Abstract:

The grand challenges of our time call for a new era in higher education in which pedagogies of uncertainty play a vital role in developing future-ready graduates. As research on this topic is scarce, we need more knowledge on how teachers can create pedagogically adequate curricula for an unknown future.
We argue that learning for uncertainty involves exposure to authentic and challenging learning situations which may cause frustration, stress, and feelings of being stuck. Moreover, learning to acknowledge the very nature of open-ended problems is necessary to cope with unforeseen and unpredictable conditions. In this article we examine how students perceive metaphors introduced intentionally to capture the essence of such situations. The study is part of a research project aimed at exploring how metaphors may help students tolerate, and even embrace, the unknown and uncertain.
Our methodological approach is a case study of a training design run as part of an interdisciplinary master’s degree course in innovation competence at a Norwegian university. In this course, interdisciplinary teams of students from diverse study programs learn teamwork skills by solving real-world problems for civic and working life. The training design is based on the idea of using “the foggy field” as a metaphor for uncertainty associated with open-ended problems. “The foggy field” is presented as a term for situations in which both the problem and the path to solution is unknown. “The foggy field” is also framed as the natural initial (and often recurring) state of real-world projects and innovation journeys. To get better insight into student experiences, we collected data through digital surveys, a focus group interview, talks with student teams, and narratives from student team reports.
The findings show that most students perceive “the foggy field” in line with the intended purpose. Students delimit “the foggy field” to the initial course period and describe it as a state of “buzzing around” and asking questions. They associate the term with troublesome feelings and an urge to stress due to uncertainty around the project work. It is noteworthy that students portray “the foggy field” as a new kind of uncertainty in a teaching setting.
We conclude that “the foggy field” appears as a useful metaphor for helping students acknowledge the inherent uncertainty of real-world problems. As such, our study may contribute to better insight into how metaphors may be usefully applied in teaching and learning environments for uncertainty.

Keywords:

Pedagogies of uncertainty, higher education, open-ended problems, metaphors, the foggy field.