"Meitheal - Using the old Irish tradition of a Meitheal to develop a resilient, adaptive, autopoetic learning community"
CONCEPT: Meitheal is an ancient Irish tradition of a group coming together for a common purpose and working together and for each other to ensure that all succeed in achieving their goal. (An aspect of Meitheal would be akin to the traditional Coop structure.) There are other layers and to Meitheals such as the rhythms, stories, memories, sounds, smells, landscapes, myths and other EQ’s and SQ’s which embodies and nurtures the Genius of the group. When cultivated and conscientised, this richness provides the lubrication, creativity, magic, self belief and resilience for the Meitheal to respond to changes in its environment and to demands made on its members, whether they are rapid and unpredictable, or foreseeable and moderately paced, in a balanced, congruent, holistic and effective manner. In terms of managing change, particularly against the world view of accelerating chaotic unpredictable change, Meitheal can operate as an aware, congruent, self reliant, adaptive self organizing organism
In the Electronics Dept. in DKIT we have revived these values and aim to create a Learning Community where students and staff together engage in teams to master exciting new technologies in Electronics, Computers, Audio/Visual, Communications, Robotics etc. Meitheal starts from the premise of creating Community as a core value. We seek to tune into the various rhythms and issues that are present with the particular student/staff dynamic. It is an advantage that Meitheal is being developed within an Engineering sphere, where there is lots of room for interfusing the three C’s of Communication, Creativity and Cooperation with the well developed three R’s of Reading, writing and arithmetic. Using Problem/Project – based syllabi with a fair mix of hands-on and theoretical content, there is a great opportunity for creating soul and rhythm within the learning community. Through focusing on building the Meitheal synergy, it is possible to introduce, safely, the concept of challenge with peer support. In the forming of stakeholder-meaning and self-value for all members of the student/staff partnership, the Meitheal negotiates appropriate rituals and permissions which enable it to go about its learning tasks with the proactive personal enrollment and commitment of all the members. This approach will promote development of the reflective practitioner engineering graduate who has had an experiential introduction to lifelong learning and to the lifelong community of their Meitheal. The outcomes are Win-Win-Win for the students, Staff and Institute and for Industry and Community. The Meitheal experience also greatly humanizes Engineering and Technology and by inculcating and tapping into the real, personal and human aspects of the members lives, Meitheal can enhance the members’ capacities to consider ethical/human/moral/community impacts and consequences of technological development. The Meitheal concept is presently being developed and rolled-out in a reflective organic way in the First year of the Electronics course in DKIT Dundalk, Ireland, since September 2001. Even in this very short period there have been huge impacts on student and staff. The proposal for this conference is to provide a “real-time” window to the conference delegates into to what this “messy” change process looks and “feels” like by involving a group of students and staff in reflecting on their experiences to date, their fears and hopes and how their own views are changing as the Meitheal self realizes.