In parallel to running and observing the main digital storytelling learning activity that sits at the centre of my action research project, I begin to delve deeper into some of the conceptual layers of the project; research cycles within research cycles start to develop. At the core of the project sits the idea that students are part of a community of creative practitioners as well as a succinct group of student partners. My research aims to look at students’ connectedness within that community. As the project develops, however, I begin to wonder about the collective nature of the activity itself. What is the overarching output of the activity and how is the overarching collective output, and students’ collective experience, different to individual experiences within the boundaries of the activity?
Thanks to a brilliant recommendation, I am currently reading Christopher M. Bache’s The Living Classroom: Teaching and Collective Consciousness (2008). In his book, Bache talks about our interdependence and what happens when individuals connect with each other on a sort of metaphysical level (although he does not use these exact words). Bache describes how this type of connectedness supports the development of the group as a whole, and aids the development of something he describes as the ‘group mind’ (p.45). Reading through some of these ideas, I begin to wonder if something like a group mind could possibly develop in a digital learning activity, online, or if you students would need to be physically in the same room, as many of Bache’s examples describe. Also, would the asynchronous nature of my research activity hinder this type of connectedness, or perhaps because of its focus, could it nurture it.
Bache goes on to talk about the development of learning fields, strong fields of connectedness that nurture more productive learning conditions. He outlines three key ingredients that must be present for these fields to emerge as ‘potent forces’ (p.59):
- Collective intention focused in an emotionally engaging group project
- A project of sustained duration
- Repetition of the project in approximately the same form many times
Looking at what my action research project sets out to do and how my research activity is set up, it does, at least in theory, contain the first two of the above-mentioned ingredients. If I were to develop this project further, and to repeat my storytelling activity multiple times, this might allow me to measure the development learning across different groups of students, through the development of such learning fields.
While I am currently not as interested in investigating learning fields specifically, I am curious about the idea of a collective consciousness that might form between learners, particularly in an asynchronous, online activity. What is it that connects us, and can it stimulate something larger than individual creative action?
Bibliography
Bache, C.M. (2008). The Living Classroom. SUNY Press.