musing on progress to date

rather ambitiously, last year we put together a conference proposal to talk about learning space developments, cultural change, and barrier negotiation. the conference is now looming (yikes!) and i'm having fun putting together the presentation.

no, really, it is fun. particularly as i'm working on the barriers section, and thinking of some of the conversations we've had over the past year or so. the presentation (at oxford brooke's social learning symposium) will be framed specifically around developments in the learning centre, which has been a somewhat contentious issue, some people feeling understandably protective over spaces that they feel they own.

without giving the game away, so far, i've come up with 4 key barriers to cultural change in the learning spaces arena, which appear somewhat predictably regardless of type of space, or stage of development:

• everyone's an expert (ie, i know what i want from my space, therefore it must be right for everyone, surely?)
• ownership (ie, you're not changing *my* spaces!)
• the 'f' word (ie, you're asking what i want? well, it has to be...flexible)
• the 'i' word (ie, flexible isn't good enough? well then, it has to be...innovative)

exploring these and thinking explicitly about negotiation strategies is proving to be interesting, and i'll start to explore them in more depth over the coming weeks. meantime, this was just a 'starter for ten' post - in the hope that one day, i might get around to updating this more regularly. fingers crossed... :)