The Use of Metaphors With LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY ® For Harmony and Innovation

Abstract

Organisational changes within Higher Education Institutions (HEI) over recent years have had a great effect on the roles of Higher Education (HE) staff and their attitudes, experience and satisfaction within those roles. The changes in the way HEIs are funded have resulted in institutional policies that are strongly market driven. Alongside this, policies of widening access to HE have led to the 'massification' of student numbers and the intensification of the workload of HE staff. The increasing focus on measures and evaluations between and within institutions, with league tables and in the UK at least, Research Excellence Framework (REF) and its previous incarnations along with the recently introduced Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), has led to a culture of audit and managerialism both at the level of institutional policy and at the micro level within faculties and departments. These effects have been particularly acute in traditionally practice-based programmes and post-92 institutions, where these drivers are at times at odds with the motivations and expertise of many of the staff who joined these institutions under different conditions. This paper presents LEGO ® SERIOUS PLAY ® as a method of enabling members of staff with diverse expertise, experience and expectations to come together to work towards a shared strategic plan in the light of the changing HE culture. The method is applied to a teacher education department within a post-92 university, where despite differing views of the challenges facing the department, consensus is achieved through the building of shared metaphors and joint narratives.

LEGO®Serious Play®in multi-method tourism research

“…Previous studies (Gauntlett, 2007; Wengel et al , 2016; James, 2013a; Frick and Cantoni, 2013) on the method have widely discussed its roots and the concepts underpinning the method. It is beyond the scope of the paper to include a profound discussion the philosophical underpinning of the method including constructivism (Piaget, 1955) and constructionism (Papert and Harel, 1991), the concept of play (Gee, 2007; Kane, 2004; Terr, 2000), the theory of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 2014) and use of metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, 2003; Carpenter, 2008; Kangas et al , 1998; McCusker and Swan, 2018) as it was previously done.…”

“…Outside the university classroom, LEGO ® Serious Play ® is used to plan career (Harn, 2019) and understanding the role of academic libraries (Lotts, 2016). McCusker and Swan (2018) used the method to anticipate organisational changes in Higher Education and to create a shared university’s strategic plan. In another example from education, Tseng (2017) found the LEGO ® Serious Play ® method was a useful tool for fostering narrative identity among marginalised students.…”

Alone but together: flow experience and its impact on creative output in LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®

“…According to McCusker and Swan (2018), "successful LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® workshops create and maintain an atmosphere of 'flow'" (p. 175). In the LSP literature, flow is mainly associated with the component balance by relating participants' skills and challenges during the activity (Kristiansen and Rasmussen, 2014).…”

“…All positive effects of LSP on participants' experience and their collaboration reported in this literature relate directly to the concept of flow, which Csíkszentmihályi (2009) vividly described in his seminal work “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.” Briefly, flow is an experience of total engagement in an activity (Sonnenburg and Primus, 2020) and can have an impact on creative output (Cseh, 2016; Maqbool et al , 2019). Although flow and its components are often mentioned in practitioner and scientific LSP literature (Beltrami, 2017; Dann, 2018; McCusker and Swan, 2018; Wengel et al , 2019), very few studies have been conducted to empirically compare the impact of LSP on participants' experiences with traditional meetings. For example, two key expectations have not been examined empirically: (1) that LSP reduces the likelihood of participants being bored or anxious because the process, starting with skill building, helps maintain a balance between skill and challenge; and (2) that using LSP changes the collaboration, in particular the participation, from a few participants dominating the meeting to everyone participating more equitably, a component of group flow (Primus and Sonnenburg, 2018; Sawyer, 2007).…”

Using Lego® Serious Play® in Higher Education with Law Students: Encouraging Playfulness and Creativity within Library Workshops

“…It is also important for me to set boundaries. Despite LSP being an emotional experience, I do need to make it clear that it is not therapy and I am not a therapist 12 . This is addressed via my instructions early on that if participants make something, they are expected to share its meaning.…”