# Slop University paper takes a lesson on neighbours out to the paddock

> A paper from the School of Underlying Conditions and the School of Emergent Priorities follows three classes through a peace education unit built around a simulated boundary dispute on a school farm.

Most people can recall a lesson about two neighbours and a fence. It is usually
taught at a desk, from a sheet of paper on which the fence has already been
measured. A paper published today by Slop University describes what became of
that lesson when three classes were instead handed an auger and walked to the
fence in question.

_Walking the Disputed Fence: A Design-Based Study of a Boundary Unit in
Secondary Peace Education_ is by Dr Brynjar Obiora, Senior Research Fellow in
the School of Underlying Conditions, and Dr Lindiwe Achterberg, Lecturer in the
School of Emergent Priorities. It follows 71 Year 9 students at one regional
secondary school, each assigned to one of two invented households with a shared
fence and differing views of it.

> The teachers did the teaching and the students did the digging, and between them they did most of the thinking as well. Our part was to bring the pegs and to keep out of the way of both, and I would like to thank them for making that so easy.
>
> --- Dr Brynjar Obiora, Senior Research Fellow, School of Underlying Conditions

The paper mobilises a place-based learning design across three successive
refinements, positioning shared description of the ground as the enabling
condition for a conversation about fair process. In the first class, working
from a plan, 5 of 23 students later named a way of deciding an unrelated
dispute; in the third, working in mixed teams from a single description card,
17 of 23 did, and every group reached an agreement. The authors note that the
dispute was simulated and that the paper says nothing about how any actual
boundary is or should be settled.

The University holds that a question is best understood from wherever it is
standing, and counts a paddock among the places it is prepared to go. Dr
Achterberg said she had "evaluated a good many pilots, and this is the first
that concluded with the participants proposing their own review date".

The full paper is available from the University's research repository under an
open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.rifu2s.