LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® As An Affective Experience In Doctoral Researchers’ Support: Tensions And New Freedoms

This paper reports some of the findings linked to a small scale phenomenographic study in which it was explored how LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® (LSP) is experienced by coaches working in higher education as supervisors of doctoral students, are involved in doctoral researchers’ development or doctoral supervisors’ development. Data was gathered through five individual semi-structured interviews. Through the iterative phenomenographic analysis three categories of description emerged, ‘LSP as a relational experience’, ‘LSP as an affective experience’ and ‘LSP as a facilitative experience’ and their limited qualitatively different variations. The findings in relation to ‘LSP as an affective experience’ created tensions relating to participation, expression and the material itself as well as new freedoms that were invigorating such as opening-up, engaging in playful explorations and combining more than one method.