Researching the idea of flexible and open learning spaces, student’s agency and their voice

Caroline Kuhn
Second year PhD student at the
Institute for Education, Bath Spa
University. Bath, UK.
Mathematics teacher
Researching in the idea of flexible and open
learning spaces, student’s agency and their
voice
Is ‘open’ really open for all?
GO-GN Workshop Cape Town 2017

(Open)-
Dynamic.Space
A consideration of tensions
concerning personal design and
institutional artifacts. The case of
Open Personal Learning Spaces
An overview of the first stage of my
PhD research study

Socio-political
c o n t e x t
Image: CC-BY Flickr, Caroline Kuhn

Socio-political context
CC BY. Overview of the lifelong learning strategies (JRC & IPTS Report: The future of
learning: preparing for change)

This was discussed in 2003 while
doing the report
The scenario of a 21st Century
Learning-intensive Society
depicted in this report is an
imaginary snapshot of how
society might function with open
learning at the core of what
everyone does all the time,
everywhere

Students’ concerns
 Students want to be co-creators of their digital
environment
 Want a flexible environment to experiment, tinker
with new tools, learn from each other and create
their own blend
 Want to be informed about the need for digital
literacies and taught consequently
 Want to create a space for people to work it out for
themselves
But they say they don’t know how to use personal
devices, services, networks, and practices in academic
context!
Taken from The Digital Student project (Jisc project, Beetham, 2014) and

Initial exploration of the digital profile of
students
(66 students in education studies Y-3)
Don't use social networking
websites(Twitter, Faceb,whatsapp,
Google+)
Don't maintain my own blog or website

Don't participate in online
discussion groups
Not using spreadsheets or data
analysis software

Aim: To explore current
students’ digital practice
1. What are students' motivations to engage
with tools and platforms and for what
reasons?
2. How open/closed is students' digital
practice?
3. Map and understand students’ perceived
needs and expectations concerning their
experience and use of digital technology in
the university

Aim of the study (stage 2)
 How can we support students in
(re)designing their personal learning
space so that they can participate
actively in an open approach to
education. In so doing they can open the
'open' in 'open practice’
 What is the level of digital competence
and provision at the institutional level?
The role of the Institution.

Theoretical context
 Practice as the sayings, doings and relatings that
hang together in a particular way that gives a sense of
purpose to practices as projects of a particular kind
[OPEN ED?] and that shapes participant's
commitments (affective domain) to achieving this
particular purpose.
Structural features: know-how, rules, teleo-affective
(purpose, goals, emotions), general understandings
(performance in a particular practice (Kemmis, et al.,
2010; Schatzki, 2006)
 Open as the architecture of practice
 Personal learning (environments) spaces as an open
educational resource created by students and also as

 PLEs are not explored yet from a socio-topological
perspective, as arrangements, constellations; as
bricolage were students are the craftman/women.
 Connections between students' agency and (open)
digital practice is key if we aim to educate for
freedom and emancipation. Hence, critically.
 Flourishing as the aim of education (Wright, 2010)
 The study is framed in a socio-cultural perspective
 Posthumanism (Barad, Fenwick) Nothing is pre-
given it is made in the performance, in the 'doings'.
Agency is not a pre-given feature in the individual it
is 'made' in intra (from within)-actions. It emerges
from the action (this maybe helps in the exploration
of agency in open educational practices and see
how it can be fostered? )

Constructive grounded theory
(Charmaz, 2014): Inductive, multiple
social realities, interpretative
understandings, co-construction of data
With whom?
32 (20+12)undergraduates (y-1, y-2, y-3)
in educational studies at Bath Spa
University

R.Q.1  stage 1
What tools and platforms do
students engage with and for what
reasons?
Methods:
- Focus group: I used the V&R
approach (White & LeCornu, 2011)
using mapping as a means to
enquire
- Sample: 20 undergraduates (y-1, y-
2, y-3) in educational studies that
volunteered at Bath Spa University

Outcomes
 A topography of students informal learning
spaces.
Are they prepared to enter the ‘open’?
Can they engage in open research?
 Digital bites: Short sessions with relevant
information about open tools for doing open
research derived from students’ perspective
of what are the main barriers and enhancers
of students’ open digital practice
 Theoretical elements related with students’
agency and readiness for navigating
effectively the ‘open’ landscape of education

Map of one of the participants of the study

 Cronin (2016): Open practice
 Farrow (2015): Open critical education
 Bayne, Knox & Ross (2015): The need for a critical approach to
open
 Hall (2009): Fusion of formal and informal spaces
 Jenkins (2006): Participatory culture
 Beetham (2016): Digital capabilities, digital student, digital
wellbeing
 Nussbaum + Sen: Human capability approach. Development as
freedom. Capabilities as functionings (being and doing)--> Digital
capabilities
 Gourlay, Hamilton & Lea (2013): Textual practice in the new media
digital landscape: messing with dig literacies. New literacy
studies to approach dig lit
 Harguitai (2004): Digital divide stemming from people with access
 Schatzki (2010); Kemmis et al.: Theory of Practice
 Whright (2010): The real Utopias Project --> The idea of
flourishing
 Castañeda & Prendes (2016); Attwell, Conole: Literature related to
Literature

R.Q.2  stage
1
What are students’ needs, expectations,
and experience about their academic
digital experience (the engagement with
digital literacies and the use of the
digital environment provided by the
Institution)?
Method:
- Focus group using a set of cards
designed by Jisc for the digital student
project

Outcomes
Students’ perspective about
their digital experience at the
institution with their
suggestions of how to
enhance their academic
digital experience

 Conceptual framework as bricolage (Maxwell, 2005)
 SCAT  Engestorm, Sannino, Daniels
 Human agency and ed research (Yamazumi,
2007)
 Performativity (post-humanism)  Intra-actions,
agency as emerging from intra-action. Barad,
Fenwick & Edwards, Bayne
 Human capability approach  Sen, Nussbaum
(can I integrated it with performativity? With
SCAT, CHAT?
 The emotional element that is so present in my
data is difficult to back up with theory. Thinking
about the need to encourage an explorative
mind-set to navigate the openness and find new
tools to mediate academic practice
 Can I link the affective domain with agency/lack

I am not sure if SCAT allows for
exploration of agency in greater depth.
In SCAT agency is not the starting point, it
is the activity. Agency comes down to the
question of how students become authors
of the activity and shape and give direction
to the activity. To study agency SCAT goes
onto explore how agency emerges, i.e the
root of agency. But it is how they see
emergence that puzzles me. There is a
sense of disassociation between the self
and the agency it enacts: it seems like
individuals come already loaded with an
amount of agency that they enact when
needed.

Whereas in performativity agency emerges
as part of the process of meaning making,
it is part of the phenomenon.
“bodies are not objects with inherent
boundaries and properties, they are
material-discursive phenomena
(performance) ” Barad,2013

Problematising
agency
Students’ agency is trapped in the
discourse of the digital natives and in the
institutional structures
 How is agency fostered? Is it possible?
What can be done so students enact that
ability to act in the open wild web?
 Why does not the university promote and
support the creation of independent open
learning spaces designed by students (my
own domain, PLEs, etc.)

References
 Wright, E. 2010. Real Utopias
 Sen, A. Capability approach
 Bildung
 The idea of Bildung of the Faculty of Educational
Sciences of the University of Oslo
 Bruford, W.H. The German Tradition of Self Cultivation.
From Humboldt to Thomas Mann
 Fossland, T., Mathiasen, H., and Solberg, M. 2015.
Academic Bildung in Net-based Higher Education.
Moving beyond learning.
 Giacomoni, P. (1998). Paideia as Bildung in Germany in
the Age of the Enlightenment. Paper given at the
Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, in Boston,
Massachusetts August 1998. Available here
 LLanera, T.A. 2011. Shattering Tradition: Rorty on
Edification and Hermeneutics. Kritike, Vol.5 (1). pp. 108-
116.
 Reindal, S. (2013). Bildung, the Bologna Process, and
Kierkegaard's Concept of Subjective Thinking. Stud
Philos Educ (2013) 32:533–549. Available from here

…
 Connected minds: technology and todays learners
(OECD+Centre for Educational Research and
InnovationI). Chapter 2: How connectedness is relevant
for young people (link for the whole book)
 How can the learning sciences inform the design of 21st
century learning environments? (link)

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