This project was a collaboration between Lucy Allen, Tyler Key, Giedre Kligyte, Bem Le Hunte, Jacqueline Melvold, Susanne Pratt (TD School), Sean Walsh (School of Life Sciences) and Clancy Beckers, Lara Giles and Anni Liu (Students).
As part of the 2020 FFYE Grant ‘Being and Becoming Transdisciplinary (TD) Practitioners’, a team of TD academics and students came together to explore and respond to student experiences of transition within the Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation (BCII). Many first-year students struggle to reflect, evaluate and successfully consolidate their learning between subjects as well as recall and articulate their understanding throughout their degree (Boud et al., 2013). Students can find it challenging to engage and transition their learning. The overarching aim of the project was to strengthen first-year students’ ability to negotiate meaning from their learning experiences and develop critical interpersonal and professional skills that can be transitioned throughout their program and eventually to the workplace (Jaques & Salmon, 2007).
Insights
Through a collaborative research process, we worked with BCII students to understand their learning transition experiences across all four years of the degree. Students identified memorable learning experiences, opportunities to re-contextualise knowledge, emotional intelligence, reflexivity and social connection as crucial factors for engaging with and negotiating meaning from their learning. Interestingly, many students (particularly those in the later years of the degree) reflected on moments of being ‘stuck’, where what you’re trying to do, create and apply isn’t moving forward (Presencing Institute, n.d.). In retrospect, students identified these moments as necessary and transformative, but couldn’t necessarily reflect, identify, express and support one another through this discomfort at the time, leaving students feeling isolated, inadequate, and disengaged.
All of us recognise that Stuck is a negative thing. It’s very anxiety inducing…we don’t like it, but we recognise that it is part of BCII (the course) and part of creative and problem-solving processes. It’s interesting that since it is so fundamental to any process that we have such a negative perception of it, and what would happen if we tried to work with it a bit more, especially since we all have such similar experiences. How could we work through this together?
Third-year student
Our strategies
This got us thinking. How might we support our students to acknowledge moments of stuck as a standard and valuable part of learning? How might we equip them with the self-awareness to recognise and support one another through moments of stuck? How might we introduce them to the concept of ‘stuck’ in a way that’s memorable so that they can carry it through their learning journey?
Drawing upon the work of The Presencing Institute and their awareness-based, action research methodology Social Presencing Theatre (Hayashi, 2021) we identified an activity we hoped could be adapted and implemented within our classrooms. The Stuck Exercise is an embodied activity that invites participants to sense into their emotional and physical experiences of being stuck and unstuck and use their body to express this. The exercise helps participants to discover new directions and insights without feeling the need to fix the situation (Presencing Institute, n.d.). The aim of adapting and applying this exercise within learning and teaching was to support students in coming to their own expression and understanding of what it felt like to be stuck whilst also developing their ability to support themselves and others in these moments of discomfort and unknown.
At the time of development and as far as we were aware, the Stuck Exercise had been designed for face-to-face delivery in a live group setting. Given the impacts of COVID-19, we adapted the activity for online and hybrid learning environments, developing two versions; an extended live-facilitated version and a shorter audio guided version.
How students responded
Trialling the exercise and the different versions was a lot of fun, and we were able to do so with students as part of a co-design workshop and large-scale subject. We also ran the exercises with academics and professional staff as part of the Learning Through COVID-19 series seminar ‘Rethinking embodied learning and education practice’ and recent FFYE Seminar ‘Cultivating True Belonging: Creative Approaches for the Classroom’. In all settings, participants expressed initial hesitation that quickly turned to joy as they eased into the process of embodying and expressing their experiences of stuck. The conversations that followed revealed collective relief at not being alone in feeling stuck and allowing participants to normalise and value this as part of the learning journey. Participants reflected deeply and supported one another as they compared their experiences of being stuck. As a result of engaging our students in the Stuck concept and exercise, we witnessed them adopt new terminology and ways of expressing their stucks both during the exercise and in reflection. Furthermore, students have voiced being able to better recognise when their peers are experiencing moments of stuck and can support them. This visualisation of reflections and learnings from the exercise captures some of our favourite insights from students and academic participants.
Going forward
Acknowledging ‘stucks’ and supporting students to recognise and sit with these moments in learning proves powerful in engaging students within and across their learning journey. We plan to keep drawing upon the Stuck exercise and plan to develop new strategies and tools that students can use to support one another in these moments of unknown.
As always, we want to share and keep developing our practice, so we invite anyone interested to engage with the resources below and reach out to Lucy Allen if you have any thoughts or questions.
Resources
By the Presencing Institute (original stuck activity)
- Stuck Exercise downloadable resource
- Stuck Exercise information and videos
- A great blog post about the Stuck Exercise in action
Resources for our developed activities (learning-specific context)
References
Boud, D., Keogh, R., & Walker, D. (2013). Reflection: Turning experience into learning, Routledge Falmer, London.
Hayashi, A. (2021). Social Presencing Theatre. Arawana Hayashi. https://arawanahayashi.com/social-presencing-theater
Jaques, D. & Salmon, G. (2007). Learning in groups: a handbook for face-to-face and online environments (4), Routledge Falmer, London.
Presencing Institute (n.d.). Stuck Exercise. Presencing Institute. https://www.presencing.org/resource/tools/stuck-exercise-desc
This post was written by Lucy Allen with contributions from Anni Liu, Clancy Beckers and Lara Giles.
Feature image by Thomas Tuma.
I love this blog! Who hasn’t felt ‘stuck’ as a student or at any other point in life? I like to think of it as ‘betwixt and between’ a space for resting and trusting uncertainty for awhile, it can be uncomfortable but eventually one moves on. These exercises look really helpful. Thanks
Hi Deborah, so glad you enjoyed it. I love ‘betwixt and between’ as a way of describing those liminal spaces. One of the great joys of this work was seeing the different ways we all describe spaces of uncertainty. Thanks!