As someone who has infiltrated HE from a practitioner pathway rather than that of an educator or lecturer, I have seen in the past 6 years that most successful students are those who set base in the workshop. And far from overstating my influence in their learning process, I have seen how inhabiting a space, using certain tools and being in touch with the medium contributes exceptionally to supporting that shift from student to practitioner, to maker.
Arendt reminds us how human beings are foremost “conditional” (Arendt, 2003) meaning that the surrounding, and the tangible, whether natural or artificial, become “immediately a condition of our existence”(ibid). Despite the unique individual perception of these conditions, the focus of HE is to teach roles: becoming an engineer, a graphic designer, a photographer… as if there was one and only way of being that. “Human being are not means to an end” (ibid), but instead active agents of action that represent a unique way of being in the world.
Hence, the knowledge we pass on from instructors to pupils should not be beads of decontextualised information but, instead the delivery of a dedicated learning environment where this knowledge expands according to each individual. In the workshop every student takes what they need, and forgets what is perceived as less relevant from their unique view. Technical learning is a source of know-how that builds a way to exist in the world, a way to interact, to perceive, to problem-solve.
Dall’Alba rescues the term “letting learn” (Heidegger, M. 1968) to describe the ontological shift necessary to teach how to be in the world according to a particular practice context (2007), rather than acquiring knowledge as receptacles. The modern challenge of HE is to move from the teacher-“decanter” model that upholds knowledge transfer as we know it. (ibid, p.688) and call for “educational approaches that engage the whole person: what they know, how they act, and who they are” (ibid, p.689)
Perhaps, what can free the HE system from a sterile, only good-for-some method is precisely the lack of method as advocated by the anarcho-philosopher Paul Feyerabend. In ‘Against method’ (1993) he acknowledges how “the content of a concept is determined also by the way in which it is related to perception” (ibid) and proposes to break this circle in pro of a more expanded way of learning. In other words, if everyone gets taught the same in the same way, we are doomed to only move in circles rather than forward. Learning is only effective from one’s own perspective, their own curiosity.
References
Arendt H., (2018). The human condition. Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press. p.167
Feyerabend P., (1993). Against method. London: Verso. p.52
Gloria Dall’Alba & Robyn Barnacle (2007) An ontological turn for higher education, Studies in Higher Education, accessed onhttps://doi.org/10.1080/03075070701685130 on February 23rd 2026, p.684 – p.689
Heidegger, M. (1968) What is called thinking? (F. D. Wieck & J. G. Gray, Trans.) (New York, Harper & Row).
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