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 Enhancing Teaching in Higher Education

This book brings together a collection of thought-provoking and challenging accounts from
higher education lecturers and practitioners who are using research and innovative techniques
to improve student learning and teaching.
Providing accessible accounts of new developments, it outlines how to apply learning theory
and best practice to everyday teaching, and provides advice on overcoming problems of
implementation.
Evidence is drawn from both funded projects and innovative practitioners from a wide
range of disciplines and backgrounds, and covers areas including approaches to learning,
working with students, enhancing the progress and development of students and supporting
and developing your own practice.
Enhancing Teaching in Higher Education addresses major issues for learning and teaching in
higher education today and will be a reliable source of advice and ideas for new and
experienced lecturers wanting to improve their students’ learning.

Peter Hartley, Professor of Education Development and Head of the Teaching Quality
Enhancement Group, School of Lifelong Educational and Development, University of
Bradford, UK.

Amanda Woods, Senior Research Fellow, Division of Primary Care, School of Community
Health Sciences, University of Nottingham, UK.

Martin Pill, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Health, and chair of the Faculty Teaching
Learning and Assessment Committee, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of the West of
England, UK.
 Enhancing Teaching in
Higher Education
New approaches for improving student
learning

Edited by Peter Hartley,

Amanda Woods and Martin Pill

LONDON AND NEW YORK

 First published 2005 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
RoutledgeFalmer is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of
thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2005 Selection and editorial material, Peter Hartley, Amanda Woods and Martin Pill; individual
chapters, the contributors
The right of Peter Hartley, Amanda Woods, Martin Pill and individual
contributors to be identified as the Authors of this Work has been asserted
by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Enhancing teaching in higher education: new approaches for improving
student learning/edited by Peter Hartley, Amanda Woods, and Martin Pill.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. College teaching. 2. Learning. I. Hartley, Peter, 1946– II. Woods,
Amanda, 1963– III. Pill, Martin.
LB2331.E66 2004
378.1′2–dc22 2004011425

ISBN 0-203-41600-7 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-43947-3 (Adobe eReader Format)

ISBN 0-415-34136-1 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-33529-9 (pbk)
 Contents

List of illustrations vi
Notes on contributors vii
Preface xi

Part one— Approaches to learning 1

1 Ingredients for effective learning: the Learning 3
Combination Lock
Colin Beard and John P.Wilson
2 Learning through work-based learning 17
David Major
3 Interactive teaching and learning: exploring and 27
reflecting on practice
Annie Huntington

Part two— Working with students 39

4 Using concept maps in learning and teaching 41
Jane Fox and Dot Morrison
5 Facilitating tutorials in problem-based learning: 51
students’ perspectives
Teena J.Clouston
6 Developing students’ skills in groups and teamworking: 61
moving experience into critical reflection
Peter Hartley
7 Learning-to-learn online: fostering student engagement 71
with online pedagogies
Gwyneth Hughes
8 Working with blended learning 83
Jo Smedley
9 Facilitating students towards self-directed learning 95
Julie-Anne Regan
 v

Part three— Enhancing student progression and development 111

10 Progression in higher education: a study of learning as 113
represented in level descriptors
Jenny Moon
11 Developing the Keynote Interactive Guide to Personal 123
Development Planning
Jenny Phillips
12 Learning about employability 135
Kathryn McFarlane

Part four— Supporting and developing staff 147

13 Research into practice: learning by doing 149
John Shaw
14 Learning to teach with technology 157
Vivien Sieber
15 Online staff development: using the web to enhance 169
teacher autonomy and student learning
Peter Mangan and Uma Patel
16 Inclusive learning in higher education: the impact of 179
policy changes
Alan Hurst
17 Reframing equality of opportunity training 189
Glynis Cousin

Index 195
 Illustrations

Figures

1.1 The Learning Combination Lock 4

4.1 Concept map—chapter summary 48
8.1 A page of the NEC VLE 2001–2002 86
8.2 The BSCW VLE 88
9.1 What is SDL? 99
9.2 How effective is SDL? 101
9.3 What do students need in order to direct their own learning effectively? 103
9.4 What barriers exist to prevent students directing their own learning? 105
9.5 What motivates students to SDL? 107
12.1 The Employability Continuum 138
12.2 Watts model of careers education 141
15.1 Staff Induction Programme—start-up screen 173

Boxes

6.1 Comparing models of group development 66

11.1 Advantages of approach taken 125
11.2 Contents of original version 126
11.3 Contents of final version 128
11.4 Suggested customisations 130
 Contributors

Colin Beard is a Senior Lecturer and University Teaching Fellow at Sheffield Hallam
University, with main research interests in innovative learning environments and
experiential learning. He is an International Environmental and Management Development
consultant and lead author of The Power of Experiential Learning. A Chartered Fellow of the
CIPD, he is a member of the Editorial Review Panel of the Journal of Adventure Education
and Outdoor Learning for the Institute for Outdoor Learning. Colin delivers Master Classes
on Innovative Experiential Learning in Singapore, China, India and Finland.

Glynis Cousin is a Senior Adviser at the Higher Education Academy. She supports
educational development and research initiatives in UK universities and is a Fellow of the
Staff and Educational Development Association.

Teena J.Clouston is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Occupational Therapy,

Cardiff University, Cardiff. Areas of research interest lie in education, particularly PBL and
e-learning, occupational science and organisational culture. Publications include a co-edited
book: Health and Social Care: An Introduction for Allied Health Professionals (Elsevier, 2005).

Jane Fox, formerly Head of Nursing and Midwifery at University College Worcester, is
currently seconded to the Department of Health (Skills for Health), undertaking work
related to the development of a Partnership Quality Assurance Framework for England. She
has a particular interest in Accreditation of Prior Learning (L.Nyatanga, D.Forman and
J.Fox, Good Practice in the Accreditation of Prior Learning, Cassell: London, 1998),
interprofessional learning (Institute of Learning and Teaching small project award 2002/3)
and concept mapping.

Jo Smedley is Assistant Director of Combined Honours at Aston University, Birmingham.

She is also Visiting Senior Lecturer in Informatics at Halmstad University, Sweden. Her
research interests lie in the area of e- and blended learning, human computer interaction
and reflective learning. Details of publications are available at www.aston.ac.uk/combhons/
jo/.
viii

Peter Hartley is Professor of Education Development and Head of the Teaching Quality
Enhancement Group at the University of Bradford. One of the first group of National Teaching
Fellows in 2000, he has produced educational multimedia (The Interviewer, Gower, 2004)
and a series of textbooks on human communication (e.g. Business Communication, with Clive
Bruckman, Routledge, 2001).

Gwyneth Hughes is the e-Learning Co-ordinator at the University of East London. She is
the leader of a short Masters-level course, Application of Learning Technologies, which has
been accredited by both SEDA and the ILTHE and has national recognition. Her recent
research and publications are in the area of e-learning and retention.

Annie Huntington is employed as a Principal Lecturer in the Department of Social Work

at the University of Central Lancashire. She is a qualified social worker, nurse and
psychotherapist with a particular interest in interactive approaches to learning and teaching.

Alan Hurst (Department of Education, University of Central Lancashire and trustee of

Skill: National Bureau for Students with Disabilities) has published papers and books and
presented keynote addresses and workshops on disability in higher education at many national
and international conferences. Currently he is managing a project to compile a staff
developer’s handbook for use in connection with raising awareness about inclusive learning.

David Major is Director of the Centre for Work Related Studies at University College
Chester. He has been involved in a number of national work-based learning (WBL)
initiatives and has been working, with others, on the WBL curriculum at Chester since
1990.

Kathryn McFarlane is careers adviser and University Learning and Teaching Fellow in
the Careers and Employability Service at Staffordshire University. As well as working as a
careers adviser, she contributes to the curriculum through various modules, and has been
Module Leader for a centrally-run Careers Module. She has been chair of the University’s
Student Employability Group, which seeks to promote the employability agenda in the
University.

Peter Mangan is Lecturer in Education in the Department of Continuing Education, City

University, London and Director of the department’s Certificate in Continuing Studies. His
main research is in the area of social reconstruction in societies emerging from civil conflict,
with a particular research focus on possible roles for the web as an enabling tool in such
reconstruction scenarios.

Jenny Moon is based at Exeter University and is involved in Educational Development.

She has worked on various aspects of programme structure since involvement in credit
developments in Wales in the mid-1990s. She has published widely on the issues of
 ix

programme structure and also on the processes of learning and reflection in learning. Her
chapter in this book brings these two areas of work together.

Dot Morrison is Senior Lecturer within the Institute of Health and Social Care at
University College Worcester working mainly with pre- and post-registration nursing
students. She has a particular interest in the nature of knowledge, which underpins
professional practice, and developing learning and teaching strategies to enhance student
engagement.

Uma Patel is Lecturer in e-Learning in the School of Arts, City University. She has
responsibility for e-learning applications. Her research is the design of tools and conditions
for adult learning and professional development. She is interested in the role of technology
in constructions of professional identity, and the relationship between technology identity
and empowerment.

Jenny Phillips has worked in educational development within Higher Education for
several years, at both The Nottingham Trent University, and Birkbeck College, London.
Her specialist interests include assessment, accessibility of learning, technology-enhanced
learning and key skills.

Martin Pill is Senior Lecturer at the University of the West of England, Bristol where he
chairs the Faculty Teaching Learning and Assessment Committee. He is Reviews Editor for
the journal Active Learning in Higher Education, and has run workshops and seminars on
teaching and learning in this country and abroad.

Julie-Anne Regan is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Health and Social Care at
University College Chester. She is the progamme leader for the MSc in Health Promotion
but also works with pre- and post-registration nursing students to develop their teaching
and learning skills, with the aim of enhancing their experiences of Higher Education.

John Shaw is Principal Lecturer in Learning and Teaching for the Business Department,
London Metropolitan University. He has been teaching in Higher Education since 1972 in a
variety of settings—from access courses to postgraduate, from Croatia to Trinidad. He has a
variety of papers published including two articles in the THES, and the chapter in the recent
SEEC book on foundation degrees (Making Foundation Degrees Work, edited by Lyn Brennan
and David Gosling (SEEC, 2004)).

Vivien Sieber is currently introducing learning technologies into the Medical Science
Division, University of Oxford and is involved with a virtual learning environment and
computer-aided assessment. She had university-wide responsibility for learning technologies
at London Metropolitan (former University of North London) and managed the Teaching
and Learning Technology Centre which delivered staff training and multimedia
x

development. Vivien gained extensive teaching experience in genetics and study skills whilst
at The University of East London.

John P.Wilson is the Continuing Professional Development Manager at the University of

Oxford. He has worked with many organisations and spent two years working in Sweden,
and four years in Saudi Arabia. He has directed an MEd in Training and Development and
has edited, Human Resource Development: Learning and Training for Individuals and Organisations
(2nd edn, Kogan Page, 2005) and jointly authored The Power of Experiential Learning: A
Handbook for Trainers and Educators (Kogan Page, 2001).

Amanda Woods is currently Senior Research Fellow at the Division of Primary Care,
University of Nottingham on secondment from her post as Lecturer in Child Health at the
School of Nursing. She is a social scientist and public health nurse and holder of a prestigious
Department of Health Primary Care Researcher Development Award which has enabled her
to pursue her research interests in public health and childhood safety promotion. Her recent
publications have been related to the learning needs of health care professionals.
 Preface

We hope that lecturers in higher education (HE) from every subject background will find this
book both useful and challenging: useful because it contains a wide range of practical ideas
which we can immediately apply to our own teaching; and challenging because the chapters
invite us to reconsider and re-evaluate the ways we teach our students. We have tried to
concentrate on issues and developments that are having an important impact on the ways that
we all teach increasing numbers of undergraduate students.
These are interesting times as far as the development of teaching and learning in HE is
concerned. On the one hand, there has been a stream of initiatives over the last decade, all
designed to improve the quality of learning and teaching (and also the status of teaching) within
universities. An important example in the UK is the HE Academy. This was established in
2004 with ‘ambitious aims’ and a ‘focus on students and improving their experience’, as
described by its first chief executive, Paul Ramsden, in his first address to the annual funding
body conference. The Academy’s long-term ambition is to provide ‘an authoritative national
voice on teaching and learning issues, promoting the professional development of staff through
a range of services and supporting the enhancement work of universities and colleges’
(www.heacademy.ac.uk, April 2004). At institutional level, the new Centres for Excellence in
Learning and Teaching aim both to reward excellence and to encourage innovation in teaching
and learning. At individual level, the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme rewards institutional
nominees who have been recognised for particular contributions to teaching and learning: this
scheme expanded from 20 to 50 awards per annum in 2004.
These initiatives and others represent both an increasing recognition of the importance of
university teaching at all levels—from institutional strategy to individual initiatives—and an
increasingly interventionist stance by both funding bodies and the government. These trends
now characterise higher education in many countries, although the specific combination of the
schemes listed above has no or few direct counterparts in other parts of the world. But we
cannot say that they have been universally accepted as appropriate models for educational
change: all the initiatives have been debated in some detail and we can find strong arguments
for both their value and their limitations.
The combination of increasing intervention and rapid expansion has led to some sharp
contradictions and tensions. To illustrate the tensions and pressures, Paul Ramsden describes
higher education as facing ‘an almost certain future of relentless variation in a more austere
environment’ (Ramsden, 1998:3). But he also argues that ‘teaching is one of the most
delightful and exciting of all human activities when it is done well’ (Ramsden, 2003:5). The
form of such teaching has also become a focus of lively and often heated debate, and this is now
xii

regularly represented in both academic and press coverage. For example, consider a typical
selection of articles aken from a few weeks’ issues of the Times Higher Education Supplement.
One, with the deliberately provocative title of ‘Audit models “kill teaching’”, contrasted
comments from Sally Brown’s professorial lecture, defining excellence in teaching to include
‘passion for the subject’ and ‘commitment to students’ learning’, with concerns from Ben
Knights about the ‘shift away from academic disciplines and expert knowledge in favour of
generic teaching’ (Utley, 2004). A personal article from Peter Abbs described ‘the current
educational reality’ as a ‘blank pragmatism’ and asked: ‘can the personal and liberating
elements of education survive?’ (Abbs, 2004). In the same issue, Ken Bain described his
research study of a sample of ‘outstanding teachers’ in various universities. Common features
across different subject areas included attempts to ‘create natural critical learning
environments’ and ‘challenge students to rethink their assumptions’ (Bain, 2004). There is no
doubt that the quality and form of university teaching continues to arouse strong feelings and
commitment.
So we have powerful forces urging (and funding) educational change, serious debate (and
some profound concerns) about the likely outcomes of this change, and some considerable
operational problems evident in the expansion of HE. In the middle of this lively turmoil we
have the daily task of teaching and the approaches and perceptions of university staff. A recent
UK survey found that a majority of university academics felt that modern students are less
prepared than their predecessors for university life and that this has potentially damaging
implications for the curriculum. This same survey found that most academics also felt that
students were primarily motivated by concern over job prospects. Only a small percentage felt
that students were mainly pursuing knowledge for its own sake. Such perceptions may have
negative outcomes if they colour our approaches to teaching, especially when research on
student attitudes paints a more complex (and also more encouraging) picture of students as
‘conscientious consumers’ (Higgins et al., 2002).
The focus of this book is on this operational level—what we do as teachers and lecturers to
influence student learning—although many of our chapters make some comments on the
organisational and political contexts that affect what we do. All of our contributors are actively
involved in the enhancement of student learning and most have a significant teaching load. So
this book is primarily written by university lecturers for university lecturers. But it is not
intended as a comprehensive primer or guidebook on teaching practice, as these already exist
(e.g. Fry et al., 1999; Light and Cox, 2002; Ramsden, 2003). Rather, it is a collection of
chapters on important current (and future) issues in undergraduate higher education—
important issues that have been identified by the practitioners ‘at the sharp end’—and it is also
a source of ideas (and hopefully inspiration) on how practitioners can influence the shape and
processes of student learning. Also, unlike some handbooks on university teaching, we have
operated a ‘light-touch’ editorial policy and so you will find some tensions and contradictions
between chapters. As with all good teaching, our fundamental aim is to encourage debate and
dialogue.
All the chapters discuss issues that the authors feel strongly about and we hope you can
sense the commitment and enthusiasm that underpin each contribution. If this level of
commitment is as widespread as we believe it is then the future of teaching and learning in HE
is assured.
 xiii

The structure of the book

The book is organised into four main sections, but this is not intended to be a watertight or
exclusive categorisation. Many of our chapters tackle overlapping themes and so the fit of
chapters into sections is sometimes a bit arbitrary. The individual chapters are briefly
summarised below under the four part headings.

Approaches to learning
Our first section invites you to consider and evaluate your overall approach and perspectives
on learning and teaching in HE. The first chapter offers an approach that can be applied to any
curriculum and any/every subject area. Colin Beard and John Wilson argue that educational
theories in the past have not tried to cover all the possible components or variables that underpin
the learning process. Their Learning Combination Lock is a systematic process that enables the
educator to consider (and select from) a vast range of ingredients available in the development
of learning processes. The lock may also be used as a diagnostic tool to examine existing
programmes, helping us to determine whether these programmes cover the main elements of
the learning process.
Beard and Wilson give examples and illustrations to show how the model can be used. They
emphasise that it should not be used mechanistically but, rather, as a diagnostic aide memoire.
It can also be added to and developed according to the considerations of the programme and the
needs of the learner.
Moving from an over-arching tool to more specific interventions, David Major argues the
case for work-based learning, comparing evidence from the well-established Alverno
institution in the US with data from his own students at University College Chester. Using
evidence from student interviews and course outcomes, he argues that this form of learning
can provide insights and learning that we cannot expect from conventional instruction.
Annie Huntington explores approaches to interactive learning by reflecting upon her own
very substantial teaching experience. She looks at both opportunities and issues for lecturers
who wish to move along the spectrum towards interactive teaching. Of course, in one sense all
teaching is interactive and this is why we need to consider a spectrum that ranges from the
inclusion of interactive exercises within an otherwise tutor-controlled lecture to frameworks
and strategies where students have to confront their personal responses to the material and
engage in reflective practice. One of her strategies is to share theories with students. And this
is a practice that crops up in several of our chapters, where students are encouraged to test and
apply theories to their own personal experience rather than simply accepting them as truths
that cannot be challenged in any context. She also raises problems of ethical practice and the
difficulties of dealing with students’ emotional responses, another theme that crops up in
subsequent chapters.

Working with students

Jane Fox and Dot Morrison provide both a step-by-step model to introduce concept mapping
to your students and a thorough analysis of their students’ reactions to this method. They
xiv

conclude that the planned use of concept maps can make an important contribution to student
learning. Their experience is not only that it helps students understand particular topics/
concepts but it also provides a strategy to foster higher-order learning and cognition,
encouraging students to be analytical rather than simply descriptive. Some students continue to
incorporate concept mapping as an important ingredient in their own learning repertoire.
If we are encouraging students to take more responsibility for their own learning (and
adopting techniques such as problem-based learning) then we need to consider how we
operate as members of staff to support students working in this way. Tina Clouston offers the
view from the student perspective, using the experiences of student participants whose views
were collected through questionnaires, focus groups and narratives over a two-year period.
And it is important to recognise that students do not necessarily view excellent teaching in the
same way as academic staff do.
There are a number of important lessons for all of us in this chapter. For example, the ‘good
news’ is that you do not have to adopt a particular personal style, which may not suit you, in
order to achieve effective outcomes. The ‘bad news’ is of course that self-awareness is a very
important skill that is not simply acquired overnight. It requires constant review and is also
extremely hard work.
Peter Hartley notes the increased application of group methods in HE teaching and asks
what (and how) students learn from these group activities and projects. He argues that much
of our current knowledge about group dynamics has been derived from particular non-
educational contexts and that this has worrying implications for our interactions with student
groups. In other words, we have fairly limited evidence about how student project groups
really ‘work’. After offering examples that show how prescriptions about group behaviour
based on business or organisational evidence may not apply to student groups in quite the same
way, he shows how we can turn this situation to our advantage. We need to involve students in
inquiry into their own group processes and use this as a vehicle to develop their critical and
reflective skills.
Gwyneth Hughes’ chapter focuses on the process of learning online and the resources
available to help online learners, such as tutorials on web searching. She responds to two key
questions: how can we embed learning-to-learn online skills into the curriculum?; and how are
learners best encouraged to use learning-to-learn resources? Using models such as Salmon’s
stages for successful e-moderating and relating this to her own research on different student
attitudes to online learning, she demonstrates a number of ways of getting students involved.
The chapter concludes with a useful checklist for including learning-to-learn online skills in
your curriculum.
Jo Smedley investigates ‘blended learning’, where the use of human and technological
components can overcome the respective limitations of face-to-face and e-learning. The roles
and responsibilities of learners and tutors in a blended learning experience are highlighted,
with particular emphasis on the design issues inherent in a successful blended learning course.
Finally, a set of case studies demonstrate blended learning in action and provide evidence of
the diversity of the student experience that can be achieved via the creative use of this style of
learning.
Self-directed learning has become one of the new slogans. But what do students make of it?
Julie-Anne Regan’s chapter summarises the main results from a year-long study of students’
perspectives of self-directed learning (SDL). She concludes that facilitating students to become
 xv

self-directed learners needs to be as carefully planned as the subject content of the curriculum.
This means an incremental approach to developing independent learners, offering more
direction at the start of the programme until students are better equipped to assess their own
learning needs. Failing to facilitate SDL in this way can create barriers to becoming an
independent learner and cause the student unnecessary anxiety and distress. One intriguing
outcome of this study is the strong link between SDL and tutor-centred approaches such as
lectures. This link appears stronger than has previously been highlighted in the literature
on SDL.

Enhancing student progression and development

The next group of chapters deals with various aspects of student progression and development.
We start by looking at issues associated with the move to describe the curriculum in terms of
specified outcomes at different levels, which has now become the dominant model of
curriculum development in the UK.
Jenny Moon investigates the notion of progression in learning as described in the level
descriptors. Starting from the analysis of the content of the level descriptors (i.e. the concepts
of learning that are written into the descriptors), she manages to reveal some of the issues and
consequences that result from this way of describing HE learning and teaching.
Jenny Phillips explains the development of the Keynote Guide to Personal Development
Planning (PDP). PDP is now an obligatory component of UK HE, although it has been
implemented in very different ways. After outlining the national context that made a PDP
guide a priority for the Keynote project, she covers the development, evaluation and redesign
of the Guide, focusing on choice of technology, content and usability issues. Finally, she looks
at approaches to integrating PDP within different subject areas, and discusses some key issues
arising from the alternative models. The evaluation of all these approaches highlights some
common themes, including the need to brief students fully on the concept of PDP and what is
expected of them, and the very difficult issue of tying PDP in with assessment.
Kathryn McFarlane starts her chapter with a definition of employability and an outline of
why it is important to undergraduates and graduates. She continues to set two challenges—
initially, to consider what opportunities your students have to develop their employability
skills and, later, to explore how you might build on these opportunities. Using her own advice
as a starting point, she outlines the existing employability-related programmes at her own
university and explains their plans for the future.

Supporting and developing staff

The final chapters raise issues of staff support and development, ranging from the use of the
web to support staff development through to the impact of recent disability legislation.
Common themes are the importance of staff development and the variety of mechanisms that
can be used to help staff develop new approaches to teaching and learning. Especially important
is the professional approach that academic staff employ. We all have a responsibility not simply
to enhance our own subject expertise but also to develop our understanding of issues related to
student learning.
xvi

John Shaw considers how teaching staff learn about learning. His case study, working with
colleagues on a franchised course, shows how the practice of education research (and in his
case, action research) had a very powerful impact. Research findings were used to make
improvements to the curriculum which made a very significant difference—for example,
student retention improved by 30 per cent. This improvement can partly be attributed to the
special attention that the student sample received, but the structural changes to the course had
longer-term effects. And, of course, action research can be ongoing and maintain impetus.
Perhaps more important in the long run, especially given the limited financial resources, was
the positive impact on staff—he describes the process as ‘the key to a major block to staff
development’.
Vivien Sieber explores the main barriers to using ICT and Learning Technology
encountered by academic staff and, to a lesser extent, by institutions, and describes a range of
initiatives designed to overcome them. She discusses barriers under three main categories:
technical and skill issues; issues relating to learning and teaching; and issues arising from lack
of appreciation of opportunities or fear. She concludes that progress depends on two related
and complementary processes: teaching staff must overcome the barriers of fear of technology
and appreciate the opportunities offered to enhance their teaching; and institutions must
recognise the investment in infrastructure, support and staff needed to develop the necessary
materials.
Peter Mangan and Uma Patel focus upon an increasingly important group of staff—those on
part-time hourly contracts, often referred to as visiting lecturers (VLs). Their case study is an
online staff development facility, AMBIENT, which has been developed to address VLs’
learning requirements, using information from self-assessment of their learning needs. They
explore the issues that can act as barriers to VLs’ online learning success, and expose as
problematic the relationship between the availability of web-based staff development and
evidence of successful learning. These issues include predictable ones, for example access to
the web and ICT skills, but also the unexpected, for example where working out professional
identity in the context of the ‘new managerialism’ in higher education has assumed a new
urgency. They conclude by reflecting upon the paradoxes inherent within online staff
development.
Alan Hurst argues that none of us can ignore the implications of changes to legislation
covering discrimination that have applied to the UK HE sector from September 2002. We may
all share the values of encouraging access to higher education but the recent legislation does
give us additional responsibilities. We can no longer simply respond to students’ difficulties
after they arrive in our classrooms. The legislation obliges us to anticipate that students with
particular disabilities will wish to attend our courses and we need to make ‘reasonable
adjustments’ to make sure that those students are not discriminated against. In other words,
we need to plan in advance to make our courses accessible and inclusive rather than solving
problems after they emerge. He advocates the ‘four As’: awareness of disabilities, audit
current practices, anticipate future needs, and action to implement inclusive learning. Perhaps
the most powerful message in this chapter is the conclusion that if we make these adjustments
to our provision then we are actually more likely to benefit all students.
In our final chapter, Glynis Cousin argues that many of our attempts to encourage equal
opportunities are based upon mistaken or misleading notions of human identity. She argues
very powerfully that we must resist attempts to classify individuals in over-restrictive
 xvii

categories or boxes. Given that one of the main themes running through this book is the search
for ways of encouraging student autonomy and self-confidence, then this argument is an
appropriate place for us to wind up this volume.
We hope that you do find at least some of the content is useful and you should certainly find
some, if not many, of the ideas challenging. We also hope that this will stimulate further
dialogue, again echoing the spirit of our last chapter.
Peter Hartley, Amanda Woods
and Martin Pill

Acknowledgements
This book started as an ILT initiative—members were invited to propose chapters which
discussed important concerns and innovations in HE teaching. It would not have happened
without the enthusiasm and commitment of Sally Brown and we are also indebted to Stephen
Jones for his considerable patience and unflagging support.

References

Abbs, P. (2004) Why I…believe the higher education bill will increase alienation from learning,
Times Higher Education Supplement, 7 May, 14.
Bain, K. (2004) Art of old masters in moulding minds, Times Higher Education Supplement, 7 May, 23.
Fry, H., Ketteridge, S. and Marshall, S. (1999) A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher
Education: Enhancing Academic Practice, London: Kogan Page.
Higgins, R., Hartley, P. and Skelton, A. (2002) The conscientious consumer: reconsidering the role
of assessment feedback in student learning, Studies in Higher Education, 27, 1, 53–64.
Light, G. and Cox, R. (2001) Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: The Reflective Professional,
London, Sage Publications.
Ramsden, P. (1998) Learning to Lead in Higher Education, London: Routledge.
Ramsden, P. (2003) Learning to Teach in Higher Education, 2nd edition, London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Utley, A. (2004) Audit models ‘kill teaching’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 23 April, 2.
xviii
 Part one

Approaches to learning
2
 1
Ingredients for effective learning: the
Learning Combination Lock
Colin Beard and John P.Wilson

Introduction
Do all your first year students still arrive bright and keen at 9.00 a.m. on a Monday morning in
the last week of the semester? How do we design their learning experience to sustain interest,
motivation and enthusiasm? Do we go with our instincts and encourage learning through
applying methods that have worked in the past, or do we base our teaching on theories of learning
and, if so, which ones from the vast range that exists?
Our answer to this dilemma is a model that offers a systematic process for the educator to
consider and select from a vast range of ingredients available in the development of learning
processes: the Learning Combination Lock (LCL). The LCL can also be used as a diagnostic
tool to examine existing programmes and determine whether they cover the main elements of
the learning process.
The LCL is not intended to be used mechanistically but rather as a diagnostic aide-memoire
that may also be added to and developed according to the considerations of the programme and
the needs of the learner. This chapter describes the LCL and offers a range of clues and
practical applications that may be used to enhance your students’ learning environment and
link theory and practice.

Introducing the LCL

Theories of learning, education, training and development are frequently developed in
isolation from one another. As a result, even educational specialists find it difficult to construct
a coherent and integrated overview of their subject. And the vast majority of people involved
with individual and work-based learning only appear to use a restricted number of theories
(Brant, 1998). Many have neither the breadth of knowledge to select from a wider range of
possibilities and options, nor do they possess a meta-model with which to contextualise and
make sense of other theories with which they come into contact. The LCL provides such a
meta-model. It is underpinned by models of experiential learning and theories of perception
and information-processing (for a full explanation, see Beard and Wilson, 2002—this chapter
concentrates on the applications and implications).
The LCL brings together (for the first time, to our knowledge) all the main ingredients of
the learning equation (Figure 1.1). In the past these ingredients have often been discussed in
4 COLIN BEARD AND JOHN P.WILSON

Figure 1.1 The Learning Combination Lock by Colin Beard

isolation, thus giving only a partial picture of the learning environment. We need to identify
all the core components to help practitioners in Higher Education diagnose and design
activities that create high-quality learning experiences for students. For example, Light and
Cox (2001:109) note that:

The design of this relationship between lecture structures and activities provides the key
location for creativity and innovation in lecturing. Even given the usual academic
constraints of what is ‘permissible’ as well as those of space, time, resources and so
forth, the permutations and possibilities available to the lecturer are limited primarily
by their imagination and confidence.

As lecturers we need to experiment and sometimes take risks in our own learning journeys.
The LCL can support the creative exploration of activity design, although we cannot ignore the
institutional difficulties of generating effective approaches:

The cultural environment of higher education does little to foster active learning to
strengthen critical thinking and creativity skills in its students…. Faculty are given little
time, budget, encouragement or support to develop ‘active learning’ tools that assist in
developing these skills. Incorporating ‘active learning’ pedagogic techniques, for
example, developing and running exercises, group projects, or simulations, is risky for
a faculty and there is no guarantee that these techniques will work or that students
see the benefits of this form of pedagogic method. Fortunately, but slowly, the cultural
 INGREDIENTS FOR EFFECTIVE LEARNING 5

environment that places barriers to moving toward more innovative pedagogical tools is
eroding away.
(Snyder, 2003:159)

We are not presenting fixed choices in the LCL but offering many more possibilities to
experiment with and reflect upon. Starting on the left, the learning environment tumbler
identifies various components found in the physical external environment that may be used as
part of the learning process. Adjacent is the tumbler that examines the core components of
learning activities. The third tumbler represents the senses as the mediator that connects the
external environment with the internal cognitive environment. Our senses alert us to the
presence of the stimuli that begin the process of perceiving and interpreting.
The emotions tumbler presents some of the vast range of emotional responses we can make
and is a very powerful aspect of the learning equation. In designing a learning programme we
may wish to instil certain emotions to enhance the learning situation as well as manage and
recognise the emotional agenda of the broader student experience.
The fifth tumbler explores various forms of intelligence whose development may be the
objective of the learning process.
The final tumbler represents various theories of learning. There is still so much that we do not
know about learning, so it is important to be aware of the various learning theories and also
our own underlying theories of how learning may best be facilitated. By making these explicit
we may better understand our own thinking and the behaviour and motives of learners.

The tumblers explained

Tumbler 1: the learning environment

The external learning environment provides opportunities to encourage learning. For
example, outdoor environments increasingly provide very real opportunities for the individual
to learn in a deep way about themselves and their interactions with others. And, it isn’t only
the external environment that can provide valuable opportunities to learn. The design and use
of the indoor student learning environment is beginning to metamorphose. Whereas in the
past it was strongly associated with the lecture theatre and textbooks, nowadays it includes:
distance education sites; common areas such as halls; social group work space with sofas;
outdoor green spaces; amphitheatres; video clips; and virtual discussion groups. An illustration
of the transition in thinking is the definition of the learning environment by Indiana University,
and their support for active learning:

A physical, intellectual, psychological environment which facilitates learning through

connectivity and community.
(www-lib.iupui.edu/itt/planlearn/part1.html,
accessed 27 November, 2004)

Well-established research shows that students learn best when they are actively engaged
rather than being passive observers…there are three avenues an institution can
promote to foster active student learning. First, certain teaching methodologies, such as
6 COLIN BEARD AND JOHN P.WILSON

problem-based learning, promote active student involvement. Second, the classroom

furnishings can either enhance or hinder active student learning. Thus, tables and
moveable chairs enhance while fixed-row seating hinders active learning. Finally
technologies which require student initiative, such as interactive video-discs, promote
active learning.
(www-lib.iupui.edu/itt/planlearn/execsumm.html,
accessed 27 November, 2004)

Of course, ‘furnishings’ represent a small fraction of the many physical elements that can be
managed in the learners’ environment. Informal learning environments are increasingly being
recognised and used for more formal learning. While students traditionally spent many
hundreds of hours learning in lecture theatres and seminar rooms, learning space is
increasingly spilling over into, and being used alongside: informal learning spaces; drama
studios; stage; laboratory; virtual learning environments; lecture theatres; seminar rooms; café
learning spaces; group spaces; stand-up corridor computer malls; and even innovation rooms
and relaxation lecture theatres, including the use of hammocks in lecture theatres in Finland,
specifically designed to enhance the creation of certain mental states, such as relaxed alertness
(see also Beard and Wilson, 2002). There is growing evidence elsewhere too that new learning
spaces are evolving:

[Arizona State University has a] special Kaleidoscope room [which] holds 120 students;
however, the faculty is never more than five rows away from any student. The
instructor relates to a few groups of students rather than a mass of 120 students…the
atmosphere is one of work, action, involvement…. Stanford University has designed
highly flexible technology-rich class-lab learning environments using bean bags for
much the same purpose as tables…. We recommend that the entire planning process for
design and renovation of classrooms includes faculty and staff with expertise in learning
methodologies.
(www-lib.iupui.edu/itt/planlearn/part1.html,
accessed 27 November, 2004)

Unfortunately, the lack of knowledge about the relationship between buildings and learning,
and the lack of dialogue between academics and facilities managers is still constraining
developments (Beard and Matzdorf, 2004) and so academics are often left to merely adapt to
given space. Furthermore, the replacement of old learning spaces with new facilities is
expensive and is a long-term investment.
Smith (1998) argues that: ‘We are not designed to sit slumped behind a piece of wood for
an hour and ten minutes at a time, nor are we designed to sit for three hours in front of a
television screen or a computer terminal’ Similarly, Jensen (1995) refers to the work of Dunn
and Dunn (1978) who found that ‘at least 20% of learners are significantly affected, positively
or negatively, by seating options or lack of them’. So perhaps we do need to explore more
innovative use of existing space until such time that the design of learning space sits more at
ease alongside pedagogical requirements. Floor space and wall space can be used for creative,
more active engagement of learners (see case study 3 below).
 INGREDIENTS FOR EFFECTIVE LEARNING 7

Technological tools are also influencing learning space, with items such as interactive
whiteboards, which can enable the instant capturing of fresh, ‘live’ and indigenous intellectual
property. As pedagogy interacts with the operational facilities and media technology, the
learning environment will undergo rapid change. This will change the future layout of walls
and learning space and enable active movement of people and information. This is important,
for we believe that good learning environments will increasingly provide areas that maximise
the flexibility and mobility of information, people and space, enabling the physical viewing of
information and concepts from different perspectives.

Tumbler 2: the learning activities

This second tumbler explores principles of designing learning activities. Creating a real sense of
engagement in an active learning journey, to bridge the gap between where a student starts and
the desired learning outcomes, over periods of time such as a semester or a year or the
duration of a degree, can be a transformative experience for students. Journeying, with its
sense of setting off, building, constructing, changing and arriving, includes all the important
conceptual ingredients to generate powerful experiential learning.
The American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) states that an important principle
for good practice in undergraduate education should be the development of an environment in
which ‘active learning’ is encouraged (Snyder, 2003:159). Snyder also refers to a number of
studies comparing active learning with those using passive learning, showing that active
learning methods generally result in greater retention of material at the end of a class, superior
problem solving skills, more positive attitudes and higher motivation for future learning.
By ‘active’ learning methods we mean intellectually, physically and emotionally more active
as well as more active in the design and selection of learning activities. Active learning can
offer a greater depth of information-processing, greater comprehension and better retention,
in contrast with the passive learning techniques that characterise the typical classroom, in
which lecturer wisdom is offered for students to dutifully record notes. Active learning
involves students doing something and taking a participatory role in thinking and learning. The
milieu of activities can include elements such as: kinaesthetic activity; mental challenges;
experiencing a learning journey; overcoming obstacles; following or changing rules; and
altering reality (see Beard and Wilson (2002) for a full explanation of altering reality).
Although much more research is needed into learning activities used in Higher Education, a
basic typology of activity might for example include:

1 Creating a sense of a learning journey for students, with a clear vision of the bigger picture,
with a clear destination, and route maps to guide the way.
2 Creating and sequencing an array of intellectually, physically and emotionally stimulating
‘waves’ of activities.
3 Adjusting or suspending elements of simulation and reality to create learning steps.
4 Creating activities to stimulate and regularly alter moods…acknowledge the student
experience, create relaxed alertness, understand peak or flow learning.
5 Using the notion of constructing or deconstructing activities, such as physical objects, or non-
physical items, e.g. the gradual construction of a model, a concept, historical maps, key
ingredients, typologies, a phrase or poem.
8 COLIN BEARD AND JOHN P.WILSON

6 Creating and managing the learning community through a mixture of collaborative,

competitive or co-operative strategies.
7 Creating and acknowledging feelings, values, targets, ground-rules, restrictions, obstacles
and allowing students to address identity, change, success and failure.
8 Considering multi-sensory teaching—see the next cog—experiment with building in a
holistic ‘sense’ of the material covered…onsider the sensory enhancement of material,
e.g. touch, smell, colour…
9 Providing elements of real or perceived challenge or risk…and allow students to address
risk and the stretching of personal boundaries.
10 Introducing complex design, sorting and/or organisational skills.
11 Developing generic functional student skills alongside specific course content work—such
as literature searching, writing introductions, conclusions, researching skills, etc.
12 Designing quiet time for reflection—using the notion of physical and mental ‘space’.
13 Allowing the story of the learning experience (including emotions) to be told by the
learners (student progress files, learning logs, reflective exercises, group reflective
dialogue).

Tumbler 3: the senses

The third tumbler considers the role of the senses. Neuro-linguistic programming (O’Connor
and Seymour, 1995) tells us that good educators use communication that conveys visual,
auditory and touch messages to engage a broader range of learners in a more effective way.
Learners may have preferred ways of receiving and handling sensory data in order to construct
their own ‘map’ of reality whereas lecturers may rely exclusively on their own preferred
representational systems when communicating. Auditory dominant students might like audio
tapes, talks, rhythms and sounds while kinaesthetically dominant students like physical activity,
which might include physical challenge or active drama and role-play. With large groups of
students, sample products can be passed around the lecture theatre to enable students to feel,
see, move, explore and try out. Environmental awareness in product-design students is
heightened when I wind up a clockwork radio and allow music to play quietly in the
background at the same time as discussing principles of sustainable product design and
distributing items, e.g. fleeces made of plastic; pencils made from waste vending machine
cups; balls that generate light; kinetic watches; plastic bricks; solar panels—they all make the
experience more alive and memorable.
Enhancing and awakening the senses and linking them to the learning activities can create
more powerful learning. Sensory stimulation alters moods and emotions and can increase
learning. The more senses we stimulate in an activity the more memorable the learning
experience will become because it increases and reinforces the neural connections in our
brains. The greater the involvement of the participants in the learning activity the deeper will
be their learning and therefore the greater the effect on future thought and behaviour. This is
highlighted, for example, in the work of Thayer (1996) on the role of everyday moods.
 INGREDIENTS FOR EFFECTIVE LEARNING 9

Tumbler 4: the emotions

Our education institutions are predominantly concerned with rational and scientific
approaches to intellectual enquiry, whereas ‘emotions and feelings are…most neglected in our
society: there is almost a taboo about them intruding into our education institutions, particularly

CASE STUDY 1:
A JOURNEY THROUGH DEGREES OF REALITY TO DEVELOP
PRACTICAL NEGOTIATING SKILLS
The course: negotiating skills for public rights of way officers—public
access to the UK countryside
Negotiating is a ‘broad skill’, involving the building of the many composite narrow
skills such as listening, questioning, diplomacy and so on. On this course we identified the
many narrow sub-skills such as influencing, persuasion, listening, tactics, entry,
developing rapport, closing and so on. The sessions use ‘narrow skills’ practice. The latter
part of the course then used broad skills practice: but with varying levels of reality or
simulation as follows:
From: low content reality
Exercise A: redecorating the office
This is a paper exercise from a standard package on negotiating. It concerns a contract
price to decorate an office suite. People are asked to identify opening gambits and write
their answers on paper.
Exercise B: driving a bargain
This is a written exercise about cars—people are told that this is a warm-up for a real car
exercise when people can pit their wits against real negotiators.
Exercise C: buying a new car
Real cars and log books are used. Cars can be inspected and faults found, both inside and
outside, as they are located in the car park. The participants negotiate with trained
negotiators who are located in an office where the deals will take place. Final agreements
are written in sealed envelopes so that the winners can be decided later.
To: high content reality
Exercise D: negotiating access to UK land on behalf of the public
Real negotiators are again present. Real job information is provided, e.g. complex facts
and figures on sheep headage payments, ranger support offered, etc. For participants, the
incentive is to try to do a good job in front of their peers; put all the skills and knowledge
acquired on the course into practice; and meet their own pre-set prices and subsidy
targets decided in their negotiating plans. They argue their case with real negotiators and
are debriefed afterwards. Videos are replayed with self and peer assessment.
(adapted from Beard and McPherson, 1999)

CASE STUDY 2:
USING DIFFERENT SENSES
The course: teaching taxonomy and classif ication to botany students
10 COLIN BEARD AND JOHN P.WILSON

Popular objects, and popular media can act as physical and visual metaphors for learning.
Here, the teaching of the classification of animals uses a bag of assorted nuts, bolts and
screws for students to create a classification system or an identification key…
Students are divided into teams and receive a bag of various nails, staples, screws, nuts
and bolts, etc. They are told they are renowned taxonomists, and that they have to
develop a classification scheme that meets the established rules of the Linnaean system.
They also have to be prepared to defend their classification scheme orally. The students
have to make a phylogenetic chart of their classification scheme using the poster paper,
tape and objects, including all of the categories from phylum to species.
They are asked to consider a range of probing questions, such as the rationale that was
used for each category and the criteria they used to differentiate among categories? Did
they rely more on ‘form’ or ‘function’? Or derived and ancestral traits? They also have to
consider the difficulties and issues associated with the difficulties and differences between
classifying inanimate objects and living organisms.
This activity is taken from the web site: www.jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/lab/
taxonomylab.html, accessed 1 May, 2004.

at higher levels’ (Boud et al., 1993:14). Fineman (1997:13) makes a similar observation:
‘Learning is inextricably emotional and of emotions. The traditional cognitive approach to
management learning has obscured the presence and role of emotion.’ Similarly Light and Cox
explain that:

Students regard knowledge and learning as something external and objective, right or
wrong. This sort of epistemological perspective is extremely difficult to give up if it is
held with any conviction, a conviction that quite often goes back to early childhood and
may be strongly invested in emotion. Teachers and the learning environment may be
vested with many of the qualities of parental or childhood authority figures. The
difficult transitions from the security of dualism into the security of relativism is not simply
a matter of absorbing new ideas or information, but is very much a restructuring at
an emotional level as well as a cognitive level, and may be accompanied by
extreme anxiety.
(Light and Cox, 2001:57, emphasis added)

During the past few years this failure to consider emotional awareness has decreased as a result
of writings on emotion and emotional intelligence. Goleman (1995) championed the subject
and drew on the work of Salovey and Mayer (1990) who classified emotional intelligence into
five main domains: knowing one’s emotions, managing emotions, motivating oneself,
recognising emotions in others, and handling relationships.
Our view is that the emotional tumbler represents the crucial ‘gatekeeper’ to deep
learning. Managing the emotional climate, accessing emotion, mapping or encouraging change
in the basic emotional make-up of students is a difficult yet necessary skill for lecturers.
Mortiboys (2002) looks at the potential for using emotional intelligence to make HE lecturing
more satisfying and effective. He scrutinises the case for the development of emotionally
intelligent lecturers and refers to research into areas such as classroom climate and lecturer
qualities. Students responded to questions about their favourite session using words such as
‘enthusiastic’, ‘fascination’, ‘being valued’, ‘confident’, ‘curious’ and ‘excited’.
 INGREDIENTS FOR EFFECTIVE LEARNING 11

It can be inferred that a number of these responses, both positive and negative, are
reactions to the lecturer. In the same way that a lecturer influences, but is not wholly
responsible for, the performance of their students, so it is with the feelings aroused by
students. Whether you refer to your role as a facilitator, lecturer, tutor or educator,
there are times when you interact with individual students and/or groups of students
and the way you are affects the way they feel, which in turn influences their
predisposition to learning.
(Mortiboys, 2002:10)

Being able to acknowledge and sense underpinning emotions and, where appropriate, steer
the emotional bases of student behaviour, is a key skill requiring an understanding of factors
affecting student motivation, such as identity, sociality, meaning and orientation. This needs
emotional maturity, responsibility and personal understanding by tutors. Students are
increasingly being encouraged to undertake personal and professional development portfolios
and progress files which, through reflective exercises, help them to examine their emotional
states in the learning journey.
Learning is enhanced when people discover things for themselves through their own
emotional engagement. This requires a commitment to discovery, experimentation and
reviewing of personal emotional goals and visions. Emotional intelligence underpins learning
as a basic building block. In order for any experience to be interpreted in a constructive
manner it is essential that learners possess abilities such as:

• confidence—in their abilities;

• self-esteem—in order to recognise the validity of their own views and those of others;
• support—from others with whom they work and bounce off ideas; from lecturers when
they get grades, marks or feedback;
• trust—they must have confidence in the validity of the views of others and be able to
incorporate them with their own where necessary.

By combining the ‘adventure waves’ of Mortlock (1984) with the ‘flow learning’ from
Cornell (1989) and the work of Dainty and Lucas (1992) it is possible to create a six step
emotional wave. For example, lecturers might map and plan the emotional journey of waves that
the student experiences throughout a semester. For example, is it realistic to try to convey
complex information to freshers on their first morning when they may be disorientated?
Surely, we should consider and tap into their emotions to enhance the learning process.
Preparation might be done through the use of twelve cards identifying the types of emotions
during each week of the semester, which is a different approach to the planning process. In
programme design we might consider the six steps thus:

1 Create conditions for pre-contemplation—reading, thinking, imagining the bigger

picture and the journey.
2 Awaken participant enthusiasm—intellectual ice breakers and energisers.
3 Start to focus attention and concentration—medium-sized activities, narrow key skills.
4 Direct and challenge the personal experience—larger, broader skills.
12 COLIN BEARD AND JOHN P.WILSON

5 Share participant enthusiasm—using quality reflective/reviewing activities.

6 Encourage quiet personal reflection.

Emotions and the concept of emotional intelligence could have been incorporated in the next
tumbler, i.e. forms of intelligence. However, we believe that emotion is a critical component of
learning and should be considered independently of the other forms of intelligence thus meriting
a separate tumbler.

CASE STUDY 3:
USING FLOW LEARNING
Course: developing critical reading in postgraduate students
We used the mood-setting frame of lounging about reading the Sunday newspapers—but
instead of newspapers we used academic journal articles from a range of well-known
sources. The participants soon had their shoes off, sitting or lying on comfortable sofas,
sometimes with cats sleeping next to them, and with soft rainforest music playing. Coffee
percolators bubble away, Earl Grey tea is on offer and lemon scents the air. The articles
are from People Management, and Management Learning, Management Education and
Development, People and Organisations, Training and Development, Industrial and Commercial
Training, Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, and many others. Hardly
Sunday morning reading!
Subtly included in the reading material were articles that encouraged students to be
aware of themselves; to be critical of these articles. We were encouraging students to
become more relaxed about the ‘literature’ associated with their subject, to encourage
them to share, become fascinated, get copies of lots of material because they wanted to
take it home, and to learn to communicate and explore their findings with each other.
Following the reading the tutor acted as a scribe and facilitator. The subsequent
evaluation of the session showed that students wanted more time in future to repeat these
explorations of the literature and to play with concepts and ideas in this relaxed way. One
student said: ‘During these sessions, differing views concerning the same articles were
discussed and new insights developed based on individual experience outside the articles.
This led to a spin of ideas that spurred more new ideas, and re-shaped some of my initial
thoughts of the article.’
(adapted from Beard and McPherson, 1999)

Tumbler 5: forms of intelligence

The fifth tumbler addresses the nature of intelligence. In addition to emotional intelligence
there are also other forms of intelligence that need to be considered and addressed in learning
design. Before Gardner’s (1983) book, Frames of Mind, much emphasis was placed on IQ.
Gardner drew attention to the notion, and importance, of other forms of intelligence and
proposed seven types: linguistic; logical/mathematical/scientific; visual/spatial; musical;
bodily/physical/kinaesthetic; interpersonal; and intrapersonal. Stimulating these many forms
of intelligence is key to inclusive pedagogy. Verbal/linguistic learning activities might include:
 INGREDIENTS FOR EFFECTIVE LEARNING 13

reading books, journal logs, debate, storytelling, verbal humour, poetry, creative writing.
Bodily/kinaesthetic learning activities might include: role play, moving laminated cards, things
to touch/feel, using physical metaphors, encouraging movement, stick-it labels that can be
rearranged. Mathematical logical activities might use mind maps, systems processing, force
field analysis, assigning numbers to things. Visual/spatial learning activities might use wall
charts, spatial anchors, gestures by lecturers, guided visualisation or imagery, visual aids,
sketches and diagrammatic representations. More examples can be found in Beard and
Wilson (2002).

Tumbler 6: ways of learning

The sixth and final tumbler in the LCL focuses upon the various types of learning
theory which, on the one hand, may be widely recognised and applied, e.g. cognitive learning
theory (Bruner, 1990); or, on the other hand, may be personal ones that remind us that we
think and learn most effectively in the mornings after a cup of tea! The main message is that
in order to enhance learning there should be some explicit recognition and understanding

CASE STUDY 4:
USING SPACE TO WALK THE TALK
Course: mapping history
Students research the history first in groups. The following week they map the
environmental history on the floor using laminated coloured cards that represent different
contents…blue for laws such as the National Parks Act, yellow for NGOs, grey for
QUANGOS such as the Countryside Agency or English Nature, orange for key events in
history such as the Wars or the Mass Trespass (1932). In addition, there are other cards
with dates on and blank cards to fill in. All the essential kit is presented in a plastic video
case. The picture-map layout on the floor or table demonstrates their knowledge of the
subject and when finished students walk the talk presenting the historical picture as they
proceed. This kinaesthetically reinforces the learning and tests understanding in a visual -
oral way.
The same can be done with a literature review and key texts. The texts are spread out
in a large space and debated and discussed as people move around them—the spatial
re-organisation and debate is key. Explore similarities and differences. Use newspaper
stories first to explore these skills with less experienced people.

of the advantages and limitations of our espoused and tacit theories (Polanyi, 1967) on
knowledge and learning. This awareness and examination of our approaches to learning,
whether as a learner or enabler of learning in others, should lead to more considered and
appropriate learning opportunities rather than instinctive or random methods to the selection
of learning approaches.
The theories of learning are too numerous to mention here although a number of categories
have been detailed by Beard and Wilson (2002:194–5). The LCL is sufficiently
accommodating to incorporate, to some degree, these categories and theories of learning.
14 COLIN BEARD AND JOHN P.WILSON

While no model can fully represent the learning process, the LCL does attempt to provide a
meta-perspective and act as an aide-memoire.

Summary of the advantages of the LCL

• It provides a broad perspective of the learning process and its various elements and
theories.
• It is sufficiently flexible to incorporate the main behavioural, cognitive and humanist
schools of learning without placing them in opposition to each other.
• It provides a systematic approach to the support of learning.
• The checklist of elements for each tumbler provides an aide-memoire for the educator,
trainer and developer.
• The metaphor of the combination lock should not limit the use of only one ingredient from
each tumbler. In practice learning events may incorporate several elements from a
tumbler.

But also remember:

• The metal rod running through the core of the LCL represents the needs of the learner.
These should be central to any consideration of the various options available in each of the
tumblers.
• It should not be used as a one-armed-bandit approach to selecting the ingredients for
experiential learning activities. The learning needs and objectives should be carefully
considered before addressing each tumbler in turn and selecting those combinations that
are likely to be effective.
• The LCL is not an exclusive list of the tumblers and elements that might be considered in
the design of the learning event. It allows trainers, educators and developers to add to the
lock and build their own personalised set of learning permutations that respond to learning
needs, thus adding to the millions of combinations. We encourage you, the reader, to
customise the model for your own particular requirements.
• The LCL should not be applied in a mechanical fashion without an understanding of the
tumblers and the principles of learning. Rather, it should be considered a form of reference
source to guide the design and delivery of programmes.

Conclusion
The LCL identifies the main components of the learning process. Detailing these elements in
the six tumblers enables systematic consideration of the potential ingredients and provides the
opportunity to select from an almost infinite number of learning permutations.
The value of the LCL lies in the extent to which it is considered, applied and further
developed. Please feel free to use and adapt this model for your own purposes. As Kurt Lewin
stated: ‘There is nothing so practical as a good theory.’
 INGREDIENTS FOR EFFECTIVE LEARNING 15

References

Beard, C. and McPherson, M. (1999) ‘Design of Group-Based Training Methods’, in Wilson, J.P.
(ed.), Human Resource Development, Kogan Page, London.
Beard, C. and Wilson, J.P. (2002) The Power of Experiential Learning: A Handbook for Trainers and
Educators, Kogan Page, London.
Beard, C. and Matzdorf, F. (2004) Space to Learn? Unwrapping Conversations about Physical Learning
Environments, Sheffield Hallam University.
Boud, D., Cohen, R. and Walker, D. (1993) Using Experience For Learning, Open University Press,
Buckingham.
Brant, L. (1998) ‘“Not Maslow again!” A study of the theories and models that trainers choose as
content on training courses’, MEd dissertation, University of Sheffield.
Bruner, J.S. (1990) Acts of Meaning, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Cornell, J. (1989) Sharing the Joy of Nature, Dawn Publications, Nevada City, CA.
Dainty, P. and Lucas, D. (1992) ‘Clarifying the confusion: A practical framework for evaluating
outdoor development programmes for managers’, Management Education and Development, Vol.
23 No. 2, pp. 106–22.
Dunn, R. and Dunn, K. (1978) Teaching Students Through their Individual Learning Styles: A Practical
Approach, Reston Publishing Co., Reston, VA.
Fineman, S. ‘Emotion and management learning’, Management Learning, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 13–25.
Gardner, H. (1983) Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Basic Books Inc., New York.
Goleman, D. (1995) Emotional Intelligence: Why it can Matter More than IQ, Bantam, New York.
Jensen, E. (1995) Brain Based Learning—the New Science of Teaching and Training, The Brains Store
Publishing, San Diego, CA.
Light, G. and Cox, R. (2001) Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: The Reflective Professional,
Sage, London.
Mortiboys, A. (2002) The Emotionally Intelligent Lecturer, Staff and Educational Development
Association, SEDA Special 12, Birmingham.
Mortlock, C. (1984) The Adventure Alternative, Cicerone Press, Cumbria.
O’Connor, Joseph and Seymour, John (1995) Introducing Neuro-linguistic Programming: Psychological
Skills for Understanding and Influencing People, Thorsons, London.
Polanyi, M. (1967) The Tacit Dimension, Doubleday, New York.
Salovey, Peter and Mayer, John D. (1990) ‘Emotional Intelligence’, Imagination, Cognition and
Personality, No. 9, pp. 185–211.
Smith, A. (1998) Accelerated Learning in Practice, Network Educational Press Ltd, Stafford.
Snyder, K. (2003) ‘Ropes, poles, and space—active learning in business education’, Active Learning
in Higher Education, Vol. 4 No. 2 (July), pp. 159–67.
Thayer, R. (1996) The Origin of Everyday Moods, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
16 COLIN BEARD AND JOHN P.WILSON
 2
Learning through work-based learning
David Major

Introduction
In this chapter, I argue that, through work-based learning (WBL), learners appear to have a
much better understanding of the learning process than is gained through conventional
teaching methods. I will concentrate on the impact of the WBL experience, which is offered by
an increasing number of HE Colleges and Universities, defining WBL as fully accredited
negotiated units or programmes of learning through work, either for students in full-time
higher education or for full-time employees who are also part-time higher education students.
The evidence that underpins my argument comes from two main sources: empirical
research findings from studies carried out at University College Chester, and the findings of a
longitudinal study into student learning undertaken by Alverno College, Milwaukee. I shall
discuss how learning occurs through WBL, what is distinctive about it, and what the
conditions are under which learning through work comes about. Close attention will be given
to the notions of critical reflection and critical self-awareness as key features of learning
through work.
My main contention is that WBL requires learners to assume a greater degree of
responsibility for their own learning than do conventional learning methods. This greater
responsibility, together with critical reflection as a key ability in WBL, leads to learners
developing a greater understanding about how learning occurs. This ability to understand more
about the learning process while, at the same time, developing knowledge and understanding,
is one that is transferable to other, more conventional, learning contexts, if learners are made
more responsible for their own learning and if they learn how to critically self-reflect.
The key questions to be asked in this chapter concern how people learn through work and
what, if anything, is distinctive about WBL, and the conditions under which WBL occurs.
Anything of real merit that can be said in these contexts must, of course, be grounded in
empirical evidence and relatively little is available at the present time. Exceptions are Boud and
Solomon (2001) who include some WBL case studies, and Garrick’s (1998) enquiry into
informal learning in the workplace which is based on an empirical investigation. More
recently, articles such as Wrennal and Forbes (2002), and Dreuth and Dreuth-Fewell (2002)
have appeared. However, Tennant’s words still ring true: ‘research in understanding learning
in the workplace is still in its infancy’ (Boud and Garrick, 1999:177).
18 LEARNING THROUGH WORK-BASED LEARNING

Empirical research findings from Alverno College (US)

An important longitudinal study undertaken by staff of Alverno College, Milwaukee, US on
‘learning that lasts’ includes evidence gathered from their off-campus experiential learning
(OCEL) programme of the importance of OCEL for the reinforcement of learning
(Mentkowski et al., 2000). OCEL is very similar in concept to the definition used in this
chapter for WBL for UK full-time undergraduates. Alverno is famous for its abilities-based
curriculum—a distinctive approach to curriculum design whereby students, irrespective of their
academic discipline, and alongside that discipline, develop competence in eight abilities:
communication, analysis, problem solving, valuing in decision making, social interaction,
developing a global perspective, effective citizenship, and aesthetic engagement. The College
has undertaken research over a 25-year period into the lasting nature of an abilities-based
education and their study shows how this education is retained and reinforced through work. A
key Alverno educational assumption is that ‘education goes beyond knowing to being able to
do what one knows’ (Mentkowski et al., 2000:57) and, therefore, all Alverno students have to
complete an OCEL requirement as an integral part of their degree studies. The understanding
that learning is a holistic process and one best achieved through collaboration is also key to the
Alverno philosophy.
In the Alverno view, learning is best understood as integrative and experiential,
characterised by self-awareness, as being active and interactive, developmental and transferable
with learning processes built around these assumptions (ibid.: 61). This would appear to go
some way towards explaining the ‘how’ of WBL from the Alverno perspective, in that it is
part of a broader educational process that combines College-based study with off-campus
experiential learning. However, the distinctive Alverno philosophy is clear that experiential
learning is as relevant to on-campus as to off-campus learning in that it is ‘a concept and
practice that must permeate a college curriculum in a systematic and developmental manner’
(ibid.: 8). Again to quote Mentkowski et al.: ‘learning involves the whole student: knowing
and doing work together in a dialectic whereby each is constantly redefining the other’
(ibid.: 8).
The ‘how’ also points to the significance of collaboration in learning that opens up the
opportunity for a ‘diversity of voices’ (ibid.: 46) and leads to individuals becoming participant
researchers through the development of a culture of inquiry. The Alverno researchers
discovered that evidence pointed to students not truly understanding the curriculum abilities
until in the workplace (ibid.: 103). They also found that the abilities continued to develop
after graduation, provided that the graduates were persistent in referring back to the
conceptual models that they had learned in College (ibid.: 103).
While evidence from the Alverno empirical research is not conclusive so far as WBL is
concerned, there are some important pointers to ‘how’ people learn, and that ‘how’ includes
the experience of taking knowledge into the workplace and integrating it with the further
experience of ‘doing’ for new learning and new knowledge to occur. This suggests that a
distinctive feature of WBL is the integration of knowledge and action as part of the learning
process, with new or enhanced knowledge emerging as the product of learning. This, in turn,
suggests that, among the conditions under which learning through work occurs, the learner
must have access to relevant knowledge to integrate into the learning through work process. A
further condition appears to be that the learner must have developed a spirit of inquiry such
that the intention to learn from experience is foregrounded.
 DAVID MAJOR 19

Empirical research findings from University College Chester

(UK)
The Alverno research identifies, among others, the following key features of the learning
process:

• knowledge is retained and reinforced through practical application;

• learning is a holistic process, crucially involving the self-awareness of the learner;
• learning is best achieved through collaboration with others.

These findings are corroborated by recent research carried out by the Centre for Work
Related Studies at University College Chester into the student experience of WBL. This
involved a structured questionnaire survey of full-time undergraduate students on
non-vocational degree programmes on completion of a six-week placement, and
semi-structured interviews involving 31 students, the majority of whom were in full-time
employment, undertaking WBL at either undergraduate or postgraduate levels.

The importance for learning of the theory/practice interplay

The idea that knowledge is retained and reinforced through practical application was
confirmed by some of the Chester learners when they identified the theory/practice interface
as an important place for learning. A number of respondents indicated that theory really only
made sense to them when informing a practical purpose. A female student on a six-week
placement commented:

I find theories really difficult to remember if I don’t see their practical application. On
the placement we mixed it in at the same time, the theory behind what we were doing,
and they both fitted together; they helped each other. They went hand in hand. You
know, ‘We are doing this because…and you need to do this because…’

Thus, effective learning may be best facilitated by a curriculum that presents learners with the
opportunity to become involved in the relationship between theory and practice, and not
where the two are regarded as being in some way separate from one another. A female
postgraduate in full-time employment noted:

I mean sometimes it is just by looking at the whole situation at work, seeing what’s
going on and then in your mind’s eye you’ve got all this theory and you can see people
behaving exactly as you have read about someone’s theory or personality or different
traits and you can see it exactly coming through in the workplace or outside the
workplace. So, it’s all a mixture really. It goes across the board. It’s more of an
unconventional learning in that sense, it’s not learning as in a school or college
environment, it’s more a learning in society such that you feed in one with another and
it doesn’t necessarily go from the book to the workplace, it could go from the
workplace back to the book.
20 LEARNING THROUGH WORK-BASED LEARNING

Thus, the model of WBL employed at University College Chester introduces students to
theoretical concepts (for example, concepts associated with learning styles, team roles, project
management, self management and development, and so on) which they are then asked to
reflect on in the light of the practical experience of the workplace. In addition, theories and
concepts drawn from academic subject knowledge (full-time undergraduates) and professional
knowledge (part-time undergraduates and postgraduates in employment) are similarly
reflected on in the context of their application in the workplace. Such engagement of theory
and practice almost inevitably results in new knowledge gains for the student, leading to the
development and enhancement of their knowledge in their academic or professional areas.
The strength of WBL, and a distinctive feature of it, may then be in its ability to
accommodate both theory and practice and, therefore, it may be an effective vehicle for a
higher education curriculum that recognises the importance for learning of the theory/practice
interplay. The Alverno research, as indicated above, shows that there is something about the
integration of knowledge and action that leads to effective learning. Barnett (Boud and
Garrick, 1999), from a theoretical perspective, would also appear to support the idea that
learning is a complex process and is not complete unless knowing and doing are combined
and, in turn, combined with reflective processes.

Learning as an holistic process, engaging both the cognitive

and affective domains
More than half of those interviewed as part of the Chester study claimed either that WBL had
brought about growth in self-knowledge, or that it had changed their view of themselves, or
that it had brought about self-examination. A full-time undergraduate, on completion of her
six-week placement, commented: ‘One thing I realised during WBL was that you are sort of
forced to look at yourself and I’ve never really done anything like that before.’
Much of this increase in self-awareness is undoubtedly connected with the process of critical
reflection, which is a key higher-order critical skill associated with WBL and one which has the
power to assist individuals with the process of meaning-making. Others spoke of various ways
in which WBL had influenced their lives or impacted on them as human beings. For example, a
female student in full-time employment, for whom HE was a new experience, said:

I’ve grown as a person which I wouldn’t have done unless I’d done this course because
I’ve been involved in so many multi-disciplinary groups working together with
a common aim really so it certainly has changed me…. Like it’s been a huge struggle I
can’t deny that but, from a personal point of view, it’s been great. In the year I’ve learnt
so much and, as I said before, I believe in myself and I’m much more confident now.

If this is the case, then it suggests that WBL is a powerful way of learning that engages the affective
domain as well as the cognitive and has the potential to bring about more holistic ways of being
and knowing than, arguably, is the case through more conventional forms of higher education
study. The place of emotions in the learning process is commented on by Garrick who claims
that, according to adult learning theory, ‘learning can be most effective if one’s emotions are
engaged in the learning process’ (Boud and Garrick, 1999:220). He points to the role of
emotion in learning found in the humanistic tradition and among those interested in emotional
 DAVID MAJOR 21

intelligence. If WBL does, indeed, impact on the affective domain, as claimed by the
respondents, then this provides reinforcement to the idea that it is a much more holistic
approach to learning and, therefore, one could argue, better equips people to live and work in
the real world.
A note of caution, however, needs to be struck in that some, at least, of the subjects could
be considered to be highly impressionable. Full-time undergraduate students, new to a form of
experiential learning conducted in the workplace, frequently undergo a steep learning curve
during the course of the six weeks of the placement which makes quite an impression on them.
Usually, learning in this way is an entirely new experience for them and the experience of
change (from the lecture room to the workplace) can be stimulating, exciting and invigorating.
My past experience of talking with students during and shortly after their placements is that,
typically, they:

• are full of enthusiasm for what they have been doing;

• have had, in many cases, an entirely new experience (even those students who have worked
throughout their degree studies express their excitement at being able to experience work
in a profession of their choosing, as do mature students with a record of employment);
• have often had the opportunity to apply their learning to a task for an employer.

All of this can have quite an impact and create the impression of having had a unique
experience.
Another group of students, on whom WBL appeared to make a considerable impression,
consisted of a number of people in full-time employment who had not expected to ever engage
in HE level study (from the university perspective, this is a reminder of the potential of WBL
as an agent of widening participation). For them, an unanticipated opportunity had opened up.
Their discovery, that not only were they able to cope with this level of study but that some of
their professional competences were actually recognised as equating with higher education
level learning, proved to be highly motivational. Therefore, it is, perhaps, not surprising that a
typical response was that WBL had impacted on them hugely and in a very positive way in that
they now valued themselves more highly and recognised their capabilities and their
contribution in the workplace.
For both of these groups, what I shall refer to as the ‘novel factor’ of WBL should not be
underestimated or ignored. However, the evidence of the interviews also suggests that even
some of those not falling into either of the above categories recognised something of the
impact of WBL on them in terms of changed self-understanding and improved motivation. It
may, therefore, be the case that, while the novel factor may play a part in the impact on the
individual of the experience of WBL, it does not explain it in its entirety and there are other
factors involved. It is my contention that these other factors are concerned with the distinctive
features of WBL that cause the learner to engage in a wide variety of ways of learning within
the context of a community of practice.

The importance of collaboration for effective learning

As a result of changes to the work structures and patterns of many businesses and
organisations, with a tendency towards flatter hierarchies, team approaches, group tasks and
22 LEARNING THROUGH WORK-BASED LEARNING

the emergent notion of the learning organisation, work almost inevitably involves people in
various forms of collaboration and engages them in interpersonal relationships in a variety of
ways. The evidence from the Chester research seems to suggest that most students recognise
this and the opportunities it presents for learning in community and not in isolation. Thus,
they acknowledge that learning through work involves an awareness of interdependency,
mutuality and collaboration, giving WBL a strong relational dimension. This raises issues for
higher education, not least in terms of the way in which assessment of learning is undertaken.
It also contrasts quite starkly with the conventional culture of learning in higher education with
its emphasis on individualism and personal achievement.
The significance of the evidence, however, should not be over-stated, nor should the
differences between WBL and conventional higher education be polarised. There is no reason,
for example, why much learning on the university campus cannot be undertaken using more
collaborative methods (many university departments now like to refer to themselves as
learning communities) and sometimes learning in the workplace may be best achieved through
lone activity, such as reading a book or writing an article. However, it remains the case that a
distinctive feature of WBL is that, typically, it occurs within a community of practice, which
itself facilitates much of the learning that occurs and, therefore, places emphasis on the notion
of relational learning. Any form of collaborative learning implies that there are two principal
forms of learning occurring simultaneously: that is, (1) learning about the topic or subject
under consideration, and (2) learning about the others who are engaged in learning with you
which, in turn, almost inevitably leads to more self-learning.

Critical reflection as a key capability in WBL

Reference has already been made to the key role of critical reflection in WBL and so it seems
appropriate to comment on the evidence of the Chester qualitative research in this regard. The
evidence suggests that, through critical reflection, change has been brought about for
individuals in respect of their views and attitudes towards themselves, their work and their
worlds. A female student in full-time employment, and studying at postgraduate level
comments:

I think I can see clearer. I think I saw things before but I tend to see the whole picture
of what’s going on, of the whole organisation, and not just from my one perspective.

And a female in full-time employment studying at undergraduate level notes:

I also try to see things from other perspectives and I don’t just believe what is reported
in the newspapers or on the television. I try to sit back and think and reflect and I try to
consider other people’s beliefs and consider what drives them to do the things that
they do.

Whereas critical thinking has always been highly prized in higher education, critical
reflection has been less so. Critical thinking implies a degree of detachment and objectivity in
relation to the object of (conceptual) thought, whereas critical reflection has a strong
subjective element that, of course, may account for its more cautious treatment in the
 DAVID MAJOR 23

academic world. Critical reflection seems to me to carry with it the weight of critical thinking
but brings the self into the equation. Thus, in critical reflection there is an attempt to examine
the implications for the self (and, therefore, to make (construct) or to remake (reconstruct)
meaning for oneself) in relation to whatever it is that is under critical scrutiny. Critically
reflective capabilities are shown to be crucial to Barnett’s (1997) view of higher education
when he identifies three key features of the ‘critical being’ which, he argues, is the
responsibility of higher education to produce: namely, critical reasoning, critical self-reflection
and critical action. Barnett’s argument is that a university education should enable an
undergraduate to go beyond the capability of critical reasoning (which a conventional
university education has provided for and should continue to provide for), to engage in critical
self-reflection (leading to a reappraisal of beliefs and values), and to promote engagement in
critical action in the world (such as might be expected from a responsible citizen). I have
attempted to make the case elsewhere (Major, 2002) for WBL as a form of higher education
that has the capability to produce the ‘critical being’ that Barnett argues should be synonymous
with the concept of graduateness.
Critical reflection is the key capability of the reflective practitioner, is at the heart of the
model of praxis espoused in liberation thinking, and is considered by some to be a key aspect
of WBL methodology. However, critical reflection is not necessarily an intuitive process. It is
one that people have to learn, especially if they are to achieve a depth of reflection acceptable
to higher education. Thus, those responsible for delivering programmes of WBL must also be
charged with the responsibility for facilitating the development of students’ critically reflective
capabilities. That critical reflection is a capability that develops through learning and
experience is implied by one of the Chester postgraduate respondents who noticed that her
peers, who had undertaken WBL previously, possessed a greater understanding and insight
than she did concerning learning in the workplace. Similarly, two other postgraduate students,
who had undertaken WBL as part of their undergraduate studies, noted their own
development in their ability to critically reflect, suggesting that, to some extent, it is a learned
process.

Understanding the learning process/learning to learn through

WBL
Learning how to learn requires an understanding of the learning process and the evidence from
the Chester research suggests that students, through WBL, gain a better understanding of how
they learn than they may do through more conventional forms of learning. In WBL, students
are required to accept a considerable degree of responsibility for their own learning and this
gives them greater freedom to determine how they are going to learn. The research confirms
that there is a wide variety of ways in which people may learn through work. In interview
some students tended, if anything, to emphasise practical learning over theoretical, though
respondents generally took a balanced view, recognising that different learning needs required
different approaches. In analysing student responses to a question concerned to elicit
something of the various ways in which people learn, six categories emerge:

• experiential learning
• conventional learning
24 LEARNING THROUGH WORK-BASED LEARNING

• instructional learning
• reflective learning
• relational learning
• other ways of learning.

The question was not in any sense meant to be about the physiological workings of the brain or
to engage in any form of psychological study but simply an attempt to find out about people’s
learning preferences and how, when free from the constraints of a more controlled learning
environment (such as the university or college), they went about their learning. It was more to
do with methods of learning and the idea that, through WBL, people probably engaged in a
wider variety of ways of learning than they would in a more conventional form of higher
education.
It seems reasonable to assume from the information given by the respondents that, when
free to do so, the way in which individuals go about learning is inclined to match their
preferred learning style. It also seems reasonable to assume, though the survey did not attempt
to deal with this, that access to a broad range of learning styles has the potential to lead to
more holistic ways of understanding learning and, thus, has the potential to lead to the
capability of learning to learn. The evidence does support the view that, whatever else
students learn through WBL, they also learn about themselves. This inevitably means that at
least an element of emotional learning is brought into the equation. Arguably, it is self-learning
that gives rise to an understanding of how one learns which, in turn, leads to a greater
awareness and understanding of the process of learning itself or of learning to learn.
If this is the case, then WBL is consistent with Carl Rogers’ (1983) holistic philosophy of
learning with its emphasis on people’s understanding of how they learn rather than what they
learn. This is a sophisticated process and one that many learners, I suspect, may never
contemplate. It is a process that a conventional university education may not require one to
consider. The difficulty some of the respondents had initially in engaging with a question that
asked them ‘how’ they learn suggests they may never have been asked that question before.
The fact that most were able to engage with it to some degree, having thought about it in the
context of WBL, suggests to me that having greater responsibility for their own learning,
together with experiencing a broader range of ways of learning, better equips people to
understand something of the learning process

Summary
In this chapter I have attempted to show that effective learning, in my view, is essentially a
holistic process that integrates knowing and doing in a critically reflective way and, moreover,
that WBL is a sound facilitator of learning of this quality. I have tried to say something about
how people learn through WBL (emphasising the theory/practice interplay, the role of critical
reflection, and the importance of collaborative learning), pointing to what I consider to be its
distinctive features (including the integration of knowledge and action as part of the learning
process, the foregrounding of learning about the self, the importance of accepting
responsibility for one’s own learning, and the experience of learning in more holistic ways) and
the conditions under which such learning occurs (including being part of a community of
practice, being exposed to a wide variety of ways of learning, and being prepared to regard work
 DAVID MAJOR 25

as the curriculum). Through conversations with those engaged in WBL, it has become clear to
me that they appear to be more conscious of, and have a much better understanding of, the
learning process than might be brought about through more conventional forms of learning.
They appear to learn more about learning and develop the capacity of learning to learn. I have
argued that this comes about, partly at least, as a result of the greater responsibility for their
own learning that WBL places on the learners and that this, together with critical reflection as
a key capability, leads to them developing a greater understanding as to how learning occurs.
Boud and Symes may well be right when they say that, where work is the curriculum, as it is in
programmes of WBL, this provides ‘a radically new approach to what constitutes university
study’ (Symes and McIntyre, 2000:14). Radical though it may be, I hope to have shown that there
are sound educational reasons why the university should fully embrace WBL and accept it as a
legitimate contributor to the higher education curriculum.

References

Barnett, R. (1997) Higher Education: A Critical Business, Society for Research into Higher Education/
Open University Press, Buckingham.
Barnett, R. (1999) ‘Learning to Work and Working to Learn’, in Boud, D. and Garrick, J. (eds)
Understanding Learning at Work, Routledge, London.
Boud, D. and Garrick, J. (eds) (1999) Understanding Learning at Work, Routledge, London.
Boud, D. and Symes, D. (2000) ‘Learning for Real: Work Based Education in Universities’, in
Symes, D. and McIntyre, J. (eds) Working Knowledge: The New Vocationalism and Higher
Education, Society for Research into Higher Education/ Open University Press, Buckingham.
Boud, D. and Solomon, N. (eds) (2001) Work-Based Learning: A New Higher Education?, Society for
Research into Higher Education/Open University Press, Buckingham.
Dreuth, L. and Dreuth-Fewell, M. (2002) ‘A Model of Student Learning in Community Service
Field Placements: Voices from the Field’, Active Learning in Higher Edu cation, 3, 3, 251–264.
Garrick, J. (1998) Informal Learning in the Workplace, Routledge, London.
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26 LEARNING THROUGH WORK-BASED LEARNING
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
consoli formassero il minore consiglio, sempre adunato e sempre
attivo per reggere la città; e che negli affari di maggiore importanza
questi consoli intimassero una generale adunanza del popolo. Nel
1130 i consoli erano venti, ed erano stati eletti dalle tre classi di
cittadini, cioè dai capitani, i quali erano i nobili del primo ordine, dai
valvassori, che erano nobili bensì, ma di minore autorità, e dai
cittadini, che erano come il terzo ordine. Il numero dei consoli
cittadini era minore di quello di ciascuna delle altre due classi; onde
l'autorità realmente era presso i nobili [320], non rimanendo ai
cittadini poco più che l'apparenza, come in Roma, ne' comizi
centuriati. La repubblica di Milano però era ben piccola allora, poichè
la giurisdizione di lei si limitava a poco più della mera città; e la
campagna che le stava intorno, formava diversi altri piccoli Stati
indipendenti da lei, e così v'erano i conti del Seprio, i conti della
Martesana e altri distretti, che avevano un governo parziale e i loro
consoli [321]; di che rimasero sino al 1781 le vestigia nelle diverse
misure, che furono in uso in Monza, Lecco ed altri borghi del ducato,
abolite or ora. Questo è tutto quello che sappiamo intorno la
costituzione civile di Milano verso il principio del secolo duodecimo.
L'autorità suprema si riconosceva presso dell'imperatore, il di cui
nome incidevasi nelle monete, e dal quale ricevevano la giurisdizione
alcuni giudici e messi che decidevano le controversie dei privati [322].
Ma il governo politico, la pace e la guerra, l'imposizione e riscossione
de' tributi erano presso la città istessa. Landolfo il Giovine, parlando
dell'anno 1112, così si esprime: [323] Papienses et Mediolanenses
statuerunt et juraverunt sibi foedera, quae nimium quibusdam
videntur fuisse imperatoriae majestati, et apostolicae auctoritate
contraria; cum illi cives juraverent sibi servare se et sua contra
quemlibet mortalem hominem natum vel nasciturum; dal che pare
che, collegandosi per difendere le cose loro contro qualunque uomo,
tacitamente s'intendesse la disposizione di contrastare colla forza
all'imperatore, qualora cercasse di toglier loro o i nuovi magistrati, o
i tributi, o la giurisdizione che esercitavano. Nelle carte de' contratti,
testamenti, sentenze, ec., si soleva in prima porre il nome
dell'imperatore o re d'Italia: Regnante Domino nostro, il tale. Al
principio del secolo duodecimo non più si fece questa menzione. In
una parola la costituzione civile di Milano allora divenne, siccome
dissi, a un dipresso simile a quella d'una città libera dell'impero.
Quantunque l'arcivescovo di Milano Anselmo da Boisio fosse un
uomo di carattere assai mite, e quantunque dovesse interamente la
sua dignità al papa, cui era nella più esatta maniera sommesso; e
quantunque l'autorità politica del metropolitano fosse di molto
diminuita, ciò non ostante dava ombra al papa il nome
dell'arcivescovo di Milano: e per allontanare ogni pericolo e
confermarne la soggezione, piacque a Roma che l'arcivescovo
abbandonasse la sua diocesi, e, seguendo lo spirito delle Crociate al
principio del secolo duodecimo, si portasse a guerreggiare nell'Asia.
Gerusalemme era già in potere dei cristiani. Non sembrava che vi
rimanesse altro desiderio alla pietà dei fedeli, se non se quello di
custodirla. Ma, se crediamo allo storico nostro Landolfo il Giovine,
altra impresa si propose Anselmo da Boisio, e tale, che la gravità
della storia corre pericolo nel raccontarla, cioè la conquista del regno
di Babilonia. Eccone le parole dello storico: [324] Anselmus de Buis,
mediolanensis archiepiscopus, quasi monitus apostolica auctoritate,
studuit congregare de diversis partibus exercitum cum quo caperet
Babylonicum Regnum, et in hoc studio praemonuit praelectam
juventutem mediolanensem cruces suscipere, et cantilenam de
Ultreja, Ultreja cantare. Atque ad vocem hujusprudentis viri,
cuiuslibet conditionis per civitates Longobardorum, villas et castella
eorum cruces susceperunt, et eamdem cantilenam de Ultreja, Ultreja
cantaverunt [325]. Questa canzone latina inventata allora aveva la
frequente esclamazione Ultreja, che il conte Giulini crede, assai
verisimilmente, essere un composto di Eja! Ultra! come sarebbe
animo! avanti! eccitandosi così la gioventù lombarda a prendere le
armi e passare nell'Asia [326]. Che questa crociata milanese, avendo
alla testa l'arcivescovo Anselmo da Boisio, attraversasse l'Ungheria e
si portasse in Costantinopoli, dove poco dopo l'arcivescovo morì,
sembra cosa certa. Cosa poi facesse in quella comica impresa, è
difficile il definirlo, tanto sono discordi gli scrittori. Orderico Vitale,
scrittore di quei tempi, ci racconta che questo esercito si accostò
verso Gerusalemme, e in una battaglia verso Gandras fu malamente
battuto, onde i fuggitivi si ricoverarono a Costantinopoli; ma i
geografi non ci sanno dire in qual luogo trovisi questo Gandras.
Radolfo, che scrisse le imprese di Tancredi, sotto del quale militava,
ci lasciò scritto che l'arcivescovo Anselmo da Boisio fu battuto dai
Saraceni sotto Danisma; ma nemmeno Danisma si trova in nessuna
carta geografica. L'abate Uspergense invece c'insegna che la
battaglia seguì: [327] contra terram Coritianam, quae est Turcorum
patria; ma nemmeno questa terra è conosciuta nella geografia; e la
patria de' Turchi, se crediamo a Pomponio Mela ed a Plinio, è nei
contorni delle paludi Meotidi, ovvero fra l'Eusino e il Caspio, nelle
vicinanze del Caucaso; parti del mondo assai sviate per coloro che
dalla Lombardia cercavano di passare in Babilonia o nella Terra
Santa. Guglielmo Tirio, che è riputato il più sicuro scrittore di quelle
guerre di Terra Santa, non fa menzione alcuna della spedizione
dell'arcivescovo di Milano Anselmo, nè delle disgrazie del suo
esercito. L'arcivescovo morì in Costantinopoli l'anno 1110, e Landolfo
il Giovine ce ne indica la malattia; ei morì di tristezza. Questo buon
Anselmo da Boisio ce lo qualifica Landolfo il Giovine per un povero
uomo, semplice, timido, e ironicamente lo chiama nel testo riferito:
[328] ad vocem hujus prudentis viri. Probabilmente a queste
disposizioni del di lui animo egli doveva la sua dignità. Questo
moderatissimo prelato, se per il merito dell'obbedienza aveva
animato i suoi a prendere le armi per combattere gli infedeli; poichè
si vide affaticato da un assai lungo viaggio; trasportato in mezzo a
popoli dei quali ignorava il costume e il linguaggio; abbandonato alla
licenza militare di giovani incautamente espatriati per di lui consiglio,
e inquieti per trovare mezzi da sussistere; in mezzo ai pericoli; senza
forza d'animo e senza aiuto; mi sembra naturale ch'ei morisse
d'affanno e di melanconia, e che si sbandassero i suoi, e ritornassero
alla patria gli altri pochi rimasti, cui riuscì di trovare la strada ed i
mezzi per rivederla. Coloro che rimproverano alla generazione
vivente d'avere minor senno di quello che si osservava altre volte,
esaminino queste epoche.
Nel principio appunto del secolo duodecimo lo storico nostro
Landolfo Juniore, che è il solo autore contemporaneo, ci racconta un
fatto prodigiosissimo; e ce lo descrive con circostanze cotanto
minute e singolari, che sembra quasi ch'ei temesse l'incredulità nei
posteri. Sinora il suo timore fu vano; ma io lo credo giustissimo. Il
fatto è il seguente. Mentre Anselmo da Boisio era partito,
comandando l'esercito che marciava alla conquista di Babilonia, il
vescovo di Savona Grossolano, come vicario dell'assente arcivescovo,
reggeva la chiesa milanese. Giunta la nuova della morte di Anselmo,
Grossolano ebbe un partito, e fu eletto arcivescovo; e dal papa fugli
spedito il pallio, che il portatore, tenendo a guisa di stendardo, in
cima del bastone, andava gridando: ecco la stola, o come dice
Landolfo il Giovine: heccum la stola, heccum la stola [329]; dal che
vedesi che anche allora si parlava una lingua simile a quella che
oggidì si parla. Eravi in Milano un prete che aveva nome Liprando.
Egli era zio di Landolfo Juniore, e convien dire che fosse di genio
piuttosto attivo, poichè ebbe tagliati il naso e gli orecchi in uno de'
tumulti per la giurisdizione romana, per cui egli combatteva. Il papa
Gregorio VII prese questo prete sotto la speciale protezione della
Santa Sede, e nella bolla gli scrisse: [330] Tu quoque, abscisso naso,
et auribus pro Christi nomine, laudabilior es qui ad eam gratiam
pertingere meruisti, quae ab omnibus desideranda est, qua a sanctis,
si persevereraveris in finem, non discrepas. Integritas quidem
corporis tui diminuta est, sed interior homo, qui renovatur de die in
diem, magnum sanctitatis suscepit incrementum: forma visibilis
turpior, sed imago Dei, quae est forma justitiae, facta est pulchrior.
Unde in Canticis Canticorum gloriatur Ecclesia, dicens: nigra sum,
filiae Hierusalem; e poi dopo lo chiama [331] martyr Christi [332]. Il
prete Liprando era titolare della chiesa di San Paolo in Compito.
Appoggiato a questa bolla, pretendeva di essere indipendente
dall'arcivescovo, e da ciò nacquero dei dissapori, i quali s'inasprirono.
L'arcivescovo sospese il prete dal suo ufficio sacerdotale, e il prete
accusò pubblicamente l'arcivescovo di simonia, [333] per munus a
manu, per munus a lingua, per munus ab ubsequio [334]. La disputa
andò tanto avanti, che vi furono partiti; si venne alle solite zuffe,
e [335] Grossolani turba, dimicans adversus primicerium,
Landulphum, ejusdem primicerii clericum lapide occidit [336]. Fu
perciò costretto l'arcivescovo Grossolano a convocare un sinodo, in
cui si giudicasse s'egli fosse legittimamente eletto, ovvero se fosse
simoniaco; e il prete Liprando si esibì di provare col giudizio di Dio,
passando attraverso del fuoco, l'accusa che aveva fatta
all'arcivescovo. Il popolo accettò con avidità questa proposizione,
che gli offeriva un genere di spettacolo maravigliosissimo. La
curiosità di vedere un miracolo generalmente eccitò l'impazienza di
ognuno; e fu avvisato il prete Liprando di apparecchiarvisi: e il fatto
ce lo descrive Landolfo nella maniera che dirò. Distribuì il prete
Liprando in elemosina il grano ed il vino che possedeva; fece
testamento, lasciando erede lo storico suo nipote; e dispose che se
egli morisse nel giudizio, quel che le fiamme avessero lasciato del
suo corpo, venisse seppellito nella chiesa della Trinità. Sia ch'ei
temesse falsa la simonia asserita, ovvero non sicuro il miracolo, egli
credette possibile il rimanervi abbruciato, sebbene con tanta fiducia
ne cercasse l'occasione. Digiunò il prete due giorni; poi, vestito con
cilicio, camice e pianeta, a piedi nudi, portando la croce, da San
Paolo in Compito venne a Sant'Ambrogio, e cantò la messa all'altar
maggiore in faccia all'arcivescovo, che si era collocato sul pulpito con
altri due personaggi. Forse in que' tempi il digiuno naturale, prima
d'accostarsi all'altare, non era un precetto; almeno, nel secolo nono,
la imperatrice Ermengarda, [337] ante introitum missarum fatebatur
se exardescere siti, et bibit plenam phialam vini peregrini, et post
haec, coelestem participavit mensam [338]. Comunque sia di ciò,
Landolfo non dice come celebrasse la messa quel prete sospeso dal
suo ufficio: ci dice però che l'arcivescovo, poichè la messa fu
terminata, prese a dire così: Aspettate, che con tre parole
convincerò quest'uomo; indi, rivolto al prete: Hai asserito, gli disse,
che io sono simoniaco, ora dichiara soltanto, se il puoi, qual sia la
persona a cui io abbia donato. Il prete si collocò sopra un sasso
elevato che era nella chiesa, e indicando il pulpito: Vedete, disse al
popolo, vedete tre grandissimi diavoli, che possono confondermi col
loro ingegno e coi denari che possedono; ma io rispondo che con
quel danaro istesso che il diavolo gli suggerì di adoprare per
comprarsi l'arcivescovato, possono aver occultata la verità e togliermi
i testimonii; e per ciò ho scelto il giudizio di Dio, che non s'inganna.
Il dialogo continuò qualche poco, sin tanto che, impaziente il popolo
di vedere questo prodigio, si udì gridare perchè venisse al cimento il
prete; il quale, sebbene fosse vecchio, e digiuno per il terzo giorno,
ed avesse fatto un lungo cammino, balzò dal sasso e si portò co' suoi
paramenti avanti l'atrio di Sant'Ambrogio; fuori del quale erano
disposte due cataste di legna di quercia, ciascuna delle quali era
lunga dieci braccia, alte entrambi più di un uomo, e similmente
larghi, e distanti l'una dall'altra un braccio e mezzo. Anzi nel viottolo
istesso eranvi gettati dei pezzi di legna tratto tratto, per renderne più
lento e difficile il passaggio. Poichè il prete e l'arcivescovo furono
fuori dell'atrio, l'accusatore prese l'arcivescovo per la cappa e disse:
[339] Iste Grossulanus, qui est sub ista cappa, et non de alio dico,
est simoniacus de archiepiscopatu Mediolani [340]. Ciò fatto,
l'arcivescovo non volle star più presente, montò a cavallo, e se ne
partì. Arialdo da Meregnano, amico dell'arcivescovo, teneva frattanto
il prete, acciocchè ei non passasse, sin tanto che il fuoco non fosse
bene acceso; e il fuoco crebbe a segno, che Arialdo ne ebbe offesa
la mano. Allora dissegli: Prete Liprando, mira la tua morte, piegati
all'arcivescovo e salva la vita; e se nol vuoi, vanne colla maledizione
di Dio. Il prete rispose a lui: [341] Sathana, retro vade, poi si prostrò
a terra, fece il segno della croce, ed entrò fra le cataste ardenti. La
fiamma si spaccava avanti di lui, e si riuniva tosto che era passato;
passò sopra i carboni, come se fosse arena, due volle recitò in quel
passaggio: [342] Deus, in nomine tuo salvum me fac, ed in virtute tua
libera me, e nella terza volta, alla parola fac, si trovò sano dall'altra
parte del fuoco, senza danno alcuno nella persona, o nei lini del
camice, o nella pianeta. Così il nipote Landolfo ci racconta il fatto.
Questo fatto, riferitoci dal solo Landolfo, e adottato poscia da chi
scrisse dopo di lui, ha tanta somiglianza con quello che Desiderio,
abate di Monte Cassino, asserisce accaduto in Firenze, che non si
potrebbe giudicare quale dei due fosse l'originale e quale la copia; se
quello di Toscana non fosse stato collocato quarant'anni prima di
questo di Landolfo, che si colloca nell'anno 1103. A Firenze si
accusava quel vescovo di simonia: si propose di provarlo colla prova
del fuoco; si prepararono due cataste lunghe dieci piedi, alte e
larghe cinque, distanti appunto un piede e mezzo. Le misure sono le
medesime nel numero, sebbene da noi non erano piedi, ma braccia.
Ivi passò illeso un monaco Giovanni Aldobrandino, che fu poi
chiamato Giovanni Igneo: e l'uno e l'altro fatto si dice accaduto in
quaresima. Costretto a rinunziare alla fede di uno storico
contemporaneo, ovvero al buon senso, io abjurerò la prima: nè
crederò che la novità abbia operato un portento per approvare una
temerità solennemente riprovata dalla Chiesa in più concilii. Dopo un
fatto cotanto decisivo, non sarebbe stato possibile che i vescovi
suffraganei, che erano in Milano pel sinodo, non conoscessero la
mano di Dio, e non concorressero a deporre l'arcivescovo. Eppure lo
stesso Landolfo ci avvisa che: [343] praesentia episcoporum
suffraganeorum huic legi et triumpho favorem integre non
praebuit [344], e il popolo istesso, pochi giorni dopo, cambiossi di
parere sul preteso miracoloso passaggio: [345] turba tristis de casu et
ruina Grossulani, in presbyterum, et ejus legem post paucos dies
scandalizavit. Ci narra di più lo stesso autore che in quella occasione
il prete ebbe offesa bensì una mano dal fuoco, ma che se l'abbruciò
prima di passarvi; che ebbe anche male a un piede, ma che ne fu
cagione un cavallo da cui fu calpestato. La verità sola che oggi
possiamo sapere è, che il fatto, come ce lo racconta Landolfo, non è
vero. Se qualche fatto simile vi è stato, conviene allargare il viottolo,
abbassare e sminuire le cataste, supporre il prete che passi prima di
una perfetta accensione; e allora con una mano ed un piede offesi
potremo accordare i due fenomeni, il fisico ed il morale. Se poi il
racconto fosse imitato da Landolfo dall'altra favola toscana, per
vanità di raccontare cose prodigiose, e per farsi nipote di un
taumaturgo, allora ne sarebbe ancora più semplice la spiegazione.
Nè sarà questa un'accusa troppo severa che noi faremo all'ingenuità
di questo storico, il quale ci vuol far credere che un angelo sia
venuto ad avvertirlo che il di lui zio Liprando era ammalato: [346] Mihi
angelus occurrit dicens: presbyter Liprandus, rediens a Valtellina,
infirmus jacet ad monasterium de Clivate [347]: asserzione sul
proposito della quale saggiamente riflette il nostro conte Giulini, che
«sarebbe stato desiderabile che lo storico ci avesse additato i segni
pe' quali egli s'avvide con tanta sicurezza, che quello era un
angelo [348]». Tutti i nostri autori però, ciecamente appoggiati
all'asserzione del solo Landolfo, hanno creduto vero un tal prodigio;
e nemmeno il nostro conte Giulini si è voluto segregare. Sarebbe
stato veramente desiderabile che avessero seguita l'opinione
piuttosto dei vescovi suffraganei e della plebe, che ne fu spettatrice.
Ma il meraviglioso seduce; non si ha coraggio di affrontare una lunga
tradizione per annunciare la verità, i di cui dritti non si prescrivono
giammai; ed è costretta la storia a raccontare di tali inezie, qualora
sieno generalmente credute.
Per otto anni ancora, dopo il raccontato prodigio, continuò
l'arcivescovo Grossolano a conservare la sua dignità, sebbene con un
partito contrario. Il papa lo considerò arcivescovo legittimo, e non
cessò d'esserlo, se non quando, portatosi egli, nel 1111, a
Costantinopoli, se gli elesse in Milano un successore. Morì frattanto
in Germania l'infelice imperatore Enrico III; ciò avvenne l'anno 1106.
Corrado, di lui figlio, se gli era ribellato, siccome dissi, adescato da
una vana lusinga di essere re d'Italia, ove visse con questo titolo per
obbedire a tutti i cenni della contessa Matilde. Anche l'altro figlio
Enrico si trovò modo di farlo ribelle al padre. Non si può rinunziare ai
sentimenti dell'umanità e della natura più freddamente di quello che
fece questo figlio Enrico, che il padre aveva già fatto suo collega nel
regno di Germania. Io ne racconterò l'avvenimento colle parole
istesse colle quali il conte Giulini lo riferisce. «I vizi, le
scostumatezze, la simonia, lo scisma dell'imperatore erano
veramente cose orribili a chi le considerava; ma pure dovevano con
pazienza tollerarsi da un suddito, e molto più da un figliuolo. Per
quanto la storia della vita di Enrico IV, re di Germania, e terzo
imperatore e re d'Italia, desti odio ed abborrimento contro dì lui,
quella della sua morte non lascia di muovere gli animi a compassione
e pietà. Altro io non dirò, se non che il misero principe, spogliato a
forza de' reali ornamenti, pentito de' commessi delitti senza poter
ottenere dal legato apostolico la desiderata assoluzione, prosteso a'
piè del figlio senza poter ottenere da lui un solo sguardo, finalmente
da disperato diede nuovamente di piglio alle armi; ma abbandonato
presso che da tutti, e giunto alle ultime angustie, alli sette di agosto
del corrente anno 1106 terminò in Liegi di puro cordoglio la vita.
Così castigò Iddio i suoi delitti in vita» [349]. I delitti di questo
principe sono di non aver voluto rinunziare alle investiture de'
vescovi, che avevano goduto i suoi antecessori. Le sue buone qualità
furono la generosità, la giustizia e il valore. Non rapì l'altrui, non
insidiò alcuno, non se gli rimprovera alcuna crudeltà. Egli comandava
in persona la sua armata; si trovò in sessantasei battaglie, e le vinse
tutte, eccetto quelle nelle quali fu tradito. Il di lui figlio Enrico, che
poi fu il quarto imperatore di questo nome, venne in Italia nel 1110;
pretese dalle città lombarde l'antica obbedienza; trovò degli ostacoli,
poichè erano già avvezze a reggersi da sè. Novara, fra le altre, non
fu docile, e il re Enrico la incendiò; così fece a varie altre castella e
terre. L'infelice Enrico suo padre non adoperò il fuoco per
sottomettere i popoli. Questa feroce maniera di guerreggiare mosse
le altre città a cercare di guadagnarselo con denaro, con vasi d'oro e
d'argento; ma la popolata e nobile città di Milano non gli fece regalo
alcuno, nè in verun conto gli badò, come ci attesta il monaco
Donizzone, che in quei tempi scriveva le gesta della contessa Matilde
con versi assai meschini:

Aurea vasa sibi nec non argentea misit

Plurima cum multis urbs omnis denique nummis:
Nobilis urbs sola Mediolanum populosa
Non servivit ei, nummum neque contulit aeris [350] [351].

Pareva che allora Milano ergesse già la testa sopra delle altre città
del regno italico. Prestarono però i Milanesi assistenza ad Enrico,
piuttosto come alleati, che come sudditi; e questa fu di molti armati
che lo accompagnarono a Roma per ricevervi la corona imperiale. È
noto che Pasquale II, papa, pretese, prima d'incoronarlo, che
rinunziasse al diritto di dare l'investitura ai vescovi. Ricusò Enrico di
rinunziarvi, e pretese, non meno di quello che aveva fatto suo padre,
di conservare questa ragione, posseduta dai precedenti augusti.
Insisteva il papa; nacque in Roma una zuffa: i Lombardi, uniti coi
Tedeschi, frenarono l'impeto de' pontificii, a segno che Enrico fece
suo prigioniero il papa, lo condusse fuori di Roma, nè gli accordò la
libertà, se non quando gli promise con solenne scrittura di lasciargli
le investiture come per lo passato. Ciò fatto, ei lo pose in libertà, e
da esso fu incoronato imperatore nella basilica Vaticana, il giorno 13
di aprile 1111. Per questa zuffa ne dovettero soffrire anche i
Milanesi, de' quali varii ne perirono, e fra gli altri Ottone Visconti:
[352] Otho autem mediolanensis Vicecomes, cum multis
pugnatoribus ejusdem regis, in ipsa strage corruit in mortem
amarissimam hominibus diligentibus civitatem mediolanensem, et
Ecclesiam [353]. Questo Ottone è forse lo stesso reso immortale dai
due versi del Tasso:

O 'l forte Otton, che conquistò lo scudo,

In cui da l'angue esce il fanciullo ignudo [354]

L'imperatore Enrico V, che aveva degradato suo padre per aver

sostenuto le investiture dei vescovati, non solamente le sostenne ei
medesimo, ma colla forza sulla persona istessa del sommo pontefice
se le fece accordare. Nella costituzione che avevano presa le città
italiche, non vi rimaneva più altra dignità che potesse conferire
l'imperatore, se rinunziava alle investiture: e il titolo di re d'Italia, già
diventato sinonimo di protettore piuttosto che sovrano, sarebbe stato
colla rinunzia ridotto a una mera parola insignificante; come vi si
ridusse in fatti undici anni dopo, colla cessione che ne fece. I
Milanesi frattanto, inquieti, avvezzi alle fazioni, diretti da magistrati la
nuova autorità de' quali era incerta, mancanti di un sistema civile
che organizzasse la città, privi d'un regolamento che assicurasse la
vita e le sostanze del cittadino, avevano ottenuto piuttosto una
turbulente indipendenza, anzi che la libertà. Convien dire che allora
o non vi fosse uomo capace di progettare una costituzione, ovvero
che non venisse ascoltato. Avevamo impiegati i primi impeti nostri a
lacerarci vicendevolmente colle civili dissensioni; i secondi impeti
furon adoperati per rovinare i vicini meno forti di noi. La città di Lodi
fu distrutta da noi quasi sotto gli occhi dell'imperatore Enrico, che
ritornava da Roma dopo la sua incoronazione: [355] Mediolanenses
quoque, cum iste imperator per Veronam a Roma in Germaniam
properabat, gladiis et incendiis, diversisque instrumentis, funditus
destruxerunt Laudem, in Langobardia civitatem alteram. [356]. Un
calendario antico, stampato nella raccolta Rerum Italicarum [357],
dice: [358] VII kal. (junii) MCXI capta est civitas Laudensis a
Mediolanensibus (1111); e la cronica di Filippo da Castel Seprio dice:
[359] anno MCXI die VII ante kal. junii destructa est civitas
Laudensis, et jacuit annis XLVIII. Qual fosse il motivo che inducesse i
Milanesi a simile crudeltà, non lo sappiamo. Il nostro Tristano Calchi
così ne ragiona: [360] De Laudis vero Pompejae eversione haud
immerito prudens lector uberiora desideraverit: sed mecum transeat
oportet, cujus in manus plura in eam rem, et si diligenter
perquisiverim, non venerunt. Caeterum constat et duras leges et
foedam servitutem victis impositam fuisse: dejectisque caeteris
aedificiis, et urbis moenibus, vix agrestium similes vici, et pauperum
tuguria miseris civibus, quae inhabitarent relicta; et pro magno
commodo existimatum, quod vicum cognomine Placentinum
reliquerint, in quo solitum mercatum octavo quoque die
continuarent, sed nec rem alienare, matrimonia contrahere, post
occasum solis in pubblicum prodire, certosve fines excedere
inconsulto magistratu mediolanensi licebat; si quipiam paulo
remotius sermones contulissent, continuo, novorum consiliorum
suspecti, aere multabantur, aut fustibus caedebantur, quibus
aerumnis indignati plurimi diversa exilia petere maluerunt, et
perpetuo patriis finibus carere [361]. La città di Lodi era fabbricata
sopra di un fiumicello chiamato Silaro, fra l'Adda ed il Lambro: anche
al dì d'oggi se ne vedono le vestigia al sito che si chiama Lodi
Vecchio. La città di Lodi presentemente non dovrebbe più portare il
nome di Pompeo, poichè deve la sua esistenza a Federico
imperatore, che la fece fabbricare alle sponde dell'Adda, quattro
miglia distante dalla città di Pompeo.
(1127) Dopo avere per tal modo rovinati i Lodigiani, ci siamo rivolti a
danneggiare i Comaschi, i quali, col favore d'un paese montuoso,
disputarono per alcuni anni, ma finalmente, superati dai Milanesi,
videro la toro città e i sobborghi distrutti l'anno 1127. Co' Pavesi
parimenti ai mosse la guerra; e nel 1152 ci riuscì di dar loro una
rotta a Marcinago: ma la città loro, munita di antiche e solide
fortificazioni, fu un ricovero sicuro per essi. Attaccammo briga coi
Cremonesi, e nel 1157 c'impadronimmo del castello di Zenivolta, e
femmo prigioniero il vescovo di Cremona Uberto, che era armato con
l'usbergo come un Paladino, e, inanimando i suoi alla battaglia, si era
spinto contro uno de' nostri, e stava terminando di ammazzarlo [362].
Tale era la strana condotta di una nascente Repubblica, che doveva
saggiamente premunirsi contro le fondate pretensioni dell'impero,
collegandosi e rendendosi amiche le altre città. Questo errore lo
vedremo poi punito da Federico, e la punizione fu meritata. Lo stato
della prosperità è il più funesto di tutti per una città che diventi
libera dopo di avere sofferta la servitù. Nella loro infanzia le
repubbliche hanno bisogno d'essere circondate dai pericoli per
obbligare i cittadini ad accostarsi fra loro, e prendere cura incessante
degl'interessi comuni. Se questi manchino, non vi è più quel principio
che può solo formare un sistema capace di reggere alla prosperità;
vi vuole un nemico e un comune pericolo per acquistare un interesse
e un sentimento comune, e così animarsi la repubblica.
La Germania era divisa in fazioni, e l'imperatore aveva i suoi nemici, i
quali vedevano volontieri che gl'italiani non gli obbedissero. Fra
questi eravi l'arcivescovo di Colonia Federico, il quale scrisse alla
repubblica di Milano una lettera che comincia così: [363] Consolibus,
capitaneis, onmi militiae, universoque mediolanensi populo. —
Civitas Dei inclita, conserva libertatem, ut pariter retineas nominis tui
dignitatem, quia quamdiu potestatibus Ecclesiae inimicis resistere
niteris, verae libertatis auctore Christo Domino adjutore
perfrueris [364]. E in questa lettera ci avvisa come i principi della
Lorena, della Sassonia, della Turingia e di tutta la Gallia (membri
dell'Impero, come lo erano i Milanesi) si erano, al paro di noi,
determinati di voler vivere liberi; e che tutti erano pronti a collegarsi
con noi, ad assisterci; su di che aspettava il riscontro. Non ci rimane
poi notizia alcuna se questa opportunissima offerta sia stata
accettata; anzi dai fatti accaduti dappoi si può presumere che se ne
lasciasse sfuggire l'occasione. Insomma Milano era una repubblica;
era già forte e prepotente nella Lombardia; ma l'uso incautissimo
che faceva della forza sua, eccitava l'invidia e l'odio delle altre città:
odio ed invidia superflue, sin tanto che la dignità imperiale passava
da un principe debole a un altro debole, ma rovinose disposizioni al
movimento in cui fosse eletto imperatore un principe di animo e di
forze robusto.
Morì in Germania l'imperatore Enrico IV l'anno 1125; e venne eletto
per successore Lottario, duca di Sassonia, il quale fu poi Lottario III
re d'Italia, e Lottario II imperatore. Alcuni signori tedeschi avevano
protestato contro di questa elezione, la quale si pretendeva fatta per
maneggi della Francia; e Corrado, duca di Franconia, del casato di
Stauffen-Suabe, fu uno dei più malcontenti. Conviene dire ch'ei
praticasse delle secrete intelligenze co' Milanesi per togliere almeno il
titolo di re d'Italia a Lottario. Certo è che Corrado, nel 1128, se ne
venne a Milano per la strada di Como; che fu acclamato re d'Italia, e
incoronato prima in Monza, poi a Milano in Sant'Ambrogio. Sceso
Lottario in Italia, si confederò colle città di Lombardia, nemiche de'
Milanesi, affine di umiliar Milano. Tentò d'impadronirsi di Crema, città
amica de' Milanesi, ma non ebbe forze bastanti. Lottario non potè
essere incoronato re d'Italia, e portossi a Roma, ove fu incoronato
imperatore in San Giovanni Laterano dal papa Innocenzo II. Vi erano
allora due che pretendevano la sovranità del regno d'Italia: Lottario,
come imperatore; Corrado, come re incoronato d'Italia. Nello stesso
tempo eranvi in Roma due, ciascuno de' quali pretendeva d'essere il
vero papa; uno possedeva la chiesa di San Pietro, e l'altro quello di
San Giovanni Laterano. Il papa di San Giovanni Laterano favoriva
Lottario, lo riconosceva per solo legittimo re d'Italia, e scomunicava
l'arcivescovo di Milano, perchè aveva incoronato Corrado: il papa di
San Pietro mandava il pallio al nostro arcivescovo. La origine di
questi due papi fu che, essendo spirato Onorio II, sommo pontefice,
il 14 di febbraio 1130, nel giorno medesimo, sedici cardinali de' più
famigliari del defunto pontefice e dei più assidui nell'assisterlo
all'ultima malattia, prima che fosse pubblicata la di lui morte,
elessero Gregorio canonico regolare lateranense, cardinale diacono
di Sant'Angelo, che prese il nome di Innocenzo II. Il maggior numero
de' cardinali, intesa che ebbe quest'elezione, si radunò in San Marco,
e creò papa Pietro di Leone, che prese il nome di Anacleto. Furono e
l'uno e l'altro nello stesso giorno consacrati ed intronizzati.
Innocenzo occupava San Giovanni Laterano; Anacleto aveva il partito
più forte, e risedeva in Vaticano. I Milanesi erano per Anacleto e per
Corrado; Lottario era per Innocenzo. Facilmente ognuno comprende
qual confusione e quanti partiti dovevansi formare in mezzo ad un
simile inviluppo di cose. San Bernardo fu quello che sedò i partiti, e
fece riconoscere anche in Milano per vero papa Innocenzo II, e per
vero re d'Italia Lottario. Si erano già domiciliati in Milano dei frati
instituiti da San Bernardo. Il santo sosteneva papa Innocenzo, e
l'arcivescovo di Milano, Anselmo Pusterla, aveva coronato Corrado, e
aderiva ad Anacleto. Cominciarono in Milano i partiti contro
dell'arcivescovo per deporlo. Quegli ordinari e decumani che erano
pel papa Innocenzo II, per preparare delle insidie all'arcivescovo,
distribuirono il loro denaro ai giurisperiti ed ai militari; e dalla disputa
l'arcivescovo fu costretto ad entrare nel pubblico arringo, ove
Stefano Guandeca, arciprete, lo accusò come eretico, spergiuro,
sacrilego e reo d'altri delitti; giurò per convalidare l'accusa, e si esibì
a provarla avanti ad alcuni vescovi suffraganei. Comparvero i
vescovi, e seco loro comparvero pure molti vestiti in una nuova
foggia con rozze lane e col capo raso; e questi, verisimilmente,
erano i nuovi monaci di San Bernardo, che il popolo considerava
come angeli del cielo. L'arcivescovo, vedendo costoro, rivolto al
popolo, si pose a dire: che tutti quei che comparivano vestiti con
quelle cappe bianche e bigie, erano tutti eretici. Da ciò ne nacque
una zuffa, nella quale non fu però vinto l'arcivescovo; ma poi,
mediante il denaro sparso dal contrario partito, fu scacciato dalla sua
Sede. Quindi abbandonato Anacleto, Milano riconobbe il papa
Innocenzo II. L'avvenimento ce lo descrive Landolfo il Giovine colle
seguenti parole: [365] Ordinarii itaque, et decumani sacerdotes, et
caeteri faventes papae Innocentio Secundo, et insidias perpatrantes
hujusmodi archiepiscopo suas pecunias effuderunt, et ipsas legis et
morum peritis atque bellatoribus viris tribuerunt. Unde ipse
archiepiscopus compulsus est intrare popularem concionem, ut ibi
decertaret cum suis excomunicatis de excomunicatione. Cumque
ipse expectaret sagittas de justa aut injusta excomunicatione,
Nazarius primicerius, mirae calliditatis homo, per prolixum sermonem
cunctae concioni induxit fastidium. Archipresbyter autem Stephanus,
qui cognominatur Guandeca, videns primicerium suum fastidiose fore
locutum, vocem suam exaltavit, et contra archiepiscopum sic ait:
Hoc quod isti nolunt tibi dicere ego dico: tu es haereticus, perjurus,
sacrilegus, et aliis criminibus quae non sunt hic notanda, es reus. His
auditis ex improviso, archiepiscopus obstupuit. Archipresbyter vero
ille habens textum Evangeliorum ad manum, continuo juravit, quod
ipse de istis rebus, quas dixerat esse in isto Anselmo, qui dicitur de
Pusterla, in judicio episcopi novariensis et albanensis, qui sunt de
suffraganeis Ecclesiae Mediolani, staret. Consules itaque Mediolani,
in concordia utriusque partis, statuerunt ut ipsi et alii suffraganei
venirent. In statuta itaque die non solum suffraganei, sed
quamplures pure induti rudi et inculta lana, et rasi insolita rasura,
concurrerunt. Cumque archiepiscopus iste Anselmus vidisset eos
constare et populo quasi essent angeli de coelis, ad ipsum populum
ait: omnes illi quos hic videtis cum illis cappis albis et grisiis, sunt
haeretici. Inde simplices, et compositi, ad expellendum, bellum
commoverunt. Veruntamen gladio Anselmi in die illa resistere non
potuerunt. Sed mediante nocte, per expansam pecuniam, manus
primicerii, et presbyteri Stephani fortissima, in summo diluculo ipsum
Anselmum a sede compulit. [366] Questi monaci, seguaci di san
Bernardo, molto operarono per fare che Milano abbandonasse papa
Anacleto e il re Corrado; e riconoscesse papa Innocenzo e
l'imperatore Lottario: e san Bernardo medesimo moveva tutta questa
rivoluzione, e come dice Landolfo il Giovine al luogo citato: [367] Ad
haec peragenda, papa adeo idoneum angelum habuit, sicut
Bernardus abbas Claraevallensis fuit. Il santo abate venne in Milano,
e fu con tanta venerazione accolto, che immediatamente divenne
l'arbitro della città. Egli mostrava dispiacere che nelle chiese vi
fossero ornamenti d'oro o d'argento, e i Milanesi cessarono di
esporli: [368] ad nutum quidem hujus abbatis, omnia ornamenta
ecclesiastica, quae auro et argento paliisque in Ecclesia ipsius
civitatis videbantur, quasi ab ipso abbate despecta, in scrineis reclusa
sunt [369]. Tutto venne a prendere quell'aspetto che insinuava quel
celebre santo, al di cui cenno i popoli europei passavano a
guerreggiare nell'Asia, e riconoscevano o abbandonavano i sovrani
ed i pontefici. Tanto era il potere dell'opinione generalmente sparsa
di lui! Il popolo di Milano, poichè era scacciato l'arcivescovo Anselmo
Pusterla, accorse a san Bernardo, che stava alloggiato vicino a San
Lorenzo, e con acclamazione lo voleva arcivescovo. Il santo aveva
più vasti affari da reggere, e disse alla moltitudine, che nel seguente
giorno egli si sarebbe posto a cavallo, e che se il cavallo l'avesse
condotto lontano dalla città non sarebbe stato arcivescovo, e così
appunto fece e se ne partì: [370] Ego in crastinum ascendam
palafredum meum, et si me extra vos portaverit non ero vobis quod
petitis, ac sic a Mediolano recessit [371]. Così Milano riconobbe papa
Innocenzo e imperatore Lottario; e partito che fu san Bernardo, i
suoi monaci, dice Landolfo al luogo citato: [372] per civitatem euntes,
collectam multam de auro et argento et rebus pluribus sibi fecerunt,
e con questi mezzi fondarono i due monasteri di Chiaravalle e di
Morimondo, così nominati ad imitazione di due già stabiliti in Francia,
i quali avvenimenti accaddero l'anno 1134. L'arcivescovo Anselmo,
scacciato così dalla sua sede, per essere stato del partito di Anacleto
s'incamminò verso Roma, dove Anacleto era riconosciuto per
legittimo papa da un gran numero di persone, e risedeva, siccome
dissi, al Vaticano; ma viaggiando, fu preso e consegnato a papa
Innocenzo II, che trovavasi a Pisa per un concilio; e quel papa che
possedeva, come già dissi, in Roma il Laterano: [373] illum captum
Romam misit, dice Landolfo, ibique, prout fama est, Anselmus ille, in
eodem mense, in manu Petri Latri, qui procurator est Innocentii,
vitam finivit.
Corrado sebbene fosse stato incoronato re d'Italia in Monza ed in
Milano, vedendo di non avere forze bastanti a resistere, si piegò ai
tempi, e riconobbe l'imperatore Lottario, e rinunziò ad ogni
pretensione sul regno italico. Lottario, riconosciuto anche dai
Milanesi, venne in Italia; e favorì i Milanesi nelle dispute che avevano
co' vicini. Mentre il nuovo arcivescovo Roboaldo scomunicava i
Cremonesi, l'imperatore Lottario li sottopose al bando imperiale; e,
unite le forze degl'imperiali e de' Milanesi, si devastò il contado di
Cremona, si prese Casalmaggiore, San Bassano e Soncino [374]: poi
queste forze si rivolsero contro Pavia, la quale venne umiliata. Così
assai incautamente i Milanesi, colla distruzione di Lodi e di Como,
colla desolazione dei Cremonesi, e cogli insulti fatti ai Pavesi, si
erano procurati dei nemici implacabili intorno le loro mura; e ne
vedremo l'effetto nel capitolo seguente. Altro non mancava ad
accendere il fuoco che doveva distruggerci, se non l'occasione d'un
imperatore potente e voglioso di riacquistare la signoria d'Italia. Ma
nè Lottario, nè Corrado istesso (che poi, nel 1138, colla morte di
Lottarlo, fugli eletto in Germania per successore) ebbero forze per
tentarlo. Corrado, obbedendo alle insinuazioni fattegli da san
Bernardo a Spira, s'incamminò alla testa di una armata per la Terra
Santa; dove il suo esercito fu interamente distrutto per la mala fede
dell'imperatore Manuello Comneno e per il valor militare de'
Saraceni. Lottario debolmente regnò fra i torbidi. Così la
indipendenza della repubblica di Milano si andò rinfiancando.
La città di Milano, diventata opulenta e popolata nel secolo
duodecimo, naturalmente doveva offrire agi migliori ad ogni
cittadino. Non si discorreva più di adoperare per companatico il
lardo, come vedemmo al capitolo quarto; ma pretendevano i
canonici di Sant'Ambrogio che un abate, in certo giorno di solennità,
desse loro un pranzo con tre imbandigioni, ed erano queste: [375] in
prima appositione, pullos frigidos, gambas de vino, et carnem
porcinam frigidam: in secunda, pullos plenos carnem vaccinam cum
piperata, et tertullam de lavezolo: in tertia, pullos rostidos lombolos
cum panatio, et porcellos plenos; sorta di vivande che non ha saputo
indicare cosa fossero l'erudito nostro conte Giulini [376], e che molto
meno potrei io spiegare. Bastano però queste per dimostrare che si
viveva con una sorta di abbondanza. Fra le cerimonie religiose vi era
quella che il parroco andasse a lustrare coll'acqua benedetta la casa,
da cui si era trasportato un morto; e che al Natale il parroco girasse
per le case del suo distretto coll'incensiere a profumarlo. Quando si
contraevano [377] sponsalia de futuro, cioè quando si faceva la
promessa del matrimonio, si regalava alla sposa un anello, ovvero
una corona, o un cinto, ovvero una veste o un drappo, ovvero un
zendado; e qualora il matrimonio poi non si dovesse più fare, se lo
sposo aveva dato un bacio alla sposa, non si doveva a lui restituire
se non la metà del regalo: [378] Si nomine sponsalitiorum annulus,
vel corona, vel cingulum, vel quid simile, seu amictum, vel pallium,
vel zendadum detur; matrimonio non secuto, medietas redditur si
osculum intercesserit: così le consuetudini di Milano dell'anno 1216.
Dello stato delle lettere in quei barbari tempi pochissimo se ne può
dire. Unicamente sappiamo che molti de' nostri giovani allora
andavano in Francia a fare i loro studii; ed è assai probabile che le
turbolenze interne alle quali era in preda la Repubblica, non
permettessero quella placida educazione che è necessaria per avervi
delle scuole e de' maestri utili. Fra i paesi vicini, il più tranquillo e
indifferente per noi era la Francia, colla quale non avevamo più
veruna politica relazione. Sotto Lottario s'erano scoperte in Amalfi le
Pandette, e s'era risvegliato un fermento universale per lo studio
della giurisprudenza. Il nostro Oberto dall'Orto fu distinto fra i dottori
di quel tempo; e maestro Giovanni, pure nostro cittadino, fu un
medico che ebbe molta parte nel far risorgere la facoltà che coltivava
in Salerno. Egli scrisse in versi latini un trattato di medicina per
Enrico I, figlio di Guglielmo il Conquistatore, re d'Inghilterra, che così
comincia:

Anglorum regi scribit schola tota Salerni [379] [380] ec.,

e sebbene la ragione umana fosse coltivata da pochi, e con

poverissimo successo, se vogliansi paragonare que' lavori colle
produzioni di secoli più felici; nondimeno dobbiamo accordare che ci
eravamo scostati assai dall'ultima barbarie del secolo undecimo,
quando ne' pubblici contratti si scriveva così: [381] deveniat in
potestatem abas ipsius monasteri sancti Ambrosii in perpetuis
temporibus in eodem sanctum monasterio ordinatus fuerit... capella
una... que ego noviter edificavi... in onore sancti Michaelis et Petri,
consecratam ab domum Eribertus archiepiscopus [382]. I cognomi
cominciarono a formarsi nel secolo undecimo; e nel duodecimo
erano generalmente praticati. Le maggior parte ebbero l'etimologia
dai luoghi d'onde traeva origine, ovvero dimorava la famiglia. Vorrei
poter descrivere le azioni de' nostri Bruti, de' nostri Orazi, de' nostri
Scevola; ma non balena alcun lampo di virtù fra quei tempi ancora
caliginosi; o se qualche uomo generoso e nobile visse allora fra noi,
e produsse la sua virtù fuori dalle azioni della famiglia, questa trovò
così poca elasticità negli animi altrui, che non ne rimase memoria. La
sola religione era il mobile di ogni azione in que' tempi... sebbene
questa mia proposizione non è esatta. La sola corteccia della
religione moveva ogni cosa, e la vera religione era trascuratissima. Il
mancar di fede, l'assassinare il distruggere, l'usurpare, il calunniare,
l'opprimere, erano azioni comunemente praticate quasi senza
ribrezzo. Dopo ciò, tutte le esterne pratiche del rito religioso erano
osservatissime, e servivano di pretesto allo sfogo della feroce
inquietudine de' nuovi repubblicani; poco degni in verità d'esser
liberi per l'abuso che ne fecero a danno proprio e dei vicini.
 CAPITOLO VII.

Della rovina di Milano sotto l'imperatore Federico I.

Il nome di Federico I imperatore, comunemente conosciuto col

soprannome di Barbarossa, non è ignoto a veruno anche del popolo
di Milano. Ognuno sa che Milano fu distrutto da lui. Molte favolose
tradizioni, come accade, si frammischiarono colla verità. Federico
Barbarossa però si ricorda come un barbaro. L'epoca di questo
imperatore è stata funesta. Siamo stati avviliti; ma non vili, nè senza
gloria. I Romani ebbero due epoche di somma umiliazione; le Forche
Caudine e l'invasione de' Galli. Noi avemmo Uraja e Federico. Gli
autori di Germania di que' tempi ne fanno un eroe; i nostri ne fanno
un tiranno. L'unico partito ch'io prendo sarà quello di appoggiare il
mio racconto singolarmente agli autori tedeschi che scrivevano in
que' tempi; e credere di Federico tutto il bene che ne dicono i
Milanesi, e tutto il male che ne dicono i Tedeschi. I primi autori che
mi serviranno di guida saranno Ottone, vescovo di Frisinga, figlio di
Leopoldo Pio, marchese d'Austria, e zio paterno dello stesso
imperatore Federico; il quale, come esercitato, quanto in que' tempi
potevasi, nelle lettere latine, scrisse i fasti del nipote, da lui animato
a farlo: l'altro sarà il canonico di Frisinga Radevico, il quale, per
ordine dello stesso imperatore, continuò que' fasti dopo la morte del
vescovo Ottone [383]. Ivi si legge la lettera che l'imperatore diresse al
vescovo suo zio, animandolo a scrivere e dandogli una traccia dei
suoi fatti nell'Italia [384]; ivi pure si vede che il continuatore Radevico,
dice di avere scritto per obbedienza al desiderio del defunto vescovo:
[385] Ejus jussu, pariterque divi imperatoris Friderici nutu [386].
Sicuramente essi non hanno propensione per i Milanesi. Il terzo sarà
il canonico di Praga Vincenzo, che accompagnò il suo vescovo in
quella spedizione d'Italia, e fu presente alla maggior parte degli
avvenimenti accaduti in Milano. La cronaca di Vincenzo fu data al
pubblico per la prima volta nel 1764 dal padre Dobner, nel primo
tomo dell'opera intitolata: Monumenta Historica Boemiae, stampata
in Praga. Gli altri autori tedeschi, pubblicati nelle raccolte del Pistorio
Nideno, del Menckenio, dello Struvio, dell'Ocfalio, mi serviranno pure
di guida. Farò uso ancora de' nostri italiani Morena e Sire Raul, autori
tutti contemporanei; ma unicamente pei fatti che non possono
essere contrari all'imperatore; sebbene il Morena sia più imperiale di
alcun altro. Sarò costretto a registrare più le parole altrui, che a
scrivere le mie; ma i lettori che temono lo spirito di partito e che
bramano di conoscere quanto si può la verità de' fatti accaduti, non
mi sapranno mal grado se pongo sotto a' loro occhi piuttosto i pezzi
interessanti degli autori originali, che scrivevano le cose dei loro
tempi, anzi che un sempre incerto racconto negli argomenti
contrastati. Questo è il solo partito che conviene allorchè s'entra a
narrare una porzione di storia controversa.
(1152) Corrado, poco dopo il suo ritorno da Terra Santa, morì in
Bamberga l'anno 1152, e fu eletto re de' Romani il di lui nipote
Federico Barbarossa. Egli allora aveva trentadue anni. Pieno di ardor
militare e di un carattere fermo e impetuoso, sembra che il suo
primo pensiero sia stato quello di sottomettere le città del regno
d'Italia, e di ridurle ad una reale obbedienza, dallo stato
indipendente a cui si erano poste da centoventi anni e più.
Albernardo Atamano e Omobono Maestro, due cittadini lodigiani, si
portarono alla dieta di Costanza, e gettaronsi a' piedi di Federico,
implorando il suo aiuto contro de' Milanesi, i quali non cessavano di
opprimere i Lodigiani, anche presso le diroccate mura della loro
patria distrutta. Il re Federico destinò Sicher per suo ministro a
Milano, con un decreto in cui comandava che si cessasse di
opprimere Lodi. I due Lodigiani ritornarono alla patria, per cui
avevano operato senza commissione. Credevano di essere accolti
come salvatori dei cittadini, e non ritrovarono che biasimo, strapazzi
ed ingiurie; poichè il timore de' Milanesi era il solo sentimento che
restava a quegl'infelici, dopo il peso di lunghe e gravissime sciagure.
Venne a Milano Sicher, e presentò il decreto del re. I consoli milanesi
stracciarono la carta, la calpestarono; e a stento il regio messo potè
sottrarsi al furore del popolo [387]. Dopo un tale affronto Federico si
determinò di venire in Italia alla testa di un'armata. I nemici de'
Milanesi non potevano mancare di unirsegli contro di Milano; la
quale, come dice il panegirista e parente di Federico: [388] Inter
caeteras ejusdem gentis civitates primatum nunc tenet..... non
solum ex sui magnitudine, virorumque fortium copia, verum etiam ex
hoc, quod duas civitates vicinas in eodem situ positas; idest Cumam
et Laudam, ditioni suae adjecerit [389]. Cominciò Federico a
devastare alcune nostre terre. Erano amici nostri Tortonesi, i
Piacentini, i Cremaschi ed i Bresciani. Federico assediò, prese e
distrusse Tortona; e dai Pavesi fu accolto con solenne pompa. Così il
re Federico nella sua lettera riferita da Ottone di Frisinga: [390]
Destructa Terdona, Papienses, ut gloriosum post victoriam
triumphum nobis facerent; ad civitatem nos invitaverunt. Col
vocabolo però di distruzione non si può intendere già che fossero
atterrate le case della città, ma deve intendersi soltanto la
demolizione delle fortificazioni, e lo smantellamento de' ripari che la
munivano. Poichè nello stesso anno in cui venne distrutta Tortona, la
repubblica di Milano scrisse ai Tortonesi la lettera seguente: [391]
Consules, populusque mediolanensis, consulibus derthonensibus,
omnique populo, salutem. — Cuncto romano Imperio notum fore
credimus, urbem vestram, quam de caetero confidenter nostram
dicemus, contra fas ac pium, injuria penitus, destructam, a nobis
audacter nec non viriliter restaurutam esse, murisque, omnium
nostrorum invicem sudore constructis, circumdatam. Tria itaque
civilia signa ad perennem memoriam ad vos dirigimus. Tubam
videlicet aeneam, qua populus in unum convocetur, vestrum
significantem incrementum. Album vexillum cum cruce Domini Nostri
Jesu Christi, rubeum colorem habens per medium significans a
manibus inimicorum post multas ac magnas angustias vos esse
liberatos: in quo solem et lunam designari jussimus. Sol
Mediolanum, luna Derthonam significat; lunaque lumen a sole suum
trahit, omne a Mediolano Derthona suum trahit esse. Haec duo
mundi sunt lumina, haec duo regna. Sigillum, quo vestrae signentur
chartae, continens in se duas civitates Mediolanum et Derthonam,
designans Mediolanum cum Derthona ita esse unitos, ut separari
numquam possint amplius. Millenus centenus quinquagesimus annus
quintus erat Christi, cum lapsa, refecta fuit [392]. I Milanesi
innalzarono la circonvallazione di Tortona con somma rapidità e con
sommo ardire, nel tempo in coi Federico si portò a Roma, e fu
incoronato imperatore dal papa Adriano IV. Questa riparazione di
Tortona dovette irritare sempre più l'animo dell'imperatore, al quale
inutilmente avevano già in prima offerto i Milanesi considerabili
somme di oro per accontentarlo. Non si trovò forte Federico allora
abbastanza per cimentarsi contro di Milano, ovvero gli affari
l'obbligarono a portarsi in Germania. Prima però di abbandonare
l'Italia, nelle vicinanze di Verona pubblicò un decreto in cui spogliava
i Milanesi della zecca, dei telonei, e di ogni podestà: e ciò in pena
d'avere distrutto Lodi e Como, e oppressi que' cittadini, con
contumacia agli ordini imperiali: per lo che li condannò al bando
dell'impero [393]. La sentenza di questo anatema non cagionò male
alcuno ai Milanesi. Essa era concepita con frasi che provavano
l'inimicizia passionata dell'imperatore. Leggevasi che i delitti imputati
ai Milanesi fossero enormi, commessi con animo sacrilego,
empiissimamente, con iniquità, malizia e pertinacia. Ciò non di
manco, appena allontanato che fu Federico, i nostri ritornarono al
loro abituale mestiere: batterono i Pavesi; insultarono e vinsero i
Novaresi; presero Vigevano, e ne demolirono il castello. Tanto erano
poco disposti a lasciar liberi i Lodigiani e i Comaschi già sottomessi!
Pretesero anzi dai Lodigiani un giuramento positivo di fedeltà; e
sull'opposizione che i Lodigiani fecero, volendo essi porvi la
condizione che salvo fosse il primo giuramento di fedeltà da essi già
prestato all'imperatore, e non accordandolo i nostri, vennero
saccheggiate e abbruciate le povere abitazioni dei Lodigiani, ed essi
costretti a ricoverarsi presso dei Cremonesi. Per tal modo erano
nemici nostri i Lodigiani, i Comaschi, i Pavesi, i Novaresi, i
Vigevanaschi e i Cremonesi.
Frattanto però che stavano rendendoci più odiosi ai vicini ed al
lontano nemico, la sola cosa ragionevole che femmo, si fu di munire
di un valido fossato, ossia d'una linea di circonvallazione tutta la
città; la quale, sebbene avesse tuttavia in piedi le antiche mura di
Massimiliano, ristorate dal l'arcivescovo Ansperto due secoli e mezzo
prima, nondimeno, per l'accresciuta popolazione doveva avere molte
abitazioni esternamente adiacenti alle mura medesime. Questo
fossato è precisamente quello per cui ora scorre il canale del
naviglio, e così con chiarezza ognuno può capire qual fosse il giro
delle antiche mura, che ora è indicato dalle chiaviche, da noi
chiamate cantarane, e quale quello del fossato, che visibilmente
anche oggidì circonda la città. Di questo fossato ne parla il
continuatore di Ottone di Frisinga e Radevico [394], inimico de'
Milanesi con questi termini: [395] Mediolanensem autem utpote viri
bellicosi et strenui civitatem suam magnis fossis circundederunt, et
imperatori audacter et viriliter restiterunt; e della terra cavata nel
fare la fossa se ne formò il parapetto nel luogo che anche
presentemente conserva il nome di Terraggio. Convien dire che
queste fortificazioni fossero assai ben fatte; poichè vedremo che non
vennero mai superate colla forza; e che, perduta che fu la città, ebbe
somma cura il vincitore di vederle distrutte. Venne in Italia
l'imperatore Federico alla testa di un'armata poderosissima, la quale
conteneva quasi tutte le forze della Germania. Basti il dire che aveva
sotto di lui a bloccare Milano Ladislao re di Boemia, Corrado duca di
Rotenburg, Lodovico conte palatino del Reno, Federico duca di
Svevia, Enrico duca d'Austria, Alberto conte del Tirolo, Ottone conte
palatino di Baviera, l'arcivescovo di Colonia Federico, Arnaldo
arcivescovo di Magonza, Hellino arcivescovo di Treveri, Wikmanno
arcivescovo di Magdeburg, il duca di Zarighen, e altri principi
sovrani [396]. (1158) La venuta di questa terribile armata accade
l'anno 1158. È strana la cerimonia che l'imperator Federico volle
premettere alle sue operazioni militari. Prima di innoltrarsi nel
Milanese fece intimare alla città un termine perentorio a presentare
le discolpe, se ne aveva. Non volle dare un gastigo senza una
sentenza, nè una sentenza senza un giudizio, nè un giudizio senza
una citazione. Vennero i legati di Milano a questa formalità.
L'eloquenza e i doni furono inefficaci; e la sentenza dichiarolli
pubblici nemici. Così, pagando questo facile tributo alla mania del
secolo, che in Italia singolarmente aveva riscaldati gli animi nello
studio e nel Codice e delle Pandette di Giustiniano, rese sacra in
certo qual modo la vendetta e interessate più che mai le città nostre
nemiche a favorire la rovina di Milano. Poich'ebbe data Federico la
sentenza, si rivolse al Milanese, e, affacciatosi a Cassano per passar
l'Adda, trovò il ponte così bene presidiato dai Milanesi, che non ardì
di superarlo. Gl'imperiali tentarono il guado verso Corneliano: alcuni
perirono nel fiume; ma però un buon drappello di militi si postò sulla
sponda destra del fiume. Per lo che i nostri trovavansi alla custodia
del ponte, dovettero abbandonarlo, per non vedersi a un tempo
stesso assaliti di fronte e al fianco; e si ricoverarono in Milano.
L'esercito imperiale s'incamminò a passare sul ponte, il quale si
ruppe, non sappiamo se a caso, con qualche danno dell'esercito.
Questi avvenimenti, anche minuti, meritano luogo nella storia,
poichè fanno conoscere che la guerra non si faceva con un cieco
impeto, ma con arte e consiglio anche in que' tempi. Un errore però
commisero allora i nostri, e fu quello di collocare un presidio nella
torre dell'Arco romano, di cui ho dato notizia nel capitolo primo.
Quella mole, fabbricata dai vincitori romani fuori del recinto per
dominare la città, e fondata sopra quattro enormi pilastri e quattro
arcate, doveva atterrarsi da una città che aspettava un potentissimo
esercito nemico. Un presidio così isolato non poteva nè difendersi,
nè reggere, soltanto che sotto vi si fosse collocata una catasta di
legna e postovi il fuoco. Gli imperiali, ben presto cominciando a
rompere i pilastri, costrinsero gl'infelici situati tanto incautamente ad
arrendersi, e dalla cima poi di quella gran torre, gl'imperiali, colla
pietrera, scagliarono incessantemente de' sassi a danno ed
incomodo inevitabile di coloro che stavano alla difesa della porta
Romana. L'imperatore pose il suo quartiere verso la Commenda di
Malta, che allora era la magione de' Templari. Il re di Boemia pose il
suo a San Dionigi. L'arcivescovo di Colonia alloggiò verso a San
Celso. Di contro a ciascheduna porta della città vi si postò un
principe; e si circondò la città con un esercito di centomila
uomini [397]; ovvero, come dice lo storico nostro contemporaneo Sire
Raul, di quindicimila cavalieri, e inumerevoli fantaccini. A tutte
queste terribili forze della Germania, dalla quale erano venuti quasi
tutti i sovrani alla testa de' loro sudditi armati, si unirono le forze di
quasi tutte le città di Lombardia; e il canonico di Praga Vincenzo, che
vi era presente, nomina Pavesi, Cremonesi, Lodigiani, Comaschi,
Veronesi, Mantovani, Bergamaschi, Parmigiani, Piacentini, Genovesi,
Tortonesi, Astigiani, Vercellesi, Novaresi, d'Ivrea, di Padova, d'Alba,
di Treviso, d'Aquilea, di Ferrara, di Reggio, di Modena, di Bologna,
d'Imola, di Cesena, di Forlì, di Rimini, di Fano, d'Ancona e di altre
città ancora, che tutte avevano mandate le loro milizie a combattere
contro di noi [398]. Al comparire di tante forze i Milanesi stavano
armati tranquillamente rimirandole dalle loro fortificazioni: [399]
Stabant armati supper vallum, nihil omnino strepentes; dubium,
principis advenientis aspectus utrum hanc reverentiam, et huius
silentii disciplinam, an metum universis incusserit, dice Radevico, lib.
i, cap. xxxii. Una tanto spaventosa unione di forze non si
impiegherebbe al dì d'oggi per acquistare una città presidiata da soli
cittadini. Un esercito assai minore basterebbe, e coll'assedio, ovvero
con un impetuoso assalto se ne renderebbe padrone; ma allora la
polve per anco non era conosciuta (la più antica memoria della polve
ascende sino alla pubblicazione dell'opera: De nullitate Magiae, in
Oxford, fatta da Rugiero Bacone circa l'anno 1260, cioè quasi un
secolo dopo i tempi de' quali tratto; e il più antico uso della polve
nella guerra seguì l'anno 1346 nella battaglia di Crecy, come ci
attestano Larrey e Mezzerai. Il re d'Inghilterra Edoardo scompigliò i
Francesi con cinque o sei cannoni; ciò accade più d'un secolo e
mezzo dopo Federico). Troppo era ardua impresa il venire a cimento
contro gli assediati, i quali, dalla sommità del terrapieno, scacciavano
nella larga fossa gli aggressori prima che ad essi potessero
nemmeno accostarsi, e perciò: [400] Divisis, ut dictum est, inter
principes exercitus portis Civitatis, singuli eorum festinare, parare,
sudibus, palis aliisque propugnaculis castra munire, propter
improvisos hostium incursus, decertabant. Neque enim vineis,
turribus, arietibus, aliorumque generum machinis tantam civitatem
attentandam putabant. Sed longa potius obsidione fatigatos ad
deditionem cogi, vel si foras propter fiduciam multitudinis erupissent,
proelio superatum iri [401]. Si aspettò adunque che il tedio e i
maneggi inducessero i Milanesi alla resa, e non ardì Federico di
sottometterli colla forza. Questi fatti, trasmessici da un tedesco,
nemico del nome italiano, e panegerista dell'imperator Federico,
provano abbastanza che Milano in quel tempo era una repubblica,
piccolissima per la sua estensione, ma di una forza e di un ardimento
maravigliosi; e se ella avesse avuta tanta sapienza, quanto ardire e
robustezza, forse la storia posteriore d'Italia sarebbe più simile alla
romana. Lo storico nostro Sire Raul ci parla di varie scorrerie che i
Milanesi fecero su i nemici, col rappresagliar ai medesimi molti
cavalli: [402] Interea milites Mediolani egrediebantur de civitate, et
auferebant scutiferis exercitus roncinos, et tantos abstulerunt, quod
roncinus quatuor solidis tertiolorum vendebaturj; e il Radevico, che
scrisse i fasti dell'imperator Federico per comando di lui, e in
conseguenza non è mai sospetto di parzialità per i Milanesi, descrive
varie sortite da essi fatte; ed una singolarmente caduta sopra il
conte palatino del Reno, e sul duca Federico di Svevia: [403] Apertis
portis cum pugnacissimis egressi, disjectis custodibus, usque ad jam
dictorum heroum castra excurrunt, oppugnant, sauciant. Alemanni,
ubi hostes adventare senserant, inopinata re, ac improvisa primo
perculsi (l'affare era di notte) alter apud alterum formidinem simul,
et tumultum facere: deinde alius alium appellare, hortari, arma
capessere, venientes excipere, instantes propulsare: clamor
permixtus hortatione, strepitus armorum, etc., e conchiude che,
accorsovi poi il re di Boemia coi suoi, e così resasi più vasta l'azione,
i Milanesi, non potendo reggere a tanti, ritornarono nella città [404].
Questo fatto, altrimenti in parte, lo descrive la cronaca del canonico
Vincenzo da Praga, che si legge nel libro del P. Gelasio Dobner [405].
Secondo detto cronista la sortita fatta dai Milanesi non fu di notte,
ma [406] circa horam vespertinam... fit pugna ex utraque parte:
fortissimi caeduntur milites, nec hi vincuntur nec illi. Videns autem
praedictus princeps se eis sufficere non posse, ad regem Bohemiae
plurimos mittit nuncios, rogans ut ei sua subveniant militia; dice poi
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