Lisa Grocott and Kate McEntee – Monash University
Kathryn Coleman – University of Melbourne
Roger Manixv -Parsons School of Design and Brooklyn College
This was a fascinating article to read, I came across it while reading Tim Savage’s paper on creative technician roles. The tile spoke out to me in a way, that included 3 words; Designer, Scaffolds and Risk.
These are centred around my technical pedagogy researching reading, and for me, this paper is directing a challenge that is unique to understanding the shifting mindset that is parallel between technical roles and academic roles in design education.
The article sets out to change the mind of students’ and teachers’ perspectives on individualism versus teamwork, changing the concept of work around ‘working with’ people rather ‘than for’ people. Changing the ideas from around ‘making things’ to now preparing the tasks of ‘making sense’, ‘making-possible’, ‘making-right’ and ‘making-happen’.
The shift happens first by the students witnessing the teacher show vulnerability by interrogating their own journey and showcasing empathy, allowing students to experience a transformative teaching opportunity, in which a student possibly gain self-understanding and emotive awareness. The goal here is to allow the vulnerability around risk and the authors then expose that a student with a growth mindset, is more curious which can relate to a comfortable setting around embracing risk, this alertness of shifting mindsets can emphasise the ability to develop and grow in design practice.
The research methodology in research design explored the transformational learning that contested existing mental models on the previous student teaching interaction. These introductions are studio-based learning with interventions based on observations, discussions and reflections, supported by scaffold opportunities throughout the 12-week semester, that ranged from short reflective exercises, such as ‘Give yourself an A’ to mindset-oriented peer assessment, to a semester-long activity, the ‘performance gym’.
The major reflection of this exercise is to get students to open up honestly about their learning experiences and how they considered engagements with risk-taking, uncertainty and vulnerability could be translated to student experiences. These experiences were also observed through American learning scientists (never heard of these before) and also one-to-one interviews with a researcher outside of the teaching team. (would technical staff be this researcher in my scenario?)
Learning design – ‘Learning Mindset Case Clinic’
* group work that worked through peer belief or mindset.
* understanding a peer’s full participation in or dedication to learning.
* Structure for reflecting, acting, responding and practising from listening and showing vulnerability from personal challenges.
Below is an extract from the student feedback;
“We are able to truly be ourselves with our group and spend our energy focused on how we can work together and support one another on our project.
All the class is working together. People aren’t stuck on the project as much. It’s not their project and they don’t feel like it has to be polished and amazing. It is just an exploration. And that makes the whole difference.”
Performing risk through play (behaviour patterns).
* Serious play activities (first 90 minutes of a 6-hour workshop)
* Play-based activities designed to develop and enhance, collaboration, creativity, reflection and self-awareness.
* ‘Performance Gym’ – non-competitive play, to instruct behaviours and thought patterns around group work.
* ‘PG’ changed the environment to illustrate a change in teaching – ‘magic’ circle
* 20 predesigned games to help students ‘jump’ straight in,
* As ‘PG’ progressed so did risk-taking and trust amongst peers.
Below is an extract from the student feedback;
“I think it [the Performance Gym] makes us free ourselves up so we’re
not being so self-conscious of everything we do. And that makes us more open and spontaneous, which I have a hard time doing in real life otherwise […] The number one [advantage] for me would be confidence-building and also learning to interact with people. It’s okay. You don’t have to be right all the time. Just letting it go.
The Gym has helped me understand my relationship with other people,
how I see myself, what I take from others and in turn what I really give back to them.”
The discussion part of the article talks through the need for design education to reconsider how the designer creates, but also include how they act and become in the world. A designer needs to foster cross-disciplinary collaboration, it must include a shared pedagogy that promotes peer-to-peer learning, trust, risk-taking and the ability to reflect on actions. Using the studio setting to track the intrapersonal (taking place or existing within the mind) and the interpersonal (relating to relationships, or communication between people) that illustrates the creativity of designing with ourselves and others, potentially could highlight the value of constructing the learning mindsets, with the outcomes of promoting agile, resilient, reflective learners in the process of a design education.
Even though I read that this skill/mind frame failed to be transferrable across other disciplines, I can understand that the purpose of this sense of play and risk could be more situated in Higher education teaching scenarios that are single discipline focuses rather than multi-based learning institutions, it talks about resisting binaries and how to consider or think differently about the data that came from this educational research, the most transferrable skill is the commitment to taking risks as educators and using vulnerability and interrogating methodologies to reconsider existing mental learning models.
To take the best thing from this article would be the understanding that we, even as teachers are all learners, and our skills are evolving and these skills we cannot gamify (apply typical elements of game playing), strategising or evenly quickly mastering.
To consider the future of this article, areas to study would be studio-based pedagogical experiences, explicit scaffolds, risk-taking, reflection and normalizing discussion around learning mindsets within design education
I believe this is a question, that I am asking myself, are these series of investigative triggers I can add to my technical research pedagogy? How is a single discipline studio environment can I measure risk, reflection and discussion around teaching and learning within the design?
I decided to use interactive textile design as a prompt for this article, to see how the world around textiles is exploring a ‘game-like’ nature in the textile itself.
Interactive textiles to support independent living.
