Walking Pedagogy/Andragogy - 1

Over a few posts I will elaborate on my ideas of teaching and learning about walking.  

 

A walking pedagogy/andragogy is essentially a set of approaches to teaching and learning that is built around the activity and subject of walking.  Approaches to teaching and learning differ between children and adults, hence the distinction between Pedagogy = paidi (child) + ago (guide), and Andragogy = andras (man) + ago (guide).  Working mostly with adult learners, my approach is rightly called a walking andragogy, and I'm a walking andragogue!  A future post will discuss experiential learning as a key component of the adult learning model.

Like other approaches to teaching and learning, a walking andragogy includes the following elements: 

• A methodology and practice of teaching 
• A strong theoretical foundation 
• A curriculum of content 
• A research domain

For me, as an urban geographer and educator, my practice for many years, is to use a walking andragogy. Like McFarlane (2011), I think that ‘Walking is central to how we come to learn urban space’. Learning the city happens on a very fundamental level. “Motion creates an experiential sense of direction, perspective, distinction, and lay-out in the city … a form of 'circumambulatory knowing' (Ingold 2004: 331)…” 

The desired learning outcome of the walking experience is to build the intellectual capacities required to function in an unfamiliar environment. This means acquiring knowledge and creating integrated clusters of knowledge structures, along with exercising the cognitive, affective and psychomotor capabilities required of walking. An example of a knowledge structure, is the mental map of the city that a student will construct by identifying and configuring paths, nodes, landmarks, districts and edges. As they walk through the city, they hone their sensory and cognitive capabilities of wayfinding, perception, memory, judgment, and reasoning. 

Over the long run, students of the city often develop strong affective attachments to place.  Others might feel disattachment. Either way, as individuals move through the city, they become more capable and familiar with place.  Learning outcomes become even broader, and even transformative for some individuals. They take away new habits of mind that pay closer attention to urban issues, develop a critical understanding of place, and identify those ways of thinking that injure and exploit other people and places. 

 Ingold, Tim (2004) "Culture on the Ground: The World Perceived through the Feet." Journal of Material Culture, Vol. 9, 3: 315-340. 

 McFarlane, Colin (2011) Learning the City: Knowledge and Translocal Assemblage. Wiley & Sons: West Suffix