..... EXPLORING CONCEPTUAL, PERSONAL, SOCIAL, PHYSICAL AND VIRTUAL SPACES FOR LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Thursday, February 19, 2009

What are the Sticking Places?

As part of the second Learning Spaces seminar, we talked about whether the concept of 'sticking places' - or to use the proper term, Threshold Concepts - is a useful idea for art and design education. This is the proposal that particular concepts are key to the development of mastery in a discipline but are often problematic because they are counter-intuitive and difficult to grasp. For Meyer and Land (2006. p22) learning involves the occupation of a liminal space.... a kind of teenagehood, where they fluctuate backwards and forwards between different kinds of understanding.

So - what are the things that art and design students have 'to get'; and how can that process be supported? I suggested that, from my experience the first thing an architectural student has to 'get' is how to look differently; not just noticing landmark buildings or making commonsense divisions between what is ugly and what is beautiful, but viewing every single space/object with a critical and creative eye, for its potential to inform their own creative work.

As the groups talked, they were most interested in what students themselves bring to the process - in who defines when you 'get it' and in the broader processes of becoming/being a learner and becoming/being a practitioner, rather than, say, the problems of learning specific concepts. For one group a key set of sticking places was about the identity of becoming a student - the desire to engage in learning - understanding/acquiring a subject culture/ethos - which is bound up in teaching and learning approaches and methods. Another was the process of developing critical awareness - seeing multiple perspectives - positioning self/gaining ownership - communicating ownership/position using (and possible subverting) the conventions of the discipline. Both groups came to a similar conclusion - that the key threshold concept is being able to articulate their subject well and therefore pass it on (beyond the boundaries of their own discipline).

Rather than a series of individual 'moments' then, sticking places seemed to be more like a journey over a very uneven terrain, with learners (and tutors) bringing different kinds of more or less suitable equipment.