Learning to Ask Naïve Questions with IT Product Design Students

Abstract

What does it mean to use, or do, theory in the scholarship of teaching and learning? The article approaches the question by considering the role of design anthropology in developing studio-based engineering programmes. Central to my discussion within situated contexts of learning is the idea of practice-based exploration conceived as a way of enhancing collaboration between knowledge traditions. My focus is on the practice of interdisciplinarity, and I show how such practice is a way of doing anthropology with other disciplines rather than doing an anthropology of these subjects. Through this `anthropology with', I examine the learning and teaching of critical reflection skills. Building upon an experiment in learning and teaching carried out at the Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen in 2004 in developing ways of knowing and understanding on the interface across disciplines, I aim to show how learning can itself be a form of research that generates new knowledge and understanding. I suggest that `anthropology with' could be a powerful way of doing theory in the scholarship of teaching and learning.