09. Detour and Return: Reflections on Portable Pedagogy in Art and Design Education

Published by: Creative Pedagogy

Volume: 1 Issue: 1 Year: 2026

Author: Digger Nutter (Glasgow School of Art)

Corresponding Author: Digger Nutter D.Nutter@gsa.ac.uk

Abstract

This reflective paper explores how performing pedagogic practice in public can transform understanding of that practice. Detour, a paired walking activity originally developed for interior design students, was re-enacted at the GLAD 2025 symposium through a double-voice presentation. One voice, pre-recorded, described the original project with confidence; the other, live and uncertain, responded in real-time. This act of sharing became an experiment in pedagogic translation, surfacing three tensions latent in the original work: balancing openness with structure, practising attentiveness rather than intervention, and recognising silence as a pedagogic response.

Through these moments of noticing, I develop three conceptual scaffolds: trust objects, rhythm, and relevance, that together articulate portable pedagogy, a way of understanding how the relational affordances of studio teaching might translate across disciplinary boundaries. The central insight is that practices do not transfer through replication but require translation; what needs to travel is not the specific activity but the principles that made it possible. Three scaffolds support this portability: trust objects that hold lightly (artefacts carrying pedagogic intention while enabling autonomy), rhythm as a subtle pedagogic structure (temporal design that shapes attention), and relevance understood as relational rather than imposed (a connection emerging between the activity and the learner's questions).

Rather than offering a replicable method, the paper proposes conceptual scaffolds for understanding how pedagogic practices might translate across contexts. Portable pedagogy asks not “will this work elsewhere?” but "what need for it for this to work elsewhere?”

Keywords: Walking pedagogy, research-creation, performance as inquiry, studio pedagogy, pedagogic translation.