Presentation for 'Evolving identities: Collaboration to enhance student success', National Forum Seminar Series, Dundalk Institute of Technology, 23rd May 2019

1. WHAT IS THIS THIRD SPACE?
@JULIANMCDOUGALL

2. WHAT DO WE MEAN WHEN WE TALK ABOUT THIRD SPACE?

3. FOR LATER
Identify a media text that represents some ideas about how you think about
education and your practice and identity within it, right now.
This text should be a symbolic reference point, not too direct – ie not a documentary
about education or a film about a teacher or a library professional, but something
else that is more personal to you, in a more conceptual way.
Don’t share it until later please. And you can’t choose Rocky.

4. SHARING IDEAS FROM ….

5. Playful and Dynamic
Literacies
Third Spaces Curation
Digital Media meets Literacy in the practices of everyday life
Our way of seeing THIRD SPACE ….

6. Technology as part of
material culture and
lived experience
Digital media and
learner identity
Media education and
Literacy as inclusively
and ideologically
defined
Curation as a new
literacy practice
Animation
Blogging
Video
Social media
Audio/music
Photography
Identity
New literacies
Arts and humanities in education
Curriculum studies
Primary educationTechnology and education
Critical theory and
New media
Methods
Methodology
Frames
Practices
Fields
Coding and creativity
Games
Possible
Locations of
Dynamic/Playful
Literacies Research
VR / AR
Making
Play
Shared writing in WIKIsParticipatory
research
Children’s voice
Video
Audio
Observation
Transcription
Ethnography
Multimodal
Drawings

7. Third Spaces
Dynamic literacies
Curation
ISSN: 1941-0832
RADICAL TEACHER 36
http://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu No. 97 (Fall 2013) DOI 10.5195/rt.2013.49
Sampling an Inner DJ with Hip Hop Hopes: (Re)Writing
Immigrant Identities for English Language Learners in
Classroom Third Spaces
By Andrew Habana Hafner
AZTEC ACTIVISTS BY MELCHOR RAMIREZ, TUCSON, ARIZONA 2012 PHOTO BY CHRISTOPHER TINSON
Learning
Knowledge
Power
Networks
‘Cases’
- What happens in the third
space?
- To who?
- What changes in the second
space?
- For who?

8. THIRD SPACE IN EDUCATION
First space – home, community, lifeworld
Second space – education (school or University)
Third space – in between but a porous membrane
between (1) and (2)
’In between’
• Physical or metaphorical or digital / virtual
• Expertise is exchanged between teacher and
student
• Learners bring with them repertoires of literacy and
funds of knowledge

9. THIRD SPACE
Educational systems which are more agentive, are those
which promote the negotiation with outside culture; they
recognise that students bring with them knowledge, skills
and dispositions.
Agentive systems recognise the social and connected
nature of learning in a third space.
Principles from Vygotsky.

10. In this article, we articulate a set of reflections on how the project, in bringing
together academics, students and community participants in a challenging but
rich space, enabled exchanges of expertise and new, boundary crossing ‘ways of
being’ in education that can be discussed as ‘third space’ interactions.
Project: Hunger By the Sea, Third Space Partnership

11. Article about the project
Special issue on 3rd Space
partnership

12. Project: Comrades and Curators

14. THIRD SPACE IDENTITY RESEARCH
Identify a film that stands in as a ‘third space’ connecting, for you, history
(‘received’ / radical); politics (public); politics (personal) and your life
narrative. This film could be ‘about’ anything, or it could be explicitly
historical or political, it depends on you. It could be a radical text or very
mainstream. It must be a film from / with which you make meaning.
Tell your partner about this film and how you can make those connections
from it.
While you are listening to your partner’s story, draw a map to visually
represent these connections.
Share your maps and give one another the opportunity to ‘correct’ anything
or suggest another way of representing things.
Jig-sawing, thematic modelling, ‘data capture’ – photographs of maps / audio
recordings of discussions (with informed consent).

16. For me, Comrades sits in a space between my own political
views and trade unionism, some deeply personal things to
do with my late father, my working life and then the
connection between all of those.
When I ask people to choose a film with political and
historical meaning for them and then think about similar
connections, usually they come up with rich, deep and
personal stories.
I use some ‘distancing’ techniques, putting people together
in pairs and then groups, so that by the time they share their
stories, they are combined into themes arising from several
people.
Then, with people’s consent, I photograph the ‘maps’ and
use them as data for the research.

18. LET’S DO TEXT
Talk to your partner about your media text, how you make
meaning from it / give meaning to it, in relation to education,
your job and your research.
As you are listening to your partner, draw a map / picture
connecting the text to the person to education and to life.
Take it as far as you can in the time.

19. IF WE HAD LONGER …
Longer process, over 2 days if possible. Range of creative
storytelling methods to share each others’ narratives.
Into smaller groups, then jigsawing, collecting themes.
Interviews – what themes were shared, which stories were personal /
unique? What was the role of the text in elicitation?

20. Remember that where you stand is grounded in who you are, where
you come from and what you have experienced, all of which
contribute to form the lens through which you interpret the world.
You may not be aware of this lens but it exists and colours
everything you perceive – it is your responsibility as a professional
educator to strive to ‘know’ yourself before you seek to
‘understand’ others.
Tricia le Gallais @ Bournemouth2015
Third Space Knowledge