Patrick Dillon

University of Exeter | UoE

The Uffington White Horse, possibly the oldest hill figure in Britain, lies just off the Ridgeway in Oxfordshire, close to the ancient enclosure known as Uffington Castle and a Neolithic long barrow called Waylands Smithy. Anna Dillon, Priscilla Trenchard, Chris Hoggett and Patrick Dillon have responded to the White Horse in its setting through dra...

Design Roots provides a comprehensive review of culturally significant designs, products and practices which are rooted to particular communities through making tradition and a sense of place. Many rich traditional practices associated with community, tacit knowledge and culture are being rapidly lost due to globalisation and urbanisation. Yet they...

This paper reports comparative case studies in three countries, Estonia, Cyprus and Peru. Through these, the cultural ecologies of six textile craft practitioners, two in each country, were investigated using interview-based situational analysis. Cultural ecology is concerned with transactional relationships between people and the environments they...

This is an edited version of a paper presented at the conference 'Studying Traditional Crafts', Viljandi, Estonia, November 12-14, 2019. It contains PowerPoint frames that were designed to present the essential theoretical detail of cultural ecology by way of a diagrammatic animation. These have been consolidated and interleaved with short explanat...

The idea of a circular economy is based on self-contained enterprises employing local people, producing goods and services from local resources, minimis-ing waste and maximising internal recycling. Historically, farming systems in northern and western Europe operated in circular economies with integral craft practices. We now call this 'traditional...

Elevating Wiltshire features a selection of artwork by Anna Dillon and drone photography by Hedley Thorne. Anna Dillon is an established landscape painter. She has exhibited widely and her work features as illustrations in several books. Anna’s landscape paintings capture the timeless spatial character of place, its topographical essence. They are...

Through perspectives drawn from the philosophy of law and the theory of cultural ecology, this paper examines how during a pandemic generalized regulations and restrictions may need to be adapted to local conditions. This is especially so when lifestyles and working practices are location-sensitive. The case of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region (...

Research into educational applications of augmented reality has largely centred around neuroscience, the biological sciences and social sciences. From this, a basic theoretical and empirical framework has been established. Moving beyond the current paradigm will involve drawing on research from allied disciplines and being open to ideas from the f...

Sacred places take many forms and are experienced and understood in many different ways. There are no fixed definitions. For me, a sacred place is somewhere that is recognised for its spiritual significance, usually because of the way people engage with it through ceremony, worship of a deity, or acts of homage. It may be a large tract of landscape...

Dillon P. 2020. Traditsioonilise käsitöö uurimine: toob mineviku tänapäeva ja loob tulevikku [Studying Traditional Crafts: bringing the past into the present and making a future], Studia vernacula, 12, 200-209. English version

Studying Traditional Crafts’ was the theme of a conference organised by the Estonian Native Crafts Department of the Viljandi Culture Academy, one of four colleges in the University of Tartu. The conference was held in Viljandi, November 12th-13th, 2019, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Department. Over one hundred people attended the confe...

In the twelfth century a medieval scribe included the Uffington White Horse, along with Stonehenge, as one of the 'Wonders of Britain'. This documentary evidence confirms that the Horse is ancient. No other hill-figure is known to be as old. But what constituted a 'Wonder' in the medieval world? Richard Ingrams, the founder of Private Eye and The O...

The game of chess and its immediate precursors have a history of over 2,000 years. But what of the prehistory of the game and the pieces used? The hypothesis presented in this article is that the development of the pieces that are now associated with chess is part of a cultural ecological continuum of gaming materials through stones and other natur...

My research extends across a number of fields: Information technologies and social media in education, crafts, heritage, environmental education, landscape studies. I explain how I have adopted a cultural ecological framework to make connections in this work, and adapted it to focus on an exploration of how people experience the world and how they...

Environment and School Initiatives" (ENSI) was an international network, offering a platform for cooperation among practitioners, researchers and policy makers in the fields of Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development. Innovative environmental projects, Action Research, Quality Criteria for ESD schools, Teacher competencies...

The three decades during which the Environmental and School Initiatives International Non-profit Association (ENSI-inpa, hereafter ENSI for short) has existed coincides with a fundamental shift from an analogue to a digital world. ENSI arose from a European tradition of environmental education and over thirty years it helped shape a sustainability...

For a brief period at the beginning of the First World War, the villages of Aston Tirrold and Aston Upthorpe (known as ‘The Astons’), which are near Didcot and Wallingford in what was then Berkshire, but now Oxfordshire, were a minor, if little known, centre of literary activity. There is no direct connection between the intellectual communities in...

The paper outlines a provisional framework for location-sensitive governance to promote inclusive decision making and sustainable lifestyles. The paper reflects the understanding we have developed through crossdisciplinary cooperation. Our intention is to outline the research and bring it to the attention of the wider academic audience of Arctic la...

This article is about facilitating collaborative, creative improvisations in learning with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and in so doing enhancing under-utilised creative possibilities in education and development in schools, universities, workplaces and in every-day life. Improvisation is defned and earlier research on supportin...

This article reports comparative case studies in three countries: Estonia, Cyprus and Peru. Through these, the cultural ecologies of six textile craft practitioners, two in each country, were investigated using an interviewbased situational analysis. Cultural ecology is concerned with transactional relationships between people and the environments...

This research focuses on Finnish students’ (n = 84) experiences of using personal iPads in their studies through 3 years of upper secondary schooling. It is based on results from one of the first schools in Finland where all the new students were provided with iPads at the start of their studies. Data consists of: (i) 127 short stories written by s...

The topic of this book concerns protection of sacred sites in the Arctic. To recognise indigenous customary law means to support indigenous customary protection of such sacred sites. It also implies safeguarding cultural heritage in the Arctic. Both legal pluralism and cultural ecology help us understand indigenous customary laws in the Arctic and...

This research is a contribution to issues of digital technology use at the interface of formal and informal learning contexts. The research was conducted in the discourse tradition and investigates Finnish teacher training students’ ‘manners of speaking’ as resources for, and obstacles to, making pedagogical changes in response to the potential of...

This book focuses specifically on the experience and protection of indigenous, and particularly Sámi sacred sites in the Arctic. Sacred sites are being increasingly recognized as important reservoirs of Arctic cultural and biological diversity, as a means for the transmission of culture and identity, and a tool for the preservation of fragile north...

The paper outlines a provisional framework for location-sensitive governance to promote inclusive decision making and sustainable lifestyles. The paper reflects the understanding we have developed through crossdisciplinary cooperation. Our intention is to outline the research and bring it to the attention of the wider academic audience of Arctic la...

The Ridgeway is part of a larger network of paths and tracks that traverse the chalk landscapes of southern England. Eric Jones and Patrick Dillon tell the story of the middle section, which runs from Streatley in Berkshire, where the River Thames cuts through the chalk hills, to the prehistoric complex at Avebury in Wiltshire. It is an account of...

This article concerns perspectives on, and formative experiences of, crafts and cultural heritage reported by twenty exchange students from seven countries who studied Cultural Heritage and Craft Education in an International Study Programme at a University in Finland. The research is reported in a cultural ecological framework. Data were collected...

ABSTRACT Visual databases are increasingly important resources through which individuals and groups can undertake species identification. This paper reports research on the collaborative processes undertaken by pre-service teacher students when working in small groups to identify birds using an Internet-based taxonomic resource. The student groups...

This paper offers a brief overview of some connections between art, environment and nomadic cosmologies, and relates these to matters concerned with customary laws. The connections are made in a cultural ecological framework which emphasises the transactional basis of how people engage with their environments. Whereas art has always been an integra...

This paper reports research in Finland into how pre-service teachers' experiences of using Second Life in a course about sex education, and how projections about the use of virtual environments like Second Life in their future teaching at primary level, contributed to the development of their proto-TPACK (Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowl...

This research focuses on how experiences of learning with ICT in pedagogically meaningful ways can affect pre-service teachers’ intentions to use ICT for teaching and learning. The research is based on the framework of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB). It is a quasi-experimental design study with pre- and post-testing. The effects that a 12-we...

Many pre-service teachers are members of the net generation and are expected to be familiar with different ICTs, yet several studies have indicated that they are not necessarily able to use them for teaching and learning. The notion of teachers’ technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK) is central to this concern. In this study we use the responses...

Cultural ecology takes a holistic and integrative view of the relationships between people and the environments they inhabit. In such a view, environment is seen not as a separate, ‘given’ entity, but rather something that emerges from a complex set of interactions and transactions between people, their material and organisational surroundings, the...

This paper reports a comparative study in a Finnish school and a British school of the emotional associations made by 10-11-year-olds with their school grounds. Colour and symbol associations were used as a stimulus for getting students to engage with their school grounds, describe their feelings about them, and produce a lexicon of ‘emotion words’...

Scaffolding helps the novice to accomplish a task goal or solve a problem that otherwise would be beyond unassisted efforts. Scaffolding firstly aims to support the learner in accomplishing the task and secondly in learning from the task and improving future performance. This study has examined pre-service teachers’ experiences of technologyenhance...

This study focuses on upper secondary and vocational level teachers as users of social software i.e. what software they use during their leisure and work and for what purposes they use software in teaching. The study is theorised within a technological pedagogical content knowledge framework, the emphasis is especially on technological knowledge an...

The aim of this chapter is to draw together two theoretical perspectives on the dynamics of educational change and propose a contemporary integrated framework as an analytical tool for use in education. A cultural ecological framework, which views the individual as an integral part of the environment and places significance on interaction with the...

In this paper we review briefly histories and ideologies underlying multiculturalism in Nordic countries, highlighting tensions between integrationist and inclusive approaches. We propose a cultural ecological framework through which we discuss the possibility of a transculturalism based on Fourth World engagement with the environment. Cultural eco...

This chapter sets out an approach to professional development and team building in a newly established faculty in a Finnish university. A method is given for mapping the academic and professional experiences of eight faculty members across disciplinary boundaries to arrive at a cross-disciplinary framework for collaborative research in multi- and i...

This paper provides an insight into challenges with collaborative learning using social software. It reports two case studies conducted in a teacher training department in a Finnish university. Although the case studies were concerned with providing teacher students with inspiring and motivating experiences of using ICT in pedagogically meaningful...

This paper presents a framework for facilitating localisation and contextualisation of information and communication technology (ICT) in education. The framework is developed through the cumulative improvement of the theoretical foundations of the CATI (Contextualise, Apply, Transfer, Import) model for implementing ICT in teaching and learning. The...

Research has demonstrated that simulation-based inquiry learning has significant advantages for learning outcomes when properly scaffolded. For successful learning in science with simulation-based inquiry, one needs to ascertain levels of background knowledge so as to support learners in making, evaluating and modifying hypotheses, conducting exper...

This paper reports a lexicon of emotional associations made by 10-11 year old students with their school grounds. Colour and symbol associations were used as a stimulus for getting students to engage with their school grounds, describe their feelings about them, and produce a lexicon of emotional word's. The method was developed with students in Fi...

This article is an invitation to therapeutic deconstruction: a call to reconsider our assumptions about land, water and the relationship between the wet and the dry. It takes the form of a dialogue in which poetry (Gross) and visual art (Price) prompts, probes and challenges reflections offered by a natural resource economist (Staddon), a cultural...

This article focuses on personal learning environments (PLEs). The idea with PLEs is to put students in a more central position in the learning process by allowing them to design their own learning environments and by emphasising the self-regulated nature of the learning. This study describes the structure, functions and challenges of PLEs made by...

This paper reports a case study for developing lecture teaching in higher education by connecting simultaneously the benefits of face-to-face teaching and social software for capturing and sharing students' lecture notes. The study was conducted with 12 university students taking a degree course on pre-primary education. Data were collected on (1)...

This paper reports the first stage in a programme of research into improvisation in learning being conducted at the University of Eastern Finland. It is concerned with the extent to which improvisation in learning is a spontaneous activity that occurs out of the process of collaboration. It addresses the question: does the sharing of lecture notes...

English and Finnish versions of a presentation about a cultural ecological perspective on education given at the ‘Models of culture-oriented environmental education for youth work’, The Finnish Foundation for Environmental Education, Rantasalmi, Finland, May 2011.

The research reported here is concerned with a critical examination of some of the assumptions concerning the ‘Net Generation’ capabilities of 74 first‐year student teachers in a Finnish university. There are assumptions that: (i) Net Generation students are adept at learning through discovery and thinking in a hypertext‐like manner (Oblinger & Obl...

This paper opens with a critique of the majoritarian, post-Enlightenment, scientific worldview, the assumptions it makes about human cosmologies and lifestyles and how, in turn, these assumptions influence the nature of educational systems. The critique focuses on how the experiences of minority cultures, particularly those cultures that are nomadi...

This paper takes as its starting point assumptions about use of information and communication technology (ICT) by people born after 1983, the so called net generation. The focus of the paper is on social networking. A questionnaire survey was carried out with 1070 students from schools in Eastern Finland. Data are presented on students’ ICT-skills...

This paper explores relationships between crafts, craft education and cultural heritage as reflected in the individual experiences and collective values of fifteen female university students of different nationalities. The students (all trainee teachers) were following a course in crafts and craft education as part of an International Study Program...

This paper reports a 5-year design experiment on cumulative knowledge building as part of an international project. Through a longitudinal study and analysis of cumulative research data, we sought to answer the question, ‘what happened and why in knowledge building?’ Research data constitute messages which participants have written into a shared kn...

This contribution is an overview of the papers presented at the Northern Environmental Education Development (NEED) conference in Joensuu, 2009. It was published as Dillon, P. 2010. Geo-scientific education, tourism and environmental interpretation: Making connections and raising issues, pp. 70-76 in T. Keinonen, S. Juntunen & S. Kärkkäinen (Eds) L...

This paper presents a rationale for integrating two theoretical perspectives on information and communication technology (ICT) education. The CATI (Contextualize, Apply, Transfer, Import) framework for implementing ICT in developing countries is integrated with a cultural ecological framework based on interactions and transactions between people an...

The Finnish high school system in rural areas is facing challenges because of a decreasing number of the students. This situation places new emphasis on online learning. Online learning offers new possibilities for high schools to provide equal learning opportunities for their students. This paper explores students’ readiness to adapt their studyin...

The need for intercultural awareness and skills emerges strongly in both distance learning courses, and in social life in multicultural societies. The study of online language transactions is therefore an important aspect of the emerging culture and sociolinguistics of computer mediated communication. The research reported in this paper concerns pe...

Sociocultural theory is a Western construct, an explanatory framework for cultural patterns associated with settled, largely urban, lifestyles. In Mongolia the majority of people are mobile pastoralists. The Mongolian situation challenges some fundamental premises of Western theory. In Western educational situations, structures, contexts and schema...

This paper develops the idea of a pedagogy of connection for working across and between disciplines by examining transactions that take place at the boundaries between contributing disciplines. Characteristics of cross-disciplinary work are outlined and a case is made for regarding it as a creative and integrative activity. An analysis of two cross...

Three years ago the authors worked collaboratively on a paper that integrated theoretical perspectives and practical insights in a conceptualisation of adaptive educational environments as creative spaces for fostering intellectual abilities associated with transference and synthesis in cross-disciplinary situations (Loi & Dillon, 2006). Since 2006...

This paper reports a small‐scale investigation into the differences in learning behaviour exhibited by members of an intercultural group undertaking an online course on educational enquiry in support of doctoral research in education. Differences in learning behaviour can be attributed in part to the different cultural and linguistic backgrounds of...

In this paper, the idea of coming into presence and an epistemology that recognises the agency of the learner in the construction of knowledge is developed as an organising framework for reconceptualising design education. Design is typically taught as a problem solving exercise based on a representational epistemology. A critique of the representa...

A case is made for working in higher education across and between disciplines, variously known as inter- and multidisciplinarity. Integrativism is proposed as an inclusive term for these different but related modes of academic work. Working integratively is presented as a creative activity. The application of integrativism to the curriculum leads t...

This paper integrates theoretical perspectives and practical insights to offer a conceptualization of adaptive educational environments as creative spaces for fostering certain intellectual abilities associated with creativity, notably transference and synthesis in cross‐disciplinary situations. When educational environments are modeled as systems,...

In this article integrativism is proposed as a framework for e‐learning and practitioner research. The philosophical bases of integrativism are outlined. Foundational principles of integrating education, derived from the notions of continual quality improvement and high‐quality learning, are explained. The extension of integrating education to embr...

A 4‐year‐long action research project involving curriculum development in education for sustainable living as part of home economics in a university teacher education course is described and analysed. Design experiments were used to develop the curriculum and promote learning. The design experiments emphasised an integrating approach to action rese...

The 'Personalisation and Digital Technologies' report moves the personalisation debate forward by focusing specifically on the potential of digital technologies in four key areas: enabling learners to make informed educational choices; diversifying and acknowledging different forms of skills and knowledge; creating diverse learning environments; an...

Educational multimedia, as combinations of text, images, graphics and sound, in both offline and online digital formats, may be analysed in terms of the educational transactions it supports (e.g. exchange of information, application of skill, construction of knowledge, self-expression, social interaction). Through instructional design, transactions...

 For largely historical reasons, information and communication technology in education has been heavily influenced by a form of constructivism based on the transmission and transformation of information. This approach has implications for both learning and teaching in the field. The assumptions underlying the approach are explored and a critique of...

The model of design taught in educational institutions in the United Kingdom and elsewhere has fundamental weaknesses. At best it is a partial and superficial description of what happens when individuals engage in the process of design. At worst it is inaccurate and misleading. The authors are working on multiple-perspective approaches to design ed...

Museum online learning initiatives (MOLLIs) have been developed in a partnership between the University of Exeter and the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, UK. Educational transactions in MOLLIs are analysed as a series of dynamic processes: information exchange, skills application, knowledge construction, social interaction, and self-expressio...

There are similarities and differences between the contexts of craft, design and fine art. The differences are subtle but fundamental. Historically, the context of craft was utility and the context of fine art was aesthetic. In recent times, utility has become a characteristic of design; although craft objects may still have utility, they now more...

This article addresses issues surrounding the process of training people in the use of information and communications technology, and the application of the outcomes of training in the workplace. The topic is discussed in the context of the evaluation of Ensuring Effectiveness of ICT Training. This is a CD-ROM developed as a pilot multimedia resour...