic value

- increasingly difficult to construct relationship with study

Page 9: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

Critical challenge for students:

� less ‘how’ to learn

� more how to make my experience of learning ‘my

experience’:

- ‘it doesn’t interest me’

- ‘I’m going through

the motions’

- ‘I don’t care about - ‘I don’t care about

the quality of what I do’

- ‘I don’t understand

what I’m doing here’

� Disengagement as subjective defense

- weakness of ‘role’ means ‘I’ is more exposed

- ‘I don’t study, so failing doesn’t matter’

- drop out rather than fail (7.4% UK, range 1.3% - 25%)

Page 10: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

To respond to this demands we think about agency:

- shift from discourse to practice (Whatmore 2006)

- break with logocentric model (I think therefore I am)

- practice turn

- new focus on making and doing

- ‘Making is connecting’ (Gauntlett 2011)

- building, sharing, doing, connecting- building, sharing, doing, connecting

Particularly evident in changing forms of social action

- changing relationship with space: marching�

occupying

Page 11: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

The rhythm of the march, order and repetition,

individual relationship to ‘the whole’ – class, party,

organization etc

Page 12: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

Tahrir Square: embodied experience: recognition of shared

vulnerability and care

Page 13: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

Breaking gender roles

Page 14: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

Embodied need for rest and protection

Page 15: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

Other embodied needs

Page 16: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

Care for place and each other

Page 17: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

Life

Page 18: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

Agency:

Vulnerability - need, food, security – shared and made public

- Importance of the embodied process of making – filming,

building websites, puppet, images, cooking, cleaning

- ‘sensory politics’

- type of communication very different from conference

- personal implication, embodied connection

Page 19: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

Art and cultural action

Silmiyya (peaceful)

Strangeness: breaking ‘us’ ‘them’ dichotomoy

Art displacing the observer

Page 20: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

Embodied presence in the Square brings politics into

being:

‘to suffer and to move, to engage other bodies… could

we understand action, gesture, stillness, touch, moving

together, if these were all reducible to the vocalization

of thought through speech?’ (Bulter 2011)

- what implications for the agency involved in ‘sensory

learning’?

Page 21: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

The importance of improvisation:

- action guided by bodily experience and the senses

- intention exists, but goals can transform

- draws on DIY cultures

Nostalgic analysis: return to ‘craft’, imperfection is desirable,

sign of authenticity as opposed to industrialised perfection

Improvisation:Improvisation:

- ethic of co-creation

- temporal dimension: being in and attentive to the present

- cultural dimension: opportunity afforded by the particular

Relationship to the particular:

- break with ‘tyranny of generality’ (Wittgenstein)

- opens out to an ethic of care

Page 22: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

Themes can be embedded in experiential learning:

- move from ‘testing ideas’ to ‘collaborative knowledge

building’ (Noguera Fructuoso 2012)

- complex and real tasks that justify transaction costs of group

work, with an outcome that matters

- use communications platforms in education context

Recognise different dimensions of learning:Recognise different dimensions of learning:

- cognitive (debating, finding and using information, linking

ideas and contexts)

- affective (reacting emotionally, sharing emotions, chatting,

seeking general feedback)

- metacognitive (planning, clarifying, monitoring)

Page 23: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

Collaborative knowledge building (teaching critical

thinking in action) (Noguera Fructuoso 2012):

TASK RESPONSIBILITY

Design Teacher

Organization – identifying Teacher/studentsOrganization – identifying

resources, negotiating,

Teacher/students

Execution Students

Evaluation – what learnt, what

experienced

Student/teacher (Teacher

responsible for accreditation)

Page 24: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

Simple messages:

1. We need to move critical thinking out of an excessively

cognitive framework

2. The problem is not primarily the capacity of students to

undertake logical operations, but the capacity to encounter

themselves in experiences of learning

3. Social world is ‘deinstitutionalising’, highlighting the need to

understand agency (particularly in education)

4. The practice turn is critical, underlining embodied affective 4. The practice turn is critical, underlining embodied affective

creative learning to the ‘experiencing subject’

5. Improvisation is a key dimension of contemporary culture,

not nostalgia for past, but a situated ethic of the particular, the

basis of care

6. Critical thinking is built though action combining increasing

clarity around rules and procedures with openness to context,

intercorporeality and and improvisation (not unlike musical

improvisation)

Page 25: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald

thank you!thank you!

Page 26: What sort of agency is involved in experiential learning? Learning through action - Kevin Macdonald