Hi All

The reason i consider the stuff students do in these classes
design-learning is that design is about changing some part of the world and
design products are examples of such acts of transformation of some
kind....regardless of culture and tradition these transformed things are of
a human commonality. The act of design produces such things and design
thinking may inform the paths we take in transforming some small or great
part of the world which surrounds us. Many things can be said about such
visual design 'things' but they do not speak...these things have an agency,
however, which prompts us to say things about them. In this way the design
approaches are innately concerned with transformation which makes them
valuable in the limited context of the cross-cultural learning programs we
teach.

When i wrote of knowledge formation i realised a truely significant thing
from your replies...this realisation was that formation was seen to be the
coming together of knowledge in a learners mind by some people on the
list...i thank you for this because i never realised such differences in
interpretation of these words...my conception of knowledge formation is
more like the formation adopted by a flight of birds...a self-ordering
group knowledge formation-an arrangement of human relations in the
experience of knowledge in a context...which leads to the investigation of
possibilities in the meta-design of knowledge formations... the arrangement
of group relations aligned in some way to fit knowledge seeking
events/actions in some context and the correspondance between such patterns
of relation and the knowledge which emerges at group and individual levels.
Indigenous Philosophy is focused on this level of understanding. Such
formations are integral in the common sense of organisations and
cultures...and have also been the focus of a lot of theory and creative
development programs as Chuck states.

My personal aim in this project is very subversive...to get students to
step down from the giant mechanism of contemporary developmental society
and experience understandings of the world which are being ground into the
earth with trees and environments(this is colonial reality for the
colonised peoples) This assists them in building a critical literacy of
human organisation (colonialism and its institutions)in coming to knowledge
in and about such contexts. Rather than expousing some critical theory and
contesting social justice issues we engage students within an Indigenous
learning paradigm instigate a system of group relations which guides
observation-design learning...and show them that it works. This causes some
amazement for most of the students especially for those who are
second-degree students in education. They learn that the Indigenous
knowledge paradigm 'produces' knowledge engagements at many levels
simultaneously...a far cry from their normative uni study.

When i asked the question what formations exist in judgement...i was
wondering about the group structuring of judgement routines in
organisations...and those things which may be excluded/included in/from
such formations in normative contexts. The groups that we send out to
schools have to work in very structured environments...and the return to
their prior Indigenous design learning engagement approaches is essentially
demanded in these social structures....to counter this we give each group
of three students a gift...a small individually designed boomerang painted
by Aboriginal inmates in prison...which they are required to
share...keeping them in contact...keeping some of the relations built in
the course alive...perhaps?

The group learning we do often gets to a stage of awe at the fluent
sapience of human interactions in knowledge...when there is no heirarchical
intent or content and we just let our relations show us all what we may
learn together...that is when i really begin to learn and enjoy the wisdom
of people and the patterns of interaction which they adopt in sharing
knowledge with respect.

Norm



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Norman Sheehan
Lecturer
Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit
University of Queensland
Brisbane Old 4072 Australia