The In-between spaces of education
suddenly, face-to-face interactionS BETWEEN students AND LECTURERS Have ceased. I’ve been reflecting on THE in-between moments that occur in teaching and learning environments. specifically IN moments outside of the traditional seminar room.
I’d like to try to put in words the intellectual, interpersonal and affective load these moments carry for me. I’d like to know what ‘in-betweeness’ means for students and teaching colleagues. Do people share any of the observations below? And if yes, what do you think might be good ways to creatively harness the awkward, the self-conscious, the embarrassing, the rushed, and the mundane?
I found myself using the term in-betweenness to define the variety of unstructured, transitory situations we find ourselves in as educators when we move our ‘normal’ teaching practice to new contexts and spaces. I have in mind here a literal move, a change of the setting we tend to occupy with our students during term time: whether that is a museum visit, a session in the archives, a visit at a placement provider or a cultural institution, a seminar conducted sitting in a circle in open air on a spring morning in the green spaces of Tremough campus. The move might not even be planned: many a timetable clash/faulty equipment/fire alarm has required a seminar group to pack their stuff halfway through a session and follow their seminar leader in their heroic efforts to identify a suitable space while performing - with various levels of confidence and success - their newfound role. You would expect academics to be experts at nomadic life but somehow this does not translate so well inside the Peter Lanyon building.
In such scenarios, in-betweenness can take many forms: the nervous chit-chat on the train or hired coach, the small talk in the reception lobby, lift, or stairs of the museum, preparatory remarks as students gather around an early renaissance medical textbook, follow-up questions as the group moves from one exhibit to the next, irrelevant comments and gossip the educator cannot help being drawn to, hilarious or sober anecdotes either party may share outside the usual learning space. In-betweenness can, and does, of course, take place during conventional teaching sessions; it is only accentuated outside the classroom. But it happens, too, in the corridors. And it happens in the class itself, before whatever comical convention the instructor resorts to signal the beginning of ‘actual’ class. We think of these intervals as giving students time to ‘settle down’. What if what is happening here is not about settling, but about unsettling?
the nervous chit-chat on the train or coach, the small talk in the lift or on the stairs. Why would you look for It? What happens in these moments? Nothing and everything.
I never paid attention to these moments when I was based at the University of Manchester. Perhaps it was the sheer numbers of students, the quick pace at which the university was operating, the frantic, vibrant rhythms of Manchester reflected in the city campus hubbub on Oxford Road, my own exhaustion teaching while writing my PhD. I was entering and exiting teaching sessions, planned or unplanned, without taking heed of in-between moments. Moving to Cornwall has allowed for plenty of opportunities to stop and listen and reflect. The geographical remoteness alone means that if you are planning an optional study session in London (Wellcome), Exeter (Cathedral Archives) or Redruth (Krowji), you will most likely, intentionally or not, travel there and back with students, and might even unexpectedly spend an evening hour marooned together at a Truro platform.
The small size of the campus means that if you want to meet students at the Italian Garden, you will walk there with most of the class or meet them on their way out of the Stannery or at the Koofi queue afterwards. The Penyrn location and campus majestically deconstruct any pretence at fixed space teachers adn students might occupy. In-betweenness abounds if you just look for it.
Why would you look for it? What happens in these moments? Nothing and everything, in my experience. Sometimes the unstructured discussion and events before ‘class’ fit neatly (or better to say are made to fit neatly…) into the topic under examination: last night’s Twitter remarks allow for an impromptu collaborative start to a seminar on early modern print and popular culture. Nervous small talk often strengthens the emotional bond between the group that might feel unmoored outside the seminar room, it creates new connections, and upturns established ones. This different emotional energy occasionally transforms the whole learning session that ensues, and I certainly experienced this on field trips with my first cohort of the Feeling Bodies module (2018-19), where the term ‘affective atmosphere’ was no longer just part of the academic content of the day but an embodied reality. I have seen increased levels of confidence and knowledge exchange, teamwork, and students engaging with topics as investigators and researchers. Somehow, I know the in-between moments are central in this process.
Maybe it is due to my lifelong imposter syndrome, but I relish these in-between moments and their ability to dismantle fixed roles and scripts
Maybe I am wrong and unstructured discussion remains unstructured and peripheral to the learning process, neither a benefit nor a drawback, just a state. An inconvenience perhaps? Maybe it is due to my lifelong imposter syndrome, that has always made me wary of presenting myself as an authority, that I relish in-between moments and their ability to dismantle fixed roles and scripts. Maybe it is because my physique makes it hard to separate myself from students if we are on a train or museum. Maybe it is my impatience with the dry rhetoric of health and safety guidelines and multiple instructions that have to come first every time a group finds itself outside the classroom, and my attempt to recuperate enthusiasm by incorporating these into a theatre of in-betweenness - let’s celebrate the awkwardness of ‘the toilets are on the ground floor’! Maybe I just like the gossip.
I do not know yet how to study these moments and fruitfully build them into my pedagogy. I do not know yet how to invite students to think about them collectively without risking their unmediated experience of what unfolds during in-betweenness. Until then I will continue to cherish them and embrace them as the genuine part of the learning experience I feel they are.
Image courtesy of Jim Kelly