PRESENTATION OF PRE-STUDY

The development and incorporation of RPL as UCN’s response to some of the current trends and political agendas causes a need to investigate the students’ perception of learning. The introduction of RPL contributes to strengthening teaching methods that previously have created situations with a high degree of resistance from the students.

The PhD project, as described in the introduction, is based on practical experience regarding the issues concerning “passive-aggressive resistance” against the teaching created by the educational institution’s process-oriented approach to learning. These experiences are unexamined and imprinted with tacit knowledge that can potentially be full of biases, prejudices and unchallenged assumptions. A pre-study investigating the students’ understanding and perception of learning is therefore needed to be able to say something more confirmative about how the students understand and interpret Reflective Practice-based Learning.

The following Section presents a summary of the results from the initial pre-study of the understanding of learning of students at UCN, Technology. The pre-study can be read in its full length in Appendix A. The aim of the pre-study is thus not to identify who has the “right” answer, but rather to gain an understanding of differences and similarities that are important for the development of new educational designs based on Reflective Practice-based Learning - in other words to identify possible paradoxes, tensions and contradictory views. The study aims to contribute to knowledge about practice-related problems.

The use of critical utopian action research in the pre-study is chosen as the method ensures that the students’ voices can be heard without the researcher influencing the content of the perspectives being discussed. Critical utopian action research as a method deals with these imbalances through recognition of the researcher being

present while students have the opportunity to express themselves in “free space”. The method makes it possible to address criticism about bias as the students contribute new knowledge and insight, without being directly affected by the researcher. The use of critical utopian action research as a form of interview is not only to gain knowledge about the practice but also to visualise the paradoxes and inconsistencies that exist in practices between teachers and students. It is, therefore, crucial to establish a “free space” where students have the opportunity to discuss respectively critical and utopian perspectives on teaching and learning as a concept (Skovsmose & Borba, 2004). A more detailed description of the research design and data collection is also found in Appendix A.

The pre-study is based on four different workshops with four selected educational programmes at UCN, Technology. In total, 68 students participated. The students who attended the workshop were on average one year into their education and thus had an idea of what it means to study in higher education. Based on the coded data from the critical utopian action research workshops, the pre-study reveals that one consequence of the students’ “passive-aggressive resistance” against the teaching is a lack of autonomy. It is, therefore, difficult for educators to motivate students to be interested in an explorative and analytic approach to the academic representation ‒ disciplines they might not even see the value of ‒ if the teaching is based on traditional dissemination of specific knowledge. Furthermore, the students do not develop a reflective practice that enables them to challenge and change the professional context.

The pre-study thus indicates that the following three main topics are particularly challenging regarding developing Reflective Practice-based Learning at UCN, technology:

- Motivation and autonomy - Exploration and analysis

- Reflective practice

In the following section, these three topics will be elaborated according to the theoretical position of Practice Theory as described in previous chapters.

4.4.1. THE STUDENTS' AUTONOMY

Reflective Practice-based Learning points toward a process-oriented approach that contrasts with the learning approach the students are familiar with from earlier schooling systems. The consequence is a “passive-aggressive resistance” against the teaching and a lack of autonomy. The students exhibit passive behaviour in situations where, in their opinion, they do not feel that they have received enough teaching to be able to work with their projects. The students explain that they react to this situation by choosing not to do anything or go home. Their statements indicate an understanding

of learning as something that involves the presence of a teacher who presents the curriculum. It is, therefore, difficult for educators to motivate students to be interested in an explorative and analytic approach to the academic representation ‒ disciplines they might not even see the value of. The students cannot actively and independently acquire knowledge and subsequently formulate relevant issues they can investigate and explore. They thus lack the necessary skills and tools to facilitate and initiate their learning and study process. In the students’ utopian presentation they talk about how they want their educational programme to be organised in such a way that there is no

“wasting of time” where they do not know what to work with and thus risk making mistakes if they start up on their own initiative.

The education programmes at UCN are composed in a way where a large part of the study time is self-study. This means that students are expected to work independently with their projects for up to 42½ hours per week. Only half of the study time is covered by teachers, which does not mean that the students are free to go home for the rest of the day. However, the teachers and the students have no clear and shared understanding of the normative rules for what it means to be a student in full-time study. The students express a clear desire for the teachers to spend more time explaining the material rather than the academic depth taking place through self-study. This means that the students place the responsibility for the learning process unambiguously with the teachers. There is no recognition that the individual has a responsibility to acquire knowledge themself through active participation and immersion. Moreover, understanding complicated topics takes time, and the process is often confusing and unclear at the beginning. The pre-study thus shows that there is a mismatch between the students’ and the teachers’

normative understanding of what good teaching practice is. There is a lack of shared understanding of what Schatzki refers to as the “teleoaffective structures” regarding what is acceptable or unacceptable in a given teaching situation (Schatzki, 2016, 2017).

The students’ frustration reveals itself through criticism of the teachers’ planning and structure of the classes. According to Dewey’s understanding of learning, there is a risk of the students’ frustration blocking and disrupting the opportunity to learn (Dewey, 1938a, 1938b). On top of that, the students’ learning experiences are so incoherent that they do not intertwine into a whole, which leads to confusion.

4.4.2. LEARNING THROUGH EXPLORATION

A large number of generic competencies or abilities are acquired through participation in multiple practices consisting of different situations played out in different bundles (Schatzki, 2017). Therefore, according to Schatzki, learning is a result of acquiring a specific habitus that it is necessary to operate within a particular practice (Schatzki, 2016, 2017). Dewey describes learning as something that has an experimental nature and therefore argues that education and teaching are the elements that underpin and guide the experience.

A problem-based project is a teaching approach aimed at creating multiple practices through an experimental approach. The pre-study shows that especially the exploratory behaviour provokes the students as it brings them into situations where they do not know what the next step is and also they cannot expect a final result. The experimental approach involves situations and activities that require a reflective approach to achieve learning. If reflection is the key to learning, it is not particularly interesting if the student presents a “sensible” solution to a problem. It is rather their ability to challenge their work through a reflective exploration. It is, therefore, a challenge when the students, as previously described, maintain a passive and pending approach to avoid making mistakes. The students perceive the projects as messy and miss clear markings of what is fact and what it takes to be good enough. They thus lack a fundamental acceptance of the idea that “trial and error” provides learning.

4.4.3. REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

The students describe how they feel that the teachers have no control over what the projects should contain, what is right and wrong, and what they have to learn. Also, they experience teachers that do not have a shared agreement of what the academic content is, which leads to different and contrasting answers to the students’ questions.

The students thus lack a fundamental ability to assess what is relevant concerning their problem area critically. Further, there is a lack of understanding of the complexity that a professional-oriented project contains and the need for knowledge as a concept to undergo constant development. Therefore, the students must develop competencies to be able to enter into a professional dialogue and discussion with the teachers so that, through a reflective approach, they will be able to make decisions about what is “right or wrong”. This is in line with Dewey’s argument that it is the relationship between action and thinking and thus the transaction itself that is learning (Dewey, 1938a, 1938b). If teaching is based on a communicative handing over of “best practice”, the students will not achieve a practical understanding of the challenges that a professional practice contains. Schatzki describes this as learning, understood as a process that follows a “path” that adds metaphorical and literal meaning to a personal trajectory (Dreier, 2008; Schatzki, 2017).

Teaching built around the students’ personal trajectories requires an open interpretation of both subject and problem (Dreier, 2008; Schatzki, 2017). However, the open frameworks for the content of the project reinforce the students’ experience of their study process as messy with a lack of clear markings of what is right and what is not.

The students acknowledge, partly, that there may be several different ways of working with a problem, but they argue that it then must be the teachers’s responsibility to select the knowledge or methods necessary to solve the problem. The premise that knowledge can be discussed and developed through the confrontation of two different points of view is thus not recognised by the students. A pervasive element is the students’

frustration at not attaining sufficient academic depth during their studies. They have a

feeling that their knowledge acquisition is just “scratching” the surface of the topics they are dealing with. The students thus demand a clear marking of what is right or wrong and a precise and concrete definition of the syllabus.

4.4.4. CONCLUSION OF THE PRE-STUDY

Bente Elkjaer suggests, through pragmatism’s understanding of learning, that there is no separation between “coming to know about practice” and then “coming to be a practitioner” (Buch & Elkjaer, 2015; Dewey, 1938a, 1938b). Understanding a situation is therefore about being able to manoeuvre in complex interpersonal situations, which requires innovative responses and transformations. Dewey also argues that action and thinking are interconnected and that it is the transaction itself that is experienced and thus learning (Brinkmann, 2006; Buch & Elkjaer, 2015; Dewey, 1933, 1938a, 1938b;

Elkjær & Wiberg, 2013; Schatzki, 2016, 2017). It is, therefore, crucial for the academic depth that the students work independently with the project subsequently to the teachers’ knowledge dissemination. In this way, the material will be transacted through an exploratory approach where action and thinking are coupled, which contributes to the professional depth.

According to Schatzki, generic competencies or abilities can be learned through participation in multiple practices. Obtaining an ability thus requires considerable experience from different situations played out in different bundles (Schatzki, 2016, 2017). Here, theorising of first-order abilities directly linked to a practice of doing and saying will contribute to the formation of second-order abilities such as coordination, organisation, communication, planning and designing. Learning, and thus academic depth, is linked to increasing the operationality that is created, through change and the acquisition of new tools (Schatzki, 2016, 2017). Thus, academic immersion in a professional learning context is an expression of a link between theory and practice or, as mentioned earlier, the transaction between thinking and action (Brinkmann, 2006; Buch & Elkjaer, 2015; Dewey, 1933, 1938a, 1938b; Elkjær & Wiberg, 2013;

Schatzki, 2016, 2017).

The pre-study (see Appendix A) of this PhD, however, reveals that the students in technology programmes at UCN lack specific learning strategies for how to work in depth with the curriculum through academic disciplines ‒ they are often brought into situations where they do not know what the next step is. Reflective Practice-based Learning points toward a process-oriented approach that contrasts with the learning approach the students are used to from earlier schooling systems. The consequence is a “passive-aggressive resistance” against the teaching and a lack of autonomy. It is, therefore, difficult for educators to motivate students to be interested in an explorative and analytic approach to the academic representation ‒ disciplines they might not even see the value of ‒ if the teaching is based on traditional dissemination of specific knowledge. Furthermore, the students do not develop a reflective practice that enables them to challenge and change the professional context.