Sean-Henry Fitzsimons

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.

Tim Savage
University for the Creative Arts

Is this it? have I found answers to the questions I have been having… Where am I?, do I belong? , Am I on the right journey?

Tim Savage has really opened my mind about technical pedagogy from reading this article and our email exchange, I have been questioning ideas around a technical pedagogy that has been thrilling to my research response, but to have been given a route to explore from the ELIA technical summit. I personally wasn’t at the summit myself, but my Line manager, alerted me to the work of Savage, from a text message. I took a risk, I emailed and I wanted to see if my journey in technical pedagogy was similar to that of someone with more experience. Savage is the Technical Director of Learning at the University of Creative Arts (UCA).

What is phenomenography?

“Phenomenography is the empirical study of the different ways in which people think of the world. In other words, its aim is to discover the qualitatively different ways in which people experience, conceptualize, realize and understand various aspects of phenomena in the world around them (Martin et al., 1992). In phenomenography research, the researcher chooses to study how people experience a given phenomenon, not to study a given phenomenon. Marton (1986) and Booth (1997) described phenomenography as:

“Phenomenography is focused on the ways of experiencing different phenomena, ways of seeing them, knowing about them and having skills related to them. The aim is, however, not to find the singular essence, but the variation and the architecture of this variation by different aspects that define the phenomena” (Walker, 1998).”

An overview of a theoretical framework of phenomenography in qualitative education research: An example from physics education research

Savage uses the work of Whitechurch and the graph showing a new third space and where the roles of “service” and academic are blending into a newfound position within HE, to cite from the article;

“Whitchurch refers to ‘service’ rather than ‘non-academic’. I am choosing to locate technicians within this theoretical space. I use the term ‘technician’ within this article to describe specialist staff working on non-academic contracts with primary responsibilities for maintenance, health and safety, and supporting academic activities, while also providing demonstrations, teaching and support for students with practice-based learning.”

This was what woke me up, I knew reading this article, that I had found a voice that connected with my concerns and how I could navigate them in this research journey of finding my own technical hybrid academic role that consists of everything quoted above. The other side of this is considering the pay gap between technical roles and academic roles, and how the academics are more than double that of technicians, yet teaching has consistently been led by technicians.

“For higher education institutions (HEIs) hybrid technician/teacher roles represent
excellent value, providing high-quality practice-based teaching at a comparatively low cost. For the technicians themselves, choosing a blended role can provide career advancement and opportunities to develop pedagogic skills through practice and study.”

Savage has also described the roles of the technicians and academics and how they are played out in creative higher education;

“I find a more useful working distinction is that technicians teach practice and process whereas academics are more likely to deliver lectures, theory and concepts, while also contextualizing the work and guiding the trajectory of learning”.

Is there an opportunity at UAL to provide a third space role in Creative HE that is a hybrid position and what would that entail?

1. Technical leads grade 5 –
2. Research and knowledge exchange.
3. Module leads in technical outcomes (eg. Knitted garment projects).
4. Assessment and feedback input in recognising technical response to learning.
5. Workshop leads, in running and performing a successful workshop and team.

How would I continue this research and conversation around the above? Is there someone at UAL doing the same level of research as Savage, could I compare their insights with his?

Methodology and my taking from it.

• Low-level appreciation or ‘down there’ in terms of technicians’ position.
• Technology proficiency led to specialised jobs with no hierarchy.
• Technicians’ awareness around third space teaching and working with particular ‘allowing’ academics.
• Institutional team working opportunities empowered technicians and their input.
• Technical jobs allowed time for upskilling and personal/academic development.
• Receiving no training or development opportunities in their academic role.
• Academic roles are succumbed by admin work.
• Undervalued terms of technical teaching first being in 1st year of academic teaching.
• Technicians tend to be self-motivated and explorative on progressing their skill sets.
• The ability to self-develop, allows the technical roles to develop.
• Critical awareness has led to a technical crossover in contextualising the purpose of the product/object.
• Technical roles are more like apprenticeships for academic roles.
• Technical roles allow time/space to be a practising artist/designer.
• Technicians are overseers and can see if similar teaching is being taught.
• Technicians can be seen as having a holistic job with student engagement/interaction.
• All participants would reconsider technical roles – better pay of course, or if they wanted to start a family the job had better perks.
• Technical teaching is a lot more enjoyable than academic teaching.
• Teaching all day can be exhausting and tiresome for other activities or social endeavours.
• Unprepared for assessment in the terms of summative formats and the responsibility of student engagement with assessments.
• The salary of academics was the motivating position to move from technical to academic.
• Technical roles have importance around practising their own discipline.
• Technicians provide dialogue around industry/practice that is relatable and active.
• Technicians are more excited to test and play with new technology that could benefit the student’s learning experience.
• Academics value research, and technicians don’t get opportunities to partake in research.
• Diversification and participation in HE, Student entry has lessened and students intake are less likely to know basic skills, which then becomes a teaching job for technicians.

There are more in-depth points, but I tried to summarise the methodology approach and how it can be expressed in a shorter format or more accessible reading. I agree with 99% of this research evidence, as a technician in this journey these are questions I am asking myself daily.

“One of the clearest messages emerging from the interview data is that the technician role provides a developmental framework through which all participants found themselves able to develop their disciplinary and pedagogic skills while also being supported to maintain their practice. From the technicians’ perspective, the university appraisal system an enabling
the process that aligned their own development needs with that of the institution and provided the time and autonomy to upskill.”

Why would I want to change? I do benefit from the system, I have the time and opportunity to explore and partake in anything I want, be it self-development or professional, or working with other teams and exploring other departments. How can we bring this level of ‘freedom’ to academic roles?

“As academics, all participants felt that they were working harder, longer and with greater responsibility and accountability. All were working in small academic course teams and described feeling relatively disempowered and disconnected in relation to the university. All perceived that their professional development was less important to the university as academics than when they were technicians.”

Is this promising? I know I can take this for granted, but do I need to investigate my own research into transitional technicians that moved into academic roles?

“At a sector level, new practice-based academics (from technical, industry or practitioner
backgrounds) should be integrated rather than assimilated with traditional academics through improved induction and appraisal experiences that identify skills gaps to support their transition.”

I think this is the material I need to bring to the table at UAL, to fight for these roles that are hybrid-based practitioners that also reflect academic qualities. It will be interesting to see where this takes me, in my search for technical pedagogy and where it sits in UAL and within myself. I will need to really digest and follow Savage’s work to see how his understanding of these routes is progressing and how I can learn from his evidence and findings to build my own, I will finish up with a part of his conclusion that secures me on the right path.

“For technicians with aspirations to transition their own careers to academia the message of this study appears to be: excel as a technician; engage with professional development activities; earn the academic credentials on offer; collaborate with academic colleagues; and continue with your own practice and gain research insights”