Professor Colin Beard

News update on my latest projects:

The book Managing Spatial Ecologies is now out with Routledge, New York. My chapter focuses on Spaces that change people and organisations. I will be doing some more work on Organisational Development for the NHS later this year, as well as working with the UK Higher Education Academy to deliver some new workshops for lecturers. I am now busy preparing for the European Experiential Education Conference in Greece, as well as my next Training the Trainer workshop which will be a week long event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Singapore will be visited later this year as a result of an invitaiton to speak at a Global Alliance of Educators Conference, as well as a visit to Finland where I hope to deliver a symposium contribution on the Mind, Body, Environment relationship in learning (embodied and embedded learning). The Third Edition of the Experiential Learning Text is coming along with new chapters on sensory intelligence, and coaching using the six dimension model as a guide (belonging, doing, sensing, feeling, knowing and being). I am at last hoping to receive the draft final copy of the audio  book on Sensory Inteligence in the next few days from my colleagues in India. I think I have to develop more patience: although it is now over a year ago since the recording took place in a studio in Mumbai!

The ride is complete!

The woodland ride is developing nicely. We have now created a richer haven for wildlife and we hope to stop any disturbance before the spring is in full flow. Nest boxes of different sizes are going to be put up over the next few weeks to encourage a few more birds along the ride. In the winter as the photos shows the sun aligns with the length of the ride – glorious! At home the chicken coop is taking shape and I am looking forward to getting new hens this year.

 Meantime the new book on Managing Spatial Ecologies by Routledge New York is now in proof stage….so not long to go…..and the audio book on Sensory Intelligence is now ready for launch from Mumbai, India with the cover design done and the introductory voice work complete.

Later this week I am fliming the technique ‘How to Get to University’ that shows students Higher Education concepts based on the cognitive taxonomy developed by Bloom. If all goes well this will be available later next month – on request! Next month  will be working with a Welsh University on staff LTA development for two days and …..my next advanced Training the Trainer event based on the six dimensions learning model will take place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in late June.

I am working voluntarily in a private woodland for a few days each month at present, reconnecting with nature, clearing old rides and re-instating old coppice. A chainsaw, you might think, would not be a friend of nature, however we are in fact managing to increase the wildlife in the wood: both plants and animals.

The woodland has been left untouched for a long time, without any of the old traditional methods of management that were used in the past that made this woodland a thriving working place for wood crops and wildlife. The overgrown rides when opened up will let more light in and increase the wildlife diversity, creating an edge effect. I am enjoying re-learning many skills from my days as a county wildlife conservation officer, a BTCV field officer and an RSPB warden. The moments when resting, and taking a coffee and listening to the sounds of nature in this ride (the photo above) are pure bliss for me and I realise how much I miss working in the outdoors! I enjoy ‘reading’ nature and its signals, like people read books: nature talks and tells me so much and the experiences are very special for me.

I am hoping to return to Patagonia early next year and again let my spirit free in the ‘wilds’ kayaking with my Chilean friend (‘wilderness’, is really not ‘wild’ at all, it is a place of beauty, and spiritual freedom). I am enjoying reading about this very Western notion of ‘wilderness’ in a book called: Wild, an elemental journey by Jay Griffiths. This great book is written by a women who has travelled and realy experienced some remarkable places around the world, including the Amazon and the Arctic far north, listening to remarkable indigenous people. This  book has been described in many reviews as profound and extraordinary. The book certainly challenges us to think about our langauge.

The language that we take for granted in its every day usage. Langauge has played a major role in divorcing us from our natural being – a focus expanded upon in the writing of David Abram, particularly in his fabulous book: The Spell of the Sensuous.

The Experiential Learning Toolkit provides practical examples showing experiential learning in action across a range of cultures and contexts from education, to corporate training, to individual and organizational development.
An in-depth review by Roger Greenaway has been published here

http://reviewing.co.uk/reviews/experiential-learning-toolkit.htm#review

Extracts:

“I am persuaded by the author’s commitment to making learning more real – a thread that is common to all the tools in this wide-ranging toolkit.

“A significant strength of this book is that most tools are original….”  “I am impressed by the range of tools that use space and spatial relationships. Some involve moving labels and objects (‘Different Ways to Know’, ‘Nuts and Bolts’, ‘How to get to …’). Others involve giant models or maps on which participants move (‘Just Four Steps’, ‘Ace of Spades’ and ‘Walk the Talk’). Seeing, touching, moving and making are fully integrated into most of these tools for experiential learning.”

Our thanks to Roger Greenaway

http://reviewing.co.uk/reviews/experiential-learning-toolkit.htm#review

I am persuaded by the author’s commitment to making learning more real – a thread that is common to all the tools in this wide-ranging toolkit.

Watch this space for more details of a new book to be published soon by Routledge New York called Managing Organisational Ecologies (Edited by Keith Alexander and Ilfryn Price). I have been writing for some time now with a friend an eminent Professor of Facilities Management Ilfryn Price, and we have really enjoyed the creative space that links our respective fields of study. Our new thinking has largely taken place in conversational form in a cafe round the corner from Sheffield Business School, not in the academic institution where we work. In fact my view is that ironically universities have little space these days for deep thinking and writing by academics, despite social knowledge construction space increasing in the layout of Universities and their learning centres. The same is true for corporate organisations. The concept of ‘away days’ helps to explain why outside places help…if we think of ‘away’ we might ask away from what? It is often the mental, and cultural/general organisational clutter that exisits in workplaces, and at our workstations, that blocks such creative processes.

Facilities Management you might think, like I did, hasn’t really got much interest for people like me, concerned with learning and personal development! However my colleague Professor Ilfryn Price was originally trained as a geologist,  and I was trained as a zoologist and so we both have a deep understanding of Darwinian thinking, and the evoloution of species. This has created a common language. We have been examining how learning and working are convergent evolutionary trajectories in the knowledge economy. In a recent and separate paper for a leading management journal (we are awaiting reviewers comments on) I examined a ‘quick and dirty’ sketch of the evolution of learning theories, whilst Ilfyn Price examined the history of the office, and some fascinating insight resulted ……In this new book, out soon, all the contributors speak this language of a (new) spatial ecology.  In the mobile dynamics of the world today how does space affect learning and working….? Contributors explore these complex issues and reveal new insights. They include for example facilities specialists from academia, designers, architects, and corporate real estate specialists who work in, and have redesigned some of the most efficient buildings in Europe. Indeed many global companies have been experiementing extensively in recent times with space redesign to explore efficiency and efficacy gains……. Nearly 20 years ago Tom Peters, in Liberation Management, wrote:

‘In fact, space management may well be the most ignored — and most powerful —tool for inducing culture change, speeding up innovation projects, and enhancing the learning process in far-flung organizations’.

……watch this space for more on these exciting topics!

So what do we mean by LIFEWIDE learning? Emeritus Professor Norman Jackson invited me to contribute to a new book he has edited (and significantlly contributed to). Lifewide learning goes largely unrecognised. The rear of the book comments that the book focuses on many aspects of this concept and that it calls for further and higher and other educational institutions to recognise and value this learning. Lifewide concerns the fact that much learning takes place through many experiences people encounter or create in many different spaces and places simultaneously, both on and off campus. In higher education for example students often spend three four or more years as part of their lifelong journey of quite intense learning, in many cases this can be a transformational experience. With Norman Jackson I have written a chapter on the creation of a holistic model for learning and personal development. There are also chapters by Emeritus Professor Ron Barnett about lifewide education as a transformative concept for higher education, and a chapter by Emeritus Professor Michael Eraut and others about learning through work. There is a forward and other chapters by a significant contributor and mentor to Norman Jackson in the book writing project, Professor John Cowan, an extraordinary teacher whose experience spans over 45 years. We have all heard a great deal about lifelong, but not so much about lifewide.

I have just returned from examining a doctoral thesis at Helsinki University in Finland.
The thesis was ‘Theorising the nature of reflection’. My role was as an ‘opponent’. The internal professor who directs the whole process is called the ‘custos’. The candidate defends their research thesis in a public defence. The ‘public’ in the auditorium often consists of interested and involved academics, research students, family and friends. During the defence the doctoral student discusses the thesis with the opponent for about two hours. The student has to wear black. The opponent (me) wears doctoral gowns (not the hat fortunately on this occasion as it was very warm in the auditorium – it was just carried in under my arm and placed face down at the start of the process as the three of us (custos, the student defending and the opponenet) enter the front lecture theatre podium.
The custos formally starts the event by announcing so to the audience. The doctoral student then has to introduce the work with a lecture (lectio praecursoria) for about twenty minutes. The student then calls upon me to present my critical comments. I then make a short statement, and we then sit down and start the defence process. At the end of the critical examination I then stand and the student stands and I make a (longer) statement which forms the basis of my examiner report. I also state my intentions with regard to my recommendation to Faculty. The doctoral student then thanks the opponent and the custos formally closes the process. We then leave the auditorium and have coffee tea and cake.
This defence is also very festive in Finland. A post doctoral party or Karonkka, is organised in the honour of the opponent by the doctoral student. We went by boat to an island about twenty minutes out of Helsinki, to a restaurant, where we celebrated and made the necessary speeches.
This was a wonderful experience steeped in tradition, with both formality and celebration in balance. The picture shows the return journey from the celebration party by boat.

Our family spent last week in Northern Ireland, on the Ards Peninsula – and the weather was fantastic. I sent a text to my friend Elaine Alexander (who took me kayaking on Strangford Loch the last time I was over) to see what she was up to half expecting her to say we could go out kayaking on the Loch again. No such luck for me – Elaine texted back to say she was kayaking round Ireland to be the first woman from Northern Ireland to paddle this gruelling journey! Go to kayakingaroundireland.com/shooter to see the adventure unfolding – and sponsor Elaine as she is circumnavigating Ireland to raise funds for the Share (Outdoor) Centre that delivers adventure programmes for children…………..

Yes …………….guess what – a call on the intercom announced in Manchester Airport as I stood at the carousel: ‘will Colin Beard please go to lost luggage.’…!!!!
Third time unlucky Air France didn’t get my luggage to Manchester Airport from my Beijing (Peking) flight despite and hour turnaround at Charles De Gaulle in Paris! But I diid get an upgrade from Beijing so I can’t complain.
Ah well got some clothes at home….my journey has been completed…..back in Sheffield……

Conference delegates in 2009………………..