In my blog post titled Nameless I gave an account of an ‘uncertainty efflorescence metaphor’, which is offered as a ‘learning space design tool’ to enable learners to deal with uncertainty in their workplaces and their lives. It can also be used reflexively by individuals and groups committed to their own journeys to understanding. Today I want to pick up where I left off in the other post. Please read the Nameless article if you haven’t yet done so – http://bit.ly/2uJstyj; then continue here.
The arum lily metaphor came into being in the early 2000s as I struggled to make sense of my role as an educational designer at Charles Sturt University even as that institution endeavoured to reconceptualise how to provide an ‘excellent’ education for the professions. My decision to follow a philosophical hermeneutic rather than a hermeneutic phenomenological research method in my doctoral program meant that my research ‘product’ was going to be another way of conceptualising, that is, theorising the university’s mission. Yes, I was fully immersed in the maelstrom of collective angst as we sought a common understanding of the university’s challenge (a hermeneutic phenomenological endeavour); however I wanted to do more than faithfully convey that angst; I wanted to provide a way forward (a philosophical hermeneutic pursuit and sharing of new insight). I can best explain the function of the lily metaphor in my thinking with reference to another key element of my curriculum design solution – a ‘triple hologenesis’ model, and to my model of ‘four fields of curriculum interest’ in a university curriculum of becoming.
According to this way of thinking, hologenesis is the coming to be of wholes. The transformation of institutional practice required to conceive and realise a curriculum of becoming for a particular profession can be thought of as a triple hologenesis (Figure 1).
Figure 1. The triple hologenesis framework for curriculum renewal
Source: After McKenzie et al. (2012, p. 13). To re-publish this diagram you first need to obtain permission from the original publisher, Common Ground, at info@commongroundpublishing.com.
The curriculum WHAT refers to the quantum of qualities and capabilities that need to be engendered to produce rounded, grounded practitioners for a given field of practice; the curriculum HOW is concerned with the theories, frameworks and ways of doing that underpin and constitute the teaching process. The following excerpt from my thesis explains.
"The system on the right side – identified as Teaching teams – has a fluid, recirculating process happening. It’s as if working on the curriculum WHAT and the curriculum HOW together, achieving consensus on and congruence between them, has the effect of transforming a teaching team into an intentional course community of belonging [see below]. And on a macro view, the closed system called Teaching teams is part of a wider becoming, enacting a curriculum of becoming and graduating ‘novice rounded, grounded practitioners’. The three concepts within the closed system, H1, H2 and H3, are three expressions of hologenesis, the coming to be of wholes (McKenzie, 1999) – three emergent manifestations or cultivations ….
"In what sense is this framework potentially capable of transforming education for the professions in the twenty-first century? The idea of hologenesis is eminently suited to the idea of a curriculum of becoming because both are organically emergent conceptions and both are fully at home with the flux of change. Education for practice will never be stable, for two reasons. In the first instance, educating for practice is absolutely committed to meeting the needs of clients, which are infinitely variable and changeable over time. Two, it is a supercomplex world of ideas in which we live, and there will always be educational theorists and practitioners who conceive what they regard as better ways of educating for the professions. Debates will proliferate into the imaginable future" (McKenzie, 2014, pp. 274-275).
According to curriculum of becoming theory,
a university curriculum of becoming cultivates individual development in four dimensions – my four fields of curriculum interest schema:
Field 1. Understanding and knowhow required in the chosen field of practice
Field 2. Uncertainty dexterity – a capacity to function and thrive in conditions of incomplete information and uncertainty
Field 3. Social presence – a capacity to work with others and lead
Field 4. A deep sense of self as a foundation for moral judgment and personal agency. (McKenzie et al., 2009) (McKenzie, 2014, p. 275)
The four dimensions of the curriculum need to be developed in parallel throughout the degree program if students are to be rounded and grounded on graduation. This includes learning experiences within the second field, supporting students to become ever better prepared to deal with uncertainty, developing their ‘uncertainy dexterity’. My initial conception of the curriculum design challenge within field 2 is conveyed in these questions:
How might the learning gradient be described? Might the Field 2 learning experience consist in a series of problem situations of increasing complexity and uncertainty, as categories of analysis and problem-solving become more rubbery, fluid, insubstantial? (McKenzie, 2014, p. 280)
In terms of the the arum lily metaphor, the learning gradient required over the course of a professional preparation program (trajectory A to T) needs to develop students’ uncertainty dexterity (trajectory zero towards ±5) in sync with capability development in the other fields identified in the four fields of interest in a university curriculum of becoming. However, the arum lily aura can not only serve as a model for developing a teaching program; it can also symbolise the slow dawning of understanding among members of the teaching team that they also are becoming something more than they were before their journey began; they are beginning to feel at home together in spite of? – or because of? – their new-found uncertainty dexterity. They now belong to a special kind of community.
Transformation of a teaching team into an intentional course community of belonging. In 2009 I wrote a fictional piece about an institution somewhere along the path to realising a curriculum of becoming. It was in that article that I first conjectured on what effect such grappling with curriculum WHAT and HOW questions might have on the course teaching team. I believed, and still believe, that intense and sustained collective effort on such a high stakes endeavour will naturally bring about a transformation of the teaching team into something more …
"The defining feature of a community of belonging is that members have a strong bond to the community and a strong, shared commitment to the work and welfare of the community. In return, the community has a strong commitment to every member and his or her capacity to contribute fulsomely to its ‘being-in-the-world’ (Heidegger, 1962) and its activities. It is out of this reciprocal relationship that the community can pursue its goals effectively, elegantly, responsibly. In the context here of realising a curriculum of becoming, a course community of belonging is one whose primary, essential character is expressed in a shared resolve to conceive a rich, evidence-based, dynamic (continuously reconfiguring) picture of the rounded, grounded graduate for the profession or career concerned – outcome consensus – and to make the course a fertile and supportive learning environment in which students naturally undergo their professional transformation – process consensus" (Olsen, 2009).
In an era in which professional identity and personal identity are repeatedly put to the test, professional practitioners will be more or less adept at confronting novelty. If during their professional formation they were deftly and delicately supported as they were exposed to problems of increasing uncertainty, they will be more likely to stand their ground as they respond to any novel situation. I have argued here and in my thesis (McKenzie 2014) that the uncertainty efflorescence metaphor can be used by course teams to conceptualise the learning gradient, the descent into uncertainty that will most effectively support everyone undergoing that learning journey. It can also help course teams to reflect on their ascent towards becoming an intentional course community of belonging, and on the issues that most perplex them.
Reprise.
Graduates can only be justifiably self-confident in situations of uncertainty if they have integrated, enfolded the four named dimensions of graduate capability into their ‘being-in-the-world’. This is a sophisticated and subtle metamorphosis, nurtured by the curriculum over time:
"students’ journey to job-readiness requires that they be taken on a staged, continuously integrating, diverging–converging journey in meaning-making and capability development in [the] four fields of interest. The intent here is that the four areas of interest … are made ubiquitously explicit or implicit across the whole curriculum, and that student development as practitioner-in-training occurs holistically–progressively. Achievement at the end of each year should see students developing in all four areas (McKenzie, Higgs, & Horsfall, 2008, p. 396)" (McKenzie, 2014, p. 277).
References
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time. New York: Harper and Row.
McKenzie, A. (1999). A ferret tail-chase – the perpetual closed loop of open system reflecting-theorising. Paper presented at the Issues of Rigour in Qualitative Research Conference, Association for Qualitative Research. Bundoora, Vic.: Association for Qualitative Research. Retrieved from http://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/edfa60_0fb537e4e4d347eaa908a2cbfd324d10.pdf.
McKenzie, A. (2014). Meaning making: A university curriculum framework for the twenty-first century. Saarbrucken: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing. ISBN 978-3-659-52667-1. Available https://www.morebooks.de/store/gb/book/meaning-making:-a-university-curriculum-framework-for-the-21st-century/isbn/978-3-659-52667-1.
McKenzie, A., Higgs, J., & Horsfall, D. (2008a). Exploring the practice–pedagogy middle ground: progress report on a hermeneutic inquiry into education for practice. Paper presented at the WACE Asia Pacific Conference. Work Integrated Learning (WIL): Transforming Futures – Practice ... Pedagogy ... Partnerships. Manly Australia. Australian Collaborative Education Network, pp. 370-376. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2uJlmWG.
McKenzie, A., Higgs, J., & Loftus, S. (2009). What is the best thing a university can do for its students in the twenty-first century? Paper presented at the CSU ED Conference, 26-27 November. Charles Sturt University, Thurgoona, NSW, Australia. Retrieved from http://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/edfa60_c11118b027984d25a4837d6103247f18.pdf.
McKenzie, A., Higgs, J., & Simpson, M. (2012). Being a university in the twenty-first century: Re-thinking curriculum. Journal of the World Universities Forum, 4(4), 1-18. Retrieved from http://wuj.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.173/prod.316.
Olsen [aka Tony McKenzie], K. (2009). A CSU 'curriculum of becoming'? A reverie. Imaginative leap retrieved from http://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/edfa60_528b7dc699b64ab2a37d0c1e6578c91c.pdf.
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