‘Inhabiting’ and flexible learning: resolving a conundrum

Ronald Barnett, Institute of Education, LondonFlexible Learning conference, Higher education Academy, University of Westminster, 23 July 2013

Centre for Higher Education Studies

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Themes, agenda

Inhabiting – (the HE landscape/ the student experience) Spaces/ learning spaces Flexiblity/ flexible learning Students Students’ being – and becoming Learning landscape Architecture

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Exam question

• In the context of flexible learning, how might the idea of inhabiting help us? Just what is that students might come to inhabit?

(Both practical and policy dimensions)

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Initial considerations – on inhabiting itself

• Being on the inside – Of what? Of external structures (credit accumulation)– Of internal(ised) structures (disciplines)– Of oneself – critical self-reflection; coming to an understanding of

oneself• These are different kinds of learning spaces – with quite different

pedagogical and educational principles • Does talk of flexible learning invite us to focus (over-focus) on external

structures?

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A conundrum

In the context of flexible learning, how might we employ the idea of ‘inhabiting’?

Is it that the student inhabits and finds his/ her way through systems and structures that offer flexible pathways (place, pace, mode)

OR

Is it that the student inhabits (dwells in) her own internalised patterns of reasoning?

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On dwelling in time and space

• B Russell – ‘citizen of the universe’• Hamlet: ‘I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space’• Bourdieu – ‘habitus’ – structured dispositions/ ‘generative capacities’/ ‘categories

of perception’• Polanyi – idea of ‘indwelling’: one comes to dwell in a framework of

understanding – both control over the world and over ourselves; permeated by phases of self-destruction.– ‘we are guided by experience and pass through experience without experiencing it in itself.- ‘we lose ourselves in contemplation.’- ‘Contemplation has no ulterior intention or ultimate meaning … we become

absorbe in he inherent quality of our experience, for its own sake.’

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Inhabiting knowledge

• Disciplines• Interdisciplinarity• Ethno-epistemic assemblages (Irwin & Michael)• Mode 2 K• Epistemic spaces • ‘Thinking spaces’ (Thrift) – in ‘new time-space arrangements’ – ‘spaces

of inspiration incorporating many possible worlds’• Mode 3 K

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Two concepts of learning

• We learn through various systems and structures – of time, place, mode– And these systems may permit greater or lesser choice

• And we learn in ourselves (we inhabit ourselves, dwell in ourselves)– ie, when I learn something, something changes in me. I come into a

new space, a new mode of being in the world

• (Heidegger – being as ‘being possible’: in this learning, new possibilities open for me.)

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So two concepts of learning spaces

(cf Savin-Baden)

• Learning spaces as– External to myself

• And as– Internal to myself.

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The student as architect

• Again, therefore, two ideas• The student as arranger, of exploiter, of external spaces

extended to her• She creates her own patterning of learning spaces –

technology, places, pace, modules, disciplines.• And• She creates her own patterning of ideas and experiences in

her own mind and being.

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The idea of attachment

• In the idea of attachment, these two concepts of learning (and of flexibility) come together

• We can ask with what degree of attachment is a student located in her external learning spaces? (a) external attachment

And we can ask • With what degree of attachment is the same student located in her

internal learning spaces? (b) internal attachmentNB: high attrition rates in many distance-learning programmes across the

world: detachment in (a) leads to detachment in (b)?NB: greater likelihood of non-completion the longer part-time students

take to complete their programme.

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Space and structure

• Are there general relationships between educational effectiveness and structure?

• Total structures, allowing of no choice or spaciousness, are educationally ineffective

• But so too are entirely open educational situations?• Ownership, attachment arise in presence of structures

tempered by elements of choice

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Inhabiting takes place on levels and places • Unit• Course• Institution• National system• Cross-nation

And actually and virtually• In/off campus• In/outside course (LW lng)• In own country/ in another country

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The idea of heutagogy

(Hase and Kenyon):• the study of self-determined learning• expansion and reinterpretation of andragogy• emphasis on learning how to learn, double loop learning, a non-linear

process, and learner self-direction.• requires that educational initiatives include learning how to learn as well as

just learning a given subject itself. • in heutagogy, all learning contexts, both formal and informal, are

considered.

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Conclusions

Genuine learning calls for an internalised learning So flexible learning has, in part, to be a matter of opening spaces

to learners to promote this internalised learning In the end, we have to learn by and for ourselves We inhabit, we design, we modify our own learning spaces Much talk of flexible learning is concerned with external learning

systems Place, mode, pace Not a set of goods in themselves Answer to our conundrum: Flexible learning spaces are justified only to the degree that they

sponsor internal learning, internal inhabiting of and attachment to and development of the learner’s own spaces

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