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Painting and shaping Learning Landscapes with Assemblages in mind

by Peter Goodyear

This third SRHE Landscapes of Learning symposium – Assemblages – was a deeply engrossing and thought-provoking event. In this response, I want to do three things: pick and connect some particularly fruitful points from each talk – there were many, so this is hard; comment on assemblages and assemblage thinking in relation to current and future learning arrangements, and segue into the practical work of realising better spaces for learning in better universities. Landscapes are both depicted and made. An alertness to relations and flux can sharpen our perception, but can an assemblage sensibility inform better architecture?

Points plucked from the talks

Carol Taylor’s keynote made a persuasive case for connecting Deleuzian thinking about assemblages with a broad set of posthuman perspectives. She went on to offer an impressive array of spatially and materially-grounded example studies, illustrating her approach and also inspiring further research. Assemblage thinking helps us to see things that would otherwise be invisible, to give (almost?) simultaneous attention to questions of how, why, when and what, and to refuse sharp distinctions between bodies, things, words, ideas and feelings – to start with relations between things, rather than with the things themselves. Forming better ways of understanding the circumstances in which things happen is important for students of all fields and disciplines. It is important for teachers and other education workers in a second sense, because it helps set up situations for valued learning and for inducting students into practices of knowledge-making, including the practices of shaping convivial epistemic environments for themselves.

Tim Fawns used ideas of entanglement to reconcile hackneyed arguments about “technology in the service of pedagogy” vs “technology as driving and constraining pedagogy”. Pedagogy first or technology first? In most cases of educational innovation, pedagogical practices and technological infrastructures already exist and are used to justify, explain and constrain one another. They are already assembling or, one might even say, co-constituting one another. This argument is even stronger if one looks more broadly at the personal aims and technologies that students bring with them, and when one takes properly into account the complicated learning places that students configure, furnish and equip for themselves and their peers. 

Karen Gravett’s talk made clear that very little is known about how students’ activities are distributed in space, how students find, make and curate places for learning and what this means for matters of belonging (to a university). Certainly, university teachers and leaders cannot claim to know this in any representative, well-theorised or systematic way. Indeed, it emerges that there are many ways of belonging, no one way of managing campus spaces to afford inclusion and no simple metric connecting qualities of place with feelings of belonging, such as might be useful for an estates director’s KPIs.

Harriet Shortt researches relations between places, artefacts and organizational life, including places we might too-simply tag as “for work” or “for learning”. The main research site she spoke about was a newly-built Business School, though she was using this to advocate for participant-led visual methods: getting the users of buildings to photograph places of significance to them and share their annotated images. This is very useful for post-occupancy evaluation but also raises lots of deeper questions about place-making, including how people reconfigure places to resolve tensions between privacy and community, or collaboration and interruption.

The four talks illustrate the importance of understanding study activities through students’ eyes and experiences, with a capacious framing – so that what students curate and contribute isn’t simply missed – and then weaving more elaborate descriptions that catch multiple entanglements (place, tools, tasks, bodies, minds etc) so that all participants and stakeholders can agree a shared understanding of how things are being achieved, sufficient to improve the circumstances in which joint work is done. Subtle observation and an openness to complexity are important when making descriptions of how things are coming to be as they are. Then provisional simplifications are needed to agree on collective action.            

Assemblages and assemblage thinking

At several points in the “Assemblages” symposium, a leitmotif emerged: an allusion to using theoretical language at Academic Board. This recognisable shorthand conjures up our shared frustrations, as scholars of higher education, with the conceptual and linguistic gaps between research, policy and practice and with a paradox at the heart of educational work in universities: the insistence on discussing education in a vernacular language, unpolluted with exotic terms-of-art.

I am academic enough to value fine-grained disputes between knowledgeable scholars over what Deleuze and Guattari were trying to say when they wrote about rhizomes, lines-of-flight, segmentarity or assemblage. I also endorse something Carol Taylor said about the dangers of extracting ideas and terms from their intellectual homes and deploying mangled versions of them to serve dubious ends.  

But, in my own practice, I am deeply invested in understanding how knowledge, ways of knowing and ways of coming to know, that emerge in our work as scholars of education, can be made useful to other teachers and to students.  I have a practical interest in this occurring, coupled with an intellectual interest in how people actually do this work; I study epistemic practices at the boundaries of disciplines and professions. I try to understand what happens when (say) university managers in education, campus infrastructure and IT try to create better learning spaces or when people try to help design ideas travel. In thinking about “assemblage”, I am interested in how clusters of ideas migrate and become useful – to students, when they are tackling challenges that matter to them – and to teachers, architects, technologists and others involved in shaping educational spaces. So, I would say:

  • Whatever disciplines, professions or roles our students might be preparing themselves for, they will need subtle and sophisticated tools for understanding the world and acting ethically and effectively with others. Posthuman and postdigital perspectives can help students analyse the complex (learning) situations in which they find themselves, and reflect more deeply about how good work is accomplished.   
  • Scholarly teaching must acknowledge the complexities and risks involved when ideas move outside the domain of specialist scholarly debate. It is one thing to induct students into academic life by modelling scholarly disputation. It is quite another to maim or kill a half-grasped idea while it is in flight. There is a time and a place for correcting other people’s use of the term “assemblage” – but perhaps not at meetings of Academic Board.  

It’s also worth noting that “assemblage” exists somewhat independently as a technical term in fields such as archaeology, ecology, data science and art practice. One can use the noun “assemblage” to speak about the toolset of an ancient culture, the animals and plants typically inhabiting an area, a complex data set or a three-dimensional collage of objets trouvés, though these usages don’t normally have strong connotations of flux and evolution, such as we find when assemblage is understood as a verb. Moreover, there are lines of analysis within organisational science and science and technology studies (STS) that talk cogently about sociomaterial and sociotechnical assemblages, free from any visible Deleuzian mooring. I’m thinking, for example, of writing by Wanda Orlikowski, Susan Scott and Lucy Suchman on  technology in organisations and sociomaterial entanglements in working practices: productive resources for thinking about educational technology, technology in higher education, current and future learning spaces.

In sum, “assemblage” helps us notice and depict sociomaterial relations and change, but it is not the sole preserve of Deleuzian scholarship.

Learning landscapes: making places for coming-to-know

“A key element of placemaking is thus its open-ended and contingent nature. Placemaking is a dynamic experience, through which people, practice and the materiality of place undergo constant change.” (Sweeney et al, 2018, 582).

Harriett Shortt asked why so many new campus buildings mirror corporate head offices. Why do estates directors and architects impose these giant glazed voids upon us? She asked us to think of other more congenial forms: galleries and museums, for example. I think we should also be bolder and think how it might become possible for everyone involved in university life to engage in intentional place-making. We see what can be done in course and curriculum design through movements such as “Students as Partners”. We get other glimpses of what’s possible in the place-making events captured in the images our speakers shared. Beyond that, I suggest, we might try to make a scholarship of learning places that works in symbiosis with much more organic, bottom-up developments: less concerned with space-efficiency metrics and enabling the corporate; more invested in giving biophilic form to the market-place of ideas. There’s a well-established strand of work in architecture, urban planning and place-making on which we can draw. Christopher Alexander, Jane Jacobs, Marwa al-Sabouni and Thomas Heatherwick spring to mind.

It can be helpful to make a distinction, in educational work, between analysis and design. The first tries to depict and understand an existing state of affairs. The second involves steps to protect or improve upon it. The two depend upon one another, but work upon different objects. They require a dual ontology. In reflecting upon past and present educational events, we do well to acknowledge that tasks, tools and people are deeply entangled – considering assemblages or agencement helps here. But in thinking about what we can change (eg for the next time a course is run, or for the layout of a new learning space), we must break tangled realities into components over which we have some control. By “we” I don’t just mean teacher-designers or learning space researchers. Everyone has a role in this kind of place-making.

Collectively shaping material instances of what Raewyn Connell calls the “Good University” or Ron Barnett calls the “Ecological University” involves some tricky challenges. How do we form coalitions around images of what universities should be doing? How do we identify zones in which we have power to make change – including changes that give us more power to make other changes? How do we consolidate incremental changes so that we don’t dissipate our strength in perpetual defensive work? How do we co-create the infrastructure and reshape the landscapes that afford more socially responsible, sustainable and just ways of working and learning together?

Some of this may still be in our DNA. Jane Jacobs closed her great book on the organized complexity of cities with the following words. I like to think we can apply them to universities.

“Dull, inert cities, it is true, do contain the seeds of their own destruction and little else. But lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration, with energy enough to carry over for problems and needs outside themselves.” (Jacobs, 1961, p448)

Peter Goodyear is Emeritus Professor of Education at The University of Sydney. His research on place, space and learning has appeared in a number of books, including “The Education ecology of universities: integrating learning, strategy and the academy” (Routledge/SRHE, with Rob Ellis, 2019); “Spaces of teaching and learning: integrating research and practice” (Springer, with Rob Ellis, 2018) and “Place-based spaces for networked learning” (Routledge, with Lucila Carvalho & Maarten de Laat, 2017).


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Landscapes of learning for unknown futures: presenter responses to audience questions (Assemblages Symposium)

by Karen Gravett and Tim Fawns

SRHE’s ‘Landscapes of Learning for Unknown Futures: prospects for space in higher education’ symposium series, delivered with Professor Sam Elkington and Dr Jill Dickinson, aims to foster continuous dialogue around learning spaces. Here, two of our presenters Dr Karen Gravett and Tim Fawns, reflect on some of the ideas and issues raised during the third symposium on ‘Assemblages’. This blog has been compiled by Sam Elkington, Jill Dickinson, and Rihana Suliman (SRHE Conferences and Events Manager.)

What is the role for human agency in these types of assemblages with human and non-human actors, so as not to feel helpless or a “cog” while respecting the need to de-centre the human?

Karen: Humans still have a key role within assemblages but the perspective is shifted from thinking about the relational connection between humans and nonhumans or materials. This enables us to ask new questions, for example with respect to teaching in a classroom, we might notice not just what the teacher is doing or student is doing, but how the space and objects within the class interrelate and entangle to shape learning in different ways. How do bodies and spaces work together and connect? How are relations shaped by object-space arrangements in classrooms and what inclusions or exclusions are produced as a result?

Tim: Agency is always relational, contingent on the agency of other elements. The agency of humans is constrained by the people, technologies and materials we are bound to or surrounded by. However, a complex understanding of constraint also allows for more agency, because by understanding how they are constrained, humans have more possibilities for action. We can more clearly where we can act on entangled relations. For example, by better understanding our place within a system, we can more easily see the different places where we might be able to reconfigure things to free up space to move.

The teaching approach at many HE institutions is heavily lecture-based. How does this lack of interaction with students affect the conversation we’re having around assemblages and learning space more broadly?

Karen: Teaching that does not include interactions between students and teachers or students and peers and that is transmission focused suits many of the traditional tiered teaching spaces that still dominate UK universities today. This is how we often assume teaching should ‘be done’ to students. If we think about these kinds of object-space arrangements we can see that they may not be conducive to creating meaningful dialogue, to fostering relationships, to engaging a diversity of learners, or to enabling innovative teaching to happen. Fortunately, there is also a lot of creative teaching that is happening both within and beyond these spaces that teachers can learn from. Teachers have always found ways to be subversive and also institutions are increasingly creating new and more flexible learning spaces.

Tim: I am wary of assumptions that there is no interaction in lectures. There is always interaction (and intra-action) in any educational activity; that is one of the premises of an assemblage. In this question, the lack of interaction is seen from the teacher’s point of view. It is important that we focus on what students are actually doing rather than what we assume they must be doing according to a particular teaching method. Spaces are always complex; there are always many things going on, many of which will divert from our expectations. However, the material configuration of a space (e.g. tiered lecture seating and a podium), and the scheduling of time, do impose real constraints on the activity that is likely to manifest. Within any method, we can tinker with these parameters of material and temporal configuration and, thereby, open up more possibilities for agency.

Where does collaborative learning happen in our future learning landscapes? We still seem to work in a very individualist learning mode, through assessment practices to curricula and beyond…

Karen: Yes there is a real need to move beyond values of individualism that are present within both academia and society, and to think about our relational connections and how these matter. Collaboration can happen everywhere and anywhere – via a student-staff partnership project; via dialogic modes of teaching, via group work, via walking and other creative pedagogies. Online and offline. We just have to value it and make it happen.

Tim: That our assessment processes and practices, and our formal structures of higher education, are so tightly configured around individualist learning is a challenge. However, it doesn’t change the fact that collaborative learning is inevitable and, to me, the primary form of learning, particularly if we are thinking of assemblages. As we continue to embed more collective and collaborative practices in education, such as student co-design, group work, and the integration of artificial intelligence technologies, alternative narratives will emerge that fit better with our experiences of collective learning and education. It will be fascinating to see if we adapt practices, policies and structures in response, and how the different narratives – collective and individual – will co-exist in tension and negotiation.

Some universities have created a lot of flexible collaborative classroom spaces – we find that when we create them at my institution, faculty either don’t know how to utilise them or prefer to still use them as lecture halls continuing the individualist learning.  How can we create a space that ‘entangles’ both?

Karen: I find really helpful what Diane Mulcahy (2018, p 13) says about space, that “Thinking the term ‘learning spaces’ as something we do (stage, perform, enact), rather than something we have (infrastructure) affords acknowledging the multiplicity, mutability and mutual inclusivity of spatial and pedagogic practices”. In this case educators may need support to think about how they can make and enact the classroom to become an inclusive space. In my institution this happens via conversations for example as part of our PGCLTHE or other peer observation and mentoring practices. Perhaps teachers could be supported to see different ways to teach and to learn from others who are innovating and experimenting in the classroom.

Tim: The configuration of those spaces is actually a big step forward, even if practice and culture are slow to adapt to the new possibilities. A large part of what we need to do now is share practice and engage in open conversations about new possibilities. Individualist teaching may be the bigger barrier here: if we teach as individuals not as teams, and if we don’t talk enough about what we are all doing, we will have less exposure to alternative ways of educating. I think we are then less likely to develop practices that attune to wider contexts and possibilities.

Reference

Mulcahy, Dianne (2018) ‘Assembling Spaces of Learning ‘In’ Museums and Schools: A Practice-Based Sociomaterial Perspective.’ in Spaces of Teaching and Learning, Understanding Teaching-Learning Practice, edited by Ellis, E and Goodyear, P 13–29. Singapore: Springer

Dr Karen Gravett is Associate Professor and Director of Research at the Surrey Institute of Education at the University of Surrey, UK, where her research focuses on the theory-practice of higher education, and explores the areas of student engagement, belonging, and relational pedagogies. She is Director of the Language, Literacies and Learning research group, a member of the SRHE Governing Council, and a member of the editorial board for Teaching in Higher Education, and Learning, Media and Technology. Her work has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Society for Research in Higher Education, the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education, the British Association for Applied Linguistics, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her latest books are: Gravett, K. (2023) Relational Pedagogies: Connections and Mattering in Higher Education, and Kinchin, IM and Gravett, K (2022) Dominant Discourses in Higher Education.

Tim Fawns is Associate Professor at the Monash Education Academy, Monash University, Australia. Tim’s research interests are at the intersection between digital, clinical and higher education, with a particular focus on the relationship between technology and educational practice. He has recently published a book titled Online Postgraduate Education in a Postdigital World: Beyond Technology. Personal website: http://timfawns.com. Twitter: @timbocop


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When tending learning landscapes, what matters most?

by Pippa Yeoman

Wednesday June 14 saw the second instalment of the SRHE ‘Landscapes of Learning for Unknown Futures: prospects for space in higher education’ symposia series, delivered in partnership with series co-convenors Professor Sam Elkington and Dr. Jill Dickinson.

Sam drew the second session to a close with a question, “What matters most?”

I wanted to have my say then and there but I was watching delayed at a distance and in that moment, I wanted to say: “It is the care with which we anticipate what is to come and prepare accordingly that matters most”.

The session had been framed in terms of flexibilities. It was an opportunity for us to consider the myriad forces shaping the spaces in which we teach and learn including broadening participation, shifting patterns of attendance, mixed motivations for enrolment, and the blurring of boundaries in which polycontexturality and multi-chronicity now shape a university education.

To flex is to possess physical properties affording bending, a willingness to yield to the opinions of another, or to be characterised as capable of adapting to new or changing circumstance (Merriam-Webster, nd)

The choice of the plural — flexibilities — was intended to invoke multiplicities or an opening up to possibilities. This is an orientation I am ordinarily at home with but in this instance I must confess a reticence based on my preference for avoiding the use of the singular — flexible — when speaking of the built environment for learning. In my role at the University of Sydney, I am tasked with ensuring more than 900 learning spaces support our educational aspirations in the teaching of over 70,000 students and I have grown weary of calls for flexible furnishings and future-proof spaces. Rooms of requirement, however much they may delight our imaginings, are a fiction. At some point, decisions based on underlying educational purposes must be made and a single chair, table, or room cannot be all things to all people concurrently.

Reflecting on the purpose of a university education, Jeremy introduced us to Biesta’s (2012) categories of qualification or the acquisition of knowledge and skills, socialisation or enculturation into existing social practices, and subjectification or the individual process of becoming. Applying them to the learning landscape immediately multiplies the contexts in which we can be intentional about supporting students in becoming part of a community, developing as individuals, and working towards a qualification.

But to move from high-level educational purposes to practical plans, we need more than a stable design orientation or purpose. We need clarity about what is open to alteration through design and capable of supporting activity that we value, everything from quiet introspection and still imaginings to strident debate and active co-creation.

Framing activity in terms of emergence is helpful in this regard. Alexander (2001) explains emergence with the help of a whirlpool; a momentary vortex produced by the flow of water through a particular configuration of riverbed, banks and rocks. The vortex is not part of the river in the same way the riverbed, banks and rocks are. Rather, it is induced in the action of the whole. But if this analogy is to be of any use to us, we must identify the educational equivalents of the riverbed, banks and rocks.

We must ask, what are the underlying structures that support what students do, how they do it, and who they do it with on any given day? The framing of this question deliberately references the three dimensions of the Activity-Centred Analysis and Design framework (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2014; Goodyear, Carvalho & Yeoman, 2021) that are open to alteration through design. They are the epistemic design (task eg interview for a report), the set design (tools eg Bring Your Own Device), and the social design (people eg group roles). The fourth is not open to alteration through design. Instead, it is emergent. It is acts of co-creation and co-configuration or what is done with what has been proposed.

I have found this framing helpful in identifying the underlying structures of learning and in tracing students’ responses to them when they are free to do what they must in order to learn (Ilich, 1973). And this is not to mention the freedom that educators experience when they are able to respond to the needs of their students based on their understanding of what really matters and is within the realm of their influence on any given day. Learning to work with these ideas has produced some practical tools (Yeoman & Carvalho, 2019; Carvalho et al, 2023) that offer just enough, but not too much, structure.

Biesta’s (2012) core purposes of education make the task of tending the learning landscapes of unknown futures less fraught by providing a clear and steady orientation. The three purposes persist; it is how we anticipate and support them that varies, all the while honouring their singular multiplicity qualification-socialisation-subjectification. And the analogy of the whirlpool brings us closer to understanding what it means to say that place is produced in the interaction of the whole, neither fully determined in advance nor unyielding to perturbations in the doing.

Thinking through ‘flexibilities’ with the aim of supporting diverse cohorts to flourish as they make their way through the learning landscapes of unknown futures has certainly been productive and, based on my reflection, I will add to my initial response to Sam’s question,

“It is the care with which we anticipate what is to come and prepare accordingly — building the structure and yielding to the flow — that matters most.”

Pippa is a committed educational ethnographer and academic developer, with a deep-rooted passion for instructional and architectural design. As a Senior Lecturer (Learning Spaces) on the Educational Innovation team at the University of Sydney, she takes a central role in translating and implementing strategic initiatives related to the university’s built environment.

Her primary focus lies in the design and development of spaces that support diverse student cohorts throughout the day, across semesters, and throughout various degree programs. Pippa’s ambition is to contribute to the creation of a convivial learning environment – a campus that not only welcomes but also serves a purpose for every student. Her expertise is built on a comprehensive body of observational research, which she enriches through cross-disciplinary collaborations with academic and professional peers.

References

Alexander, C. (2001). The nature of order: an essay on the art of building and the nature of the Universe. Oxford University Press.

Illich, I. (1973). Tools for conviviality. Calder and Boyars.

Further resources from this event including sketch illustrations and a summary of discussions are also available from https://srhe.ac.uk/events/past-events/


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Landscapes of Learning for Unknown Futures: Prospects for Space in Higher Education – Reflections on Flexibilities Symposium, June 14th, 2023

by Sam Elkington and Jill Dickinson

Wednesday June 14 saw the second instalment of the SRHE ‘Landscapes of Learning for Unknown Futures: prospects for space in higher education’ symposia series, delivered in partnership with series co-convenors Professor Sam Elkington and Dr. Jill Dickinson.

This was the second symposium in the series following on from the April launch, where the inaugural symposium event utilised the lens of ‘Networks’ to elucidate a view of higher education (HE) learning spaces in terms of how such spaces are becoming increasingly connected, permeable, and interwoven (both physically and digitally), revealing increasingly adaptive learning environments.

Flexibilities

The second symposium looked to shift focus, this time utilising a lens of ‘Flexibilities’ as a means of grasping the increasing complexity of learning spaces emerging amidst the flux and flows of contemporary digital educational environments. From this perspective, the framing idea of flexibility was positioned as a critical aspect of how learning is situated relative to the demands of students seeking greater control in fitting their studies around their learning needs and preferences, as well as other aspects of their lives. The presentations and work shared offered a range of theoretical and applied interpretations and perspectives as a basis for generating collaborative, reflexive discussions, and debate.

In his keynote address, Dr Jeremy Knox looked to push beyond the more conventional interpretations of the idea of flexibility in HE settings, with a focus on efficient performance and accessible models of delivery, to a way of thinking about space in terms of its interrelationship with digital technologies that are interwoven into the fabric of the university learning environment, and that constantly shape educational practices. When viewed from this perspective, and drawing on Biesta’s (2013) tenets for democratic education in a globally networked society, Jeremy argued that space is, in practice, ‘enacted, turbulent, entangled and hybrid’ (Edwards et al., 2011) and cannot be productively viewed only in terms of settings for ‘qualification’ (knowledge and skill acquisition). In addition, contemporary spaces for learning are also important vehicles for ‘socialisation’ and the ways in which individuals become part of society through networks for learning and becoming, or ‘subjectification’. In HE, we tend towards the purpose of qualification and how we can design spaces for better learning outcomes at the expense of thinking deeply about how different configurations of spaces can support the more peripheral, but no less important, purposes of socialisation and subjectification. Jeremy drew on his extensive experience of facilitating online courses at scale, particularly MOOCs, to think critically about spatial configurations across different modalities and to point to the underestimation of the complexities of inequalities and structural issues of online learning. We cannot assume that we can deploy digital education and technologies without risk or concern. Indeed, there are certain spatial flexibilities that emerge when institutions are required to be supple in how they respond to an increasingly uncertain and changing HE landscape; modifying what is done to suit the multiple purposes of effective provision through greater student involvement and how teachers negotiate and manage change, amidst shifting ideas of a boundaried university experience.  

In his talk, ‘Spatial fluencies – more than spaces, more than literacies’, Dr. Andrew Middleton made calls for ‘place’ to be moved up the HE agenda through marrying values and philosophies with practical innovation. Andrew defined the underpinning concept of spatial fluencies as ‘an individual’s ability to confidently and critically navigate and negotiate spaces for learning, for professional life, and for lifewide experiences’. He suggested how we can survive and thrive within HE through self-determination, self-responsibilisation, and learned processes around agency, affinity, autonomy, association, agility, and adaptability. Andrew also advocated for multimodal thinking in terms of how we can use, experience, and develop learning environments, recognising how we might occupy liminal spaces and/or cross boundaries as we navigate the transitions within, and between, different spatial ecosystems within HE, and their particular formalities, informalities, non-formalities, and incidentals.

Dr Kevin Merry then gave a talk on ‘Universal Design for Learning Spaces’, suggesting how notions of learner variability, and the removal of environmental barriers, need to be cornerstones in developing future narratives around multimodal learning landscapes. He noted how goals of accessibility, inclusivity, and equitability can only be achieved through the adoption of hyflex approaches. Drawing some alignment with Andrew’s previous talk, Kevin called for students to be provided with meaningful options around UDL principles of engagement, representation, action, and expression. He also noted the impact that particular spatial configurations can have on pedagogical approaches, how some spaces are inherently limited in terms of their adaptability and flexibility to achieve multiple ends, and the need to make the most of multimodal opportunities offered by different spatial configurations to emphasise key messages.

Finally, Dr. Namrata Rao  and Dr. Patrick Baughan  gave their talk on ‘Blurring the Pedagogical Boundaries in the Postdigital University’. They presented findings from a research project that drew on digital-visual methodology and sociomateriality to explore staff experiences of navigating the complexities and uncertainties presented by emerging HE landscapes. In their talk, Namrata and Patrick highlighted the key role that space and place can play in developing trust, enabling myriad affective connections, fostering wellbeing, encouraging personal development, and creating hope, and illuminated the power and value that such interactions can hold. They also explored some of the differences between pre- and post-pandemic spaces, blurred and muddled private/public spatial boundaries, the significant role that materiality plays, and the value of informal interactions.

Following networking opportunities over the lunch break, both the keynote speaker and the presenters were invited to engage in a panel discussion to continue the conversation through identifying and exploring key themes that had emerged from the morning’s presentations. Chaired by Professor Sam Elkington and framed by a broader concern for the prospects of space in higher education, the discussion was structured around reflections and questions from the audience. Key points arising included:

  • adopting a students-as-partners approach to co-create and co-produce learning spaces.
  • recognising the holistic nature of the student experience that is broader than studying for particular qualifications, and can include a range of formal and informal, physical and digital spaces, and both on- and off-campus.  
  • the potential for reimagining presentee-ism through monitoring different forms of engagement in different ways, through a range of spatial contexts, and using a wide variety of tools, technologies, and platforms.

The keynote, talks, and panel discussions from this second symposium helped to further drive discussions forward around the need for, and the complexities around, working collaboratively to design and use future learning landscapes in ways that best meet individual needs and preferences and at particular points of time.

Within the third, and final, symposium of this series, we will be continuing these conversations through focusing on the theme of ‘Assemblages’. In this event, we will be exploring the expanding spectra of learning spaces (including their architecture and materiality) and the pedagogical approaches that are being adopted within them, against the backdrop of challenges that are presented by traditional decision-making in terms of strategic, long-term, estate planning, resources, and the need for agility in responding to a dynamic HE environment.

Register to attend Symposium 3 (selecting either in-person or remote participation) online: please click here for the booking page.

Alongside driving forward conversations around the future of learning landscapes, the other key purpose of the Symposia Series is to explore the potential for embedding multimodality to foster accessibility and inclusivity and encourage meaningful engagement. Alongside the live streamed keynote, presentations, and panel session, the event was also recorded, and captured through live sketchnoting and social media posts. All of the outputs produced from the Symposia Series so far are available here.

Sam Elkington is Professor of Learning and Teaching at Teesside University where he leads on the University’s learning and teaching enhancement portfolio. Sam is a PFHEA and National Teaching Fellow (NTF, 2021). He has worked in Higher Education for over 15 years and has extensive experience working across teaching, research and academic leadership and policy domains. Most recently Sam worked for Advance HE (formerly the Higher Education Academy) where he was national lead for Assessment and Feedback and Flexible Learning in Higher Education. Sam’s most recent book (with Professor Alastair Irons) explores contemporary themes in formative assessment and feedback in higher education: Irons and Elkington (2021) Enhancing learning through formative assessment and feedback London: Routledge.

Dr Jill Dickinson is an Associate Professor in Law at the University of Leeds. As a SFHEA, Jill was also selected as a Reviewer for the Advance HE Global Teaching Excellence Awards, and she has been shortlisted for National Teaching Fellowship. A former Solicitor, specialising in property portfolio management, Jill’s dual research interests are around place-making and professional development, and her work has been recognised in the Emerald Literati Awards for Excellence. Jill holds a number of editorial roles, including board memberships for Teaching in Higher Education and the Journal of Place Management and Development. She has recently co-edited a collection entitled Professional Development for Practitioners in Academia: Pracademia which involves contributions from the UK and internationally, and is being published by Springer. Jill has also co-founded communities of practice, including Pracademia in collaboration with Advance HE Connect.

Further resources from this event including sketch illustrations and a summary of discussions are also available from https://srhe.ac.uk/events/past-events/


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Landscapes of Learning and other metaphors

by Marguerite Koole

As I write this response to the first symposium on “Prospects for Space in Higher Education”, I am aware of my asynchronicity. I listened to the recording of the session, and I am subsequently engaging in the conversation through writing. I am physically located 6,500 km away. While time and space may separate us, the technologies that we use in our daily engagements can weave us together. Interestingly, ‘Technology’, derived from the Greek technē, refers to an art or artifice; derived from Indo European *tekth- meaning to weave, build, join. Latin adopted it (textere) meaning to weave.

One of the characteristics that defines us as human is our use of technology. Technology surrounds us. As I write this, I am sitting on a chair, clicking on a keyboard, and reading on a screen with light waves projecting into my tired eyes. It’s midnight. There is an old Webster’s New World Dictionary from 1970 by my side. This old dictionary is a reminder of my past. (I have safeguarded it for many years because of the quality of the etymologies.) I am surrounded by physical and digital technologies as well as atmospheric conditions. It’s summer on the Canadian prairies. It’s hot. The air conditioner has been humming for hours.

To be sure, the spaces in which we find ourselves are replete with sounds and lights of varying quality and frequencies. There are objects in our spaces and, sometimes, other creatures such as flies, spiders, mites, pets, and people. Temperature, airflow, air quality, paint colour, physical dimensions, and many other aspects all relate to our use of these spaces. On a human level, Viola’s research into how students experience belonging in university spaces evidenced the importance of merging physical, virtual, and emotional connections. Beckingham’s discussion of bonding and bridging social capital highlighted elements of mattering: being noticed, being cared for and being needed. The characteristics of space can support and/or diminish connections and mattering. I would argue that all such factors, physical-environmental, digital, and socio-cultural co-create our personal and collective experience within spaces.

Listening to the four presenters I was fascinated with the words used to describe spaces for learning in the higher education context. I examined their slides, the whiteboard sketches, and my own notes. I circled words that conjured images in my mind. For fun, I asked ChatGPT to do a preliminary sorting of the list of words into five categories. Then, I chose titles, reviewed the lists, and conducted a final sorting (Table 1).

Table 1: Words for describing spaces

Spatial conceptsRelationshipsLearningTechnologyOther  
Polycontextual space Reflective space Virtual learning spaces Multi-polycontextual Space for stillness Siloed ecologies Space production Boundary crossing Meshwork Fixed nodes Invisible boundaries Multi-dimensional Model of space Peripheral Context collapse Seclusion Fluid Topology Holes and breathing spaces Accessibility Place spectrum Merging of spaces Participatory spaces Learning spaces Spaces for learning Unfolding  Bonding social capital Bridging social capital Networks Commitments Peers Learning relationships Communication breakdowns Nurturing connection Community engagement Mattering Co-presences Disaggregation of the person Ephemerality Association Social integration Learning communities Field of relations    Scaffolded Blended learning Hybrid learning Enablement Stimulation Transversal skills Fugitive practices Disaggregation of learning Cognitive integration    Post-digital Networks Mediations Datafication Surveillance Multi-modal  Strands Non-digital strands Transhumanist Human as a document Static models Transparency Tyranny of the designer Fit Haunting Imaginaries  

Clearly, many of the words in Table 1 can fit into multiple lists, and other people might sort them differently. The spatial concepts were highly metaphorical, and I found the number of items in each list intriguing. Relationship terms appeared emphasised and digital-technology terms seemed de-emphasised while the number of ‘learning’ words/variations was moderate. To create a visual sense of the salience of the individual words in the list, I created a word cloud (Figure 1). The two words most repeated words were ‘space’ and ‘learning’ – not unexpected for a series on “landscapes of learning”.

Figure 1: Word cloud (Created via https://wordart.com/)

As scholars, we strain to locate metaphors to encapsulate and model our world. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) argue: “human thought processes are largely metaphorical” (p6). They write: “The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thin in terms of another” (p5). For me, the very word ‘space’ invokes feelings such as openness, closedness, arrangements, activities, stillness, noisiness, walls, furniture, and so on.  I decided to delve more deeply into the meanings of the following space-related words:

Space

  • From Latin: spēi- to flourish, expand, succeed.
  • Area or room sufficient for or allotted to something [a parking space]

Place

  • From Greek: plateia a street
  • Space; room
  • A particular area or locality; region

Context

  • From Latin: contextus (n.) a joining together; contextere (v.) to weave together; com (together) + textere (v.) to weave.
  • The whole situation, background, or environment relevant to a particular event, personality, creation, etc.

As it turns out, the words ‘space’, ‘place’, and ‘context’ are not all that metaphorical in their common usage, but their etymological nuances are attractive and reflect, perhaps, what we wish to achieve in describing and/or envisioning learning spaces—that is, locations for flourishing, success, and weaving together of people, ideas, and experiences.

During her session, Gourlay opposed metaphors such as ‘network’ suggesting that it emphasises connections rather than one’s state of being. She argued that Ingold’s (2011) notion of meshwork was more appealing in its suggested fluidity with whole fields of relations unfolding. Similarly, she found metaphors such as ‘intertwining’ troublesome because it suggests merging of two entities into one, explaining that two pieces of twine cannot actually merge; rather, they remain two pieces of twine as they wrap around each other. Her thinking about space led her to concepts of ephemerality (that which is not recorded), seclusion (that which is not observed), and co-presence (that which is co-located at the same time and same place). She arrived at a metaphor of “fugitive spaces” for learning, which she argues are essential for human learning as opposed to information transfer.

With my own leanings towards the sociomaterial approach, I ‘get’ her argument. Within a sociomaterial sensitivity, reality can be thought of through multiple patterns of relations in which “human, digital, physical-environmental, and socio-cultural characteristics interact to produce phenomenon” (Koole et al, 2021, para 3; Sørensen, 2009). The ‘pattern of relations’ metaphor helps me to connect and order my experiences, readings, and discussions of the world. The use of metaphor appears useful and even necessary in discussions of space and how space is inhabited.

During the panel discussion, Bligh drew attention to the place-for-learning-spectrum in which there is a single continuum of structured to unstructured spaces. In addition to the need for conceptualising a multimodal spectrum, he suggested that there is a need for a common lexicon to discuss space. Such language could guide designers, builders, and users of space. As he noted, “design tends to focus on metaphor”. Yet, as Gourlay suggested, metaphor can also become an impediment in which we could become even more bogged down. It is important to interrogate and test our metaphors; we must know their limitations.

As I ponder the discussion in its entirety, however, I found the seemingly overwhelming use of metaphors productive. It is productive in terms of inspiring creative ideas about how we can understand space and our use of it. I find myself constantly exploring new metaphors and philosophical approaches in order to grasp new ways of seeing reality, ideas, and issues. Less conventional approaches such as sociomaterialism and the postdigital, for example, help me question what might otherwise remain hidden. An anecdote might help to illustrate how different approaches can help in seeing anew:

Many years ago, after I had completed my undergraduate degree, I took a wonderful class called “Drawing for the Completely Intimidated”. I had never taken a real art class outside of grade school, so this course seemed perfect for exploring my artistic side. As the course progressed, the students had opportunities to experiment with various materials, subject matter, and techniques. It was during a drawing exercise involving shading with pencil that I suddenly became attuned to lines and shades in a glass vase that I had never really noticed before. Even 30 years later, I still see everyday objects differently; my sensitivity had shifted, and now I can see a reality that was previously hidden from my gaze.

In recounting this story, I think of Bligh’s suggestion that we shift from static knowledge to possibility knowledge. Metaphors are useful tools for exploring possibility. While our metaphors might proliferate uncomfortably, they might also lead to novel ways of envisioning the co-creation of learning spaces as locations for flourishing, success, and the weaving together of people, ideas, and experiences.

Marguerite Koole is an Associate Professor in Educational Technology and design for the College of Education, University of Saskatchewan. In 2013, Dr. Koole completed her PhD in E-Research and Technology-Enhanced Learning at Lancaster University UK on digital identity in networked learning.  She also holds a Master of Education in Distance Education (MEd) with a focus was on mobile learning. Dr. Koole has a BA in Modern Languages and has studied French, Spanish, German, Blackfoot, Cree, Latin, Mandarin, ancient Mayan hieroglyphics, American Sign Language (ASL), and linguistics. She has designed interactive, online learning activities for various learning purposes and platforms—including print, web, and mobile devices. 

Email: m.koole@usask.ca

Twitter: @mkooleady

References

Guralnik, D (1970) Webster’s new world dictionary 2nd ed Nelson, Toronto: Foster & Scott Ltd

Ingold, T (2011). Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description London: Routledge

Lakoff, G and Johnson, M (1980) Metaphors we live by Chicago: The University of Chicago Press

Sorensen, E (2009) The materiality of learning: Technology and knowledge in educational practice Cambridge: Cambridge University Press


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Landscapes of learning for unknown futures: presenter responses to audience questions

by Brett Bligh, Sue Beckingham, Lesley Gourlay, and Julianne K Viola

SRHE’s ‘Landscapes of Learning for Unknown Futures: prospects for space in higher education’ symposium series, delivered with Professor Sam Elkington and Dr Jill Dickinson, aims to foster continuous dialogue around learning spaces. Here the three presenters reflect on some of the ideas and issues raised during the first symposium on ‘Networks’. This blog has been compiled by Sam Elkington, Jill Dickinson, and Sinéad Murphy (SRHE Conferences and Events Manager.)

  1. How do we encourage academic staff to think more intentionally about how they use different spaces in and through their practice? How do we effectively build in ideas of working with spatiality into our learning and teaching strategies? 

Julianne: Academic staff should consider how students are connecting with each other and with educators in formal learning spaces. Spaces aren’t (in most cases) designed by the educators teaching in them, but looking at the formal learning setting (lab, lecture theatre, seminar room, etc) through a critical lens can help educators begin to think about what they might want to achieve in that space. For example, if you want to know whether a new way of teaching a challenging concept is landing with the students, also consider: can students see each other in the layout of this room? Can they look around the room to see whether anyone else has a quizzical expression on their face, so they know they aren’t alone in not understanding a concept? 

Sue: Staff need the luxury of thinking time and discussion to spark new ideas and share current practice. Encourage or lead a course/subject group activity where colleagues start by looking at how they use their own spaces, then visit other parts of their university. How are others using those spaces? Vignettes, videos and the like could be shared in newsletters which could then be used to prompt discussion and inspire alternative ways.  

Brett: If staff are to think more intentionally then they need to get used to talking about space in relation to their practice. One problem is that neither the pedagogical theories that people use, nor the institutional guidelines used in practice discussions, tend to be very helpful in talking about how space is used. We need to build a vocabulary that helps people to discuss the roles of space in practice. That vocabulary must be challenging, so that it provokes new thinking, but it must not be overly technical or oriented towards engineering or architectural concerns. In my own work I have put forward a tentative vocabulary that I think could be used, in both ‘everyday’ thinking and conversations and in institutional projects where space needs to be discussed more productively.

  • How do we work productively through the inherent contradictions of learning space design? For example, universities create specific spaces with the aim of helping to build a sense of community but then impose rules on how those spaces can be used. 

Julianne: Students tend to use spaces to socialise that aren’t entirely intended for that purpose. From example, my school friends and I used to gather in a hallway that adjoined the gym to the art wing at our high school, for no other reason than it was the perfect size for our group to hang out before school every morning! I’d be interested to see what the role of space utilisation monitors/ technology will be in the future of spaces like this. If my high school had these monitors available, I wonder whether they would consider expanding the space and adding some benches for students to sit on.  There have been some great StudentShapers projects at Imperial in this area – and the spaces that have been transformed to create more informal social space have garnered lots of positive feedback. 

Sue: When planning new buildings or updating current, it is essential that educators and students that will use those spaces are included in the conversations. The users of those spaces will be able to highlight what is missing and provide suggestions.

We need to start with reimagining what it is like to start a new course at university. I remember taking my daughters around multiple institutions for open days. Where they chose to go to was not just the course or the reputation of the university; it was where they felt comfortable and could imagine being there. Space begins with walking through the main doors, the café, the social spaces, the library and of course the formal learning spaces. Being able to visualise mentally what their future experience might look like, creating an affinity to and a sense of place they could relate to, and connect with is so important. Making the space feel welcoming and somewhere they would want to be. Connecting language to physical objects could include motivational quotes or saying welcome in multiple languages, graphics/images that depict diverse role models, big screens showcasing video clips with captions of what students are doing and creating, how and where they are collaborating and communicating. How can students be involved in created art/artefacts that can be showcased for others to see that depict the student experience?

Visiting an open day at the weekend may be busy but it doesn’t always capture the true feel of what’s to be expected in a session in full flow. How can this be created with video, AR or VR? The very spaces students will learn in are wide and varied, and may not have been experienced before.

Brett: We must view space design as an ongoing process in which refinement and new ideas are viewed as inevitably and welcome. Initial designs will hardly ever work in quite the ways intended, and so we must be prepared to refine the spaces and also recognise what has actually been achieved. To do so we need to provide ongoing forums for interprofessional and staff-student discussion. At present, these are often created for specific projects (for example, where a new building is being designed) and then wound up afterwards. Inevitably, these bounded discussions follow narrow agendas and seem formulaic. We need something more ongoing and permanent.

  • What do you think are the most immediate considerations pedagogically when thinking about how to make the best use of learning spaces? What can we practically be doing now to move staff towards being more open, flexible, and creative in and with space? 

Julianne: There is a walking interview method I’ve used in my research at Imperial: walking can generate thought. I’d be interested to see how educators can implement walking into their pedagogy, perhaps starting out with ‘office hours’ meetings happening over a walk, and maybe moving onto engaging students in formal coursework outside. Colleagues of mine like Dr Luke McCrone, who completed his undergraduate degree in Earth Science and Engineering, recognise the different way of thinking that one experiences when outside the classroom. There was a great 2014 piece on this in The New Yorker – “Why Walking Helps Us Think” by Ferris Jabr.

Sue: We can do more to create comfortable spaces to meet, collaborate and learn together outside of timetabled classes. Furniture is important; learning booths are popular in corridors as informal meeting places. Libraries, once hushed and quiet, now offer learning spaces students can use independently or with peers. Access to charging points for portable devices, as well as access to loanable devices. If we provide spaces for students to interact informally before class, it could make them feel more at ease when coming into a formal class. After the class has finished where can students go to debrief, plan for future groupwork, engage in social conversations? Landmarks they can communicate by text or group chat apps along with screenshots to arrange meetups. Such places will become favoured, and their use creates a sense of community and emotional connection. This links in to mattering as messages easily sent by mobile can cascaded to cohorts as well small groups.

Brett: Counterintuitively, the most constraining issue when discussing space usage tends to be timetabling rather than problems with particular spaces. We need to be clear that open, flexible and creative uses of space are not the same as efficient space occupancy; if a university is to be more innovative with space then occupancy metric will be challenged. I see no way other than to confront this contradiction directly.

  • Is it that spaces need to be seen as a way of ‘simulating’ certain modes of being and not just from a perspective of enacting certain forms of pedagogic content knowledge? What might this look like? 

Julianne: Great question, and my research on identity development ties in with this.  Interacting with other people and presenting different parts of ourselves to others depends on who we are with, and what the setting is. The idea of boundaries comes in again with this question. For example, the self that I present when I enter the Junior Common Room at Imperial (where the best katsu curry is!) is a bit inhibited – I feel I am encroaching on undergraduate territory, whereas I feel very relaxed having lunch or coffee outside with colleagues on the Queen’s Lawn, where the space feels more public. There are power dynamics in certain spaces!  

Sue: For current students, informal learning and self-directed learning starts before any scheduled class and often continues afterwards. Students line up ready to enter large lecture halls or sit cross legged in corridors waiting to enter a classroom for a seminar, lab, workshop or other discipline related space. Sometimes in deep conversation and some shy and yet eager to belong. If a picture is worth a thousand words what pictures would make a difference to the learning spaces to stimulate conversation? Perhaps some constant and providing familiarity, others changeable to create interest and intrigue? How can walls be used to share stories about the educators they will meet within the classroom? What stories can be told of prior students?

Brett: Many spaces do already stimulate certain modes of being. In my view these are often either ‘disciplinary’ spaces – including design studios, engineering labs, and finance trading rooms – or outdoor spaces, including green spaces but also pods and classrooms in wooded areas. If campuses are to continue to be viewed as valuable, then they need to be clearly differentiated from other forms of spaces. Too many campuses in recent times seem to look more and more like generic business parks as time goes on. This will inevitably erode how students perceive universities as places, and over time how valuable campuses are perceived to be—which could pose existential issues for some universities as institutions.

  • How can individual staff build creativity and criticality into their pedagogical approaches while working in learning spaces designed without their input? Is a collective voice among staff needed to influence how learning spaces are established; if so, how can this be facilitated, and how can an intersectional perspective on access needs and dynamics of power be assured?

Julianne: Bringing in different stakeholders when designing new spaces is key (see a list of prior StudentShapers projects at Imperial to see how students and staff became partners in designing new spaces at Imperial), and gives a sense of agency to staff and students alike. Building agency in the community would be a great outcome in and of itself. 

Sue: We need to push back against conventions. Why is furniture in a classroom in rows when we want students to interact and work in groups? Why do we plan for a lecture and separate seminar when we want students to engage in active/project/problem-based learning? It is important to evaluate innovative use of learning spaces from the students’ perspective. What works for them? How inclusive does it feel? What would they change?

Brett: Individual staff have increasingly limited power. Teaching is increasingly the domain of interprofessional collaboration and teamworking. I do think that collective voices are needed; including the forums for discussion I mentioned earlier. We also need to think more at the level of spaces across (a) whole programmes of study and (b) students’ entire experience of being at university, than at the level of the specific pedagogical interaction.

  • Hasn’t this whole conversation exploded, or at the very least fundamentally challenged, the conventional idea of a university campus?

Julianne: It has! The idea of a ‘university campus’ may also be different, depending on what your own university context is. Coming from a US liberal arts background, my initial mental image of a ‘campus’ is very different from the revised version that is in my mind’s eye after studying and working at universities in the UK. As technology has become a large part of the university experience, the conventional idea of a university campus should now include digital/online spaces, too. 

Sue: Successful examples of hybrid modes of learning are set to continue, so yes. But this also means we need to continue to review learning spaces that are not timetabled. We need to provide learning space for students to engage online; not all will have a space at home or reliable digital access, or it is too far to go home and then take an in-person class the same afternoon. Where lectures are scheduled online, students may value learning together using one screen or personal screens and headsets. In the classroom, planning a flexible space is important, being able to reconfigure seating plans to suit the needs of the class and activities. Long rows of heavy tables and chairs are not conducive to interactivity and spontaneous communication.  

Brett: Yes, I think that the idea of the university campus is being challenged profoundly, resulting in rearguard actions by some stakeholders as a form of defence. The attempts to make campuses ‘sticky’ are but one example of this.

Lesley: I would agree that it has – in some quarters – reinforced an already prevalent idea that the physical campus is obsolete or in need of ‘reinvention’. However, I would caution against an assumption that because universities managed to stay operational while fully remote, it is something to pursue post-pandemic. This was an emergency response, not an active choice, and it brought with it a large number of disadvantages to students and academic staff. Our own study at UCL into the impacts on academic and professional services staff revealed many tensions, stresses and difficulties encountered by staff remote working, with evidence of differential impacts on women and those with less workspace (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/departments-and-centres/centres/ucl-knowledge-lab/current-research/ucl-moving-online-teaching-and-homeworking-moth). Research has also shown that the pivot to online had negative effects on students in terms of alienation, lack of engagement and social support.

I would be highly critical of ‘discourses of inevitability’ which state that as a result of the pandemic, the role of the material campus and face-to-face engagement should be challenged. While remote engagement may have a limited place, I would argue that the pandemic has in fact underscored the vital importance of being physically together on campus, in terms of engagement in study, and also in terms of social contact, identity and depth and richness of experience.  

Dr Brett Bligh is a Lecturer in the Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University, and Director of the Centre for Technology Enhanced Learning. He is co-Editor of Studies in Technology Enhanced Learning and co-ordinator of the CL-SIG group dedicated to discussing uses of the Change Laboratory approach in higher education settings. His research interrogates the nexus of technology mediation, physical environment, and institutional change in higher education. Brett’s work prioritises Activity Theory conceptions of human practice, and interventionist methodologies. For further details about Brett’s work see his staff profile here.

Sue Beckingham is a Principal Lecturer and LTA Lead in Computing. In addition to teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate level, Sue has an academic development leadership role where she provide support and guidance relating to learning, teaching and assessment. In 2017 she was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship. She is also a Fellow and Executive Committee Member of the Staff and Educational Development Association. For details of Sue’s publications and other activities, see her staff profile here.

Professor Lesley Gourlay is a professor at the UCL Knowledge Lab, currently working in the intersection of Science and Technology Studies and Education, drawing on phenomenological perspectives and approaches. Her current project, funded by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship Grant MRF-2020-35 (Sept 2021 – 2024), focusses on ‘The Datafied University: Documentation and Performativity in Digitised Education’. She is currently working on a new monograph for Bloomsbury Academic, with a working title of ‘The University and the Algorithmic Gaze: A Postphenomenological Perspective’. For more, see Lesley’s staff profile here.

Julianne K Viola is a postdoctoral Research Associate at the Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship (CHERS). Julianne leads the Belonging, Engagement, and Community (BEC) and contributes to educational research and evaluation efforts across College, and is a developer of the Education Evaluation Toolkit. Previously, Julianne completed her doctoral research at the Department of Education, University of Oxford, on how adolescents develop their civic identities in the digital age, conceptualisations of citizenship, and the interplay of social media and technology on youth civic identity. For details of Julianne’s publications and other activities, see her staff profile here.


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Landscapes of Learning for Unknown Futures: Prospects for Space in Higher Education Reflections on Networks Symposium, 26 April 2023

by Sam Elkington and Jill Dickinson

Wednesday April 26 saw the launch of the SRHE ‘Landscapes of Learning for Unknown Futures: prospects for space in higher education’ symposium series, delivered in partnership with series co-convenors Professor Sam Elkington and Dr Jill Dickinson. This blog was compiled and edited by Sinead Murphy.

The intention of this Symposium Series is to bring together leading voices and space-based research from across the field to encourage critical discussion and debate with a view to generating and encapsulating key insights around contemporary landscapes of learning in HE. Traditionally, the needs of learning spaces have been often pushed into the background of institutional planning, decision-making, and curriculum design in favour of other, more visible performance measures of the student experience. Now the changing requirements of learning spaces are top of the agenda for university leaders, estates teams, and practitioners who must recognise and understand how learning can take place anytime and anywhere and, therefore, imagine new and radical strategies for student-centred, sustainable campus design.

We offer the concept of ‘learning landscape’ as a basis on which to explore how universities can use different ideas about learning spaces to reflect changing preferences, incorporate digital technologies, and critically consider future possibilities. This Symposium Series presents opportunities for key stakeholders to discuss and debate  new possibilities for pedagogy, technology, and learning spaces. Enacted through separate, hybrid symposium events, and structured through the prism of one of three thematic lenses – networks, flexibilities, and assemblages – the Series has been informed by a ‘Kaleidoscope of Notions’ (Wang et al, 2011) for interrogating theoretical and applied perspectives and priorities for future learning spaces.  We aim to encourage an overarching reflexive conversation with, and for, the sector.

Networks

The initial Networks themed symposium charted a focus shift in HE. It recognised that the contemporary learning landscape needs to be considered less in terms of singular learning spaces and more in terms of how spaces are becoming increasingly connective, permeable, networked, and interwoven (both physically and digitally) to provide inclusive and adaptive learning environments.

In her keynote address, Professor Lesley Gourlay offered a critical take on the concept of networks in HE learning and teaching. She highlighted an overemphasis on connection (defined in terms of interlinkages between discrete nodes) and the mediating role of technology in associated learning processes. Noting the inseparability of physical and digital space in and for learning, Lesley argued for the need to push beyond now established post-digital configurations of space and knowledge generation, towards a conceptualisation of ‘lived’ learning encounters as being more-than-digital, situated within an unfolding meshwork of formal and informal spaces. Lesley drew upon the work of Tim Ingold to animate her view of the meshwork of intertwined learning spaces in HE, pointing to the need to retain three critical components of the learning landscape:  ephemerality, co-presence with others, and the significance of finding seclusion and stillness. From this perspective, the spaces ‘between-the-lines’ possess value for students in their coming-to-know about their subjects, as well as themselves, offering what Lesley described as ‘fugitive spaces’; fleeting yet meaningful assemblages of space and practice that help students to navigate the increasing sprawl of HE campuses and their digital appendages.

In her talk, ‘Mattering, meaning making and motivation: building trust and respect through multimodal social learning communities’, Sue Beckingham shared insights from work exploring how social media can be used to support student mattering, helping to mediate intentional communicative action and trust across formal and informal spaces for learning. Drawing on the ideas of ‘bonding’ and ‘bridging’ social capital, Sue challenged us to question assumptions we can sometimes make about the concept of mattering, it being more than an exercise in fostering social connections between individual learners. Sue’s work provided a compelling empirical basis for utilising multimodal strategies to help students understand what is expected of them in spaces both on and off campus. For Sue, such strategies function as ‘gestures’ that encourage, and model for, relational practices through shared experiences where students have learned to work cooperatively across contexts and boundaries. 

Dr Julianne K Viola’s talk, ‘Nurturing meaningful connection in a new era of learning’, introduced longitudinal research that began before the pandemic and continued through periods of online and hybrid delivery, as well as taking in the more recent return to campus. Julianne’s research sought better understanding of the factors that influence students’ ability to navigate their university settings and build meaningful connections with campus space(s) and student communities. By encompassing student experiences prior to, during, and post-pandemic, Julianne provided unique insight into what matters most for students in building and maintaining a sense of belonging and community across different modes of delivery and experience. Key findings highlighted the significant impact that the lack, or absence, of physical contact with space, and the limited ability to connect and socialise with others, had on student engagement and motivation in, and for, their learning. Further insights pointed to the prevalence and persistence of certain structural barriers – viewed in terms of how certain physical (campus) and virtual spaces are set up and utilised – that can undermine or weaken meaningful connections for students. Supporting similar insights shared in Sue Beckingham’s earlier talk, students reported a positive or enhanced sense of belonging and community with their university settings when a mix of formal and informal spaces were available to them as ‘touch points’ in their wider experiences. Crucially, this merging of spaces points to the affective dimension of networked space as a means of nurturing meaningful connections for students on both an individual and collective level.

In his talk ‘Physical learning spaces and networked landscapes of learning: Prismatic mediations’, Dr Brett Bligh problematised how physical learning spaces mediate networked landscapes of learning, arguing that physical spaces exhibit multiple mediation on what is expected and made possible for students and educators therein. Brett challenged the established logic of ‘built pedagogy’, and associated proliferation of solutions in modern campus development, on the grounds that such solutions are typically based on a model of deploying different types of learning spaces to mediate certain forms of educational practice. 

Brett was quick to highlight the limiting nature of such an attitude towards learning space and how it encouraged certain ways of interacting and speaking about space production. Brett’s view is that, in the practice realities of learners and educators, such activities constitute a wider learning landscape comprised of a range of environments, people, social structures, and resources. It is within these ‘mediations’ that physical learning spaces are appropriated, and their agentic qualities and rhythms revealed. Building on established research, Brett made the case for an alternative language for conceptualising how space is a “mediating factor” within the actual practices of HE that is based around six core concepts, wherein space is understood to be transparent, enabling, stimulating, associative, cognitively integrated, and socially integrated. Whereas earlier research conveys distinctly normative views on space, focused largely on stability, this alternative framework is oriented towards encouraging stakeholders to reflect on their experiences and explore future possibilities within their institutions. Brett wants the associated vocabulary to support reflection, re-thinking, and re-conceptualisation – as stakeholders use it to explore their experiences and aspirations together.  

In the afternoon panel discussion contributors were given licence to expand, elaborate, and cross-examine the work presented with the aim of considering more deeply the ‘prospects for space’. Discussion identified the importance of connection, mattering, belonging, and a clear need to move away from performative paradigms in learning space and campus design towards a more participative paradigm of practice. Such a paradigm shift would acknowledge the rhythms of connections, of continuities and discontinuities in space, of working socially and solitarily, identifying, and intentionally inviting touchpoints that converge at the boundaries of experience (physical, virtual, and emotional). New strategies for enabling learning and accommodating the multiple demands on today’s students necessitate a rethinking of the  uses and locations of learning space. Increasingly, this will require universities, educators, and students to be flexible and network-minded in how they seek out, and bring together, formal and informal activities in an environment that recognises that learning can take place any time, in either physical and/or virtual spaces.

The powerful insights emerging from this first symposium have encouraged us to think about how we can help scaffold the spaces that students are already using for learning. We can draw on their experiences of using these locations and technologies to adopt student-centred approaches to designing landscapes of learning that extend across and beyond the campus. Our next symposium considers these, and related, ideas through the lens of Flexibility: we will explore how learning is situated relative to the demands of students for greater control in fitting their studies around their learning needs and preferences, as well as other aspects of their lives. Such a view implies a necessity for widening and loosening of the boundaries of conventional learning spaces to provide greater potential flexibility in how, where, and when learning happens. We hope that you will join us on 14th June, online or in person at SRHE’s offices, to continue this conversation.

Sam Elkington is Professor of Learning and Teaching at Teesside University where he leads on the University’s learning and teaching enhancement portfolio. Sam is a PFHEA and National Teaching Fellow (NTF, 2021). He has worked in Higher Education for over 15 years and has extensive experience working across teaching, research and academic leadership and policy domains. Most recently Sam worked for Advance HE (formerly the Higher Education Academy) where he was national lead for Assessment and Feedback and Flexible Learning in Higher Education. Sam’s most recent book (with Professor Alastair Irons) explores contemporary themes in formative assessment and feedback in higher education: Irons and Elkington (2021) Enhancing learning through formative assessment and feedback London: Routledge.

Dr Jill Dickinson is an Associate Professor in Law at the University of Leeds. As a SFHEA, Jill was also selected as a Reviewer for the Advance HE Global Teaching Excellence Awards, and she has been shortlisted for National Teaching Fellowship. A former Solicitor, specialising in property portfolio management, Jill’s dual research interests are around place-making and professional development, and her work has been recognised in the Emerald Literati Awards for Excellence. Jill holds a number of editorial roles, including board memberships for Teaching in Higher Education and the Journal of Place Management and Development. She has recently co-edited a collection entitled Professional Development for Practitioners in Academia: Pracademia which involves contributions from the UK and internationally, and is being published by Springer. Jill has also co-founded communities of practice, including Pracademia in collaboration with Advance HE Connect.


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Landscapes of Learning for Unknown Futures: Prospects for Space in Higher Education

by Sam Elkington and Jill Dickinson

Across the higher education (HE) sector, factors including increasing student numbers, growing diversification, concerns about students’ mental health and wellbeing, and marketisation, have been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis. Their culmination has pushed the changing needs of learning spaces to the top of the agenda. Against this backdrop, our Symposia Series aims to provoke critical debate around the possibilities for new configurations of learning spaces to support decision-making, policy and practice in developing future landscapes of learning within HE.

Learning Landscape

In response to the challenges faced within the HE environment, university estates teams need to recognise how learning can take place anytime and anywhere and develop radical strategies for student-centred, sustainable campus design. Future approaches to learning need to be dynamic and linked, and weave together formal and informal activities to create a holistic learning experience. We offer the concept of ‘learning landscape’ to explore how universities can draw on a spectrum of different learning spaces to reflect changing preferences and incorporate digital technologies. This Symposia Series at SRHE presents opportunities for key stakeholders to engage in collaborative reflexive discussions around, and debate the potential for, effectively entwining the possibilities for pedagogy, technology, and learning spaces.

Symposia Series

The Symposia Series brings together leading voices from across the field to encourage critical discussion and debate with a view to generating, encapsulating, and assembling key insights that can inform future decision-making, policy, and practice around landscapes of learning in HE. The Series is structured through the prism of three thematic lenses: networks, assemblages, and flexibilities, with a separate Symposium dedicated to each. Through providing opportunities for shared learning, we hope that the Series will cultivate an ongoing community of practice that will support the development of better understanding around the opportunities for developing learning spaces in terms of their networks, assemblages, and flexibilities.

Networks, Flexibilities, and Assemblages

In the first Symposium, which focuses on the theme of Networks, we chart a focus shift in HE, recognising that the contemporary learning landscape needs to be considered less in terms of singular learning spaces and more in terms of the ways in which spaces are becoming more connective, permeable, networked, and interwoven (physically and digitally), providing inclusive and adaptive environments in which learning can take place. Professor Lesley Gourlay (University College London) will be giving the keynote at this Symposium, followed by presentations from Sue Beckingham (Sheffield Hallam), Dr Julianne K Viola (Imperial College London), and Dr Brett Bligh (Lancaster).

The second Symposium explores the idea of flexibility as a critical aspect of how learning is situated relative to the demands of students for greater control in fitting their studies around their learning needs and preferences, as well as other aspects of their lives. Such a view implies a widening and loosening of the boundaries of conventional learning spaces to provide greater potential flexibility in how, where, and when learning happens. In this Symposium, we will hear from Dr Jeremy Knox (Edinburgh) (as keynote), Dr Andrew Middleton (Anglia Ruskin), Dr Kevin Merry (De Montfort), Dr Namrata Rao (Liverpool Hope) and Dr Patrick Baughan (The University of Law).

The third and final Symposium draws on the lens of Assemblages to examine the expanding spectra of both learning spaces (including their architecture and materiality) and the pedagogical approaches that are being adopted within them. These discussions are presented against the backdrop of challenges posed by traditional decision-making around strategic long-term estates-planning, resource implications, and the need to act swiftly to meet the challenges presented by a dynamic HE environment. Following a keynote fromProfessor Carol Taylor (Bath) at this Symposium, we will also hear presentations from A/Prof Tim Fawns (Monash), Dr Karen Gravett (Surrey), and Dr Harriet Shortt (UWE).

Thinking differently about conversation

We are also drawing on this Symposia Series as an opportunity for modelling multimodal opportunities for engagement to foster more inclusive, effective, and ongoing dialogue and encourage informed, meaningful change. Each of the three Symposia will run primarily face-to-face, hosted by SRHE in London. Components of each Symposium (namely the Keynote and Presentations) will also be streamed live so as to enable a hybrid format and remote engagement. We will also be recording content from each Symposium to help further engage as wide an audience as possible. We are inviting a selection of international scholars with recognised expertise in different aspects of HE learning space research to engage with, and review, the keynote and presentation materials from the Symposia and work with us to produce extended blogs in response. In addition, we will be facilitating continued dialogue to bridge each Symposium across the Series through other modes, for example via the use of Padlet, blogs, social media, and podcast communications to create a rich tapestry of critical insight and debate that we hope will drive the conversation forwards around the prospects for learning space in HE.

Sam Elkington is Professor of Learning and Teaching at Teesside University where he leads on the University’s learning and teaching enhancement portfolio. Sam is a PFHEA and National Teaching Fellow (NTF, 2021). He has worked in Higher Education for over 15 years and has extensive experience working across teaching, research and academic leadership and policy domains. Most recently Sam worked for Advance HE (formerly the Higher Education Academy) where he was national lead for Assessment and Feedback and Flexible Learning in Higher Education. Sam’s most recent book (with Professor Alastair Irons) explores contemporary themes in formative assessment and feedback in higher education: Irons and Elkington (2021) Enhancing learning through formative assessment and feedback London: Routledge.

Dr Jill Dickinson is an Associate Professor in Law at the University of Leeds. As a SFHEA, Jill was also selected as a Reviewer for the Advance HE Global Teaching Excellence Awards, and she has been shortlisted for National Teaching Fellowship. A former Solicitor, specialising in property portfolio management, Jill’s dual research interests are around place-making and professional development, and her work has been recognised in the Emerald Literati Awards for Excellence. Jill holds a number of editorial roles, including board memberships for Teaching in Higher Education and the Journal of Place Management and Development. She has recently co-edited a collection entitled Professional Development for Practitioners in Academia: Pracademia which involves contributions from the UK and internationally, and is being published by Springer. Jill has also co-founded communities of practice, including Pracademia in collaboration with Advance HE Connect.


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How do we enable transformative university transitions?

by Rita Hordósy

The Covid-19 pandemic meant a ‘swift and acute’ disruption to student experiences through the ‘dissolution of the physical and social environment’, and immediate financial hardship experienced by many. The issues of student retention, success, connectedness, and feeling included remain pressing issues for current entrants. To look at what it means to become a university student and a graduate, and to understand these issues in the whole student lifecycle, it is useful to draw on experiences from before the pandemic. Using yearly interviews with 40 home, undergraduate full-time students who started their studies in 2013/2014, my research at an English northern red brick university (NRBU) focused on how students understood, and made sense of, their experiences of student life as they moved into, through, and beyond university. All outcomes (research reports and papers) of this project are available via this link.  

Through the market system, a homogenised university experience became something packaged and sold, with the social elements all being included in the price tag to market one particular version of being at university. However, university choice and participation is experienced differently in a system that remains stratified and socially segregated, with large variety in student budgets creating differential contexts for learning.  

University space and time 

To make sense of how the university space and time are felt by students, I conceptualised transformative university transitions as a dynamic, perpetual and uncertain series of changes and movements through time and space to become a university student, and subsequently a graduate. For James, NRBU and its city as the spaces for reflection are intricately linked to who he became throughout the four years of his BA and MA: 

You, kind of, realised the limits of yourself and you realised the potentials of yourself, and that means that it harbours a weird significance, (…) that, kind of, roots you here. Not as intimate as it is your home, but as a second home of a place where you can feel like you belong, and that it is your city. James, fourth interview 

The overall university time is often understood based on the cycles of the academic year, chronicling how their approach changed to the wider community, their own learning and their future. Assessing her university time, Mary discusses the complex interlinks of exploring questions of identity, her relationships to others, and shifting focus on her university studies:   

I think I can’t imagine my life if I hadn’t gone [to university]. (…) It’s made me the way I am, I think. I absolutely loved Uni. Each year was so different as well, for me it was quite distinct. The first year was sort of a bit mental and kind of discovering who I was and all that… Second year was probably the worst. (…) I got a First but I don’t know, I think the change from the first year felt difficult. (…) I tried to calm down a bit in the second year but I went too far and I just had a boring time. And then third year I kind of had a bit of a balance between the two. (…) my life here was set up and I liked the house, and I was in a good relationship, do you know what I mean? And the course was getting really good and the dissertation…

[Mary, fourth interview]

The changing foci – as discussed below – of becoming social, academic, and a university graduate can be understood as stressors, where budgeting constraints and financial futures cut across all else, and can cause constant friction for the poorest students. Similarly, physical and mental ill-health of students, their families and friends, sometimes with tragic outcomes, can have a profound impact on their experience and outcomes.   

Social aspects of acclimatisation 

Although the first academic year is characterised by a sense of arrival, the new environment, timeframe, concepts, rules and especially new peers make university transitions emotionally overwhelming. The predominant stress factor throughout this period relates to the social requirements of university life, with the first few weeks even more tumultuous. However, centring living in university halls, joining sport clubs and other extracurricular participation can be exclusionary through high costs or basing it on excessive alcohol consumption. 

Finding a university community is key: the experience of being a student is constructed in social spaces, to be retained through the friendships made, ‘who I’ll keep in touch with forever’ [Chris, fourth interview]. The importance of peer groups relates to solving everyday issues and information gaps, support in their studies, and learning from and about each other in a broad sense, as Olivia points out: 

I think just learning off people has been, like, probably the most important thing actually, and not even from studies. (…) the people that you meet and the groups that you go to, through university, things you feel that become really important to you.

[Olivia, fourth interview] 

Upon finding a social fit within the university community, students talk about seeing beyond the initially perceived homogeneity and coming to appreciate the diversity across the institution. This then allows them to ‘stick out’, but also orientate themselves towards their academic duties.  

Learning to be academic 

Given learning experiences exist on a continuum within the life course, students will initially attempt to adapt their (often unsuitable) learning and revision techniques, whilst also grappling with a new learner identity. Upon gaining some level of familiarity and comfort with how the university operates, the academic aspects start falling into place. This tends to coincide with the second year, where the narrower and deeper focus on the subject area is compared to the broad and disjointed nature of the first academic year. 

To conquer the complex and unbounded nature of university knowledge, most students start actively prioritising and being selective on the basis of perceived importance within and between modules, tailoring the academic experiences to their needs. Students actively seek out more personalised relations with university staff and start go recognise the wide range of attitudes and interests of their tutors and lecturers. For instance, Kim discusses how her relationship with one of her lecturers changed over time: 

I think it definitely gets more friendly towards third year, there was one lecturer that we had in first year who was terrifying. (…) But then we’ve had her for a module this term and she just chats to people, she makes jokes in the lectures, she’ll show you pictures of her dog and stuff. I feel like they become a bit more friendly with you, as if you’re on the way to being on their kind of level intellectually maybe, as well as more mature.

[Kim, third interview]

Countering the alienation of the first academic year, second and especially third year students start to feel that they are known, and seen as individuals. The personalisation of learning along the clearly defined interests and the growing independence allow for creation of knowledge. Dissertations as capstones mean students become experts in an area they are passionate about: Aina, in her Masters year expressed her goal of ‘contributing to the actual field [of research] and just developing my career’ through a PhD. It is indeed through becoming passionate via the university studies, extracurricular activities, internships and part-time jobs that helps formulating career plans.

Towards becoming a graduate 

Throughout the final year, time once more becomes tumultuous, given the concerns around finishing university and figuring out what is next. As opposed to initial career ideas that looked at the ‘rest’ of the students’ lives, the later interviews saw their thinking focus on a shorter time-horizon. Robert tentatively embraces the uncertainty, keeping his options open: 

It’s not like I’m stuck down one route now. I’ve still got a whole load of different things to choose from, which is bad in a way, because it means I’ve got to make a decision at some point about what I’m going to do and it might be easier if someone just went “there, do that”.

[Robert, fourth interview]

This element of making important decisions prompts a distinction of ‘proper jobs’ versus ‘bog standard jobs’, with some graduates opting for ‘graduate gap years’. What some participants describe as a ‘random’, ‘bog standard’, ‘shitty’, or ‘normal’ job, tends to be in an industry not related to their degree: in catering, retail, service industry or the care sector. Such roles are considered short term, offer substantive flexibility for the graduate, do not require specific qualifications, and are not competitive – simply put, students are not invested in them. Conversely, graduate jobs are described as ‘real’, ‘adult’, ‘proper’, ‘a more academic’, a ‘career kind of’ job that they ‘would enjoy’. These are in sectors and industries they are striving to work in, and necessitate a degree and some specific skills. These competitive roles require flexibility from the graduate, but remunerate better, whilst also promising career progression. The ‘real’ jobs necessitate emotional investment and dedication, with constraints on leaving these roles. 

There are three key features of how graduates are thinking about their futures. First, they see themselves as graduates of their course at NRBU, hoping to work in a related sector, using their disciplinary knowledge or employing some specific skills they developed. Second, graduates aim to find an employer or role they can believe in, wanting to see the value of their work on a smaller scale and generally do good in the world – this is sometimes juxtaposed with prioritising earnings. For instance, Khaled in the third interview talks about a ‘materialistic view’ of ‘just doing [a job] because I’m getting money’ not fitting with how he ‘was brought up to think’, connecting this to his working-class background. Finally, they also reflect on their newfound confidence: in their abilities, them as people in social contexts, knowing their own strengths and weaknesses. It is this confidence that allows graduates to embrace the complexity of potential options and the trade-offs, as well as non-linear and serendipitous futures. As Amina suggested:   

I have changed, it’s been, I don’t know how to describe it, (…) I’m not the same person I was when I first initially started personality-wise. I’ve got so much more self-confidence in me as well, which I’ve never had and I’ve learned so much over the past three years (…) I’ve changed in every possible way someone could change.

[Amina, third interview] 

Recognising the multitude of dimensions at play, a diverse and interlinked set of future plans emerge, entangled in a commitment to personal concerns, values and identity, social relationships, belonging to a community and a place, as well as the wider structural constraints. Such limits are linked to financial insecurity and a sense of urgency to find a job, any job. Further, with fewer family connections future graduates are less likely to gain suitable work experience or help with job applications. 

How to enable transformative university transitions?  

Through their non-linear, multidimensional, and diverse transitions, this generation of students became (mostly) independent and (certainly) reflexive adults. University as a transformative space and time is much more than an investment into one’s human capital that should pay off as employment opportunities and earnings, or the way to fulfil short-term labour market needs. Graduates become engaged members of a broader community, gain substantive expertise in their chosen area of interest, and develop a broad plan for their futures.   

To foster transformative transitions for all, embracing the diversity in student and graduate experiences that also change over time is key. This means, first, knowing who students are, using sufficient scaffolding to make knowledge accessible, and fostering an inclusive university community. Second, a whole-institutional support provision throughout the student lifecycle that understands transitions as changeable and diverse could ensure more equitable access. Finally, stable and substantive non-repayable financial support is fundamental to level student experiences for those from poor backgrounds, especially in the context of the current cost of living crisis.     

SRHE member Rita Hordósy is a Nottingham Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham, and a co-convener of the SRHE Student Access and Experience Network. Her current research compares and contrasts the research / teaching nexus across European universities in Hungary, England and Norway. This blog is based on her recent paper ‘I’ve changed in every possible way someone could change’ – transformative university transitions’, in Research Papers in Education.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/rhordosy


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Making space in higher education research: Reporting back from our higher education geographies conference symposium

by Kate Carruthers Thomas and Holly Henderson

  • Kate Carruthers Thomas
  • Holly Henderson

Space and place are too often the background and too rarely the central focus of higher education research. This was the argument of our symposium, which offered four ways of theorising the spatial in higher education. The conversation that began in this symposium extends far beyond the time allowed, and so we are continuing that conversation here, with each of the four symposium contributors summarising their use of the spatial in higher education research.

Kate Carruthers Thomas on Massey’s spatial concepts

I work with the spatial concepts of Doreen Massey to research and theorise higher education (HE).  Massey was a radical geographer, bringing a feminist perspective to discussions of space, place and power and her understanding of space as plural, heterogeneous and fluid energises an analysis of dominant forms of space and power in HE. My SRHE 2019 paper drew on two research examples: Gender(s) at Work (2018) exploring ways gender shapes experiences of the workplace and career in a post-1992 UK university, and Dimensions of Belonging (2016) problematising a sector-wide reductive narrative of ‘student belonging’ in relation to part-time students.

Applying Massey’s spatial propositions to HE frames ‘the university’ as a product of social relations shaped by geographies of powersocially-coded masculine. Universities originate from monasteries: elite, male-dominated spaces of knowledge production. The contemporary university remains shaped by the power geometry of patriarchal disciplinary discourses, traditions and cultures as well as male-defined constructions of work and career success. Massey coins the term ‘power geometry’ to describe how individuals and groups are differently positioned in relation to flows of capital and culture, to different geographies of power in particular contexts. How they are positioned shapes how they experience the spaces they are in. Gender(s) at Work extends the notion of geography of power to gender, examining how gender operates as a geography of power to position individuals and groups in relation to the flows and connections (of prestige, reward, status) within that activity space.

I also use Massey’s device of ‘activity space’ – the spatial network of links and activities, of spatial connections, locations within which agents operate (2005: 55). This multiscalar tool enables a view of individual universities as activity spaces (shaped by their own geographies of power) and as nodes in the wider activity space of a stratified HE sector. Dimensions of Belonging theorises four English universities as sites in relationship with locality, economy and the HE sector, with each university campus a complex territory of power and inequality in which belonging is negotiated.

To capture lived experiences of university spaces, I created a methodology of spatial storytelling; one sensitised to ‘the social as inexorably also spatial’ (Massey 1993:80).  This mobilises the idea of power geometry through combining narrative enquiry and visual mapping, disrupting and revealing spaces between organisational rhetoric/corporate narratives and lived experiences. 

Working with Massey in researching and theorizing HE both energises my analyses of space, place and power and leaves room for complexity and contradiction.  Spatial storytelling reveals ‘spaces between’ leaving ‘openings for something new’ (Massey 2005: 107).

Holly Henderson on de Certeau’s spatial stories

Higher education happens in places. It does not, however, happen in all places equally, and nor does it happen equally in any one place. The complexities of how higher education is understood and accessed in different places, and how places themselves are defined in relation to higher education, are multiple. In a previous project, which looked at students studying for degrees in post-industrial towns without universities, and in a current project, which looks at access to and experiences of higher education on small islands around the UK, I have used concepts from social geographies to try to get to grips with what it means to say that higher education happens (unequally) in places.

I use spatial analysis in three ways. Firstly, using the concept of spatial stories (de Certeau, 1984), I see any place as defined narratively through layers of stories. These stories are the ways that a town or street comes to be known as a ‘kind of’ place. Often, we do not notice that we are telling or hearing them, but they are fundamental to the way we understand our surroundings. Secondly, I extend spatial analysis to the relationship between higher education and place. In the UK, and especially in England, the dominant story is of a particular mobility pattern, in which the 18-year old undergraduate leaves the place of the familial home and moves into university accommodation in a new place. Finally, I ask how individuals narrate their own stories in relation to these first two factors; do they see themselves as belonging to the place they are living in, and has that question of belonging affected their decision to move or stay in place for degree education? Does the place they feel they belong to require that they make a decision between staying without studying higher education, or leaving in order to study? And if the place they are living and studying in does not have the same history of providing higher education as that of a well-known university city or town, does higher education fit straightforwardly with the enduring narratives through which the place is defined? These questions, and others that stem from them, position place at the centre of higher education research.

Fadia Dakka on Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis

Prompted by Ron Barnett’s claim about the ‘ineradicability of rhythm in university time’ (2015), my reflection extends to the nature of time, place and change in contemporary academia. In keeping with the theme of the Symposium, I emphasise how making space in higher education research subsumes both making time and ‘dwelling’ in it. Therefore, rhythm does not simply refer to the pace of activities within the university, but also to its ontological, epistemological and ethical dimensions. Using rhythm as a critical lens and a pedagogical orientation, I have examined the production of time and space in the everyday life of a teaching-intensive university in the West Midlands (2017-18), drawing inspiration from Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis (2004 [1991]) and Critique of Everyday Life (2014 [1947,1961, 1981]). I am particularly interested in the ethical and political implications that can be drawn from rhythmic analyses of ‘felt’ time and space (Wittman, 2017) in contemporary universities. On this basis, I have empirically explored notions of anticipation, dwelling, appropriation and presence within the contemporary university.

The analysis of the participants’ spatio-temporal experiences within the institution has revealed a plurality of academic rhythms that respond to radically different logics. The logic of accumulation, rooted in temporal linearity, exacerbates procedural anticipation, conflating quantification with educational progress. Within this logic, the emphasis on individual productivity and time-management produces an impoverished educational experience centred on constant adaptation and compliance. Spatially, this coincides with the abstract, conceived grid of institutional timetables, schedules and deadlines, the oppressive repetition of which reinforces a ‘pedagogy of domination’ (Middleton, 2014). On the other hand, the poetic logic, that translates Aristotle’s ‘poiesis’ as the human activity of bringing something new into the world, resonates with ideas of transformation, appropriation and dwelling which, in turn, reaffirm the centrality of imagination-relation-anticipation as a necessary condition for meaningful change.

Appropriation, dwelling and (anticipatory) presence have strong implications for how we inhabit the university space. For instance, the participants’ unorthodox production of space documented in the project epitomizes the Lefebvrian act of subversion whereby the perceived and lived spaces produced by the participants effectively disorientate the conceived space of the institution (Lefebvre, 1991 [1974]). The participants’ refusal to inhabit the homogeneous yet fragmented space of the capitalist institution (Stanek, 2011) contrasts with their dwelling in pockets of autonomous, reflective space/time meticulously carved out in their everyday. These forms of spatio-temporal appropriation need to be increasingly performed as collective, liberating acts of quotidian resistance, in order to subvert the capitalist institution from within. 

Sol Gamsu and Michael Donnelly on the relational construction of place

The moment of entry to higher education (HE) sees major patterns of internal migration within the UK. Accessing HE is, as we know, a process that is deeply implicated in the creation and reproduction of inequalities. Binding these basic points together in an analysis of flows of students between home or school and university allows us to show how the geography of education is central to core debates in geography. Like my colleagues, the work of Massey has been central to how I have conceptualized these processes. Place for Massey (2005: 139) forms ‘where the successions of meetings, the accumulation of weavings and encounters build up a history.’ Regional boundaries are formed through the concentration of particular social practices that become symbolically and spatially associated with certain boundaries and reflect and re-create divisions and hierarchies (Cooke, 1985; Paasi, 2011).

These patterns develop over time and are rooted in particular political economies with HE provision largely instigated, or at least largely financed, by the state. The historical and contemporary geographies of local and national state power, the spatial contexts of regional dominance within England, the relative autonomy of the Welsh, Scottish and (Northern) Irish systems of governance in relation to power of the Anglo-British state – HE has been a central field that has been shaped by and in turn reinforced the spatial hierarchies and divisions created through the state. Beyond these structural geographies though, cultural geographies of regional division are also reflected and created by individual mobilities created by daily or termly movements to and from university and home.

Our paper (Gamsu and Donnelly, forthcoming) explores these theoretical issues, using social network analysis (SNA) methods to highlight how recognizable regional and national boundaries are present in students’ mobility patterns. Taking the example of students moving from Northern Ireland to Liverpool we explore how student mobilities reflect historical patterns of migration across the Irish Sea. Using the same SNA approach, we examine the distinctive hierarchies of schools and universities present in school to university movements. We find a cluster of primarily English elite private and state schools and universities. Quantitative SNA methods are complemented by qualitative interviews and mapping techniques to allow us to show how student mobilities at the micro-level create, reflect and reinforce historical spatial boundaries and socio-spatial hierarchies of institutions.

In Conclusion

To draw these distinctive approaches together we briefly revisit the original aims of our symposium, the first of which was to highlight the often unseen ways that space and place structure higher education, and structure it unequally. Inequalities and difference underpin Henderson’s work with spatial stories working to understand ways in which higher education happens (unequally) in places, while Carruthers Thomas frames the university itself as a complex territory of power and inequality. Spatial analyses throw up difference and relationship in Dakka’s uncovering of a plurality of contradictory academic rhythms in the everyday life within a teaching-intensive university and, in analysing flows of students between home/school and university, Gamsu and Donnelly highlight the shaping of HE through local, regional and national differences reflecting historical and contemporary geographies of local and national state power.

The second aim of the symposium was to demonstrate different possibilities for the use of spatial theory in researching higher education, providing new insights into enduring debates. To this end, each of the four papers foreground particular spatial/temporal concepts or processes. By putting place at the centre of her research into island HE Henderson gains new insights into narratives of HE and belonging. Gamsu and Donnelly frame the moment of entry into HE as a pattern of internal migration, using social network analysis to highlight regional and national boundaries in student mobility patterns.  Carruthers Thomas positions gender as a geography of power within the university as means of examining spaces between organisational rhetoric of equality and lived experience. Meanwhile Dakka introduces opposing logics – the logic of accumulation and poetic logic to challenge the privileging of individual productivity over reflective space/time carved out in the everyday.

Dr Kate Carruthers Thomas is a Senior Research Fellow and Athena SWAN Project Manager at Birmingham City University, UK. She specialises in interdisciplinary enquiry into contemporary higher education, inequalities and gender; in spatial methods and analyses. Kate also uses poetry and graphics as methods of disseminating her research in these fields. 

Dr Holly Henderson is an Assistant Professor in Education at the University of Nottingham. She has previously held positions at the University of Birmingham and began her career teaching in Further Education in London. Her research and teaching focus broadly on sociological issues of inequality in education. In particular, she is interested in access to and experiences of post-compulsory and higher education. Her research is theoretically informed by social geographies, which enable analysis of the ways in which place, space and mobilities structure educational possibility. She is also interested in narrative and its relationship to subjectivity.

References

Barnett, R (2015) ‘The time of reason and the ecological university’, in Gibbs, P, Ylijoki, OH, Guzman-Valenzuela, C, Barnett, R (2015) Universities in the Flux of Time London: Routledge pp 121-134
Carruthers Thomas, K (2019) ‘Gender as a Geography of Power’ in Crimmins, G (ed) (2019) Strategies for Resisting Sexism in the Academy London: Palgrave Macmillan

Carruthers Thomas, K (2018) Rethinking Student Belonging in Higher Education: From Bourdieu to Borderlands London: Routledge

Cooke P (1985) ‘Class practices as regional markers: a contribution to labour geography’ in Gregory, D and Urry, J (eds) Social relations and spatial structures London: Macmillan, pp 213-241

De Certeau, M (1984) The practice of everyday life (S Randall trans.) California. University of Berkley Press
Gamsu, S and Donnelly, M (Forthcoming) ‘Social network analysis methods and the geography of education: regional divides and elite circuits in the school to university transition in the UK’ Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie

Lefebvre, H (1991 [1974]) The Production of Space Oxford: Blackwells Publishers Ltd

Lefebvre, H (2004 [1991]) Rhythmanalysis: Space, time and everyday life London: Bloomsbury

Lefebvre, H (2014 [1947,1961,1981]) Critique of Everyday Life London: Verso

Massey, D (1993) ‘Power-Geometry and a Progressive Sense of Place’. In Bird, J, Curtis, B, Putnam, T, Robertson, G and Tuckner, L (eds) Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Chance. Abingdon: Routledge pp 59-69

Massey, D (2005) For space, London: Sage

Middleton, S (2014) Henri Lefebvre and Education. Space, History, Theory New York: Routledge

Paasi, A (2011) ‘The region, identity, and power’ Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 14: 9-16

Stanek, L (2011) Henri Lefebvre on Space. Architecture, Urban Research and the Production of Theory Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press

Wittman, M (2017) Felt Time. The science of how we experience time. Cambridge: MIT Press

The Symposium was held at the 2019 SRHE Research Conference at Celtic Manor. I bet you’re sorry you missed it.