higher education – Page 4 – Stumbling with Confidence

Higher Education, Creativity and the German Minister (+Coffee & Pastries)

Some years ago, before Brexit, I happened to be standing and chatting to the then German Federal Minister for Education. We were in the (long) coffee queue during a break at an ELIA (European League of Institutes of Art) conference, the theme of which was the future of arts higher education in Europe in the light of Bologna, and he had just given a keynote address.

I thanked him for his keynote, and he asked me my name and where I was from, and what what I did. When I said I was from the UK and worked in higher education performing arts, he smiled and said “Ah, the UK….”

There was a pause.

Then he said, as we shuffled down towards the coffee and pastries: “Let’s put our differences to one side for moment. I have have a serious question for the UK. For the past 40 years or so, your economy has not always been in the best shape – to put it mildly. Yet during that period you managed to lead the world in areas such art, design, fashion, music, theatre, etc. Over the same period we have had a relatively successful economy but, with a few exceptions, have produced nothing like that sort of consistent, high-level creative output. So, my question is, what are you doing, or perhaps NOT doing, in your education system that enables that sort of creativity to flourish?”

Standing there, eyeing from afar the rapidly diminishing plate of pastries, I did not have a clear, rigorously-argued, well-researched, evidence-based answer to give him. But two thoughts did occur, then I added a third which, on hindsight, perhaps I should have avoided.

I said to him: “I do think it may have something to do with our long tradition of non-conformity, of sticking two fingers up to authority, and also our high tolerance of eccentricity. We like our mavericks and eccentrics……”

I should have stopped there but added “…..neither of which – in my limited experience – you have in Germany”.

At which point we had reached the coffee and the few remaining pastries.

The minister frowned and simply said: “Ah, interesting” and we went our separate ways.

I often think about that conversation as I witness the virulent spread and baleful effects of compliance, conformity and standardisation throughout our systems of learning and teaching. Of course, given our traditions in the UK, many do stick two-fingers in the air and manage to develop and provide wonderful, creative learning experiences. But all too often they occur despite not because of the systems in place, and they frequently happen in isolation. So, while eccentricity and creativity still survive and occasionally thrive, we keep quiet about it, hoping that ‘they’ won’t notice the students having a wonderful time and learning a great deal, while ‘they’ obsess about ensuring that the institutional metrics will pass muster, that the quality assurance boxes are appropriately ticked, that the student ‘customer surveys’ return the ‘correct’ results, that the data to put in the Key Information Set shows shows the institution in the best possible light. It’s worth remembering that KIS also means Keep It Simple!

Zen and the Art of Curriculum Maintenance

Like many, I am fascinated by Japan and Japanese culture. That fascination, in my case, goes back a long way. My father used to do business in Japan and often visited with my mother. We had Japanese art and artefacts in our house and we often hosted Japanese students who came to study here in the UK. I’ve also had the opportunity to visit Japan myself in the course of my work.

I recently watched James Fox’s series of documentaries about Japanese art and culture and also Monty Don’s programmes about Japanese gardens and garden design. Both presenters commented on the importance of the Japanese idea of ’Ma’ – often translated as ‘negative space’ but it is much more than that. One way of understanding ‘ma’ is as the space between tangible things that gives those things meaning. It is not so much empty or negative space, but rather it a space full of energy, potential and promise. The character for “Ma” (間) combines the character for “gate” 門 with the character for “sun” 日 – an image of light beaming through the empty space of a doorway.

One of Britain’s most influential post war graphic designers, Alan Fletcher, refers to Ma in his introspective book The Art of Looking Sideways

“Space is substance. Cézanne painted and modelled space. Giacometti sculpted by “taking the fat off space”. Mallarmé conceived poems with absences as well as words. Ralph Richardson asserted that acting lay in pauses… Isaac Stern described music as “that little bit between each note – silences which give the form”… The Japanese have a word (ma) for this interval which gives shape to the whole. In the West we have neither word nor term. A serious omission.”

Attic Late Geometric IIa high-necked pitcher, c.735-720 BC Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK / bridgemanimages.com

In the western tradition and culture we have nothing like the idea of ‘Ma’. Instead, we dislike a void, and tend to fill it. One of the few things I remember from my student art history days are the large, ancient storage jars called Attic Vases. They are often covered from head to toe in decoration. The reason for that was the belief that the Evil Eye enters through empty space. Perhaps that notion is still hidden deep within our Western psyche?

Having trained as a designer and with my interest in things Japanese, when I started working in higher education I was immediately struck by the fact of just how busy our curricula and timetables are. It’s as if we are afraid of leaving ‘empty space’. Why? In case students get up to ‘mischief’?

Rather than filling the curriculum and timetable void, what if we designed them incorporating the idea (and actualité) of ‘Ma’. Designing in the ‘empty/negative’ spaces that help to make sense of the whole, providing the time and space to step back, to think, to reflect, to make, to create.

Armed for a multitude of jobs

This blogpost is adapted from an article that first appeared in a special learning skills supplement of the Times Higher Education.

Employers frequently bemoan graduates’ lack of skills, but the performing arts demonstrate that they can provide students with the variety of ‘soft’ skills coveted by CEOs.

“If I want someone to design and build bridges, I’ll recruit an A-grade engineering graduate, but if I’m looking for potential managers and leaders of this company, I’m more likely to employ the editor of the student magazine or the director of the dramatic society.”

This, said by the chief executive officer of a major engineering company, encapsulates many of the concerns and challenges in the debate on skills in higher education.

Record numbers of young people may be entering higher education but, according to the British Chambers of Commerce, many do not really understand the work ethic and they lack professionalism. This view is shared by many employers across the industrial, commercial and professional spectrum. They claim graduates are leaving universities lacking a number of the essential skills required by the market-driven, consumer-led, image-focused, technology-intensive, AI-challenged, rapidly changing world of employment in the 21st century.

But are employers right?

There is a tendency, particularly in government and policy-making circles, to accept the employers’ view without question.

However, while there are genuine concerns about skills, the views and statements of employers need to be treated with some caution. 20 years ago a report for UNESCO pointed out the disparities between what employers stated to be the case about skills and their recruitment and selection policies. Not much has changed in the intervening years. The views of employers are often based on ignorance of what goes on in universities.

That UNESCO report did, however, find an “amazing consensus” among employers on the attributes they expected graduate recruits to possess. These included flexibility; an ability to contribute to innovation and creativity; an ability to cope with uncertainty; an interest in life-long learning; social sensitivity and communication skills; an ability to work in teams; an ability to take on responsibilities; and to be entrepreneurial.

These skills fall into the area known as “soft” skills, as opposed to the “hard” skills associated with technical or discipline-specific abilities and the basic skills associated with the 3Rs. Soft skills are also related to what has become known as “emotional intelligence”.

The CEO’s example of the director of the dramatic society as a potential manager or leader confirms the belief that the creative arts generally and the performing arts in particular have the potential to provide students with precisely the types of experiences and skills that employers value. Further evidence can be seen in the phenomenon of large companies bringing in leading practitioners in dance, music and theatre to train and motivate staff. This lucrative line of business has grown to such an extent that a number of arts organisations, such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, created special units to promote and run such courses.

Through the arts, students learn to innovate and think creatively – qualities that are valued by many new and expanding industries. Performing-arts programmes provide opportunities for the exploration and formation of values, the development of feeling and sensitivity and an opportunity to develop social skills that do not occur as naturally in other disciplines.

The performing arts also help to develop self-confidence. A paying audience arriving at a specific time on a particular day to see a performance is great motivation to develop time-management and decision-making skills. Entrepreneurial, problem-solving and negotiation skills are acquired out of necessity when faced with minimum or non-existent budgets, inflexible production managers and recalcitrant health and safety officers.

But there’s no room for complacency. Some areas, such as the long-established acting, dance and music conservatoires, used to focus little on developing transferable, more general skills required to build and sustain a career in an unpredictable and insecure field of work. But in recent years, acknowledging the wider environments their graduates are likely to enter, they have recognised that training to be an artist is not incompatible with training to be employable and that music-making and theatre-making are skills-rich areas of enterprise.

Research I undertook into the non-arts graduate destinations of performing arts graduates revealed a plethora of graduate-level work across many sectors. One that stood out was a drama graduate getting a place on the coveted (and well-paid) management training course of a major international company. She reported that she was up against dozens of business studies graduates but the feedback she received pointed to the fact that the skills she had acquired through her drama training were precisely the skills the company was looking for.

Certainly, the performing arts have the potential to deliver skills that are in demand, but even in that area of work, arts administrators and managers are known to complain that practitioners are often not equipped with effective entrepreneurial, communication and self management skills. Jobs are increasingly demanding a combination of highly developed specialisms. Many of the recruitment difficulties reported relate to finding the right range of skills.

Two contradictory trends are at work: an increasing specialisation of job roles and a need for what are called “magnificent generalists” – people with the skills and experience to cross boundaries.

Perhaps “crossing boundaries” suggests a way forward for those concerned to enhance and broaden the skills of their students. Engaging with the skills that the performing arts have to offer is not about turning accountants into actors or medics into musicians. But it is about exploiting the many and rich opportunities for skills development that the performing arts have to offer.

Beyond excellence…..towards wonder

In higher education (and in education generally) we obsess about excellence. So what does excellence mean?

Going by the result of the debate on excellence at an academic conference, there is a clear majority who feel that the term has lost credibility and value. When all institutions are either ‘excellent’ or, at the very least, ‘striving for excellence’ (see university mission statements below) then we are witnessing a lot of sound, but hopefully not fury, signifying nothing. Excellence, in Bill Readings’¹ memorable term, has become ‘de-referentialised’. Turning to the dictionary provides little assistance. In the Concise Oxford ‘to excel’ is defined as to surpass or to be pre-eminent (i.e. to be better than the majority), whereas ‘excellence’ is defined as ‘very good’.

Whatever meaning ‘excellence’ once had has become lost in a blizzard of hyperbole. The fate of excellence follows in the tradition of other terms such as ‘community’ and, more recently, ‘creativity’, whose meaning has become devalued and decontextualised through over- and inappropriate use.

In the arts, the term excellence is rarely if ever used as a descriptor except – and this may be relevant in considering educational achievement – in relation to the application or demonstration of skill or craft. Academics, students and arts practitioners tend to avoid the ‘E’ word. The theatrical cliché has never been: “You were excellent, darling”. ‘Wonderful’ is truly a much better word than ‘excellent’ to describe high artistic achievement. Rather than excellent’s rather hard-edged, triumphalist implication of being better than others, ‘wonderful’, i.e. full of wonder, has a sense of the remarkable, the extraordinary, the truly successful that is the mark of the highest quality work.

Excellence, it must be said, is much favoured by arts politicians and bureaucrats who use it both aspirationally and as a justification for funding. Excellence attracts rewards and prizes. But the use of the term has more to do with product branding (as it has in higher education) than with a real concern with the subtle complexities of quality and value.

Here is a typical example: one of our leading UK arts funding bodies, in its mission statement, states: “We believe the arts to be the foundation of a confident and cultured society. They challenge and inspire us. They bring beauty, excitement and happiness into our lives. They help us to express our identity as individuals, as communities and as a nation”.

Wonderful! But then they go and ruin it by reverting to corporate-speak and saying they are going to “serve the people … by fostering arts of excellence through funding, development, research and advocacy”. An external examiner I knew, having seen what was – by general consensus – a remarkable, successful, extraordinary, inspiring … yes, wonderful piece of final-year practical work was dismayed to find that the two internal examiners, who also thought the work was remarkable, successful etc had agreed a mark of 75%. He asked them to start at 100%, and argue persuasively for marks to be deducted. With the assessment criteria in their hands they struggled to get below 95%. To describe that work as merely ‘excellent’ would have been insufficient. It was beyond excellence.

That is perhaps what we should be striving for and, in doing so, we need to look beyond our obsession with trying to define, achieve, assess and reward excellence.

As the old saying goes: education is, or ought to be, a wonder-full thing.

References

1 Readings, B. (1997) The University in Ruins. Harvard University Press

‘Keep on the Grass’: changing the language of education

If you visit a National Trust property here in the UK, you will often see signs saying things like ׳Keep off the Grass’, ‘Don’t Touch This’, ‘Don’t Touch That’, ‘Keep to the Path’. It’s all in the negative and proscriptive. But, in a few places, as an experiment they kept the signs but changed the language. Now it’s Dos instead of Don’ts accompanied by some encouraging words. Rules are there for a reason, but rather than focus only on what people can’t do, try to point them in the direction of what they can do. If you need to impose a restriction zone, for example around a fragile object, then simply explain why and direct visitors to where they can take a closer look at the detail (for example, online). People tend to be more relaxed and understanding when they feel informed and can make a choice.

There was a recent short exchange on Twitter with an HE colleague looking for better word or words than ‘Delivery’ in regard to teaching and learning. I distinctly remembered the late Ken Robinson wondering in regard to the obsession with ‘delivery’: “When did education become a branch of FedEx?”

In my own research into creativity in higher education, when I asked colleagues from across a whole range of disciplines, for the words and phrases they used to describe creativity or being creative in regard to learning and teaching, the top twenty words and phrases contained words that never appear in programme or module specifications or any Teaching, Learning and Assessment strategies.

Words like joy, play, fun, passion, excitement, adventure and let’s admit they sit alongside words like anxiety, stress, disorientation, which are also part of learning.

Learning and studying should involve all of those…..and so should assessment.

So, instead of hitting students as soon as they start with dire warnings about plagiarism and cheating, let’s talk about integrity, trust, responsibility, partnership, collaboration, and so on.

I’d also like to suggest that we stop using the word failure. It’s such a loaded word. Much better, in my own mind and practice, to be able to say to a student: “OK, that didn’t work, and here’s why, but what have you learned from the experience? And design an approach to assessment that rewards the learning instead of penalising the so- called failure.

So, returning to the idea of ‘Keep on the Grass’ and extending the metaphor, perhaps it would be much better for everyone if we start seeing and talking about higher education as less like a machine for learning and more like a garden and words like growth, flourishing, blossoming, ecology and transformation.