16th January
Attended my first PGCert intro session whilst sitting in the French Alps on a family holiday, not for the first time I reflected on the impact of the seismic shift to remote working and learning, how it has both enabled balance of life and work and simultaneously brought other challenges around setting boundaries and not being constantly available.
It felt almost luxurious to have 3 hours of reflective practice, and my first thought at the end of the workshop, as I looked out at the snow and my different surroundings, was how had this different environment influenced my ability to process, learn and engage with the content of the session. I had felt relaxed, engaged and open to listening and learning from others.
We know that the digital / metaverse / phygital world provides many options for new blended learning experiences, however the reality is that I teach again in an uninspiring room, in a building not fit for purpose, and with the physical restrictions of tables, room layouts, etc.
How can this type of space stretch thinking, and inspire creativity and reflection?
Having recently visited my son’s new university with a £25m investment in a new engineering building, all the staff enthusiastically and excitedly talked about the design thinking behind the new building, the labs and how the lecture rooms have been designed to encourage group work, focus and healthy learning environments.
I have worked in the design of retail space and am a co-founder of a creative co-working space outside of London where we took inspiration from the writing of Nancy Kline in Time to Think and the Ten Components of a Thinking Environment to create an effective working environment.
With reference to Place, Nancy Kline says
Producing a physical environment – the room, the listener, your body – that says, ‘You matter’. When the physical environment affirms our importance, we think more clearly and boldly. When our bodies are cared for and respected, our thinking improves.
Thinking Environments are places that say back to people, ‘You matter.’ People think at their best when they notice that the place reflects their value to the people there and to the event. And because the first place of thinking is the body, it needs to be in a condition that says to us as thinkers, ‘You matter’.
In these ways, Place is a silent form of appreciation.
The question of how does the space at LCC say to our students ‘you matter’ is an interesting one. In the meantime how am I managing the space we have and myself within it to reinforce a message that my students ‘matter’? What can I do with the space that I have and the restrictions of that …
Shelia Ball takes Kline’s ideas and questions ‘in what ways does Kline’s Thinking Environment create the conditions for developing equity? What are the implications for education policy and practice?’ This got me thinking about power structures and the development of teaching spaces.
Further explorations around this topic in connection with academic environments brough up a Spark Journal article ‘A journey around my classroom: the psychogeography of learning spaces’ – the term psychogeography was new to me and the focus of one of the presentations in the workshop this morning. In this article the writers pose the following question
‘If it is common practice in art and design subjects to create a non-hierarchical relationship between students and staff, why are we still looking for the educator who supposedly holds all the knowledge and stands at the front of the room?’
I’m interested to think about this further, how in my own practice I can think about both the use of space in terms of a learning environment and connected with that how the use of space can contribute to a non-hierarchical relationship between myself and students. This is particularly interesting for me in my role as an AL – I often feel that as an AL I am engaged with the university for my content knowledge and less for my teaching and learning expertise. Therefore students do not tend to challenge or perhaps I am too directional in the way I approach topics.
Further exploration of this topic led me to a book called Bernstein, B. (2000) Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research and critique (Rev. ed). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, it appears this is available in the LCC library so note to self to pop in next time I’m at LCC and take a look
So.. in my efforts to bring small changes, this week I used music, playing the song Lovely Day by Bill Withers as the students entered the room – I could sense a slight surprise and a lightness in the room and environment as students filed in and connected differently with both myself and one another. It helped that the sun was out and the sky was blue! Reminiscent of my week in the Mountains before.
Definition of Psychogeography
Psychogeography is the study of specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals. (Debord, 1955
https://www.timetothink.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/literature-review-s-ball.pdf
https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/10341/1/25-178-1-PB.pdf
Debord, G. (1955) ‘Introduction to a critique of urban geography’, in Knabb, K. (ed.) (1981) Situationist International Anthology. Oakland: Bureau of Public Secrets