Problem Scenario
I have been asked to research, design, run and document an ‘Open’ workshop that teaches an aspect of my practice to a group of peers. I’m not sure what a ‘practice’ is, or if I have one! How can I figure this out? I’m also unsure about what ‘teaching’ this in the ‘Open’ might involve. If I do have a practice, how might I support others to learn it in an open way?
This week, the task is researching, designing, running, and documenting an ‘open’ workshop that teaches an aspect of our practice to a group of peers.
Experience
The Details and Process of My Toolkit: Language and power
My challenge is how to design and create a culture of critical thinking and communication between learners in an open Toolkit. As Hardy(2006) said, the essential points of difference, plurality, and independence of mind call for a refocusing in all areas, so improving possibilities for partnerships, distant learning, and other methods to combat opportunity limits should be taken into consideration when designing our toolkit.
My first analysis is shown as flowed: Multi-language can structure overly centralized power, so my workshop plan is to create a game by stimulating similar situations to develop a deeper and more practical understanding of the relationship between power and multi-lingual for the public.
Process: First of all, I will introduce the workshop. Then, Divide members into groups of 7 people (or 5, depending on the total). Arrange members in the group into 1 person (first rank) 2 people (second rank) 4 people (third rank). The host gives a short event on a note to the first rank, they can choose one way ( avoid talking, like drawing, body language, sign language to transfer to the second rank, and so on, and the second rank transfer to the third group. At last, participators in the third rank show what they think is that message.After finished the activity, participators are encouraged to exchange ideas and assumptions.
I also received some tips to improve the task: Explore more profound with theory to conduct students, give examples and show them directly, and create an assignment that provides particular information through the task for the participator
An Illustration of the Toolkit
Reflection
I draw on some challenges and highlights encountered in this project to develop my critical and reflective response.
The first problem for me is choosing a topic. From my perspective, the core of an open toolkit is about finding interesting topics from everyday social life to conduct and shape the practices. After researching, I choose the topic ‘Language and power’ to present the socio-political issues that exist today. The whole assumption is that multi-language can structure overly centralized power. This was based on the state of society today, by the 20th～21st century, with the complexities of international relations, because so much conversation is entirely in the language of English, certain English-speaking countries try to exploit news to convey information through language differences. (Brym, 2016). There was a time some super countries chose isolationism as their policy, which restrict communication between some non-English-speaking countries. For example, utilizing the prevalence of English in relational bodies, the United States frequently participates in international affairs (Brym, Robert, 2016; Franco-Roldan& Nicolas, 2018). As a result, I try to design a game that uses a different way of transferring messages to stimulate the news spread by the authority, hoping to develop a deeper and more practical understanding of the relationship between power and multi-lingual for the public.
The second challenge is how to design the workshop in a pedagogy way. As pedagogy offers a unique perspective for participators, we need to encourage peer-to-peer study. Paragogical approaches also extend traditional learning into self-determined, peer-led, decentred, and non-linear. (Here,2013), so the form of an interactive workshop with peers’ communication and practice is an available approach to use. View from Wittgensteinian asserts that when people combine as a group some practices, just as in social, people tend to set in motion by processes of intelligibility and are given some coherence and identity (Nicolini, 2012, p. 171).
The third necessary point is to find theoretical, methodological, and practice-based literature background to build this toolkit. The biggest challenge I have met of design the open toolkit is to raise and find theories for support. As suggested here by Grootenboer (2017), Practices are formed by being in and participating in the social world. Understanding thereby practices requires a theory, or suite of theories, that illuminate the socialness and sociality of practical being, action, and interaction. Finally, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, I found theories and reference to support my ideas.
In conclusion, I believe that practice open toolkit offers a more rounded comprehensive understanding of the social phenomenon by encompassing more than just analyses and theories (Grootenboer,2017). However, my toolkit is much more about some negative political problems and ignores the pedagogy, This discovery has returned me to reimage the essence of the course and I will do some modifications in the following days.
Reference
Brym, R. (2016) After Postmaterialism: An Essay on China, Russia and the United States. Canadian journal of sociology. [Online] 41 (2), 195–212. Available at: https://discovered.ed.ac.uk/permalink/44UOE_INST/1viuo5v/cdi_gale_infotracmisc_A557578543 (Accessed: 3 August 2022).
Grootenboer, P. et al. (2017) Practice Theory Perspectives on Pedagogy and Education: Praxis, Diversity and Contestation. Singapore: Springer Singapore Pte. Limited.
Herie, M. (2013). Andragogy 2.0? Teaching and Learning in the Global Classroom: Heutagogy and Paragogy. Global Citizen Digest, 2(2): 8-14.
Nicolini, D. (2012). Practice theory, work and organization: An introduction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Hardy, Tom. Art Education in a Postmodern World : Collected Essays, edited by John Steers, Intellect Books Ltd, 2006. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=283072.
Created from ed on 2022-12-13 16:59:35.
23rd November 2022 at 1:19 pm
Hi Misty, I think you should return to this section – The Details and Process of My Toolkit: Language and power – and tidy it up. It’s a bit confused at present. The actual workshop is, nevertheless, well concieved. You just need to work on describing it clearly.
23rd November 2022 at 1:26 pm
Rooting your topics in everyday social life as away of conducting and shaping practice makes sense here – it comes across clearly in your focus on ‘Language and power’. The rationale behind the workshop is there, albeit a bit hazy/sketchy. I suggest you focus more on how information flows from one central ‘node’ to many networked ‘nodes’ instead. The issue of ‘language’ here isn’t the only important variable, the fact that information is always being transformed and translated by ‘interference’ is just as vital. I’d resist the temptation to make a grand geopolitical statement and focus on the game-like qualities of what your are proposing to do. We have discussed this in detail – it’s a question of making sure that the participants know how to play your communications game – only having done so, they might then grasp some of the bigger picture you have in mind.