Being and becoming a CETL Director
Sibyl Coldham University of Westminster
I have chosen the immersive learning experience of taking on a new job – new to me, but also new in the sense that at the time the job only existed as a job description – director of a CETL that was created through the bidding process[1]. In this story I am drawing parallels between the performativity of aims and targets set up in a project application and the inherent performativity in course design even when learning is the nominal task.
The context and challenge
In my case the post of CETL director had been ring-fenced to those who had been involved in writing the bid, although initially I had not intended to apply – I was in the data-gathering phase of a PhD. However, I had the range of experience that the job description required, I did not want to work under any of the others who were going to apply, and I realised that I would regret it if I did not at least interview for the job. The down side was that I became director of a Centre that could be visualised as a Chinese coin or a polo mint, and a staff of four people - two of whom “didn’t get my job”. All of us were half time in the Centre / half time in our School-based jobs, and the challenge for me was - and is - to value the time for and to create respect for learning process that can look and feel like starting from scratch.
Characteristics that engaged me in an immersive way
I think this question falls into two parts – characteristics of the situation and characteristics of me. In terms of the situation, as director, I was the responsible person. Immersion for me was the order of the day. I could see that others needed to be able to find their own way in(to) this, but also felt that we needed an identity ASAP. Everyone was finding it difficult to extricate themselves from their previous School-based activity and we had no Centre office space for the first nine months. My immersion came through this perceived need to create an identity for the Centre, internally for the team and the university, as well as for external contacts, and for myself. This manifested through involvement in the design of the space and the look in terms of colour, furniture etc, and through drafting marketing materials to articulate the Centre’s purpose in clear and organic ways that could accommodate change and attract ideas and connections that the core group had not / would not have thought of. Everyone was involved through commenting on drafts etc, but I don’t think others were immersed in the finding and building patterns and frameworks in the way that I saw it.
At the time I saw this as immersion in the peripherals. I was also concerned not to be, as I saw it, overly directive of the team as I felt that this would atrophy their own immersion and the growth of the work. I was trying to get a sense of the people as a team, the project’s relationship to the rest of the university, and how the different approaches might work together. However, writing this now I can see this as a form of immersion in the landscape – a different kind of immersion from digging into the detail or constructing something new and focal, then working out its relationship to the ground some time later, or even leaving that task to others. I tend to use systemic interpretive models - group relations, discourse analysis, yinyang theory[2], which work from a high level of immersion in the detail. I think, for me, immersion is the norm. I could see the problems attaching to my greater immersion – that this in itself might be a barrier to others’ finding their way. But couldn’t see any other route at the time.
What forms of learning / personal development / change immerged from the situation?
The most challenging aspect of this journey has been to find the courage to insist on “reinventing the wheel”. It seems obvious to me that if the Centre is be an agent of change we have to do things differently and that this does not mean just changing the targets and outcomes. But how differently? What differently? And whose toes am I treading on?. As a teacher, I have routinely encouraged students to re-visit the wheels that underpin what they know or are learning. That, to me, is what reflection is, and I work like this myself, but “director” is a very public place. I see that I need to create a culture of inquiry and working in the unknown, but this is difficult in a culture of performativity. So, I am learning about self sabotage – and strategies for avoiding it, but mostly I feel I am drawing past experiences together – old selves are re-emerging in slightly different forms, and that I am getting back as much as, or more than I am gaining.
What words / concepts / feelings describe what immersion means to me?
For me immersion is a form of escape – setting aside other concerns – prioritising the detail and the chain of thought. This can be pleasurable, but it can also be dangerous, frightening and/or lonely. For me, I think immersion is normal, but I also recognise that, intellectually, I am a bit of a loner. I get involved in others learning projects, and they can become my own , but for me the level of immersion seems to be in inverse proportion to my ability to talk about my
thinking.
What principles and lessons relevant to designs to enrich learning opportunities in HE?
First – I would challenge the idea that learning only shows itself through change (Jarvis etc). For myself, I am re-finding old selves rather than inventing new ones, and I need to draw on what is there. I don’t agree that someone can be “not learning” even if that learning is simply reinforcing the status quo. If I am doing this I need to see it as a positive act that I might need to face up to rather than dismissing it as a learning a “miss hit”. I think we need to talk about change in the context of learning as part of the programme, and value change within and changing back, rather than foregrounding incremental change by default.
Second – “it’s the people / relationships, stupid” (to misquote …). People learn, understand, understand differently, embody etc. We need to start with the back-stories and foreground the intra-personal learning contexts within the group. We need to encourage people to engage with their own and others stories, for goal setting – but also for identifying the resources within the group, and negotiating how they might be used creatively and for mutual advantage.
Third – I think we need to build in structures and processes that periodically bring people back to the surface to engage with and articulate to others outside the immediate learning group (which may be a group of one). I see this as a safety net as well as a means of gaining the value of reflective input.
I am also increasingly concerned with the rigidity of learning outcomes, and the uncritically way in which one way of writing them has taken hold – in my university if not generally.
footnotes
[1] My University used the CETL initiative as an opportunity to bring a similarly focused activities in different Schools within the University together to create a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts. I believe we were unusual in this. Most HEIs bid in respect of established units.
[1] In the Chinese world view qi (everything) is in a dynamic balance in that it exists as polarities (yinyang) that are interdependent and mutually create and consume themselves.
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