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The Debate
Some of our experts in the field have given their thoughts on the Debate Piece An academic merry go round by Kathryn Penaluna. If you would like to join the debate please email chris@isbe.org.uk and your comments will be placed on the website.
Responses by:
Simon Roodhouse
Charlotte Carey
Stefania Romano
Response to An Academic Merry go round
By Simon Roodhouse
Kathryn Penaluna’s article ‘an academic merry go round: why we must start to think like designers’ concerns itself with suggesting that those involved in teaching business may learn from the way that designers are educated and how their businesses operate. She suggests that transmission teaching is out, and facilitating the learning journey through experience is in. She goes on to argue, that the people involved in design teaching, are drawn from the workplace and the focus on doing, rather than talking rather than being employed because of their research record. The reason she thinks it is important to focus attention on this type of learning is because of the constant calls for ‘more creativity in business’.
She has a point; there is no doubt that University design education is rooted in practice and the world of work. It is essentially work based learning. Professors Paul Gibbs and Jonathan Garnett from Middlesex University Institute for Work Based Learning confirmed in a recent publication that work based learning is an emerging discrete university subject which is taught, studied and researched as ‘a field of study’, in its own right. It is not a traditional part time course undertaken whilst at work but rather: ‘The demonstration of your ability to reflect upon your skills, knowledge and approach to your work, often called your ‘professional practice’.
A useful publication, Getting Started with University Level Work Based Learning edited by Alan Durrant, Garth Rhodes and David Young takes this further by connecting academic study with workplace competence. In some situations, learners will develop occupational competence alongside the WBL programme and this is usually assessed separately by the employer’. The emphasis in this model is on what has and can be learnt at work by carrying out the job, interacting with colleagues and identifying and reflecting on processes and procedures, the corporate memory relies on being employed. It is this philosophy that underpins university design education and incidentally has some resonances in business education, particularly project work undertaken in executive MBAs. We simply need to see more of it.
The other important observation in the article concerns distinguishing creativity and problem solving, both incidentally over exposed terms. The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has suggested creativity as the first stage in innovation and innovation as
‘product innovation – bringing to the market or into use by business process innovation; significant changes in the way that goods or services are produced or provided; categories of investment such as R&D, capital goods and software acquisition; design activity, for implementing current innovations or directed to future product or process changes; management related, such as strategic changes to the organisation of business or its functions, in order to achieve gains in competitiveness’ (DTI, 2006, pviii)
As a result, innovation can be thought of as structured problem solving [that is design education] (Clegg 1999), unlike creativity, which may be described as ‘A creator (who) is unlikely to stick in a mould, rather reshaping that mould, thereby extending the framework established for the field of endeavour.’
(Gardner 1993)
Finally claims for the size and importance of the design industries need to be taken with a pinch of salt, as the DCMS suggests;
‘As set out [above,] many of the calls for better evidence have focused on official statistics and the way DCMS uses these to estimate the economic importance of the creative industries. In particular, problems have been raised with the identification of creative industries within official classifications. Official statistics are drawn from ONS surveys which cover businesses that are registered for VAT and do not include those that are not registered or small businesses whose turnover is below the VAT threshold. This is problematic when trying to identify and measure the activity of the creative industries because many of the industries are very specific and small in terms of number of businesses, turnover and employment. There is concern therefore that official statistics are not totally representative of the whole creative industries sector. The only way to overcome this would be to carry out a separate survey of small creative firms and individuals but this would be a huge undertaking involving significant costs and potentially placing a considerable burden on the firms’ (DCMS 2006 ).
Above all else what we really need is more work based learning that is informed practice.
Professor Simon Roodhouse
Response to An Academic Merry go round
By Charlotte Carey
Having been asked to respond to Kathryn’s account I find it hard to know quite what I could add. Perhaps I can offer a different, albeit an ‘in full agreement’ perspective. I have the opposite background, I have a Fine Art training. I studied Art and Design from age 16 before doing a degree in Time based Media (via Fine Art). I now work in a business school and much of my research and teaching has been centred on entrepreneurship/enterprise and enterprise education.
For me the issues business schools had/have with teaching enterprise were a ‘no-brainer’ and the similarities of teaching somebody to be creative (have ideas and solve problems) were closely aligned to teaching somebody to be enterprising. Sitting in a class room/ lecture theatre being lectured at just didn’t seem appropriate.
Here’s the thing: Creative discipline graduates experience high levels of self-employment and it could be argued are entrepreneurial. The way they are taught/the way I was taught, as Kathryn describes, included the following – responding to real-life briefs/projects, all of my lecturers were also practitioners (self-employed or running/part of micro businesses) weren’t they entrepreneurial role models? Frequently I had to present (participate in ‘crits’) to my peers and lecturers and justify my ideas and their feasibility and at the end of it all there was a degree show (a big networking and sales event).
Each of these things and the ways in which I was assessed provided, it could be argued, real-life context, experiential learning and an opportunity to rehearse my career – I went on to be self-employed, then ran a small business for 9 years before becoming an academic (but that’s another story). This is not to say that this provision isn’t flawed, for sure these creative companies frequently fail or fail to grow, they could use more business ‘know-how’ in their pedagogies. But in terms of teaching people to be enterprising there seems a lot of benefits.
The reason for offering this brief insight is that perhaps the question as alluded to by Kathryn shouldn’t just be how can business schools support enterprise education in other faculties? Rather how can both learn from each other.
Charlotte Carey is Senior Lecturer in Creative Industries Marketing, Birmingham City Business School. She has published and presented many conference papers in the field of enterprise education, with a specific focus on enterprise education and the creative industries. She can be contacted at charlotte.carey@bcu.ac.uk
Response to An Academic Merry go round
By Stefania Romano
Education is an important part of everyone’s life. The style of teaching is a personal attitude which is used to transfer knowledge to an audience through communication, charisma as well as interpersonal skills of an educator. His/Her professional improvement is influenced by working experiences, an open-mindedness, a constant need to know, an ability to share knowledge and create synergies with colleagues as well as students.
Kathryn Penaluna highlights that in the teaching design context both teachers and students play an important active role in nurturing and changing the learning quest. This establishes useful and recognizable synergies in order to increase the students’ aptitude on problem solving and professional enrichments for educators.
She points out design educators’ teaching method as a competitive tool that could be used in the traditional academic environment to respond to students’ needs in a proactive way. She stresses the value added of teachers’ collaborative approach during their lessons, harnessing outside expertise, student input, and their own commercial experience to stimulate students and increase their professional self-confidence. She also highlights prominence to audience’s constructive active participation. She further describes fundamental elements involved in the educational system that have to be considered such as applied creativity discussions around the literature, and above all the use of challenging problem solving situations, and suggests that business school thinking can benefit from an increased awareness of how the design industry works, based on the latter’s results, competitiveness and growth rate.
The article is an accessible introduction to a contemporary subject matter which serves as a wake up call for those who are still in a business school “silo” and ignoring this innovative way of teaching, while offering further insight for those who have already embraced it. For example, in the initial paragraph it is pleasing to note the comparison of Victorian Era innovation and inventiveness which were made on a hunch, an approach with good parallels to the modern day’s design thinking.
The article demonstrates sensibility, smoothness and a concise observation on a proactive expansive teaching which includes amusement, creativity, interaction, efficiency and productivity. It is also an optimum singular self-assesment which could merit a standing ovation if it encouraged other subjects to do the same.
Stefania Romano, Tor Vergata University