The Application of Open Space Learning in the AHECS

Employability Module

Dr. Nicholas Johnson26 June 2014

AHECS Biennial 2014 • NUI Maynooth

OK, let’s get on our feet.

Applied Theatre ResearchOr, why is a Beckett scholar talking to AHECS?

• Past engagement with TCD Careers Service & this research area

(my own department, AHECS 2012, “Knowing What We Know” 2013)

• Physical actor training — ”Speaking Without Language” —has wide applications

(Disability Service, Medicine, CAPSL, Human Rights)

• Collaborations with Warwick, especially Jonathan Heron(IATL, Beckett Summer School, Beckett Laboratory)

• Specific consultation on open-space pedagogy with the AHECS Employability Workgroup (2014)

What is Open Space Learning?

Warwick University: OSL at IATL

Key Pedagogical Tenets of OSL

• Learning should be grounded in discovery, enquiry and action, with a stress on the development of social intelligence• Learning flourishes best in flexible and non-hierarchical spaces that encourage collaboration• Learning should be affective and interpersonal, recognising both cognitive and embodied knowledges• Learning activities should acknowledge disciplinary knowledge as provisional, problematic and ‘unfinished’• Learning environments and pedagogies should favour interdisciplinary collaborations and multiple learning styles• Learning environments should be constituted as public spaces for the free exchange of ideas between participants in which learning is negotiated, and the protocols of the space are freely determined and amended by them.

(IATL, Warwick University)

Concepts of Space

Concepts of Space

Concepts of Space

Two EpistemologiesDOMINANT since the ENLIGHTENMENT

(and still dominant in the Academy):VIEW FROM ABOVE (objective)

anchored in formal axioms, theories, paradigmssecured in print & organized by/around text

knowing that _____, knowing about ______

SUBORDINATE and REPRESSED:VIEW FROM GROUND LEVEL (subjective)

active, intimate, hands-on, participatory, personalrooted in embodiment, orality, communityknowing how ______, knowing who ______

SCIENCE versus “OLD WIVES’ TALES”

Idealist / Materialist“To begin with, notice that the

abstract/concrete dialectic is one of prehension, representing two different and opposed processes of grasping and taking

hold of experience in the world – either through reliance on conceptual

interpretation and symbolic representation, a process I will call comprehension, or through reliance on the tangible, felt

qualities of immediate experience, what I will call apprehension.”

David A. Kolb (1984), 29

“Workshop” as Integration

“The embodied nature of OSL begins, in very practical ways, to move us beyond

the dilemmas and contradictions of idealism and empiricism, as mind and

body, unified, promote an infinitely more memorable and integrated learning experience for students and tutors.

Pedagogical theory and practice begin, perhaps, to catch up with recent thinking

in psychology and neuroscience that increasingly foreground the holistic

nature of body and brain.”

Monk et. al. (2011), 123

OSL Theory in Practice“Open” in the sense of spatial construction

(a “third space” — see Kolb, Vygotsky, Bhaba)

“Open” in the sense of exterior relations(in sense of economics, politics — see Boal, Freire)

“Open” in the sense of power: “Uncrowning”

Further reading:Monk, Nicholas, Carol Chillington Rutter, Jonothan Neelands,

and Jonathan Heron. "Open-space Learning: Practice into Theory.” Open-space Learning: A Study in Transdisciplinary Pedagogy (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011), 116–134.

Using Open Space Learning

The AHECS Employability Module in Practice

Clear Positives

• Consultations with stakeholders and huge efforts of Employability Workgroup have created an innovative,

interdisciplinary module.

• Modes of learning in OSL and workshop-based pedagogy are much more responsive to contemporary careers environments

and what is valued, thus contributing to employability.

• Careers Services can be at the cutting edge of pedagogical practices within the university, serving their position at one of

many “trans” spaces:Transitional, Transactional, Transgressive, Transfigurative,

Transcendent,Trans-Rational, Trans-Cultural, Transdisciplinary.

• Research opportunities arise within a recognized and highly progressive framework in teaching-and-learning theory, as well

as in careers theory.

Case Study

Workshop B: I think, therefore I am… employable?

Exercise 6: Walking DebateThe debate consists of the two opposing statements:“Get real – circumstances determine career success”

“Keep smiling and play to your strengths”

The first statement is based on opportunity structure theory, which foregrounds the role of socio-economic structures in

career development.

The second is drawn from the positive psychology approaches discussed earlier.

An information sheet is issued to all participants in relation to each statement.

Challenges in OSL Application

Built EnvironmentParticipationPreparation

—Anxiety may arise.

Two ways to think about this:

Legacy of Teacher-Student Relation(in old model)

Positive potential role of anxiety & struggle

Dr. Nicholas Johnsonjohnson@tcd.ie

Walking Debate: Feedback

Sold? Skeptical? Or of two minds?