Enacting learning citizenship: a sociomaterial analysis of reflectivity and knowledge negotiation in higher education

ABSTRACT

Across international university contexts, on-campus physical learning spaces are increasingly implemented with the aim of fostering active, collaborative, and student-centred learning. This paper theorises learning environments as complex sociomaterial assemblages of pedagogic approaches, material spaces and technologies, teachers, and learners that shift and flow in synergy to enact and refine students’ dispositions for reflective practice. The article presents data from pre-service teachers and teacher educators as part of a broader case study investigating the pedagogic enactment of an innovative learning space in a regional Australian university. Sociomaterial studies of learning spaces are under-represented in understanding reflective practice. Staff and student narratives of practice illustrate processes of negotiating meaning and critical reflection within an embodied learning community. The findings illustrate the ways both social and material actors work in conjunction to enable learners’ knowledge negotiation and reflective practices, and foster the dispositions and skills important for collaborative active citizenship.

KEYWORDS:

• professional learning
• sociomateriality
• dispositional learning
• communities of practice
• higher education
• critical reflection

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributors

Renae Acton

Renae Acton, PhD, is an Education researcher at James Cook University, Australia. She has research interests in the areas of educational learning spaces, the scholarship of teaching and learning, pedagogic relationships, and professional wellness.

Kelsey Halbert

Kelsey Halbert, PhD, is Senior Lecturer and researcher in Education at James Cook University, Australia. Kelsey’s research and teaching spans the areas of teacher education, citizenship education, values education, history education, service-learning and curriculum studies.