student learning

The crisis of the American higher education is no longer news. Rather than prosecuting the state of educational affairs with the dominant approach of “crisis zeitgeist” held among educationalists and analysts (65), Harrison and Mather examine the positive contributions of higher education and analyze problems through positive inquiry, alongside their critique as learners, professors, and administrators in the system. Throughout the eight chapters, the authors show how older and current research in theories, applications, and empirical data can strengthen the interdisciplinary and interconnected industry – both within and outside of itself (ch. 2). While mindful of the current commodification of education or the consumeristic mentality currently involved in reprogramming or (re)structuring education, the authors urge a more holistic evaluation of not just the value of higher education towards vocationalism but also its purpose for cultivating individuals, community life, and public service: to see that education as a means of vocationalism (career development, preparing learners for better paying jobs) is not more important than to embrace the intrinsic value of liberal arts education for nurturing knowledgeable citizens who will in time contribute to the democratic ideals of public society (chs. 3 and 5).

The thrust of Harrison and Mather’s proposal is a hopeful, though realistic, imagination of “what can we create together” (46) not just with educators, but also with community engagement (50). Thus they recommend a shift from a pedagogy of “standardization testing” to cultivating attentiveness to the different “narratives” for “meaningful student learning” (ch. 4), and from a focus of merely cognitive and pragmatic (applicable) knowledge to building a holism of cognitive, affective, and other facets of learning, and developing the whole person (chs. 6 and 7). Accordingly, universities and community colleges need to learn to leverage what each offers best without denigrating one another (denigration happens when leaders wrongly conflate or differentiate vocational and remedial goals of education in both types of institutions). They need to create  infrastructures that provide level-playing fields for learners of different economic and ethnic standings in matching institutions, curricula, and related discourses on the recipients and goals of education (59; 83-86).

The volume does not only register theoretical concerns; the authors report positive efforts from select institutions that have redirected discourses and implementation for overcoming crisis. The selection includes well-known and lesser-known institutions, such as Ball State University, Berea College, College of Wooster, Columbia University, Denison University, Duke University, Emory University, Kentucky State University, Ohio University, Santa Clara University, St. Mary’s College, University of California Santa Cruz, University of North Carolina, Wake Forest University, and Western Governors’ University in the United States, and it even provides occasional reviews of institutions outside of North America, such as the Asheshi University in Ghana.

Though discussions in the volume would resonate with colleagues in religious studies programs, the volume did not provide application for religious or theological studies programs. Various efforts by the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) to overhaul religious offerings (curriculum, faculty, student enrollment, and so forth), such as granting reduced M.A. and M.Div. curriculum to requesting member institutions have both helped and added to the challenges of re-envisioning religious studies programs in light of the current educational crisis. The search for better resolutions in the sea of analyses continues with no clear landing in sight.

This book is an invitation, and is itself a somewhat circuitous reflection on teaching and learning. Directed at writing teachers, much of Danberg’s advice applies to teaching in general, and not just because faculty teach forms of writing in class. The title borrows an image from a famous rabbinic story in which Rabbi Hillel was asked by a nonbeliever to teach the whole of Torah in the time the nonbeliever could stand on one foot. “That which is hateful to you do not do to others,” Hillel instructed, “The rest is commentary; go and learn it” (13). Danberg reminds us that standing on one foot is a posture of instability, the position of both teachers and learners. He encourages teachers to remember their own difficulties in learning. Following Rosenzweig, Danberg suggests that Hillel did not mean “the rest is only commentary… To know Torah is to know the lesson, but also to participate in an ongoing conversation… into the lesson’s value” (14). Students often seek facts, principles, or methods that they can then apply, but good teachers are able to set them on a path of lifelong inquiry. A series of autobiographical vignettes in prose and poetry, the book is punctuated by reflection prompts, or “commentary.”

The author employs several metaphors, but cooking images dominate. A good cook has learned not just to follow a recipe but knows how to see the possibility of a meal in the ingredients on hand; a good cook knows what a dish needs and when it is done. The implied parallel perhaps works best with the craft of writing but the larger point is about what Danberg calls “enfolded knowledge.” Teaching involves confronting the tension “between what we must tell students and what they can only know for themselves” (71).

He offers a compelling description of his own learning disability – his struggles, the strategies he developed, and how teachers reacted to him along the way (47). Danberg laments that schools often define gifts narrowly and he suggests the following exercise: “Spend a couple of days observing the people around you and see how many gifts you can identify… Think of yourself as a zoologist whose great pleasure it is to wait for a butterfly they’ve never seen before” (58). Later, he describes class as “an invitation to inhabit forms of attention and attunement, patterns of caution and regard… If all goes well, it is no more mysterious than the heart and mind, that tangle we are always entangled in” (73).

Danberg invokes the kabbalistic concept of tzimtzum, the contraction of the divine making space for creation. (This comes in a piece entitled “Four Principles and a Fifth” – but I counted six!). A good teacher knows when to get out of the way in order to make space for learning: “You can shape the problems and anticipate the obstacles. You can decide what a student encounters and the time it takes. But in the end, you simply must get out of the way, and leave them to do the work of learning” (98-99).

Reading this book is a bit like ruminating on a Zen koan. Danberg contradicts himself and revels in paradox. The bizarre organization and genre shifts can be frustrating. This is a quirky book, but one with many moments of glittering insight into the difficult joys of learning and teaching.

Open-Space Learning (OSL), a “transdisciplinary pedagogy” as practiced at the University of Warwick, challenges assumptions about the boundaries of disciplinary knowledge, the organization of teaching spaces and resources, and the power arrangements that order the roles of teachers and students. This book bears witness to the efficacy of learning in spaces that assume students are engaged in embodied risk-taking, problem-based play, personal responsibility, group collaboration, and open-ended exploration within boundaries and expectations that yield demonstrated competence. The essential prefix for this learning space is “trans-”; it is asserted to be transgressive, transcendent, transitional, trans-rational, transactional, transdisciplinary, and transcultural. OSL draws from the learning theories of Boal, Freire, Vygotsky, Gardner, and Kolb and from the work of Clark and Damasio in neuroscience.

In 2005 the University of Warwick received a grant from the Higher Education Funding Counsel of England to create its center for Creativity and Performance in Teaching and Learning (CAPITAL) in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Principles of theater pedagogy and performance studies opened new learning possibilities for disciplines not normally associated with embodied performance. The OSL website at the university notes collaborations between CAPITAL and students in business, chemistry, cultural studies, theater studies, philosophy, math, and psychiatry programs. The authors indicate that hundreds of students have been exposed to their learning pedagogies between 2007 and 2011.

Four case studies create the backbone for the book. (1) An undergraduate module “without chairs” for literature majors brought twelve of Shakespeare’s plays to life and assessed student learning in comparison with students in the “with chairs” version of the module. (2) Law students argued cases found in four plays and analyzed their legal implications. (3) The learning gained by participants in the Certificate in Teaching Shakespeare program and the Postgraduate Award in Teaching Shakespeare for Actors is assessed using several measures. (4) Three “practice as research” projects focused on theatrical productions, practical workshops, and performance process for undergraduate students or post-graduates who were teaching Shakespeare. These studies provide descriptions and interpretations of the projects, but they do not offer much detail about the pedagogy’s methods for those without a theater background.

The book publisher provides videos and outlines for specific OSL activities on its website. (I was not successful in getting a number of the links to work.) The OSL site at the University of Warwick provides similar links as well as some others. (This website has not been updated since fall 2013, which also raises questions about the current state of OSL at Warwick.) This book was published as a paperback in 2015. Open Space Learning reads like a report for university or funding organization officials. The authors give significant attention to student assessment of their learning and their performance on various required assignments.

Classroom lectures and seminars, characterized negatively as contexts of “knowledge download,” were the dominant forms of teaching when CAPITAL began. OSL intentionally changes, at least in theory, the relationship between teachers and students, “dethroning” or “uncrowning” the power of the teacher that is reinforced by physical classroom spaces and presentation formats.

I am not satisfied that the authors grappled with the power dynamics that remain present in OSL environments. While a teacher’s authority and expertise are expressed differently in the OSL context, teachers are still structuring the environment in which learning occurs. They are evaluating student work. They determine who passes or fails the modules. While teachers may have been “dethroned” from the traditionally hierarchical ways of exercising authority, they still have power, and perhaps disguised power, in the exploratory OSL context.

The expressions of open space learning reported in this book depend heavily on the plays of Shakespeare. These applications of OSL for religious or theological educators are not immediately obvious, but imaginative teachers, especially those with a performing arts background, will draw inspiration from Open Space Learning and develop possibilities for performing the narrative-based texts from their disciplines in their teaching.