Usando TSPi y PBL como apoyo a la educación de la Ingeniería de Software en un curso

Initially formed in 2008, my social enterprise and creative social practice, AwhiWorld, emerged out of a need for me to bring my traditional community development and business consulting tools together with the emerging ideas and technologies I was experimenting with in my creative practice. After a number of mainstream and leading edge projects in and around East Papakura I decided to embark on a PhD to more formally develop and evaluate my work.

In the next year or so I started my PhD focussing on how to use emerging tools (in this case geo- locative mobile technology) to support the spirit of place. Geo-locative or geo-reality mobile allows users to place and retrieve digital media in and around specific locations (using a complex set of navigation tools including GPS). You can ‘place’ a story about a site at the site itself to be retrieved by users with an associated mobile app. The research while not exclusively focussed on ‘social innovation’ was designed to enact social change i.e. to assist people to engage more creatively and fully with the spirit of place (as they understood that term within their own frame of reference) and therefore more actively appreciate, respect and care for those locations.

I designed the research to be as flexible and inclusive as possible in order to reflect the epistemological and ontological complexity that is ‘place’ today. I also wanted to work within a practice based approach which allowed for a high degree of emergence both in the means and the possible outcomes. The design eventually evolved into a multi-stage, multi-methodological research framework that was inherently reflexive and encompassed intra-, inter- and transpersonal elements The research necessarily involved working with a bricolage of objects, activities, relationships and conceptualisations as the inherent multiplicity of place requires skills in trial and error and muddling through, rather than just pre-planned, narrowly executed engagements. To provide some greater structure to this necessarily ‘messy work, I synthesised two forms of integral theory, Braud’s Integral Inquiry (1998, 2011) and Esbjörn-Hargens’ development of Integral Methodological Pluralism (2006, 2010) based on Wilber’s Integral Theory (2000, 2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2003d, 2006). This allowed me to move between first (subjective), second (intersubjective) and third (objective) perspectives and methodological approaches.

I worked on three sites, a marae, a cemetery and a wahi tapu (sacred site for Māori). On all sites I created, in collaboration with those who lived and worked there, a geo-mobile ‘experience’ that shared stories (albeit in different formats) of each place.

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Data collection methods ranged from reflective blogging on my personal practice through to microscopic soil sampling, from semi-structured interviews through to experimental camera and sound work. It also actively included transpersonal aspects such as dreams, visions from meditations, discussions with psychics and activities with energy healers alongside scientific microscopy work and soil analysis and social science methods such as interviews using likert scales. An overview of this design is provided here:

Figure 1: Overview of PhD research structure

My work on all sites, but particularly at the marae, showed that these tools can indeed support the spirit of places and spaces (in the most inclusive sense of that word). Recorded outcomes included more positive perceptions of locations, raised awareness among key groups of use of this type of technology in this context, greater awareness of the importance of certain locations and understanding of the stories and history of those sites in the bigger context of the area.

The research design was comprehensive but was complex to administer and a little cumbersome at times. It allowed for multiple perspectives to be included and honoured the diversity of the locations where the case studies took place although perhaps in some areas depth lost out to breadth. My view of this research was that it was in an experiment in how quality research can be undertaken when working in place, particularly when undertaking work which can be classified as socially innovative. Stage One  conversations/ semi-structured interviews  private reflective blogging Stage Two

First Person Perspective:  autobiographical reflection  private reflective blogging  meditation

 dowsing

 brain wave scan (using EMOTIV software) Second Person Perspective:

 reflective conversations / informal interviews  oral history interviews

 encounters and conversations with the spirit of place  photo documentation and sound sampling

 public feedback book within gallery exhibition  psychic walk

 collaborative earth healings  archival document analysis Third Person Perspective:

 survey of place practitioners after demonstrations  demographic information and secondary research  scientific site analysis: microscopy, soil sampling  user analytics

164 AwhiWorld Today

At the closing stages of my PhD I formed AwhiWorld into the social enterprise it is today (i.e. a registered company in New Zealand but one which engages in work for the greater social good). AwhiWorld uses traditional and emerging tools, technologies and practices to support place making, digital learning, cultural regeneration and creative community engagement.

The PhD case study at the marae evolved into a joint social enterprise to market a ‘Marae App’ to other marae around the country. The app is actually a live platform that allows for dynamic content loading and sharing so that communities can store and disseminate stories and capture comments from individuals who engage with the experience. It also supports sharing of information on services that marae offer in the health and social areas – including alerts to special promotions and events. The money generated from disseminating the app will be used to fund further projects in the community as well as support the goals of our respective organisations.

Other projects were created after the PhD was completed but use similar methodological structures and tools. ‘Place Stories Matariki’, for example, supported artists to place a number of sound works around Papakura in South Auckland. The sound installations, by contemporary Māori poets, mana whenua, experimental audio artists, punk collectives, Tokelauan songstresses and korowai weavers, were site-specific ‘stories’ in the most creative sense of that word. The stories could only be heard at specific GPS points around the town via a geo-locative mobile app. The platform was designed as a way to support digital literacy among different groups of artists, to support a greater degree of awareness of the diversity within the town, to connect people across diverse cultures and genres, and to promote Papakura as a place of innovation and high quality creative and cultural work. Another project, Awhi Creatures Papakura, used augmented reality (AR) technology. AR allows you to view material that is not visible to the naked eye using special glasses or the camera view of your phone. Using this technology, everything from magical creatures to historical landmarks becomes visible. In the case of Awhi Creatures new media artist and AwhiWorld collective member, Kim Newall, worked with local youth to help them bring magical creatures alive with sounds and colours. The creatures were placed in and around Papakura township to be discovered by solving clues in a town wide treasure hunt that ‘showed’ off some of the special places in the town.

This project, a partnership with the local business association, highlighted the range of businesses in Papakura and encourage people to travel to the community from other suburbs and ‘see’ the town with new eyes. The work promoted digital literacy among the youth participating but also the public who downloaded the app and engaged with the creatures. The treasure hunt aspect also encouraged connections and relationships as people worked together to answer clues and discover where the creatures were lurking. This work is currently evolving into a larger project covering a number of different institutions and organisations around Auckland (e.g. cultural sites, schools) who will soon be using the creatures to tell stories about local history, the environment and historical artefacts.

There have also been a number of specific organisational partnerships including an ongoing collaboration with staff and residents of a South Auckland retirement home. This has included multiple sub-projects and events bringing together traditional technologies (sewing, crafting, patch working) with emerging technologies (e.g. AR) to make mad hats and dresses that are then presented in annual Easter or ‘world of wearable arts’ parades. The work not only builds digital literacy and awareness, but also fosters a sense of relevancy among the residents who are engaging

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with technologies not even available to the general public. Residents have spoken to us of the fun they have had in seeing their creations come to life in the digital realm and the joy of engaging with something different and new. The rest home itself is seen as a place of interesting and creative activity and is reimagining itself as centre for creativity in the community. Our next collaboration builds on this as we are working with them to create a monthly ‘Maker Space’ on site that will eventually open out to the surrounding community.

All of these projects have taken place in and around Counties Manukau and have been designed to generate positive stories about the locations. The projects intertwine and are building networks of business managers, politicians, creative artists, grass roots community workers, schools and academics who wish to be part of AwhiWorld’s work.

Reflection on Practice

Although one is more formally set out than the other, both types of research (PhD and day to day practice) involve a bricolage of objects, activities, relationships. Indeed the complexity of life today “requires skills in trial and error and muddling through, rather than just pre-planned narrowly executed engagements” (Buxton, 2015). While my PhD research used a sophisticated research design my AwhiWorld work in community (which has taken place outside of an academic setting) has been comparatively messy and emergent. In general the projects evolved out of relationships, connections and conversations as well as dreams, intuitions, inklings and musings.

The concept of practice has become increasingly popular among scholars across a number of disciplines. Schön (1983), describes a practitioner as someone who encounters certain types of situations or contexts over and over again. As the practitioner engages with a variety of ‘cases’, or bounded experiences, they develop their “repertoire of expectations, images and techniques.” (p. 60). According to Schön, practice needs to be integrated with research not separated from it. The problems confronted in society are complex, messy and uncertain and exist in “swampy lowlands”, not in the “high hard ground” of research and ‘technique’ (p. 42). He notes that those working in the swampy lowlands “involve themselves in messy but crucially important problems and, when asked to describe their methods of inquiry, they speak of experience, trial and error, intuition, and muddling through” (p. 43). He argues that modern practitioners of any kind need to choose between multiple approaches and find their own way to combine them together. Reflecting on their decisions and actions in this process is a form of practice in action.

Sumara and Carson (1997) put forward the notion of ‘lived practice’, which is a way of conceptualising a processual, performative and intrinsically natural form of research engagement and practice in general. Writing in the context of action research, they argue for a blurring between the worlds of research and of living, work and practice. Unfortunately, embodied ‘lived practice’ is seen as inferior to ‘higher learning’ as it is “too situational, contingent and particular” (Weber, 2013, p. 55). At the same time, indigenous practices, which are holistic and embedded in ontological understandings completely at odds with academia, are excluded - as are any approaches that understand the word ‘holistic’ as embracing spiritual and transpersonal aspects.

Shahjahan (2005) is among a growing number of academics who view the knowledge generated within academia as ontologically colonising and anthropocentric – with other beings subordinate or non-existent. He notes that dominant scientific theories do not accept arguments involving “people’s spiritual relationships to the universe, to the landscape, rocks, rivers, mountains and other things, seen and unseen” (p. 696). He argues for a multidimensional gaze, so that today’s “issues and

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questions are not seen in two-dimensional level or through mainstream triangulation but rather are seen in its depth and at different levels of consciousness” (pp. 697-698).

I see the many interventions around the town as a web of enacted practice. My work, as a producer- facilitator-connector-activator, is a lived, spiritual practice. I am intervening in my own social system, place-making in my own place, connecting at multiple levels within the system: politically, institutionally, spiritually, socially, digitally, and economically. My work is a way of connecting but also disrupting the web so that unusual partnerships and connections are made and less useful stories about the town become unstuck.

Somerville (2007) sees new knowledge generation in place happening through research engagement that is at once “messy, open-ended, liminal, and irrational” (p. 235). For Somerville, “emergence is an important and under-recognized quality in all research that aims to generate new knowledge” (p. 240). I see emergence as the essence of my own practice and many organisations with whom I work. They innovate by seizing opportunities and acting on instincts that emerge in the moment and/or out of dynamically shifting territories.

I consider my work to be socially innovative in so far as it is using new ideas that work in meeting social goals – or unmet needs. I may not be engaging in strictly defined empirical research, or engaging in purely theoretical musings, but I consider my contribution as valuable to a conference such as this - as much as those who have chosen more traditional academic routes.