Helping law students via spaces and performance

In their paper Grier Palmer, Cath Lambert and Jonathan Heron (University of Warwick) reported on the first results of an attempt to create a new pedagogic culture for undergraduates.

For details of student reactions to the module see Creative critical learning: Act 2, a paper presented by Grier at Learning in Law Annual Conference 10.

Using non-conventional spaces and performance inputs from theatre, the critical issues/thinking final year module at Warwick attempts to help students to ‘move outside the box’ by creating a new pedagogic culture and environment. Students are encouraged with a mix of four different interventions to learn and behave in new ways as to how they approach challenging issues and in the ways that they discuss, respond and present their ideas. The focus is on mixing cognitive with affective and physical skills – with a strong emphasis on the individual ‘performer’ and on the group’s creation and performance of its thoughts and emotions.

The module is ‘staged’ deliberately in non-conventional spaces on the Warwick campus – the Teaching Grid, the Reinvention Centre and the CAPITAL Centre. PhDs from a mix of disciplines outside law are trained as facilitating tutors, also through the performance coaching of theatre directors, etc. Materials for the students’ critical reviews include multi-media and creative, as well as more conventional, text.

A group of sociologists, also participants, are undertaking ethnographic research into the module, while the module leader is in parallel surveying and interviewing the students, tutors and researchers. This will give an unprecedented record and evaluation of innovation in pedagogic culture, as well as in law students’ learning conceptions, skills and behaviours.

The module design is based on student feedback and observations (as well as educational literature), which have illustrated that students find critical and reflective thinking difficult, and also lack confidence in communicating and presenting their thoughts on complex, ambiguous and perhaps emotional themes and material. Additionally, students find a student led, self managed pedagogy very challenging after three years of lectures and exams. The module therefore exploits different disciplinary assets and resources in an attempt to boost wider thinking and perspectives.

At Learning in Law Annual Conference the team presented some features of the continuing action research into the module plus new ethnographical research by the sociologists, while Jonathan Heron led a participative opportunity for participants to experience the ‘presence and performing’ aspect of the module – on their feet at the back of the room.

Helping law students: the module leader (Grier Palmer)

The ‘Critical issues in law and management’ module (CILM) aims to help law and business students (around 50) to develop career useful skills, including ‘soft’ interpersonal competencies, as well as to practice critical thinking about critical issues. Student feedback and reflection on possible changes to the module were presented in Grier’s paper at LILI 2006, ‘Moving outside the box’: a conceptual and practical review of teaching reflective and critical thinking with undergraduates. In 2008-09 four different interventions were introduced to the module to try to achieve a step up in the students’ responses and development, including the introduction of facilitating tutors (PhDs from a mix of disciplines) and the use of several unconventional spaces – see Cath Lambert’s section below and the photos in the slides (embedded below).

Interim conclusions on the pedagogic outcomes, based on student focus groups and reflective assignments plus observations by the tutors, were that the theatre workshop had made an impact (see quotes below), with some students taking a different approach to their presentations. In group discussions some students had shown a more confident critical communication, both debating and critiquing material, and there seemed to be some increased awareness generally of other perspectives than just the surface content of the texts, but students still were challenged and not comfortable with the unusual nature and style of the module.

The cross fertilisation of the various disciplines involved (Marketing, Theatre, English Literature and Sociology) was stimulating for the academics, and the PhDs were gaining from being tutors and facilitating the students in critical discourse. The increased research was providing a closer and richer appreciation for the teachers of the students’ world.

Some significant assignments later in the session would give more evidence of the final impact on current students, and several areas were identified for improvement for the 2009-10 cohort.

Spaces, performance: the theatre director/teacher (Jonathan Heron)

Objectives of the presence and presentation workshop:

1. To use the concept of non-verbal communication
2. To explore the function of status within human interactions
3. To use physicality and voice to be more fully present
4. To develop presentation skills

Outcomes of the presence and presentation workshop:

1. Participants will have engaged with ‘presence’ by ‘making’ and ‘reading’ still images and body language
2. Participants explore status through a series of physical tasks and a feedback session
3. Participants use physicality (and begin to consider use of voice) to be more fully present.
4. Participants reflect on the importance of non-verbal communication, use of space and clarity of speech to develop presentation skills.

A few key thoughts from a discussion with the module leader reflecting on the workshop (CILM students divided into two different classes of around 24):

(The students) started thinking about how there is non-verbal communication, there is sub-textual information that comes out of human interactions which is tremendously useful for them in such a course… – but also in the workplace in order for them thinking about how they present themselves
 
..how one particular fragment of human interaction can be dissected and re-read and understood in different ways depending on the context surrounding it. That for me got the group talking and thinking about how they are present in space, about how they might be able to embody certain kinds of ideas.
 
I felt a need…to try and explain more why we were doing it, and try and connect it to what is essentially my simplification of the legal field, the business field, rather than just saying we are doing this because we need to play.
 
…Could I have led it far more like a pure drama session?…I don’t know, this could have completely failed if I’d done it like this, but could I have just focused on them as performers in space?

Spaces, and research: the sociologist (Cath Lambert)

The Reinventing Spaces project, funded by the Reinvention Centre for Undergraduate Research, began in October 2007. The project involves ongoing qualitative research exploring the relationships between curriculum, pedagogy and space in, and between, school and university settings, and is being carried out by a collaborative team of sociology staff and students (doctoral, postgraduate and undergraduate) at Warwick.

To locate the research in a wider context we are working with two local schools, both of which have different spatial developments going on at the moment. We are also carrying out, with additional funding from the Academy Subject Centre for History, archival and oral history research into the historical development of classroom design and development in universities.

We are starting from the premise that space is important – not only in the more obvious sense that certain physical spaces prohibit or enable particular pedagogic practices, but also that space is generated by our social and pedagogical relations and actions.

One aspect of the research has involved ethnographic investigation into the experiences of the students and staff involved in CILM in 2008-09. The module was chosen because of the range of university spaces used by the same group, offering an opportunity to observe, document and analyse the relationship between teaching and learning and the physical environment.

Methodologically, a team of three (myself, Elisabeth Simbuerger, a PhD student in sociology, and Danny Wilding, who completed an undergraduate degree and began an MA at the same time as the research), participate in the module, while Elisabeth also undertakes the responsibilities of a tutor. We are part of the sessions, we make notes and observe and listen and document what is happening. We had intended to use visual methods but have held back on this. We are also interviewing course leaders and tutors and looking at course materials and documentation, and will be interviewing students at a later stage. We have paid a lot of attention to ethics, and the students understanding why we are there.

Our intention is not to provide direct evaluation of this module, although hopefully some of our observation will be useful in that respect, but rather to tease out some of the bigger issue relating to thinking spatially about teaching and learning.

Some of the key themes:

• relationship between time and space – not separate entities. The module moves at a fair pace – it has speed, in the module overall and often within the individual sessions. The space and time are both full of activities. Sometimes it feels as if the activities are exceeding the space and time. The movement between different spaces promotes this sense of restlessness and never having quite settled into it. We have found this space/time relationship both drawing on, and possibly feeding into, the location of these particular students as law and business finalists, most of them with ambitious goals for life post graduation, in the current political and economic context of panic and hyper-competition.
• This links into the second theme – relationship between knowledge and space. The spaces and pedagogic methods and design of the module are interconnected here, as the emphasis is on minimal fixed content and instead on the generation of knowledges by the students, sometimes individually, often collaboratively. Some of the open spaces have worked to enable students to take ownership for small chunks of time, of a space of knowledge production and exchange. The workshop at the Capital studio certainly enabled them to learn through physical and embodied action and presence. A very different session in the same space – when they were doing formal presentations – turned it into a rather hostile environment in which some of the students appeared to lack control.
• A final point relates to ways in which attention to spatiality focuses our research attention on the realm of the physical, the haptic, the embodied, the aesthetic – the lights, sounds, temperature, air quality, and the emotional. Many of the spaces in which these students and teachers have worked are inherently more social spaces – the layout generates sociability and dialogue and sharing. This means that the feelings and emotions of being a student or a teacher, which are always there but are usually pretty individualised, are made more communal.

We have paid attention to emotions associated with risk and fear – curriculum and assessment for CILM generated a certain amount of risk, and the spaces also are risky, less predictable and pre-ordered. There is comfort in many of the aspects of the spaces but also physical discomfort – overlapping with issues of time and also with fatigue (timetabling); pleasure also a key component, and we have seen this in the communality and physicality of the ways the spaces and furniture are occupied, in the competitive nature of the module – fear for some, pleasure for others – performative pleasures of being paid attention to and taking risks and doing well in front of peers.

Early days in terms of research as a whole, but these are some indicative themes.

Further reading

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• Mingers J (2000) ‘What is it to be critical?’ Management Learning 31(2):219-237
• Whitchurch C (2007) ‘Beyond boundaries: finding a new vocabulary’ Higher Education Quarterly 61(3):406-408

Alison Bone (University of Brighton) reports:

This session was interactive and really helped the audience to understand how proper use of space (including personal space) can influence and assist learning, particularly in relation to the development of critical thinking.
 
Students often come to university reluctant to work in groups and sometimes unclear as to how they should discover their own perspective. Grier, Cath and Jonny each presented a section of the session showing how they use the spaces available to them at Warwick to encourage students to develop themselves.
 
Grier explained how students crave structure and generally want to be teacher led, whereas this third year module (Critical issues in law and management) shows them it is safe to move ‘outside the box’.
 
Jonny led an exercise whereby the whole group were each dealt a card from ace (low) to ten (high) and had to move around the room in a way reflecting their class/status as dealt by the cards. After a few minutes the whole group of 24 stood in a line reflecting their status – all done without speaking. The assembled line was remarkably accurate, with the chair at the very bottom having been dealt an ace (I know my place…) and those at the top having been dealt a ten. There was only a little confusion around the six to eight continuum.
 
Such exercises enable the students to reflect on aspects of the course where there are no lectures and no exams but a range of tutors – some from different disciplines – facilitate the sessions (including a former producer of The Archers!). Assessment is based on a group presentation, book review and reflection, plus a case-based long essay.
 
Cath explained how the group experiments with different spaces, while the tutor takes notes on the interactions. The process gets the ‘lecturer’ closer to the students, but it could be even more challenging. The research project underpinning the module has helped to demonstrate the relationship between space and time. The module is crammed full of many different activities so there is very little of either – students are literally running around campus between various spaces.
 
It has become clear that the spaces themselves are not neutral – tensions can rise during presentations. Risk and fear are sometimes present, but there is also pleasure – giving a good performance can be really satisfying. The students sometimes still suffer some discomfort and feel they need extra structure, but overall the module runs well.

About the presenters

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Grier Palmer is a principal teaching fellow in the marketing and strategic management group at Warwick Business School. He presented a paper at LILI 2006 on earlier research into teaching reflective and critical thinking – this session takes the story onto the design and novel interventions of space, performance and tuition.
 
Cath Lambert is academic co-ordinator at the Reinvention Centre for Undergraduate Research, a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning based at Warwick and Oxford Brookes, and also teaches in the Department of Sociology at Warwick.
 
Jonathan Heron is research associate for the Re-performing Performance project at the CAPITAL Centre and artistic director of Fail Better Productions (resident company at the CAPITAL Centre 2008-09). The CAPITAL Centre is a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, a joint venture between the Royal Shakespeare Company and the University of Warwick.

Last Modified: 9 July 2010