The mixed classroom: a pedagogical experiment with students and policymakers

The societal inability to respond accurately to the ecological crisis also requires a reflection on how universities can improve the impact of their practices. This paper reports on a prize-winning experiment aiming to strengthen the interaction of the university with the world of policymaking: a mixed classroom with students and policymakers. This classroom provides an environment in which policymakers and students co-produce insights, while giving policymakers direct access to academic knowledge and helping students to reflect on the dynamics of real-world contexts. The main goal of this study is to illuminate how learning in and through a mixed classroom experiment take places, for participants, teachers and organisational actors. To do so, we reflect on the continuous dialogue between our efforts as teachers and the experience of participants and others involved. To make sense of our teaching and institutional roles in this experiment, we suggest using the concept of ‘tinkering’. Further, to conceptualise the learning dynamics in a mixed classroom, we deploy the concept of ‘boundary crossing’, which turns out to be helpful in elucidating both individual learning (‘reflection’) and organisational learning (‘transformation’). Our study indicates that the notion of boundary crossing helps to effectively capture the learning situation we created and, as such, helps to redefine more generally how the science-policy interface can be understood and acted upon. For other educators interested in deploying mixed classroom-like approaches, we suggest that a tinkering approach can only work if there is sufficient room for experimentation, including failure and reflection, as well as ample time and funding. We also suggest critically looking at the constraints of the institutional logics and dynamics of higher education (e.g. the structure of semesters) and how their connection to the institutional logics and temporal dynamics of real-world contexts may be improved.

Peter Pelzer, Jesse Hoffman, Maarten A. Hajer