{"id":324,"date":"2016-11-30T10:23:02","date_gmt":"2016-11-30T10:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/lli\/?p=324"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:27:44","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:27:44","slug":"holiploigy-capturing-the-complex-and-emergent-nature-of-teaching-learning-and-curriculum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/lli\/2016\/11\/30\/holiploigy-capturing-the-complex-and-emergent-nature-of-teaching-learning-and-curriculum\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Holiploigy’ – capturing the complex and emergent nature of teaching, learning and curriculum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday 24th November saw the second\u00a0in a year-long series of HE Seminars, hosted by the LLI.\u00a0The seminar, led by Dr Phil Wood (School of\u00a0Education)<\/a>, was entitled: ‘Conceptualising the complexity of teaching in Higher Education – developing the case for holiploigy<\/strong>.’ As Phil explained, the latter term – new to those of us attending the seminar! – is the result of his growing dissatisfaction with existing terminology (e.g. Pedagogy) as\u00a0an adequate or appropriate\u00a0means of properly capturing the complex nature of teaching in HE.<\/p>\n

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As he explains\u00a0in his excellent blog, HE Reflections: exploring approaches to learning and teaching<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The concept of \u2018holiploigy\u2019 attempts to capture two fundamental aspects of work in higher education. The \u2018holi\u2019 element relates to the idea that the process of higher education needs to be considered holistically, and as a series of interpenetrating complex adaptive systems. This philosophy acts at a number of scales, and across a series of ideas. Firstly, there is the idea of the complexity of knowledge and skills within a\u00a0domain,\u00a0and increasingly their links across domains (inter- and trans-disciplinarity). Secondly,\u00a0as laid out above, it includes the idea of teaching, learning, assessment and curriculum being inextricably linked, and of a complex nature (with\u00a0lecturers and students at the intersection of the four). However, around this is the complexity of learning environments and how these processes operate across them. Teaching, learning etc operate differently in a face-to-face context when compared to being online, and yet increasingly, such blends will occur within a single course. How are the complexities of this to be understood and navigated?<\/p>\n

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And this\u00a0leads to\u00a0the idea of \u2018ploigy\u2019, from ploigos \u2013 navigate.\u00a0Agogos, as used in pedagogy, suggests a role for the lecturer\u00a0as leader, being at the centre of the educative process. At higher education level, this\u00a0should not be the case \u2013 all of the time. However, if we see the lecturer as merely a guide \u2013 we might begin to move towards a process of \u2018learnification\u2019 (Biesta, 2012)\u00a0which is potentially damaging. Biesta (2015) suggests the need for the teacher to be more central to the process of teaching and learning, but in a way\u00a0that offers an opening up rather than a narrow leading. Navigating can be\u00a0thought of\u00a0as a process which sometimes needs more direct action, especially when moving through complex, dangerous and difficult waters. But at other times, such navigation requires less direct intervention, and can allow for much greater freedom, whilst still being a journey with a purpose. In some cases a journey might allow for detours, extra investigations of interesting, new places, but all the time the crew and navigator are working together to chart a meaningful course. And all the time, the navigator is inculcating the crew into the art of navigation for themselves. (Phil Wood, Navigating the complexity of education in universities \u2013 arguing for\u00a0holiploigy<\/em><\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Phil’s\u00a0ideas\u00a0stimulated a lively and\u00a0engaging discussion ranging from how we evaluate our practices (including whether ‘evaluation’ is even the right word or concept for what we’re seeking to make sense of), to the analogies we choose to describe them, to extent to which\u00a0the current policy context for HE might stifle or work against more holistic and\u00a0complexity-acknowledging approaches to\u00a0teaching and curricula.<\/p>\n

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On\u00a0a personal note, I\u00a0came away\u00a0reflecting on the extent to which learning developers, educational developers, educational designers, learning technologists\u00a0et al<\/em>. accounted for complexity –\u00a0both\u00a0in\u00a0our own practices, and in the practices\u00a0we support others in developing. With the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF)\u00a0looming large\u00a0on\u00a0the horizon, the challenge, it seems to me,\u00a0of countering reductionist approaches to describing,\u00a0understanding and developing\u00a0what we do has\u00a0never felt more urgent and necessary.<\/p>\n

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The HE Seminar series\u00a0 – further details for which will be circulated soon – will resume in the New Year.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday 24th November saw the second\u00a0in a year-long series of HE Seminars, hosted by the LLI.\u00a0The seminar, led by Dr Phil Wood (School of\u00a0Education), was entitled: ‘Conceptualising the complexity of teaching in Higher Education – developing the case for holiploigy.’ As Phil explained, the latter term – new to those of us attending the seminar! […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":261,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/lli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/lli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/lli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/lli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/261"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/lli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/lli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/lli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions\/333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/lli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/lli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/lli\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}