Surprising, rich and frustrating

This one-line learning journey focusing on collaborative and blended learning possibilities through a problem-based learning approach has been both surprising, rich and frustrating. It has broadened my perspectives on what is possible to do in terms of using a range of technically mediating programs and tools, and a deeper sense of the landscape of ethical/private/public dimensions online as well as the spectrum of being in a visitor/residence role/mode and how to grow in my own ability to make myself present on-line more on my own conscious, various and authentic terms. The frustrating part was initiated in realizing that all the challenges of learning and teaching together with others are still the same online as in a classroom, influenced by the learning cultural habitus’ present, only now, framed with more or different obstacles and possibilities? 

Online, there is an extra challenge of co-creating connectivity and relational social carrying capacity through a medium that is a strange animal of its own. It is wigging its tail in offering an easy access to each other from all over the globe and have a close affinity to the multimodal spectrum of visual, still and moving imagery expression, as well as text and to some extent verbal communication. There is a vast asynchronistic field of possibilities to design for. But the rest of its synchronic corporal, sensual and tacit modalities are strangely twisted and withdrawn half-way there through the screen. I felt that I drifted into a “no-bodies” pedagogical land, long astray from my own ways of building a learning atmosphere and process through embodied modes of applied theatre and drama. I had experimented during the pandemic) with online versions of teaching drama and applied theatre as means to teacher training and a series of other educational purposes and started to find interesting ways to bridge some of the gaps. But this was like starting on square one and taking in a whole new field of experiences and knowledge that has approached the concerns of online and blended learning.

I often teach through experienced-based and performative modes with bodies standing and moving and playfully engaging the collective atmosphere. It can have the advantage of directly involving people in relational building that involve more than relating to text, words and talking about something. The participatory element directly involves all that you are, and we are, as human beings relating in groups in a holistic sense. If framed pedagogically well, it can bring people back to a wider range of resourcefulness within themselves. Through the live performativity it is possible to create an indirect relational building focus in a quality of serious playfulness that can let the trust emerge in the group dynamic. It also allows for interaction of polyphonic ways of knowing as for example presence in perceiving multi-modally, giving it word-less forms in gesture, internal images, songs, collective statues, role-plays, poems. The personal experience can emerge through story-telling your knowing of something as part of your life-experience in non-prestigious modes, and reflect on the content verbally in proximate dialogue to the practical experience, related thematically to learning aims, connecting deep intra- and inter-subjective perspectives in a trans-contextual display (see further presentation of extended epistemology below). 

I have continuously inquired and kept on refining my teacher/learner/artist-role in practice of what learners need to become genuinely collaborative with more of themselves involved and how I can scaffold premises for it in a teacher role. How can I design/organise/facilitate and make a relational foundation come alive in a situated now, and modelling it through the aesthetics and qualities of presence and interaction in my own personal modes and strategies? My mode and aspirations of teaching irl has been to co-cultivate a learning culture with relational focus involving a spectrum of an extended epistemology and a co-operatively inquiring (Heron, 2008, se further down). 

As we moved through topic 1to 2 to 3 and landed in topic 4, I became so aware of how I am used to mediate the learning process in simultaneous, polyphonic, multi-focused ways that started to resonate more with literature turning up in topic 4. By topic four when shifting over to a focus on the teacher’s ability to design for blended learning and collaborative processes that build not only on networking but cultivating for a community of inquiry I started to feel more at home in the relationship between the depth and complexity in the challenges and ways of framing the thinking to be involved in them. This in the sense of being anchored in the question about how the learner will be active and through what variations of interactivities that the teacher can be creative and situated in this. I could start to recognise my own ecology of communication and interaction in the sex dimensional types of learning activities described by Laurillard, (2012), referred to in a group work – inquiring/investigating, acquiring, collaborating, discussing, practicing and producing. I also appreciated considering thoroughgoingly aspects as the mode of communication being in tune with the vision of the content, translating into the “how” of co-creating, collaborating, considering of doing things, as in the 7 C of Learning design (Conole, 2015), an how the joint complexity of both of these theoretical raster’ starts to capture the dimensional depths of the process. 

Here comes a scene of introduction to teaching and a small applied analyse of it with the help of these frames. It is an elementary teacher training in applied theatre and drama, in which some of the learning aims and purposes are to re-connect to and/or develop their play competence in relation to interactively using drama convention to lead young children in indirect learning processes thematically connected to different subjects and curriculums. Some of the characteristics in the “personas” (Conol, 2015, p. 4) of the people attending these courses can be deep fears of thinking that they now will be forced into humiliating exposure “on stage” in making theatre. They are deeply motivated to relate to children (often from the experience of playing with their own children or longing for children). But playing, using the imagination, is only safe with children and can be ridiculed in the context of grownups present, or sometimes not something they feel comfortable with at all. Often the understanding of learning and play are dichotomised as an obstacle through different belief systems not made aware. At the same time everyone agrees with the official documents stating that all children should be allowed to use their multimodal and different ways of inquiring, knowing, expressing themselves and discovering through fact as well as imagination and creativity, in which movement, images, drama, dans and all artforms are required. They can often be skilled in some theoretical understandings about how modelling and incorporating what they want to teach the children is an important competence in a pedagogue, but not always connected to and embodied in their own practice.

I start by having arranged them all in a circle (the way they often place the children), and in which we all immediately is on equal terms in the level of access to each other. Everyone can see and hear and address everyone mutually. I give them the overall focus of the course and the design of the day and acknowledge that they very soon are most welcome to really share their fears and anticipations of what drama means for them, but also their curiosities. I share some of my own background, in which stories of failure and success and my own deep motivation and joy in using drama is shared. It allows for personal experience of all sorts to be part of the learning journey together and valued as collective material. I then ask them to say something about how they feel today (bringing them to become present from where they are, not needing to perform). I ask them to do that indirectly through elaborating on the metaphor of weather. I start by sharing my own state of being as for example that I am a bit tired, but the sun is shining through my clouds as I feel so much warmth and excitement in anticipating my process with them… (I explain that they do not have to share any personal content directly at all or if they want to they can – it means that they can “in protection of the metaphor/role” be indirectly personal without sharing details.) After a round of this, I make them aware of that they have with ease used their improvisor, their playfulness and imagination creatively applied. They have applied what we name in drama as metaxis – the tension between real experience and imagination that can be used through the means of role-taking or working with stories and metaphores…in different conscious ways. We have also started to share our selves, and building relationships… and in this way… I realize that every exercise I design, and in relation to each other… is multi-dimensionally and trans-contextually tied to all aspects of the process-at the same time.

In contrasting all the aspects and perspectives that this course has touched upon, I can see my own practice and how I combine everything very simultaneously directly and indirectly and step by step. The first trust-building process of relating to using intrinsically interwoven modalities that simultaneously start to focus the learning aims thematically, inquiring and acquiring knowledge and building learning to learn literacies in how we engage practically and discuss and reflect in proximity to that practice. Often and suddenly the more theoretical and conceptual landscape starts to make sense in such a process. It can then be applied and introduced in order to grasp the experience that is individually awake in everybody through their own individually rather than general reference points…and it can be shared and explored collectively rather than being presented in a cognitive individual mind-flat of text on its own high above common, collective and situated experiencing grounds. In these processes the text and reading literacies becomes structured ways that mirrors, make aware and scaffolds what is happening in action, relationally in an extended explorative practice-based universe.

For me, this move, towards the relational complexity and conscious use of multiple knowledge forms (under the mantle of blended) in teaching invigorates the role of online learning as an innovator. Especially when it encompasses even the, often poor, academic approaches to learning and teaching irl. Poor in its conventionally (reduced) into a non-relational text and verbally based learning culture that passively meet the question of what quality of learning that is aspired for, in complying to surface learning even when it is not the appropriate form of learning acquired. I would say that once it is identified that deeper, significant and/or transformative (Mezirov, 2009, Illeris, 2009, 2014) learning becomes important, a whole new order of approaches can start. I will end by sharing an introduction of extended epistemology and co-operative inquiry, taken from my thesis (Bragby, 2020). This as I saw our group moving into using this spectrum of involvement in our learning journey. But I do realize that involving an extended epistemology, it calls for an extension of the nuances of the modes of presence beyond – social-cognitive and teacher presence – presented in the approach of a community of inquiry (Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes and Garrison, 2013). It calls for an embodied, holistic, aesthetic and tacitly aware view on knowing, knowledge co-creation and interaction. I do experience though, that this online-course, in contrary to many academic contexts, at least is aspiring towards an extended epistemology in the name of blended online learning in community and PBL-processes. 

Extended epistemology

There have been many attempts to capture this inter-dynamic between aesthetic, heightened awareness, practical/physical, reflective and verbal modes, which is also absolutely at work in ATD (Applied theatre and drama), and in many other attempts to create deep and transformative qualities in both education, professional and organisational development as well as research. A very important contribution and epistemological display for this need is made by Heron (1996) and Heron & Reason, (2008), in the formulation of an extended epistemology, which is also connected to the research approach of co-operative inquiry (Heron, 1996). I will introduce it here. 

Within the field of action research, one speaks of learning, knowledge and knowing in terms of an Extending epistemology within a Co-operative Inquiry (Heron & Reason, 2008), an expanded form of knowledge creation, in the sense that; “The radical epistemology discussed here is a theory of how we know, which is ‘extended’ beyond the ways of knowing of positivistic oriented academia” (p. 367).

In this understanding and concept of learning and knowledge producing processes are included cognitive and non-cognitive abilities, experience-based learning, creative presence, art-based and practice-based knowledge forms. It is described as an organic dynamic between four differentiated forms of knowing – “extended – or what researcher term, ‘ecological’ – epistemology is embedded in or protected by many theatre practices. It needs to be recognized as a significant epistemology, serving also as a base for research and methodology, and is rooted in the arts movement itself” (Rasmussen, 2014, p. 21).

Fig. 3. Extended epistemology. 

Experiential knowing is the foundation of all the other forms- the person experiences a felt encounter, which is grasped and presented intuitively, expressed propositionally and extended into practical action. Action creates a new experience a new experience of felt encounter and the cycle begins anew. Practical knowing is deemed to be the “higher branching and flowering out of, and bearing fruit of the lower” (Heron, 1996).

The four ways of knowing can be briefly defined as follows, both in terms of process and outcome. Experiential knowing is by being present with, by direct face-to-face encounter with, person, place or thing. It is known through the immediacy of perceiving, through empathy and resonance. Its product is the quality of the relationship in which it participates, including the quality of being of those in the relationship. 

Presentational knowing emerges from the encounter of experiential knowing, by intuiting significant form and process in that which is met. Its product reveals this significance through the expressive imagery of movement, dance, sound, music, drawing, painting, sculpture, poetry, story and drama.

Propositional knowing ‘about’ something is intellectual knowing of ideas and theories. Its product is the informative spoken or written statement.

Practical knowing is knowing how to do something. Its product is a skill, knack or competence – interpersonal, manual, political, technical, transpersonal, and more – supported by a community of practice (Heron, 1981, 1992, 1996a). (Heron & Reason, 2013, p. 367)

Heron and Reason state that all four forms of knowing exist dynamically in a knowledge creating whole that is played out collectively and socially. “Everyone naturally employs these four ways of knowing and tacitly interweaves them in all sorts of ways in everyday life” (Heron & Reason, 2013, p. 367). When it comes to using this innate ability in a researching mode, the difference is said to be that: 

In co-operative inquiry they become intentional, and we say that knowing will be more valid if the four ways are congruent with each other: If our knowing is grounded in our experience, expressed through our images and stories, understood through theories that make sense to us, and expressed in worthwhile action in our lives (Heron & Reason, 2013, p. 367). Bragby (2020, p. 36-38)

I experience that our group of the strange crouches slowly opened ourselves up and started to apply our process in the spirit of his extended epistemological mind- and landscape . We blended our different responses and creative expression to what mattered in scaffolding for collaboration and building a community in our synchronous and asynchronous online exploration of the learning in each topic. For me it turned the strange online animal more and more into a strangely beautiful way of travelling in learning together over the time and space of the time spent in the online parking lot. I appreciated the meme-challenge in topic five, which calls out for gathering the essence of the learning together… and came out in an image and a poetic summery for me.

Learning to learn together – online – is like crouching a blended digital/analogues bike

that can travel between the worlds of all participants

 with no one in control steering,

 but with everyone on-board manoeuvring …

Conole, G. (2015) The 7Cs of Learning design. (manuscript)

Heron, J., & Reason, P. (2008). Extending epistemology within a co-operative inquiry. In

P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook of action research. (2nd ed.). London, United Kingdom: Sage. 

Heron, J., & Reason, P. (2013). Extending epistemology within a co-operative inquiry. In 

P., Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook of action research. Retrieved from http://www.dawsonera.com

Heron, J. (1981). Philosophical basis for a new paradigm. In P. Reason & J. Rowan (Eds.),

Human Inquiry, a sourcebook of new paradigm research. Chichester, United Kingdom: Wiley.

Heron, J. (1992). Feeling and personhood: Psychology in another key. London, United

Kingdom: Sage.

Heron, J. (1996). Co-operative inquiry: research into the human condition. London, 

United Kingdom: Sage.

Illeris, K. (Ed.). (2009). Contemporary theories of learning: learning theorists … in their

own words. New York, NY: Routledge.

Illeris, K. (2014). Transformative learning and identity. London, United Kingdom:

Routledge.

Mezirow, J., & Taylor, E.W. (2009). Transformative learning in practice: insights from

community, workplace, and higher education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey- Bass.

Rasmussen, B. (2014). The art of researching with art: Towards an ecological

epistemology. Applied Theatre Research, 2(1), 21-32.

Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in blended

      learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Edmonton: AU

      Press.