Peter Devereux

An informal curriculum review conducted as collaborative reflection, produced an innovative unit which addresses perceived short-comings in the professional skills of graduating development practitioners. The success of the new unit offers lessons on the value of embodied experiential and student-centred learning for community development and interdisciplinary students. Introducing students to complexity of contested subject areas increases their appreciation of ambiguity in the real-world context of future work. Learning settings which enable students to experience complexity and ambiguity of community or interdisciplinary work increase capacity for tacit learning, and capacity of practitioners to sit with messy, confusing problems that defy technical solution. Alignment of unit objectives with learning activities, materials and assessment enables teacher and students to gauge the extent to which the objectives have been achieved.