...a few words of reflection

Hello All,

Firstly let us apologize for this late blogging. This was due in part to our plan to subvert the blog, but there is a time and a place for everything and we have an exam to pass! Sorry.

In fact that might be a good place to start: ‘there is a time and place for everything’. We would beg to differ and a central message of our learning experience was to demonstrate that there need not be specific times and particular places for anything. Rather, places are what we make, imagine and perceive them to be and time can be spent, filled and taken in any way we (and others) choose. Our learning experience may have seemed bizarre, or perhaps even messy and unorganised. So this might clear a few things up, but you should not be expecting answers from us; instead we encourage you to ask questions and specifically questions about the Otherworlds course and the student-led learning experiences.

We were concerned for we had heard criticism about the course from some of you (and we include ourselves). Some of us thought the course – because of its different nature (to understate) – was incoherent, difficult and unstable in subject matter. Our group was interested in why some of us felt like that and decided to pursue exactly this in our learning experience. Some things struck us about the learning experiences. The parameters of the learning experience were wide open and we had only two considerations: to do something of geographical relevance and to include some learning theories. By anyone’s standards this was a flexible course. Compare your other courses: Labour Geographies, 3000 words on the workers lot in a particular company; Critical Development, 3000 words on a development issue in a chosen region with a set scale; General Paper, 3000 words of a book review…Be critical. Think back to first year when we were compelled to learn Foreign Direct Investment statistics, read textbooks, remember dates and names. And to your A-levels and school; what did you learn?

For a lot of us I think it is fair to say that we ‘receive an education’, and this is very different to participating in education. A lot of our learning has, to the very present day, been centred around a very orthodox educational relationship (or ‘pedagogy’); that of the teacher-student. Like those dichotomies we see everyday – think nature-culture, man-woman – we take the fact that teachers (and lectures) teach and students learn, as a given. But what happens when that role is reversed? What, in other words, happens when students are seen not as recipients of knowledge, but as makers and creators of it? Well, Otherworlds is what happens! We all had the chance to ‘be the teachers’ and we all did so in a variety of different ways and with very different topics. How then, is it fair to voice criticism at Otherworlds? We were its creators; literally half of the course was ‘ours’ and we could do with it what we pleased. Now I think there is something very interesting in all of this; a paradox.

We could have united and decided to bring the course ‘together’, we could have made it coherent and even fixed its subject matter. Why didn’t we? That much is obvious; it would have been boring and we wanted to push the boundaries. Does this mean then that we embraced Otherworlds, did our learning experiences show us ‘otherways’ to learning? I would like to think so. However, while we wanted to explore otherworlds we somehow limited ourselves. The parameters were wide open yet our learning experiences remained largely within the classroom, most of us used PowerPoint’s and we placed a lot of emphasis on the spoken word and the visual. Why? This is one of the questions that I would like you to consider, and if you don’t agree with the proposition that our learning experiences were restricted then that’s fair enough but be prepared to argue your case. I think there are some illuminating points to this question to be found if we look at the way we learn. Most of us don’t think twice about what and how we learn, we just do it; read the book make notes; listen to the lecturer, take notes (even if we don’t understand or think it is boring). Writing essays? Do many of us write what we want to, or what we feel we should, or do we write to tick boxes that will get us the best marks?

Academia and university is about learning. It is about learning what we want to learn, and taking from it what we choose. Many of the courses that we have been taught over the last three years have not offered the opportunity to explore topics as and how we wish. When it comes to actually doing it, its scary, we are not accustomed to ‘being the teachers’ nor are we attuned to picking our own geographical topics and teaching methods. So we err on the side of caution, we give out handouts, use PowerPoints (that’s what ‘real’ lecturers do) involve the audience a bit (it seems rude not too) and have clear introductions and conclusions. I am not saying this is a bad thing, but when we are given the opportunity to do anything I find it interesting that we restrict ourselves and I think we do this because of the way we have been taught; our pedagogical conditioning tells us so and therefore it must be right.

So think back to our learning experience, and think about how we took on-board the above. Think about the bizarre postulations from Mike about spirituality and geography and Adams linkage of the big-bang to the love that we humans feel. The drums, the videos, Mike’s ‘David Attenborough’ voice-over and closing your eyes; these were all attempts to embody an unconventional pedagogy and push further the boundaries which others before us had began to push. If you really reflect on your own earning experience – and be critical – and relate your topics and methods to other learning experiences then you may find answers about pedagogy and how it helps shape us.

What is written here is deliberately ambiguous and it is intended to get you thinking about a few things in the final few days before the exam. Remember it is not always about finding answers, but is about learning to ask the right questions.

For some critical pedagogy theory check out Freire ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’

If there are any questions, write them below.

Prepare well friends for there are but a few days left.

Adam, Mike, Chris and Craig

Postscript thought: If there is a time and place for everything, try doing something that is not ‘normal’ at an unusual time or unexpected place. See what happens. Moments of jouissance can occur and these can alter the path of your (and others) day; the mundane becomes beautiful.