2 Towards free-range learning

What is education for? Radovic-Markovic & Markovic (2012, 97) wrote that “A good education system gives students the freedom to recognize their capabilities and individual potentials.” Sounds wonderful and so important! Who wouldn’t sign up for this! However, arriving at university can be daunting for students. After years of being part of a very structured and prescriptive experience in school, there is suddenly a lot of freedom. Suddenly the student has arrived in a massive university with thousands of other students and staff. Research suggests that the majority of students in higher education experience loneliness, more so in their first year (Zahedi et al., 2022; Neves & Brown, 2022; Lovell & Webber, 2023; YouGov, 2023).

While universities are greenhouses for new knowledge creation and dissemination, universities wouldn’t be anything without people. Helping students to find themselves, to feel that they matter and are connected and belong, to learn to use their curiosity and imagination, to contribute, to make a difference, to become and be lifewide and lifelong learners and active citizens of our world are so important for growth and transformation individually and collectively.

Below, I will explore freedom, choice, and scaffolding in the context of  free-range learning. I have many questions and am seeking potential pathways we can consider for learning to celebrate freedom, empowerment, and transformation.

Freedom

Breaking free from constraints, being able to do what we want, when we want it, and how we want it. In higher education, too? Academic freedom on steroids! Sounds truly amazing! But does this sound utopian in today’s higher education context? Higher education institutions are massive businesses. There are rules, regulations, and policies everywhere and learning to navigate the complexity of the systems is not an easy task.

However, we do love our freedom! And Dewey (2015), a classic originally published in 1938,acknowledges its importance for learning. Some seem to love and crave that freedom more than others, perhaps. The inquisitive, the experimenters, the rebellious, the curious spirits and minds. Nobody can stop them. They often create freedom zones themselves.

We are familiar with the concept of free-range farming, also parenting in some countries, and understand that it is beneficial for the welfare of animals. Applying the concept in educational settings can be equally rewarding for students and educators. Not just for the inquisitive, the experimenters, the rebellious, the curious spirits and minds. We all have the capacity to be and become!

McKenzie (2000, 13) defines the free-range student as “a student fed on the wild grains and fragments available in the magical world made accessible by the Net. […] Students will learn to make sense out of nonsense and order out of chaos. They will ask essential questions and solve complex problems. They will join electronically with brothers and sisters around the globe to cast a spotlight on earth-threatening issues which deserve attention and action.” These words remind me of Illich (1971) and the concept of de-schooling society and learning within that society that is experiential, collaborative, and happens anywhere, anytime and anyhow outside educational institutions. It seems that this learning does not require any teaching and is purely based on the agency of learners, highly personalised, contextualised, and imaginative. But are learning and teaching two separate and distinct activities? Do they have to be? What if we saw them as one? We are all learners and teachers at the same time, we take and we give. We learn, and we teach. We are co-learners and co-teachers. We come together to learn and help others learn.

This raises an important question for me: Do we need a fixed and crammed curriculum? Jackson et al. (2006) encourage us to think of an imaginative curriculum instead, with freedom spaces built-in. What role can lifewide and lifelong learning play? And open education? Discovery learning? What all these forms of learning have in common is learning that is in the world with others, explorative and inquiry-based, driven by curiosity and wonder. There are so many alternative experiential opportunities for learning. Is there more that can and needs to be done to harness the value of such experiential learning opportunities for all students? Peixer (2024, 14) reflecting on the COVID-19 pandemic and the post-pandemic opportunities reminds us that “it is time for us to take meaningful action to bring about space for the education we want for people, inspired by the principles of freedom and the ideals of human solidarity.”

McKenzie (2000, 1) acknowledges the multiple benefits of free-range learning but also highlights the important role of the educator: “We must teach students to graze and digest the offerings thoughtfully in order to achieve insight.” (McKenzie, 2000, 1). This illustrates that free-range learning requires openness, criticality, decision making, and  knowing what to do and where to find help if needed. Free-range is very much self-directed learning with the student in the driving seat. It can all feel and be a bit chaotic. Haney (2017) suggests that learning plans can help to boost learner autonomy and responsibility.

Free-range learning sounds like the perfect recipe for learning, but is it the perfect recipe for all? So much freedom can be liberating but also overwhelming and disorientating. The freedom to experiment and be creative! To learn what I want, how I want, when I want, with whom I want. Too much freedom? Is there such a thing? Constraints can have magical powers for creativity and innovation; we should not forget that (Thomas & Seely Brown, 2011). And we know that freedom should not and does not mean isolation and separation from others. On the contrary, collaboration is essential for progress, growth, and evolution of ideas and learning. So how can educators create freedom spaces for learning?

How can we help our students not to feel lost and overwhelmed? How can we design imaginative curricula that let minds and hearts wonder and wander and enjoy the freedom?  How can we design learning to boost stimulation, to boost participation, to boost meaningful and novel connections to be made, to boost transformative learning?

Choice

Ok, not total freedom, but choice? Choices? But can there be too much freedom and too many choices? There is a saying in German, “Wer die Wahl hat, hat die Qual!” A loose translation is: the one who has many choices struggles to decide! Indeed! Research by Katz and Assor (2007) suggests that when there are choices that need to be made, this can be too much for students in higher education. Especially when choices are not connected to their interests, aspirations, and values. It seems to be demotivating and lead to disengagement, as their research showed. When, however, choices are manageable and connected to the student’s interest, aspirations, and values then these seem to have a positive impact on students’ learning and wellbeing. A more recent study by Galpin et al. (2022), with a focus on co-creating the curriculum with undergraduate psychology students, also found that students really welcome choice and that this has a positive effect on their learning autonomy and increases their sense of freedom and ownership of their learning. However, their findings also echo Katz and Assor’s (2007) findings, suggesting that too much choice can be problematic for students. In order to avoid this, the researchers suggest to scaffold choice across the academic programme of study, which would mean progressively more choice for students in learning and assessment. Scaffolding within a module or course is, I think, equally important, especially when we think about non-credit-bearing learning opportunities or solo modules in the form of microcredentials for example.

Scaffold

So much freedom and too many choices can create challenges, at least for some students. Furthermore, when educators leave students to their own devices and provide minimal or no help or support more generally, this can also demotivate students and lead to disengagement (Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006; Nerantzi, 2017; Gaszak, 2014). A learning scaffold that progressively disappears when no longer needed can help (Bruner 1983). Such a scaffold would be a bit like stabilisers that we attach to a bike when we learn to ride it and then remove them when no longer needed. Some, of course, learn to ride a bike without them.

Macmurray (1950, 74-75) noted, “to achieve freedom and equality is to create friendship, to constitute community between men.” It reminds me of Aristotle’s works that we humans are social creatures. Educators play a key role in making this happen and design learning scaffolds carefully and with care to help students to create valuable connections. Palmer (2007, 11) wrote about these connections and said, “good teachers possess a capacity for connectedness. They are able to weave a complex web of connections among themselves, their subjects, and their students so that students can learn to weave a world for themselves.” This made me think about learning as knitting or weaving webs of and for connections. For educators to position themselves within a learning community is important (hooks, 1994). To help students get to know educators and their peers, experience learning as a social process, learn with and from them and increase engagement within and beyond the classroom (Chickering & Gamson, 1987; Kerr, 2024). We know that learning can happen anywhere, anyhow, anytime, but to harness the learning diverse experiences bring, it needs to be illuminated and supported by educators and others.

What role does experiential learning in its broadest sense play in further enriching and creating stimulating and diverse freedom spaces and choices for learning? Spaces for personal, professional, and collective growth, and do I dare to say, happiness? I wonder if the focus of experiential learning often appears to be leaning more towards preparing students for work Beyond this important aspect of experiential learning, what are the connections between wellbeing and experiential learning, for example, and what role does the social dimension of learning and life play for meaningful engagement in experiential learning? Or what Dewey (2015, 25) called “the organic connection between education and personal experience”? Herbert (2024), for example, presents wellbeing as experiential learning and recognises the positive impact it has on active participation in learning and social life. For me, this very much also links to what Freire’s (1970) says about learning grounded in critical pedagogies and social praxis and how transformative this can be. This type of experiential learning creates fireworks, literally! All students can generate such fireworks! All students want to be happy. All students have interests. All students have aspirations. All students have something valuable to contribute!

Continuing exploring experiential learning Gaszak (2024, 70) notes that “experiential education is a powerful, meaningful way to support the personal, academic, and professional growth of students. All students should have the opportunity and access to benefit from such learning opportunities, and the opportunities should not be definitionally or functionally limited to only students who have the means and privilege to benefit.” So not a privilege for the few. In higher education, we talk a lot about access, inclusion, and equity, and there are a plethora of initiatives across the sector to improve experiences in these areas. Gaszak (2024) notes the importance of making experiential learning accessible to all students, not reducing it to activities that require third parties, for example, or unpaid internships, and calls scholars to redefine and broaden their understanding of experiential learning to create truly equitable experiential learning experiences for all students. These are important points! Interventions and pathways to transition towards more equitable experiential learning. Recognising not only the benefits these would bring for developing capabilities for a job or a profession, but also for life and their social value in active citizenship. Educators can design such diverse and authentic experiential learning activities into the curriculum and beyond that make them truly inclusive, scalable, and available to all students. Gaszak (2024, 60) says characteristically “If educators and institutions can adopt more forms of experiential learning and apply theory and best practices, then experiential opportunities can be fostered across all corners of an institution, meeting students where they are currently and providing pathways to new experiences.”

Food for thought and action

If we as educators are committed to making learning possible for our students (Ramsden, 1983) and move away from telling, prescribing, and fully orchestrating their learning experiences, we need to learn how to do this well so that our students can flourish and feel empowered to act and transform their own lives, be happy and fulfilled, and make a positive contribution more widely. Over the years, scholars have studied experiences and designed conceptual and empirical frameworks to scaffold learning supported by digital technologies, which are an integral part of the fabric of learning and teaching in higher education today. A review of such conceptual and empirical frameworks revealed four common design characteristics that matter the most in fully online, open or blended, informal and formal further and higher education settings: choice, activities, facilitator support, community (Nerantzi, 2017). How could these characteristics be utilised as a scaffold when designing freedom and choice into our curricula, our programmes, modules, and courses so that they are imaginative and nurture free-range transformative experiential learning based on informed choices in a supportive environment that leads to praxis based on critical reflection and action (Freire, 1970)?

References

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