Exploring Situated Learning

I no longer remember when I first came across the term «situated learning» — likely it was in connection to my exploration of theories of experiential learning, starting with Dewey, and continuing through Kolb and Schön & Argyris. But in the past few days I’ve been reading more closely, starting with the excellent introduction on Infed, Jean Lave, Etienne Wenger and communities of practice.

The notion that learning occurs when the learner is placed in situations that closely resemble the situations where the learning is later to be applied, and that this furthermore is part of bringing the learner into a community of practice resonates with my approach to film school education. Effective education at any practice-based film school will always create situations for the students to learn different aspects of filmmaking through practical work in real-world problems. Furthermore, a school such as ours, where the faculty are also active filmmakers, will ensure the students are not only learning through instruction but also by being included in what is most definitely a community of practice.

One question I am wanting to explore further is how this relates to the other educational theories and pedagogical approaches we employ at the school.

[image from “Situated Learning Theory” by Sandra P. Mina Herrera, https://opentext.wsu.edu/theoreticalmodelsforteachingandresearch/chapter/situated-learning-theory/]

Three thoughts as I transition from reading to writing…

At some point one has to stop reading and start writing… This is a hard one for me, as I – as a “non-academic” academic – do not have the training for this.

However, the time alloted for the NORDICIL working group to develop a film school pedagogy course is nearing a temporary end, and now is the time to produce. I have managed to create a draft outline for an introductory module (2.5 ects, 5 weeks) which I hope to receive some feedback on at our meeting in Stockholm at the start of April. The next module to tackle is the one on assesment I was assigned at our last meeting.

In addition to this, it’s time to review the descriptions of our BFA programmes and introduce several new teachers to the arcane business of teaching at the Norwegian Film School.

So, what I have I learned in all my reading the past months (well, years)?

1. While no one has really written about film school pedagogy specifically, there are many resources out there

An obvious place to start is John Dewey. The pragmatist approach, so well summarized in the quote “Learning to know by doing, and to do by knowing” is very apt for our programmes.

Experiential learning is another key for us. The Kolb learning cycle (or spiral, as it is also described) is naturally a simplified model of learning but it is a good model to illustrate how we want our students to learn.

In addition, both constructivism and social constructivism provide useful tools for understanding our own pedagogical approach. Also valuable is Danish learning theorist Knud Illeris’ work on developing a comprehensive and contemporary theory of learning.

2. Measuring artistic development is challenging

Which is probably why we do not measure it at all! Central to this is that we are working with tacit rather than explicit knowledge. While many forms of explicit knowledge indeed are necessary for filmmakers, especially when it comes to the technical aspects of the different disciplines, we are not a technical school and do not measure technical aptitude.

I would contend that what we do “measure” – how the students develop and reflect on their own artistic expression – is very much in the field covered by tacit knowledge.

3. Continual feedback and assessment is key.

We spend a very large amount of time on feedback and formative assessment, and these are integrated into various teaching activites. As an art school we firmly assert that we must constantly check that the activities we plan are in fact having the impact we plan, and the students are developing both their technical skills and their artistic abilities.

This is an area where much has been written in recent year, notably by John Hattie and Paul Ramsden (the latter in his book Learning to Teach in Higher Education)

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