MAHINDA DEEGALLE

1. INCORPORATING FIELDWORK TO INNOVATIVE LEARNING STRATEGIESTHE DVD PRODUCTION AS AN ASSESSMENT FOR STUDYING KOREAN RELIGIONS MAHINDA DEEGALLE

2. Focus: Innovative Module • SR3028 Religion, Society and Culture in Korea • Module purpose: • (a) Providing an international educational experience • (b) Introducing innovative and creative assessment • (c) Using more fieldwork • (d) Developing employability skills

3. Five Aspects • (a) Formal learning: Dongguk Summer School • (b) One weekend temple stay • (c) Living with host families • (d) Independent and group fieldwork observations • (e) Gathering audio-visual materials for DVD

4. Background and Funding • MoU between Bath Spa and Dongguk in Sept. 2007 • Partial funding from the PMI2 of British Council

5. Assessments • (a) Formative assessment: trial evaluation session on filming, selection of images and editing • (b) Participation (15%) • (c) Individual DVD script (25%) • (d) Group DVD Project Rationale (10%) • (e) DVD (50%)

6. Module Description • “Provides a unique, project based, international study abroad opportunity where you will participate in a four-week summer school at Dongguk University” • “Complete 60 hours of formal learning sessions in Buddhism and diverse philosophical and ethical aspects related to culture and society in Korea” • “Have first hand contacts with religious communities in carrying out fieldwork observations together with your peers in order to produce a group project based DVD that aims at enhancing your employability skills” • “An opportunity for you to adopt innovative learning strategies and develop skills of working independently as well as a team”

7. Module Aims • “Examine religion, philosophy, ethical norms and values, culture and society in Korea” • “Identify the problems as well as healthy interactions between religious communities in Korea” • “Assess the nature of cultural and social practices” • “Promote appropriate critical and empathetic understanding of religion, philosophy and ethical norms and values of contemporary Korea”

8. Ethnography? • “An ethnography is written representation of a culture (or selected aspects of a culture). It carries quite seriously intellectual and moral responsibilities, for the images of others inscribed in writing are most assuredly not neutral. Ethnographic writings can and do inform human conduct and judgment in innumerable ways by pointing to the choices and restrictions that reside at the very heart of social life.” John Van Maanen, Tales of the Field (1988: 1)

9. Ethnography? • “Fieldwork usually means living with and living like those who are studied (p. 2).” John Van Maanen, Tales of the Field

10. Ethnography? • “The ends of fiedlwork involve the catchall idea of culture… A culture is expressed (or constituted) only by the actions and words of its members and must be interpreted by, not given to, a fieldworker. To portray culture requires the fieldworker to hear, to see, and, most important for our purposes, to write of what was presumably witnessed and understood during a stay in the field. Culture is not itself visible, but is made visible only through its representation.” (p. 3). John Van Maanen, Tales of the Field

11. Ethnography? • “The fieldworker must display culture in a narrative, a written report of the fieldwork experience in self-consciously selected words. Ethnography is the result of fieldwork, but it is the written report that mut represent the culture, not the fieldwork itself (p. 4). John Van Maanen, Tales of the Field