PRISM Journal Volume 3. Issue 1 (2020) https://doi.org/10.24377/prism.ljmu.0301202 https://doi.org/10.24377/prism.ljmu.0301202 68 © 2020 PRISM ISSN: 2514-5347 De-Classrooming: Moving Learning Outside the Classroom Andrew P. Carlin Department of Portuguese, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China (acarlin@um.edu.mo) Received: 11/02/2020 Accepted for publication: 19/06/2020 Published: 19/07/2020 Abstract This paper reflects on a teaching problem highlighted as part of a second-year undergraduate module in sociology, taught at a UK based institution of higher education. The specific teaching problem – that of student learning as encountered and revealed in seminars – was nested within other issues; some of which related to the characteristics of the discipline of sociology itself, whilst others, related to more localised issues such as the choice of materials available for students to access and download. Whilst the lecture and course material was fixed, the flexibility of the seminar framework enabled the exploration and implementation of an ad hoc intervention in the form of ‘de-classrooming’. This intervention was utilised and developed to enhance the knowledge base and conceptual understanding of the student cohort in relation to “Everyday Life” sociology. The ‘de- classrooming’ intervention proved to be an efficacious pedagogic device, which facilitated dynamic levels of flexibility and creativity by both teacher and learners. As a pedagogic device, it manifested a number of key benefits: such as aiding the clarification of conceptual confusions. Ultimately, the de-classrooming intervention operated to establish an empowered sense of ownership where knowledge and knowledge-generation were concerned, and afforded students unorthodox opportunities for learning enhancement. Keywords: affinity spaces; anti-cognitivism; teaching sociology; de-classrooming; Everyday Life; reflexivity 1. Introduction This paper is organised to follow a version of Gibbs’ (1988) reflective cycle. Gibbs’ model was selected because of the place that it affords feelings. The notion of ‘feelings’ is important as this was an area identified as a core topic within the sociology module – and its seminar meetings – that this paper discusses. Following Gibbs’ cycle, the paper details the array of feelings experienced by both the author (the seminar tutor) and the students, as they encountered lectures and seminars on this module. Gibbs’ cycle and the place of feelings within the process and experience of reflection is thus aligned with the elicitation of comments and reflections in response to encounters with sociological knowledge (in a lecture context), and the exploration of this knowledge in a seminar context. The issues highlighted also uncover a related problem – the https://doi.org/10.24377/prism.ljmu.0301202 https://doi.org/10.24377/prism.ljmu.0301202 https://openjournals.ljmu.ac.uk/index.php/prism/ mailto:acarlin@um.edu.mo https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5138-9384 PRISM Carlin (2020) PRISM 69 3(1) teaching of highly theorised subject material, and the ability or the remit of the teacher to conceive and implement ‘real time’ creative solutions. Teachers in higher education face discipline-specific and procedural problems, and both tend to impact on the teaching of disciplinary knowledge (Carlin, 2019). Discipline-specific problems perpetuate ongoing issues where the management of teaching practice is concerned; such teaching related issues extend far beyond the remit and practice of general teaching qualifications and contributions to the Learning & Teaching literature. For instance, using a computer suite presents issues for teachers in various disciplines; however, using a computer suite for hands-on Computer Aided Design sessions presents task-specific problems, which are particular to the design and engineering fields that use it as a practical application. In this paper we discuss a teaching problem that may be familiar across various disciplines; but here is presented and confronted as a discipline-specific problem as part of a particular module in the study of sociology. It is in reponse to this teaching problem that I realised and implemented an ad hoc intervention, which resulted in shifting and enhancing students’ learning and assuaged their concerns about assessment. As James and Brookfield note, ‘[t]eaching at any level requires creativity on a daily basis as we wonder how to bring subjects alive in ways that resonate with students or make the best of constrained situations in which to learn’ (James and Brookfield, 2014 p. 54). The teaching problem and the need for my interventionist solution became apparent as a result of a seeming discrepancy between student claims to understand the subject material (being cascaded during lectures); and, their subsequent ways of recounting and engaging with the knowledge during the seminar sessions (Carlin and Murdoch 2019). Lecture engagement and the limitations of lectures as efficacious learning experiences is detailed widely elsewhere (Bligh 2006; Cavanagh 2011; Dyson 2008; Huxham 2010; Vandiver and Walsh 2010), and it is not the purpose of this paper to re-examine this. Rather, the remit of this paper is to focus on the flexibility required within the boundary of a seminar context, to introduce a creative solution to resolve a discrepancy between students’ claims to understand knowledge gleaned as part of a lecture, and the actual displays of understanding within the smaller-scale context of the seminar. As Thomas and Seely Brown note, ‘[b]oundaries serve not only as constraints but also, oftentimes, as catalysts for innovation. Encountering boundaries spurs the imagination to become more active in figuring out novel solutions within the constraints of the situation or context’ (Thomas and Seely Brown 2011, p. 35). 2. Contexts This section outlines a number of points and contexts relevant to the consideration of the teaching problem (highlighted above) in relation to sociology as a discipline; generally, these tend to operate as limitations to creativity for both teacher and learners. 2.1 Characterising Sociology As a discipline, sociology has been characterised by distinctive concerns with its orientation towards specific types of methodological problems, such as generalisability, validity, and reliability (Znaniecki, 1934, 1963). These methodological heritages are introduced to students of sociology as historical legacy issues, which connect with the founding of the discipline, and tend to promote the idea that social phenomena must be studied in the same – or at least a similar – way to the natural sciences; (stemming from its need to establish itself as a credible discipline within academia). One of the problems associated with sociology’s legacy and its orientation towards methodological and epistemological practice, is its tendency to categorise social life in dualistic terms and polarities; these may be useful as heuristic devices, but do not necessarily help the discipline move forward (Sharrock and Watson 1988); e.g., objectivity vs subjectivity, quantitative vs qualitative, structure vs agency, and macro vs micro distinctions. Sociology is also distinctive because of its planful practices of “estrangement” (Bittner 1973, p. 123); that is to say, as a discipline, it defines and discusses matters in often obtuse ways. These tend to be shared and PRISM Carlin (2020) PRISM 70 3(1) understood by members of common sociological culture; however, the teaching of sociology is often received as an abstract and heavily intellectualised endeavour, ‘that partake[s] more of the character of theoretical formulation than of realistic description’ (Bittner 1973, p. 123). This is generally caused by the reconceptualisation of ‘every day’ words, to form a highly technicised vocabulary particular to sociology (Rose 1960). Through the reconstruction of ordinary descriptions of mundane practices as professional descriptions, ‘sociologists always attempt to render accounts of matters about which accounts already exist. For example, to be analysed, kinship structure is always already known to those who constitute it’ (Bittner 1973, p. 116). Therefore, it is right that we empathise with students and the inevitability of their puzzlement when confronted with the incongruities between sociology, and what McHoul (2014) describes as the “humdrum” of their own Life-World (or Lebenswelt), for this disjunctiveness is incarnate in accounts of sociology. Indeed, this sociological attitude ‘makes war upon that world-which-we-live’ (Wieder 1980, p. 75). Some sociologists acknowledge these incongruities, how these are built into the fabric of sociology as an academic discipline (for example see Blumer 1956), and the use of a professional vocabulary that trades upon ordinary words that already have common-sense definitions (Rose 1960). The theoreticised departures from ordinary descriptions (Sacks 1963), in the use of conceptual apparatuses that are at variance with how people understand ordinary concepts, and this seemingly is for the sole convenience of sociology (Bittner 2013). Part of the point of sociology as an academic pursuit is to differentiate itself from the methodological individualism of psychologistic approaches; by adopting abstract views of the social whole, sociology sets out to avoid the reification of sole or individual standpoints. Yet within “introductory” sociology, students learn that their own personal world-views (or Weltanschauung) should not be at stake; for example, C. Wright Mills (1959) distinguishes between “personal troubles” and “public issues”. Furthermore much sociological theory is attributable to individual ideological preferences (Sorokin 1958). Indeed, the esotericism and reductionism associated with the sociological lexicon, reifies individual experience, as part of the decontextualisation and recontextualisation of versions of experience in relation to the complexity of the social whole (Smith 1974). As such, there is much “repair work” that needs to be done to accommodate and resolve the disjuncture between the directly and subjectively experienced Lebenswelt and sociologists’ versions of the Lebenswelt. 2.2 Teaching as a Substitute The seminar activities that I refer to as part of this paper relate to a respected Sociological Psychology module in the Department of Sociology at a large North West university, in England (UK). The module differed in comparison to similar units developed and taught at other UK sociology departments’, in that its ethos was resolutely anti-cognitive; it explored and discussed mind and body, emotions and everyday life without cognitive residue. As a member of contract staff, with the attendant learning curve of being at a different institution with its own institutional preferences for assessment, trying to obtain departmental support with teaching difficulties and being further limited by the scheduling of time within the department, I experienced a higher level of “precarity” in comparison to salaried faculty members (Chakrabortty and Weale 2016; Coombe and Clancy 2002; O’Hara 2015; Percy and Beaumont 2008). 3. Description The second-year BA undergraduate module on Sociological Psychology provided students with a thorough grounding in the debates surrounding the Mind/Body problem in sociology. It constructively aligned the technicalities of the debates with the level of the module, and the module leader had elected to focus upon the sociological theories of “Symbolic Interaction”. As an exemplification of the Mind/Body problem the module content utilised the sociological subfield of the “sociology of emotions”; this involved addressing the further subfield of the “sociology of everyday life”. PRISM Carlin (2020) PRISM 71 3(1) As occasions for learning, the lectures “seemed” to be going well: routine gestures of recipiency were encouraging, understanding checks were met with approval and occasional requests for clarification, and questions during lectures appeared to be relevant and insightful. However, during the seminars it was evident that students were not really grasping the gap betweens ociological knowledge, as expounded in textbooks, and the observation and recounting of subjective experience in relation to the everyday sociological phenomenon that surrounded them. One of the constitutive issues appeared to be the generic problem of students downloading materials from the Internet, without critical intermediation (Brabazon 2007). Another constitutive issue, a more discipline-specific problem, related to the learners’ selection of materials as legitimated – and promoted – by the discipline; sometimes these were regarded as suitable because of their availability through the Library. However, other seemingly relevant readings (e.g. Adler, Adler and Fontana 1987; Kalekin-Fishman 2013; Sztompka 2008) were unsuitable for the phenomena of inquiry (everyday life) as part of the individual unit concerned; these readings tended to divert learners away from the notion of everyday life as a nebulous phenomena of interest. Through their focus on the theories of everyday life, students were avoiding everyday life as an actual lived experienced by people in the world. Within the “discursive space” (Teo, 2016, p. 91) of the seminar room, I learned through the students’ participation that something was lacking. Students’ appreciation of the content of lectures was evident, however the necessary leap from abstract knowledge to contextualised understandings, did not seem to be taking place. In order to tackle and overcome this limitation, a disruptive intervention was required. Thus began a process of trial and error, to see if I (or rather, the seminar group collectively) could co-create a solution, to enable the students to not only engage with the knowledge and associated assessments with confidence, but also encounter and grapple with the knowledge in contextualised and creative ways. Despite the use of provocative source materials as part of the sequence of lectures, such as video clips of encounters in First Dates, scenes from Seinfeld, and YouTube footage of pedestrians; the seminar discussions still suggested that a different kind of intervention was required. The teaching problem required a ‘repair’ capable of addressing and teasing out actual everyday encounters and aligning these with ‘everyday life’ in sociologically meaningful ways. 4. De-Classrooming The phrase “de-classrooming the classroom” as a pedagogic technique was coined to conceptualise the introduction of simulation and gaming into classroom environments (Sharrock and Watson, 1985a, 1985b; Watson and Sharrock 1985). Gaming may be open to various disciplinary and learning contexts, but each of these various priorities – of the teacher, not necessarily of the learners – are immanent to the game (Francis 1985). De-classrooming the classroom may involve the deliberate rearrangement of a classroom, the introduction or placement of non-traditional classroom materials to suggest that it, or part of it, is pro tempore, not a classroom. Within simulation and gaming, de-classrooming utilises a “submerged” (Sharrock and Watson 1985a, p. 37) classroom space. In terms of student creativity, it should be noted that the de-classrooming protocol detailed and developed as part of my interventionist tactic – as part of the paper here, differs from the context of simulation and gaming. My use of the term ‘declassrooming’ and its associated pedagogic practice repurposes the notion to identify an actual and physical shift in learning; as such, it becomes a practice that takes learning outside of the confines of the traditional classroom setting. The paper thus sets out the case for de-classrooming students by taking them to different locations. My repurposed notion of de-classrooming thus re- situated both the discipline-specific context of the material and generated a creative intervention by actually moving the seminar to new and non-traditional places. By doing this, the students’ knowledge and understanding of the notion of ‘everyday life’ shifted; they started to see it as a collection of not only PRISM Carlin (2020) PRISM 72 3(1) “humdrum” experiences and routines, but also as a site of potentially rich sociological phenomena. The ad hoc intervention revealed and identified what we might term “affinity spaces” (Neely and Marone 2016); the recontextualised space enabled students to witness mundane social phenomena for themselves, and at the same time encouraged them to consider the phenomena of everyday life as something that can be conceptualised and theorised in sociological terms. The de-classrooming exercise discussed here involved exiting the classroom and moving the student cohort to affinity spaces (e.g., bus stops, campus cafes and food courts, university libraries, nearby public spaces) with which the students were familiar as part of their incumbency as a student. These affinity spaces as routinised environments enabled the students to encounter and observe ordinary everyday life as part of their membership of society. 5. Feelings In accordance with Gibbs’ (1988) reflective cycle, the place of feelings occasioned by the teaching of this seminar, (and, which precipitated the de-classrooming intervention), played an important role. This includes my own feelings, as well as those of the students’ that were expressed during the seminars. 5.1 Deflation Whilst some students saw the sociological literature surrounding Everyday Life as a “threshold concept” (Meyer and Land 2005), others expressed displeasure; what (certainly in the planning stages for the course) were expected to be enjoyable seminar activities, such as the inclusion of ‘every day’ video-clips exacerbated the matter. As such, students recognised a disjuncture between the ‘data’ that they were used to being provided with on a degree course (demographic statistics and socio-economic status), and what was being referred to as a datum for this unit. For me as the teacher, this was deflating; for the students, this was frustrating. 5.2 Confusion I was puzzled by the negativity and hostile reactions of students towards the inclusion of everyday cultural resources and objects, (“What is the point?”; “Anyone can see what’s going on!”); however, through a process of reflection with colleagues I came to see that their hostility derived from anxiety about assessment (“What can I write about?” The nature of the identified phenomena and how these were to form the basis for assessment purposes produced “monsters of doubt” for some students (Hawkins and Edwards 2015); and as part of the teaching there was an appreciable amount of time spent managing students’ anxieties. 5.3 Frustration I was disillusioned at the available readings, which used the terminology “sociology of everyday life” yet were obfuscating and obstructive to get at the phenomena intended in this unit (e.g. Adler, Adler and Fontana 1987; Kalekin-Fishman 2013; Sztompka 2008). As far as the students were concerned, these articles were unproblematic and seemingly relevant to the topic, especially as they appeared to be pertinent and useful for inclusion as part of the assignments. Some of the recommended readings on everyday life were geared precisely to what the author did not want students to do (e.g. Highmore 2002). The frustration was two-fold: not only were appropriate readings not available – providing access to these would have entailed infringements of copyright – providing comprehensible background to these readings would have required a substantial block of the unit in itself. 5.4 Isolation Having taught sociology and introductory sociology at a number of institutions, a noticeable feature of teaching syllabi in practice is that the learning and attitude towards sociology, established at the beginning of degree programs through the assignment of “classic texts”, gradually dissipates when faced with modules on substantive topics. Encouraging students to develop a sociological conception of their surroundings receives less priority in a changing discipline and the pressures of course development to keep abreast of these changes. Whilst this is understandable, given Delphi studies of thought leaders as to what constitutes a curriculum in sociology (Grauerholz and Gibson 2006; Persell and Mateiro 2013), it was a practical problem for PRISM Carlin (2020) PRISM 73 3(1) the author as a member of “contract” staff, trying to obtain departmental support to navigate a shift in the seminar teaching and learning activities (Alencar, Fleith and Pereira 2017). 6. Intervention The sociology of everyday life may be intuitively appealing, but it is difficult in pedagogical terms, both because of its familiarity and its disjunctiveness with ‘traditional’ sociology. As such, a necessary intervention would have to invert the focus of sociology. Estrangement practices (Bittner, 1973) in sociology may rely on what Kenneth Burke (1954) called a ‘perspective by incongruity’, conceptualising something by viewing it through the frame of something completely different, e.g., ‘[t]he comparative student of man’s work learns about doctors by studying plumbers; and about prostitutes by studying psychiatrists’ (Hughes 1984, p. 316). Such estrangement practices are worked at in advocating creativity in education. As James and Brookfield note, the most, ‘memorable critical incidents students experience in their learning are those when they are required to “come at” their learning in a new way, when they are “jerked out” of the humdrum by some unexpected challenge or unanticipated task’ (James and Brookfield 2004, p. 6-7) However, the sentiment expressed in this iteration of creative learning is what this de-classrooming exercise – moving learning out of the classroom – attempted to reverse. The intention was that by de-classrooming to a “humdrum” venue or affinity space with which students were familiar, it would be possible both to see familiar settings as worthy of investigation, and to see sociological phenomena in action. Yes, to provide a “new way” of addressing a topic; not to see the humdrum through a perspective by incongruity, or a new way, but instead to look again at what was taken for granted. Rather than trying to upend the “normal and familiar” (James and Brookfield 2004, p. 6-7), as achieved in sociological accounts, de-classrooming attempted to bring everyday life into sociology. To adapt Vygotsky on ‘fossilization’ (1978, pp. 63-64), the traditional module content and structure focussed on students’ role as being fixed, when instead creative innovations and interventions can allow students to witness knowledge and social processes in new and refreshed ways. In seeking a way to make the seemingly inaccessible transparent to those students not persuaded of the analytic value of everyday life sociology, “de-classrooming the classroom” (Sharrock and Watson 1985b, p. 196), enabled them to witness everyday life as a sociological phenomena for themselves. As a de-classrooming activity had not been set out in the module prospectus, I offered this opportunity to students, which they accepted. 7. Evaluation & Analysis A key achievement was to successfully engage students who had not yet come to terms with everyday life sociology, to see how assignments could be written in relevant ways. Yet there were unanticipated consequences on student learning that went beyond the remit of this module and seminar series. Readers of this journal are familiar with “reflexivity” and the professional benefits of reflection. There are other positions vis-à-vis reflexivity; some of these align with the processes of reflection found in professional practice, not all are helpful for students in teaching sociology. The de-classrooming activities illustrated another version of sociological reflexivity. In watching other people’s activities within affinity spaces – such as joining a queue in a food court, sitting at a booth in the campus coffee shop, standing proximate to a bus stop on a busy road – students witnessed in situ how activities may be affected by their presence as participants. This proved to be a profound realisation in student learning and the study of human interaction, and how ‘observer roles’ (Gold 1958) impacting on the practice of sociological research. This also fed into discussions on the recording of observations, such as the taking of fieldnotes; and, on the ethics of doing covert observation (Calvey 2017). De-classrooming enabled students to witness active environments in which passive readings or remote discussions of research ethics and sociological roles (participant, observer, participating observer, etc.) are enacted. Crucially, de-classrooming has such analytic and pedagogic potential because students are able to PRISM Carlin (2020) PRISM 74 3(1) witness everyday life activities and environments from within. Other unintended benefits associated with the de- classrooming exercises included students witnessing for themselves a range of concepts, such as observer roles; and how grouping together to observe the setting (taking over an entire booth) affected what participants in the setting did. This illustrated “sociological reflexivity” to students, which had been a problematic notion in other units within the sociology degree program. Hence, the positives of this exercise were not limited to this unit. Frustration at textbooks may be misplaced: in engaging with the sociological literature, it is apparent that the representation of topics is not always based upon actual occurrences and has more to do with paradigmatic biases (Lynch and Bogen 1997; Wong 2002). Furthermore, a “common core” of the discipline is difficult to discern from the analysis of contents of textbooks (Keith and Ender 2004). In the light of teaching and learning literature, this may be considered to have been a Vygotskyan challenge – for teacher and students – to make a breakthrough with the new resources that were available (Lantolf 2011, p. 26). As a teacher, I took individual seminar groups down to the ground-floor café and treated this as an “affinity space” (Neely and Marone 2016); here students could see social organisation in action (e.g. aspects of queues). Suddenly, within a non-classroom environment, social order became a tractable matter, not an abstract concept. In moving the learning outside of the classroom students were able to appreciate how we (students, teachers, textbooks) become epistemological equals regarding phenomena (Atkinson and Hunt 2008), illustrating that students have valuable insights and are authorities, too. In considering the use of de- classrooming there is also another layer of reflection. Historically, “de-classrooming the classroom” as a pedagogic device was oriented to the nature of power in the classroom. The traditional classroom was seen as authoritarian and this was seen to have deleterious connotations, such as student passivity and demotivation. De-classrooming provided the opportunity to democratise power across the teacher- student cohort (Sharrock and Watson 1985a, p. 36), and release the classroom from its authoritarian cast. The notion of student creativity requires careful thought at the design stage of de-classrooming activities. Discipline-specific parameters impose constraints on research, such as considerations of objectivity, generalisation, validity and research ethics. Yet these are not necessarily constraints upon student creativity: they provide issues that enable active engagement with settings (questions such as How representative is this setting? Is the research method suitable for the phenomenon under investigation?), which can provide a reassuring structure for those students who are discomfited by setting research questions for themselves. Although de-classrooming requires planning, student creativity is a constituent feature of de-classrooming activities. A teacher’s creativity in devising de- classrooming activities is balanced by students’ creativity in moving their own learning outside the classroom. The teacher’s adumbration of ordinary settings and activities as potential sites for task-specific observation activates students’ creativity. What this means in practical terms is that students are given the freedom – within discipline-specific parameters – to set activities and ask questions for themselves. For instance, some students observed that certain settings were not public but semi-public spaces, they were accountably ‘credentialised’, wherein only incumbents of the category ‘student’ were able to access these (e.g. communal areas within halls of residence, the student union bar). Student observers also looked at seating formations, patterns of communication within peer groups, and mobile phone use. These field-specific phenomena provided students with creative ‘solutions’ to the ‘problem’ of locating everyday life as materials for observation and assessment. I facilitated the use of students’ observations within summative assessments by accepting these as resources for inclusion in essays and examination. Class discussion following the de-classrooming exercises afforded students a sense of “ownership” of their observations, as unique and personalised. Peer PRISM Carlin (2020) PRISM 75 3(1) support, in terms of soliciting feedback on a student’s observations from their colleagues, was consolidated by scaffolding concepts within a plenary setting. A plenary session following de-classrooming activities proved to be the appropriate venue to discuss readings that informed the students’ observations. This process for working up analyses reassured students of the eligibility of their observations within assessments. In making the offer to decentralise the learning environment, which I felt necessary because it had not been itemised in the module outline, I had already thought carefully about how this could be done. What then seemed like a collaborative decision at the time was, on reflection, a tutor-initiated preference; an engineered attempt to allow students to see everyday life phenomena for themselves. Moreover, as democratising as this exercise was, I set the terms – what to look for, what to regard as eligible phenomena, and how long the exercise lasted. Furthermore, because I defined the threshold – the threshold concepts for learning, to what extent was the students’ creativity in their realisation of sociological phenomena in everyday life subsumed by a teacher’s creativity? To what extent was the traditional power structure, which de-classrooming sets itself up against, “submerged” (Sharrock and Watson 1985a, p. 37) within the de- classrooming activity itself? In the realisation of everyday life activities as sociological phenomena, de-classrooming may indeed be used effectively as a creative pedagogical device. However, there is a double hermeneutic to this creativity. De-classrooming (e.g. taking students to the campus coffee shop, to the library – not to search for resources but to observe library users’ activities, going out onto busy pedestrianised precincts to watch pedestrian traffic and their navigation practices) fosters creativity by encouraging students’ development and use of what is referred to as a “sociological imagination” (Mills 1959). However, it should be noted that it is still the teacher who decides upon the extent to which such creativity is unleashed or afforded. It is the teacher who is responsible for formulating how de-classrooming is relevant to the course, the timing of the de- classrooming activities within the sequence of the course, the extent of building learning from the de- classrooming activities into subsequent course content, and establishing the extent to which the de- classrooming activities provide sociologically significant material. This layer of reflection is important in planning de- classrooming activities because, in considering the fostering of creativeness in higher education, we should be attuned to boundaries between teachers’ agendas, power structures and students’ learning. Furthermore, creativity may be adjudged on learning gain, as the extent to which students’ appreciation of concepts and activities can be considered as outcomes of de- classrooming; and, learning enhancement, stretching what can be made from initial observations into focused, coherent analyses. This paper thus suggests that this layer of reflection be brought to other pedagogic and assessment strategies. In setting the terms and relevancies for such exercises, we should be alert to claims of “student empowerment”, and consider the extent to which tutor-initiation versus student-creativity is embedded in the process from the outset. 8. Conclusion: Transferability In formalising de-classrooming as a pedagogic device this paper has explored a discipline-specific example as a showcase for student learning. Furthermore, because of this discipline-specific orientation – the attention to teaching and learning sociology in particular – it is possible to distinguish de-classrooming from anti- sociological accounts of learning environments “in the wild”, and the consequent insufflation of cognitive theorising formulated by Hutchins (1996). De- classrooming is conceptually coherent with the discipline-specific profile of the phenomena under inspection and available for analysis. However, the outline of de-classrooming contained within this paper is not intended to bind it to sociology. Although this paper discusses an avowedly sociological context, de-classrooming has a more generalised potential for use in other disciplines in higher education, such as design and engineering, digital humanities, fashion, human geography, information PRISM Carlin (2020) PRISM 76 3(1) science, music, physics, among many others. As Kleiman (2011) notes: ‘higher education is full of intelligent, creative people who understand all too well – through their own day- to-day experience – that learning and teaching is complex and, sometimes, chaotic, and that the systems and processes that we create around that experience, or have created for us, are not always best suited to dealing with that complexity. It is also clear that the professional act of teaching with the still significant but also significantly decreasing autonomy attached to this role, provides fertile conditions for people to be creative in order to confront those complexities and to really enhance students’ learning’ (Kleiman 2011, 62.8) University teachers may consider how the introduction of de-classrooming may be of benefit to student learning in the realisation of threshold concepts and specific issues within their own fields, for enabling ownership of materials (such as data and analyses that eventuate from the de-classrooming activity), and in providing opportunities for learning enhancement. PRISM Carlin (2020) PRISM 77 3(1) 9. Disclosure statement The author(s) declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 10. Acknowledgements With thanks to Dave Calvey, Jac Eke and Chris Porter (all of Department of Sociology, Manchester Metropolitan University) and Chrissi Nerantzi (University Teaching Academy, Manchester Metropolitan University) for their support and opportunities for professional reflection. Craig Hammond for providing detailed editorial feedback. Special thanks to Rod Watson for opportunities to discuss ‘de-classrooming’. This paper could not have been written without the guidance and encouragement of the late Maria Wowk. I was privileged to be a substitute unit leader on Maria’s Sociological Psychology course at the Department of Sociology, Manchester Metropolitan University. Maria had honed this second-year undergraduate course over many years, and it was unique within UK sociology departments’ offers in its resolutely anti-cognitive position in discussing mind and body, emotions and everyday life, and being without cognitive residue. The author was familiar with the materials used for this course, and endorsed fully the analytic position adopted. This paper was supported by the Macau Science and Technology Development Fund, award number 0054/2019/A1. 11. Open Access Policy This journal provides immediate open access to its content with no submission or publications fees. This journal article is published under the following Creative Commons Licence: This licence allows others to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to this article (and other works in this journal), and/or to use them for any other lawful purpose in accordance with the licence. PRISM is also indexed in the world largest open- access database: DOAJ (the Directory of Open Access Journals). DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. 12. To cite this article: Carlin, A. (2020). De-Classrooming: Moving Learning outside the Classroom. PRISM, 3(1), 68-80 https://doi.org/10.24377/prism.ljmu.0301202 https://doaj.org/toc/2514-5347?source=%7B%22query%22%3A%7B%22filtered%22%3A%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22bool%22%3A%7B%22must%22%3A%5B%7B%22terms%22%3A%7B%22index.issn.exact%22%3A%5B%222514-5347%22%5D%7D%7D%2C%7B%22term%22%3A%7B%22_type%22%3A%22article%22%7D%7D%5D%7D%7D%2C%22query%22%3A%7B%22match_all%22%3A%7B%7D%7D%7D%7D%2C%22size%22%3A100%2C%22_source%22%3A%7B%7D%7D https://doaj.org/toc/2514-5347?source=%7B%22query%22%3A%7B%22filtered%22%3A%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22bool%22%3A%7B%22must%22%3A%5B%7B%22terms%22%3A%7B%22index.issn.exact%22%3A%5B%222514-5347%22%5D%7D%7D%2C%7B%22term%22%3A%7B%22_type%22%3A%22article%22%7D%7D%5D%7D%7D%2C%22query%22%3A%7B%22match_all%22%3A%7B%7D%7D%7D%7D%2C%22size%22%3A100%2C%22_source%22%3A%7B%7D%7D https://doi.org/10.24377/prism.ljmu.0301202 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://doaj.org/ PRISM Carlin (2020) PRISM 78 3(1) 13. 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