Dissolving the Walls An Inquiry into Nomadic Agile Learning Matthew Stevens June 2020 A thesis submitted to Auckland University of Technology in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1 Table of Contents List of Figures 3 Attestation of Authorship 4 Acknowledgements 5 Abstract 6 Introduction 8 Part One: Establishing an Epistemological Frame 18 Chapter 1: The Epistemological Problematic 21 Chapter 2: Pragmatism: An Old Name for Some New Ways of Thinking 30 Chapter 3: Comparative Discussion of Related Perspectives 59 Reflective Practice (62) | Activity Theory (66) | Phenomenology (72) Enactivism (84) | Agential Realism (104) | Deconstruction (107) Part Two: Developing a Proposition for a Nomadic Agile Learning Approach 115 Chapter 4: The Inquiry Approach 117 Chapter 5: The Problematic Situation and Tentative Proposition 139 Chapter 6: Collecting Other Perspectives 155 Chapter 7: Discussion of Perspectives 174 The Purpose: Why (174) | The Curriculum: What (184) | The Pedagogy: How (202) | Learning Contexts: When and Where (227) Chapter 8: A Refined Proposition for a Nomadic Agile Learning Approach 238 Conclusion / Summary 261 References 273 Appendix A: Background – A Proposal for an Agile Approach to the Teaching and Learning of Creative Technologies 286 Appendix B: Ethics Approval 295 a) Conditional Approval Letter (295) | b) Final Approval Letter (296) Appendix C: Tools 297 a) Email Invitation Templates (297) | b) Participant Information Sheet (298) c) Participant Consent Form (301) | d) Indicative Interview Questions (302) 2 List of Figures Figure 1: The inquiry as it ended up unfolding 10 Figure 2: The philosophical intertwinings that contribute to a pragmatist-enactivist onto-epistemology 20 Figure 3: Dewey’s process of experimental learning and inquiry 55 Figure 4: Vygotsky’s model of the mediated act and its common reformulation 67 Figure 5: The structure of a human activity system 68 Figure 6: Two interacting activity systems as a minimal model for the third Generation of activity theory 121 Figure 7: Interacting learning and work activity systems as a learning-work transaction space 122 Figure 8: Sequence of learning actions in an expansive learning cycle 123 Figure 9: The iconic model of the SSM learning cycle 129 Figure 10: The design thinking process 132 Figure 11: The pedagogical inquiry, as it unfolded 138 Figure 12: An initial rough sketch of nomadic agile learning 147 Figure 13: Front exterior of the Kauri Lounge installation at the Ellen Melville Centre 222 Figure 14: Kauri Lounge student being interviewed for Māori Television news 223 Figure 15: Kauri Lounge prototypes and concept drawings 223 Figure 16: Kauri Lounge interior wall banners telling the story of Kauri 224 Figure 17: Kauri Lounge street poster campaign 224 Figure 18: Help Me Tell My Story—a collaborative cross-institution student project 233 Figure 19: The nomadic agile course as an entanglement of multiple emergent nomadic agile learning journeys 259 Figure 20: The domain of practice 289 Figure 21: The agile learner at the center of their own learning network 290 Figure 22: The original agile learning proposal as a complex set of iterative hermeneutic circles 292 Figure 23: The agile learning model as it was applied to the Graduate Diploma of Creative Technologies 293 3 Attestation of Authorship I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person (except where explicitly defined in the acknowledgements), nor material which to a substantial extent has been submitted for the award of any other degree or diploma of a university or other institution of higher learning. Matthew Stevens 4 Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to acknowledge and express my sincere gratitude to Dr Stanley Frielick, my primary supervisor, for his generous guidance and encouragement—and for introducing me to ecological ways of knowing and learning. In particular, I would like to thank him for taking on this supervision halfway through the project, and for his invaluable help getting me back on track. I would also like to acknowledge and sincerely thank Associate Professor Andrew Gibbons, my secondary supervisor, for his ongoing support, feedback and understanding—and for providing continuity through my various supervision changes. I also need to acknowledge my other supervisors who shared the journey for a while—Professor Charles Walker for encouraging and enabling me to do this in the first place, Dr Jennie Swann for her empathy and understanding, and Associate Professor Ricardo Sosa for his invaluable guidance getting me through my candidature confirmation. Also from AUT, I would like to acknowledge the help from Dr James Charleton with my doctoral scholarship, and Charles Grinter for his help and advice with the ethics application (16/409) and approval (7 Dec, 2016). Finally, thanks to the Elwyn Sheehan for her library support, and for her awesome proofreading and editing of the final draft. I would like to thank all those who generously gave up their valuable time to participate in the interviews and openly share their perspectives. I also need to acknowledge the generous support of my workplace, Media Design School, for allowing me the flexibility and time to work on this, and actually do it all—with particular thanks to Jim Murray and Dr Sarah Baker. Thanks to all the wonderful, inspiring colleagues and students that I have had the privilege of being involved with in my teaching life. It’s been an amazing and humbling journey. Finally, I would like to give a massive thank you to my partner, Kerry-Ann Boyle, for her unwavering support and encouragement. 5 Abstract Dissolving the Walls is an inquiry into nomadic agile forms of learning beyond the constraints of educational institutions and qualifications. It starts with the tensions I experienced in my own teaching practice when applying an agile learning approach within a graduate diploma of creative technologies. The agile approach—involving individualized curricula, introducing and connecting learners directly to the domain of practice, and action-based learning approaches—stood in tension with dominant models of prescribed curricula and defined learning outcomes. Underneath this tension is a core contradiction between different worldviews and epistemological beliefs. In order to establish a suitable epistemological frame for the inquiry, the thesis begins with a philosophical discussion of the dichotomy between subjective knowing and objective knowledge. I turn firstly to Deweyan pragmatism—a naturalistic theory of knowing—that is able to dissolve traditional mind-world dualism through its holistic notion of transactional experience. This is followed by a comparative discussion of other similar action-orientated perspectives. These include enactivism and activity theory which, taken together with pragmatism, are able to contribute to a richer pragmatist-enactivist onto-epistemology of situated knowing. I then return to the practical pedagogical problem of the learning situations themselves and how these might be reconceived from a pragmatist-enactivist perspective. Generally following a Deweyan process of inquiry and using a mixed toolkit of approaches, I begin with a tentative proposition for a nomadic agile learning approach—beyond the constraints of institutions and qualifications. I then set out to collect the perspectives from the main participants in the wider learning activities through a series of semi-structured interviews. Participants included former students, teaching colleagues and employers. The interviews revealed differences in the epistemological beliefs and pedagogical expectations between participant groups and between individuals within the groups. Despite these differences, I found that there is common ground—in relation to what needs to be learned and how it is learned—that can form the basis for new shared understandings and participation in an integrated learning-practice approach. 6 What emerges is not a learning model that can be applied generally to all situations. Rather, particular learning-practice situations are dynamically co-constituted by the participating learners, teachers, practitioners and workplaces. Traditional boundaries between learning and work activities are dissolved to form a continuum of potential learning situations, within the wider domain of practice. As practice situations are always sociocultural situations, it is not only the individual learner-practitioners who learn—the whole situation itself also learns. This has particular significance for learning for professional practice, especially in creative technologies domains. Rather than privileging workplaces as stable practice situations—for which learners first need to acquire work-ready skills—they are better understood as continuously unfolding learning-practice situations that emerge from the dynamical transactions of the participants. The implication for learning courses is that rather than workplaces being passive beneficiaries of learning that takes place in separate educational contexts, we need to dissolve the walls to create an integrated participatory approach in which learners, institutions, teachers, professional practitioners and workplaces all jointly contribute and learn together. 7 Introduction Dissolving the Walls is a pragmatist inquiry that explores nomadic agile forms of learning beyond the constraints of educational institutions and