[RE]LEARN 2020 - The Learning Innovation Festival

Within the context of Industry 4.0 and the concurrent formulation and emergence of Education 4.0, alternative approaches to assessment are needed to capture the dynamic complexity of interdisciplinary learning and its artefacts. The presentation will examine Synoptic Impact Mapping as one such assessment methodology for reflexive interdisciplinary learning, or meta-praxis.

Participants will develop understanding of the concept and application of impact mapping as an alternative assessment process, and explore the opportunity for Impact mapping to capture and recognise the planned and emergent impact of disciplinary and interdisciplinary learning, and transversal capabilities.

Meta-praxis, a reflexive interdisciplinary pedagogy designed by the Michael Bunce, provides a framework within which to develop holistic intelligence (Ravenscroft, Richards and Bunce, 2020), integrating disciplinary and transdisciplinary competences to develop and leverage meta-skills through meta-learning, as defined by Bialik and Fadel (2018).

The Synoptic Impact Mapping Project is developing an alternative assessment model and interactive tool to map learning impact and growth in meta-praxial or reflexive interdisciplinary learning contexts, foregrounding continuous peer and self-assessment.

This integrative model compares levels of agency with levels of transfer to establish a profile of both planned and emergent impact and growth at multiple levels: for a school, curriculum, project, lesson, teacher or learner, for example.

It also maps the balance of emphasis on the content (data, information, knowledge, model of understanding, concept), context (topic, subject, discipline, learning area, space, environment, behaviour, macro context (socio-cultural, political, historical etc.), or mode (learning process, tool of interpretation, mode of inquiry, cognitive or practical skill – way of knowing or doing).

The underlying principle of the project is that mapping meta-praxial learning impact and growth is an open, dynamic, and non-hierarchical process, based on a balance of emphasis relative to context and the individual, over time.

Multiple instances of impact maps at all levels, represent change processes and growth across multiple domains, for individuals, groups and organisations.

This model is being used to mentor students in mapping their growth and to facilitate self-mapping of complex capabilities, to form part of a reflexive narrative of the learning journey, within the MetaPraxis Project in South Australia, and in the Sound and Music courses at UEL.