Papers by Madeleine Sclater
NSEAD and John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Nov 25, 2019
No abstract available
Conference Proceedings Welcome We are delighted to welcome you to the iJADE conference, ‘Creating... more Conference Proceedings Welcome We are delighted to welcome you to the iJADE conference, ‘Creating Spaces: Inclusivity, ethics and participation in art and design education’, organised in partnership between The Glasgow School of Art; Goldsmiths, University of London; the National Society for Education in Art and Design (NSEAD); and the centre for Research into Education, Creativity and Arts through Practice (RECAP), University of Chester. The conference aims to address inclusivity, ethics and participation in art and design education. These issues are at the centre of research undertaken by the host institutions and have returned to prominence in education at all levels, perhaps to counter anachronistic and reactionary trends witnessed in the politics and policies of governments across the world in recent years. We will focus on questions such as; to what extent are the arts representative of liberal democracies and what new ethical dilemmas might this present to educators, research...
ICERI2018 Proceedings, 2018
EDULEARN proceedings, 2017
The focus of this paper is the challenges of participatory research with young people in Technolo... more The focus of this paper is the challenges of participatory research with young people in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) settings in schools and universities. We articulate two concerns: firstly, with developing the role of creative practices and virtual communities in helping young people to find a voice and become participatory researchers of their own lived experiences; secondly with the importance of TEL researchers working together in research communities and joint enterprises, focused on their shared interests and concerns. Young people's use and understanding of the Internet is widely under-researched. We argue that researching alongside young people in TEL settings presents researchers with conceptual, methodological and theoretical challenges. The realities of research processes and young people's lived experiences with TEL do not always sit together easily.
International Journal of Art & Design Education, 2021
ICERI2018 Proceedings, 2018
This paper outlines PhD research associated with Leapfrog, a three-year funded AHRC project, whic... more This paper outlines PhD research associated with Leapfrog, a three-year funded AHRC project, which aims to analyse the impact of co-design practices in developing ‘engagement tools’ within community development. One challenge in co-design is identifying ways to understand holistically the context. Understanding individual and collective contextual factors simultaneously requires bridging the gap between theory and practice. Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) interconnects all the components simultaneously illuminating a holistic approach for understanding such context. The paper focuses on the distribution of power in co-design aiming to illustrate how designers balance power and reflects on the experience of applying CHAT into practice, identifying informal learning as a key component. It elucidates how ethnographic methods can provide a deeper understanding about the context. About this, it can be concluded that a greater awareness of context, understood through the lenses...
This project has created a highly innovative three-dimensional (3D) virtual community called '... more This project has created a highly innovative three-dimensional (3D) virtual community called 'InterLife Island', and an associated communications infrastructure that is accessible though mobile technologies. Inter-Life Island is a place where young people can 'reconfigure' their life experiences and challenges in ways that help them to gain new perspectives, and explore new solutions to these challenges through a range of activities including visual and expressive arts. The island provides tools, resources, contexts and networks of support that extend the possibilities available to young people in the 'real world', in an attempt to push the boundaries of what Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) might achieve in the cognitive, social and affective domains. The project is adopting Activity Theory as an overarching framework, in order to assist us in understanding the complex factors that influence the nature of interaction on the InterLife Island environment. Th...
This paper summarises some of the preliminary findings of the Inter-Life Project, funded by two l... more This paper summarises some of the preliminary findings of the Inter-Life Project, funded by two leading UK research councils (ESRC and EPSRC 2008-2012). Inter-Life Island provided networks of support and various tools and resources to augment the opportunities available to young people in the ‘real world’. The paper presents some qualitative results of an extensive investigation that attempted to illustrate how virtual worlds may be used by young people to scaffold creativity, provide a network of support, and enable the sharing of creative knowledge and skills. The research team used Activity Theory (AT) because we contend that it can provide a way of reconceptualising transition, by focusing on the development of a broad range of skills that young people need to develop in order to cope with increasing and sometimes paradoxical demands, and yet still be able to identify and develop their own goals and motivations in a negotiable way. Our results indicate that ILI-2 became a place ...
International Journal of Art & Design Education, 2019
This year's iJADE conference, entitled 'Creating Spaces: Inclusivity, Ethics and Participation in... more This year's iJADE conference, entitled 'Creating Spaces: Inclusivity, Ethics and Participation in Art and Design Education', was a collaboration between Glasgow School of Art and Goldsmiths, and held at Goldsmiths, London, on Friday 22 and Saturday 23 February 2019. Creating inclusive spaces for learning and thinking becomes more pressing as we face major political, social and environmental upheavals that threaten every aspect of social and cultural life as we currently understand them. Education, globally, is being challenged in these uncertain times and we need to remind ourselves of the importance of organising and sharing our experiences and understanding. There is a requirement to explore new ways of configuring our educational spaces in art and designtheoretically, practically and ethicallyto enable the development of critical citizenship. Creating democratic spaces can help educators and learners to come together to develop ways of being in the worldto contemplate, debate, interrogate, feel, connect, reciprocate, create, problem-solve, feel appreciated and develop insights in ways that allow the flourishing of selfhood and self-efficacy. These papers were selected for publication based upon a process in which delegates were invited to nominate their top papers for publication. The editorial team then reviewed the nominations and a final selection was made. One of the aims of the special conference issue is to provide an opportunity for early career art and design practitioners and researchers to publish their work alongside more established writers. Wewiora's article focuses on a collaboration involving a Liverpool school in an area of high socioeconomic deprivation. The project supported students' photographic and digital skills using co-authoring approaches to raise young people's aspirations. It is a pioneering approach between school and cultural organisations seeking to champion photography for increased visual literacy. Stevens explores 'Design Domain', a course where students are exposed to different ways of thinking, making and doing with an emphasis on pushing boundaries beyond their discipline. She draws the conclusion that it is more appropriate to focus on ways of thinking rather than prescribing ways of doing.
Inter-Life is a novel multi-modal, immersive virtual learning environment for the development of ... more Inter-Life is a novel multi-modal, immersive virtual learning environment for the development of life transition skills in young people. Current policy highlights the role of technology in collaborative learning in a social and interactive manner. This article illustrates how Inter-Life is appropriated by a group of Looked After and Accommodated Children (LAAC) to help shape their own learning. Such a learner centred approach resonates with the current policy debate on the role of technology in education.
International Journal of Art & Design Education, 2020
It would seem that technological campuses of tomorrow have manifested in 2020 as an essential spo... more It would seem that technological campuses of tomorrow have manifested in 2020 as an essential spontaneous response to a world event. This article examines the current crisis in physical art and design studio learning in higher education as a consequence of the COVID‐19 outbreak and the sector’s response to the fast‐track conversion of blended learning to a distributed model. Universities are focusing on virtual community building where group work, ‘crits’ and presentations are being carried out online. Moving assessment and engagement to online formats has consequences for practice‐based art and design courses: distributed learning changes how we teach and learn. This article discusses the implications of art and design studio education in a time of distributed learning. It considers the loss of control over a physically based, practical curriculum and the repercussions for students unable to perform to the depth and rigour required for creative art and design practice. Studio education is considered a signature pedagogy, and has a distinct set of guiding principles such as facilitating critical play, thinking and making, and a pedagogy of ambiguity. This article examines the successes and challenges of moving these pedagogical principles into distributed spaces to support student engagement, using Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as a research framework. The article also examines pedagogical strategies that support students to engage in physical forms of creative practice that enable them to connect their lived experience in a time of crisis.
Although an emerging body of literature identifies co-design as a promising approach to addressin... more Although an emerging body of literature identifies co-design as a promising approach to addressing the most urgent social challenges, little research has been undertaken about how co-design can support social change within the communities and organisations with which they collaborate. This is important because behavioural and organisational change is usually associated with the emergence of social innovations. These pressing socio-cultural challenges require interdisciplinary expertise, and we argue that the practice of co-design is an approach that provides such expertise. Co-design by its nature is collaborative and can respond to the cultural demands of a society eager to participate. These demands require significant research to better understand how the practice of co-design can be a catalyst for social change and social innovation. In this paper, we explore what is meant by co-creation, social design, and co-design within the theoretical context of this study. We present a cas...
The focus of this paper is the challenges of participatory research with young people in Technolo... more The focus of this paper is the challenges of participatory research with young people in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) settings in schools and universities. We articulate two concerns: firstly, with developing the role of creative practices and virtual communities in helping young people to find a voice and become participatory researchers of their own lived experiences; secondly with the importance of TEL researchers working together in research communities and joint enterprises, focused on their shared interests and concerns. Young people’s use and understanding of the Internet is widely under-researched. We argue that researching alongside young people in TEL settings presents researchers with conceptual, methodological and theoretical challenges. The realities of research processes and young people’s lived experiences with TEL do not always sit together easily.
Research in Comparative and International Education, 2018
The nexus of technologies, learning and cultures is a complex area of study that is currently und... more The nexus of technologies, learning and cultures is a complex area of study that is currently underresearched. It could be argued that this collection of papers itself represents an experiment in interdisciplinary research. In bringing these papers together, as guest editors, we have found the richness and diversity they contain to be a reminder of the complexity of this nexus. It is also a challenge: to synthesise some of the fundamental undercurrents and discontinuities that the papers clearly reveal, and to remain open to the incoherencies and conflicts that are also uncovered. The special issue has a very broad scope, including policy and educational systems analysis, quasiexperimental work, theoretical studies, as well as comparative work, and informal and mobile learning. These studies embrace disciplinary perspectives as diverse as Art and Design Education, Engineering, Mathematics, and Education. The featured research frameworks include participatory work, collaborative action research, and arts-based methods, as well as more formal mixed method studies. Major themes of sustainability, inequality, and employment cut across political contexts from Europe to Asia, Africa and Australasia. The settings feature practices from the design studio to the mathematics classroom and include both formal and informal learning designs. Furthermore, the technologies of learning embraced in the research collected here inevitably transform and challenge our notions of place, as teachers, learners and researchers. Mobile learning, and three-dimensional simulations of the real-world act as a serious stimulus to methodological diversity and innovation. It has been a privilege to edit and present this work; we hope that it will serve as a platform for future study. Brown and Lally (2018), in their case study of perceptions of online assessment in mathematics, report on a collaborative international project between two higher education institutions in Finland and Ireland. They focus on engineering students' perceptions of online assessment in mathematics. Evidence from the data suggests that many of the students demonstrate low levels of confidence and display little knowledge about continuous assessment processes. The study offers insight into
Research in Comparative and International Education, 2018
This paper reflects on some of the themes emerging from a consideration of recent research at the... more This paper reflects on some of the themes emerging from a consideration of recent research at the nexus of technologies, learning and culture. The authors comment on the expansive nature of the concept of learning spaces in papers featuring an investigation of technology enhanced learning (TEL) and communication design studios in the UK and Australia, the use of interdisciplinary research collaborations to develop novel implementations of TEL learning spaces, and the challenges of developing an e-university in Malawi. They also examine a comparative study focused on classroom-based learning spaces augmented by computer-based assessment technologies, and the role of TEL both within and in response to protests at universities in South Africa. Massive open online courses are then considered as distinctive educational designs that may offer diverse student experiences, either formal or informal. The next emerging theme considers the sources of tension and richness arising from the widel...
Research in Comparative and International Education, 2018
The main focus of this article is our project of reimagining higher education for ourselves and o... more The main focus of this article is our project of reimagining higher education for ourselves and our students using the central theme of technology-enhanced learning (TEL), which is inextricably linked to education in the present and in the future in many contexts. We argue that interdisciplinarity and interdisciplinary working are central and essential features of TEL and, yet, they are largely invisible in the TEL literature. TEL itself is still largely invisible in the sociology of education literature and, hence, suffers ‘dual invisibility’. We suggest that this may be connected to the crisis that has beset TEL research and pedagogy. We examine the power of theory in TEL work, citing the use of cultural–historical activity theory (CHAT) in our own TEL work. A detailed account of an interdisciplinary, theory-informed TEL project is provided, and this is analysed to explore how the weave between disciplines, particularly art and design, and education, and interdisciplinary project ...
Research in Comparative and International Education, 2018
This paper investigates the widespread integration of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) within s... more This paper investigates the widespread integration of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) within specialist Communication Design studio education in the UK and Australia. The impetus for this paper has grown from the challenges facing day-to-day design studio education and the recognition that the use of technology in higher education today has increased dramatically. Conventional design studio facilities are being reconfigured into blended studio-based classroom learning spaces (often generically termed as ‘studio’). This study compares the lived experiences of students interacting with technology within two differing international studio settings. The two case studies used a Participatory Action Research approach and employed sensory affect as a lens through which learning within studio education was investigated using Participatory Design practice-led methods. The study finds that the Australian participants working within a TEL classroom-based environment faced significant obstac...
Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2018
This interdisciplinary paper discusses the meaning of open, critical, communal, and discursive le... more This interdisciplinary paper discusses the meaning of open, critical, communal, and discursive learning spaces in higher education. It draws on recent research (Marshalsey, 2017) that illuminates the relationship between sensory affect and learning in studio education. It focuses on the extension and development of new learning configurations in the design studio, augmented by technology enhanced learning. Sensory affect is a form of feedback that can be used by learners to analyse and interpret the impact of the learning environment around them. This study used sensory affect as a lens through which to understand students’ experiences of practice-based learning in Communication Design spaces in two distinct higher education settings in the United Kingdom and Australia.The evolution of specialist design studio learning spaces, from physical studios to a blend of virtual and online educational environments, has led to significant debate about how to design, use and evaluate learning ...
International Journal of Art & Design Education, 2016
This article uses published research to explore how Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) can help t... more This article uses published research to explore how Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) can help to sustain learning communities to engage in creative exploration and open investigation. It then draws on this research to ask: how could we use TEL to support pedagogies of socio-ecological sustainability in the Art and Design education community? Three interrelated themes are explored: learning communitiesin developing shared values and supporting investigations around issues of concern; learning spacesin supporting these communities and their dialogue; and theoryto illustrate and provide language to understand the values, activities and goals of participants. Theory may help us to link the impact of these community activities, supported by TEL, to global issues. This article attempts to initiate an exploration of the fundamental elements required to create pedagogies of socio-ecological sustainability within Art and Design higher education.
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Papers by Madeleine Sclater