What follows is a powerpoint presentation and lesson plan which I presented to my colleagues on the PgCert course for feedback, outlining my proposed intervention/artefact: an action research workshop and reading list centring rest and laziness. As I am a person with several chronic illnesses for which I am classified disabled, I am very interested in the idea of rest as teaching tool and a method of boosting creativity . I am also interested in rest as a political act of protest in a world which expects constant productivity and monetization of joy/hobbies.
Teaching on the MA Applied Imagination course, I noticed that our students are required to work through the holidays. Whilst I completely understand that school of thought that it is necessary for the course to function this way in order for students to get the most out of their time on the course, it does mean that they are constantly engaged with the course material and projects – resulting in there being no curriculum mandated breaks. Obviously the expectation is that students will be able to manage their own time effectively. However, the evidence points towards the majority of students procrastinating, then over working to compensate and burning out because they have not been given express, structural, permission to take time for themselves. Whilst educators cannot be wholly responsible for this, the power imbalance between staff and students creates a need for increased duty of care. For example, during the month-long Easter break our students were given an “independent study” period with a project deadline for the first week of term. This effectively ensures that even if they do take a break they will have the draining anxiety of having a project to complete hanging over their heads, which means that they are not actually receiving the benefits of resting.
MAAI students are already encouraged to wander (flaneurs) and embrace process-based learning , but I wanted to create an intervention that took this message and extended it. I began to consider the impact having no structured deliberate break could have on students, and how I could encourage them to embrace the concept of laziness and rest as an important part of learning rather than as an inconvenience. The use of Bertrand Russell’s text In Praise of Idleness is deliberate. Although it is an easy read compared to the texts of Russell’s contemporaries, it is still quite a dense piece of writing. As a result of this it is harder to absorb and focus on than other, easier, reads which leads to distraction. Functioning as a demonstration of my point that when the brain is expected to process large complex sections of text, it needs more breaks in order to allow time to properly “digest” the information. The current expectation of reading and instantly having an opinion or thought can lead to lack of clarity, critical thinking (which takes time) and engagement with the text in question. (It also privileges extroverted personalities who are able to read quickly at the expense of students with dyslexia or who are introverted for example.) My aim is that allowing students space and time to filter through the text will in fact lead to better understanding and allow them to “give themselves permission” to go at their own pace, rather than overwork themselves and become burnt out as a result.
The feedback from my colleagues was overall positive, they did suggest some further reading and resources such as The Nap Ministry which I have subsequently explored. The original presentation did not include the time allotted for each rest break which upon reflection I thought needed to be addressed, so they were added in later.
It is a strange sensation to have discussions about love, care and belonging through a screen. Particularly when there are issues with bandwidth which means you cannot see the faces of the other people in the cohort or hear them unless they are speaking and unmute their mics. In my own context as both teacher and student I often think about how this affects the engagement and learning of my students. Of course, I have my camera on all the time while I am teaching, but in the context of creating a sense of care and belonging between students in a classroom as well as between student and teacher I think this can be one of the downsides to online learning. It is difficult to create a sense of community and care between students when we range in career stages, ages, races, political opinions etc. Aside from the shared experience of taking the PgCert together there is not much else I have in common with many of my colleagues within the cohort. In that sense, how do you foster inter-student empathy with all of these positional barriers plus the added strain of teaching through a screen? As I have said, this is something I am wrestling with both within my teaching and learning practices.
“Belonging is intersectional and ultimately, perhaps (you may not agree) individual. We may ‘belong’ to groups, by virtue of our race, gender, academic discipline, academia in general, but this does not mean that we speak as one and can speak for each other. There is a radical individuality in the nature of human experience. This applies for our students as well. It makes little sense to speak of the student experience as something singular. Experience is something that an individual goes through.”
Lindsay Jordan (2020) Lecture notes on Love and Belonging in the Educational Realm.
The excerpt above, taken from Lindsay Jordan’s lecture notes on Love and Belonging in the Educational Realm, focusses a lot on the work of Anna Julia Cooper and how her positionality affected her personal and teaching philosophies. Despite Jordan noting that many of Cooper’s philosophies – namely her brand of feminism – were “Victorian” in their approach, they still hold a lot of resonance with the kinds of teaching methods practiced today. Certainly the way I was taught throughout my scholastic and university careers felt little different from the Victorian methods depicted in film and TV. It seems evident to me that although on the surface a lot of changes have been made to teaching, both politically and technologically (our ability to hold this session online is a case in point), in terms of our human ability to care and our inner worlds as teachers and students, we are still fairly Victorian. This makes sense, if Dunbar’s number is to be believed, on average human beings are only able to ‘retain’ around 150 contacts at one time. The homo sapien brain has barely evolved since our hunter-gatherer days, raising interesting implications for the politics of care within a digital society and within a learning environment. In the context of teaching, learning and care in an online space, the constant digital bombardment and demand for interaction across platforms may be responsible for students and teachers having to make extra effort to care about one another. (Levtin 2015)
“According to the theory, the tightest circle has just five people – loved ones. That’s followed by successive layers of 15 (good friends), 50 (friends), 150 (meaningful contacts), 500 (acquaintances) and 1500 (people you can recognise). People migrate in and out of these layers, but the idea is that space has to be carved out for any new entrants.”
Christine Ro (2019) Dunbar’s Number: Why We Can Only Maintain 150 Relationships BBC.com.
The reference to “carving out” space to care about new people is interesting in this context. As teachers we likely carve out new space in our brains which allows us to care for our students, however I wonder if our students do this for one another? Perhaps this is why cliques form quite early on within new university cohorts and stay relatively consistent over the duration of the course? The process and pressures of carving out new space in the brain for what students are learning likely leaves little room for caring for their entire cohort. This is disappointing for us as educators, because we want students to learn from one another as well as from us. Conversely, perhaps the pressure from tutors to engage with one another is what causes the lack of engagement, it feels like a task rather than a natural occurrence and therefore takes up brain space as an obligation rather than as a desirable social interaction.
Thinking about care and belonging in this context, the general format of seminars and ‘participating’ in classrooms or seminars tends to privilege those who are extroverted or ambiverted over those who are introverted. Padlets and Mentimeters can go some ways into remedying this issue – they can be anonymised and allow students more time to think about their answers before writing them. However, in a question and answer/call and response format – with a teacher asking a question and waiting expectantly with a half smile in a silence which becomes increasingly more uncomfortable – it is usually the extroverted students who get fed up of the silence and tension first and answer. Which leads to the same 5 people dominating the discussion, leaving out the rest who perhaps need more time to warm up. This is even more apparent in a digital teaching environment, when visual cues are lost due to cameras being off and mics being muted. How then can a teacher create a sense of belonging and care in such an environment without ostensibly picking on, and possibly further alienating, a student who may be engaged in the content of the session but who is very introverted?
Further to this point is the issue of safety, cultural literacy and love languages. In his 1992 book The Five Love Languages Gary Chapman suggests that there are 5 general ways that human beings express and experience love in their intimate romantic relationships. These are:
Words of affirmation
Quality time
Receiving/ giving gifts
Acts of service
Physical touch
Whilst I am by no means suggesting that educators care romantically for their students in this manner, I think it is possible to use this theory to create a tailored caring environment for students which helps them to feel safe and as if they belong. I think this is especially relevant when paired with the concept of cultural literacy for students from overseas or from diasporic communities. Something as basic as researching and making an effort to understand the teaching methods and cultures of the home countries our overseas students hail from can make a massive difference to how we tailor our teaching approaches, but also in our responses to their behaviour. For example, the majority of the cohort in the course I teach on is Chinese. Before I began teaching, my course leader took me aside and gave me some tips of cultural literacy I should be aware of, which helped me to understand my students better and allowed me to tailor my approach to care for their needs in a classroom environment. In their response piece to the question “Why Asian Students Are So Quiet?” for Shades of Noir Yifan He writes:
I smiled through the crit today because I don’t know when I should jump into the discussion.
I don’t want to cut people short.
I did try to talk at some point but was interrupted before I finished the first word because they did not hear me.
I guess I will never be loud enough to catch their attention.
But I hope that they took away from my awkward smile that I was not indifferent to their work.
Yifan He, response to the question “Why Asian Students Are So Quiet?”
The assumption by many western teachers is that Asian students are all introverted and shy. I disagree with this assumption and actually believe it to be racist. Like many issues in the teaching and learning sphere, the question of why East Asian students may be more quiet than western students in class is layered and situation dependent. In Yifan’s case, they did not feel safe to speak in that particular crit environment and therefore they said nothing. Students feeling safe to express themselves and get things “wrong” is a huge part of their ability to participate in class discussions that I think Western tutors often take for granted. Our teaching culture fosters this approach and we assume this methodology is ubiquitous due to the arrogance of settler colonialist thinking.
Considering this issue in terms of love languages may provide an answer, it is possible that overseas students are showing they are attentive, respectful and care about what we are saying by being quiet. When I asked some of my students why they were quiet in class (despite me asking them questions and trying to engage with them that way), some of them said that they didn’t feel they had anything to contribute at that time or felt they needed more time and space than I gave them to think about what was being discussed and feed back. Some said they did not want to embarrass themselves by saying ‘the wrong thing’ in front of their classmates. A few said that they weren’t sure how to say what they wanted to express in English and so said nothing. Most of them said that at one point or another their internet connection had dropped out and they had missed some of the conversation, and they felt uncomfortable interrupting me to ask what they had missed. They explained that in China it would be highly disrespectful to interrupt a teacher for this reason. Some apologised and said nothing more, which I recognised as a failure on my part to make them feel safe enough to speak.
After this conversation, I experimented with my teaching methods and used Padlet to try to make it easier – and feel safer – for my students to participate in our tutorials in different ways. With all this in mind, I think more can be done by the university to provide lecturers who teach on courses with large cohorts of overseas students with lessons on cultural competency. Specifically, providing information on the learning culture of the countries the overseas students come from so that we can think more critically about our teaching practices and how they could be seen by students from different cultures. Aside from this, overseas students who have gone back to their home countries in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic may be experiencing difficulties with their internet connections. Many of my students have said that they cannot access Moodle in China without a VPN, however VPNs are illegal in China. Another barrier to learning that Western teachers will overlook due to privilege. It could be useful for us to consider recording our tutorials more often so that students who miss out sections of the seminar/tutorial due to bad connections can watch back in their own time. In this way, we could meet students where they are and probably create a sense of belonging and care using new teaching languages which better facilitate learning.
In the session notes written by Lindsay she notes that teachers are sensitive to many things, our students, our own standards and the external expectations of course directors and university management as a whole. In this section on the pressure teachers experience, she quotes Cooper ‘there is no time to inwardly digest… she gives herself no joy in the act and loses entirely all sense of humour in the process.’ Thinking about what I have written above in relation to this, I think that the internal, external and digital pressures of care can sometimes build to a boiling point in tutors and contribute to ‘compassion fatigue’. Typically a phenomenon that is usually seen in people with medical caring responsibilities, compassion fatigue is exemplified by decreased empathy for the physical or emotional pain of others due to mental and physical exhaustion and overwhelm. Psychologists are reporting that the consistent bombardment we receive online via social media and news outlets is contributing to a more generalised version of compassion fatigue (Carter 2015). Although teachers do not have traditional caring responsibilities the way parents or medical professionals do, we still have a duty of care to our students and have ethics of care within our practices.
One of the session resources we were given as a case study ‘A time to reflect’ (an excerpt from Bruce Macfarlane’s text Teaching With Integrity: The Ethics of Higher Education Practice) is an example of how compassion fatigue can manifest in teaching. The text gives a fictional account of teacher Stephanie Rae, who is clearly burnt out. She has too many teaching responsibilities, not much time to do them in, and grows increasingly frustrated by the critique she receives about the “boring readings” from her students on their end of term evaluation forms. Stephanie is also frustrated by the teachings of a charismatic colleague who, she feels, creates an engaging learning environment but does not take well to criticism and neglects nuance in his approach. Noteworthy here is Stephanie’s lack of reflection when it comes to her own responses to critique. She is overwhelmed with work, feels she is doing the best she can and cannot see why the students are not responding to her lessons the way she thinks they should. As a result of being burnt out, she has very little time to pause and reflect on her teaching methods or on her own positionality and how these could be impacting her relationship with her students. Although she ostensibly cares about her students and wants them to do well on the course and enjoy their learning experience, she does not seem to be able to marry that with compassion for their individual or collective circumstances. To return to the Cooper quote, Stephanie appears to have no joy or sense of humour in the act of teaching anymore (if she ever did). The term ‘self-care’ now seems trite, but within the context of teaching and learning, it is as important for teachers to care for and maintain their own wellbeing as it is for them to care for the wellbeing of their students.
Bibliography
Jordan, L (2020) Google doc featuring lecture notes on Love and Belonging in the Educational Realm.
Ro, C., 2019. Dunbar’s Number: Why We Can Only Maintain 150 Relationships. [online] Bbc.com. Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191001-dunbars-number-why-we-can-only-maintain-150-relationships#:~:text=The%20theory%20of%20Dunbar’s%20number,about%20150%20connections%20at%20once.>
He, Y., n.d. Q: Why Asian Students Are So Quiet?. [online] Shadesofnoir.org.uk. Available at: <https://shadesofnoir.org.uk/q-why-asian-students-are-so-quiet/>
Chapman, G., 2015. The 5 Love Languages. Chicago: Northfield Pub.
Macfarlane, B., 2009. A Time to Reflect, from Teaching With Integrity. London: Routledge.
Levitin, D., 2015. Why The Modern World Is Bad For Your Brain. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/18/modern-world-bad-for-brain-daniel-j-levitin-organized-mind-information-overload>
Bourg Carter, S., 2014. Are You Suffering From Compassion Fatigue?. [online] Psychology Today. Available at: <https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/high-octane-women/201407/are-you-suffering-compassion-fatigue>
Prior to the MAAI summer independent study break, all of the tutors were asked to create a lecture based upon the Learning Outcomes of the course. I was assigned “Being Proactive – The ability to take responsibility for your self-direction and show informed decision-making and originality in planning and scoping a major project. (AC Process)”
I was quite nervous about this lecture to begin with, because usually my interactions with students are centred around tutorials and I have a slight fear of public speaking. Aside from this, all of my colleagues have been teaching for a long time and are much more established in both their pedagogical and creative practices than I am. If my lecture had been centred around the learning outcome of Impostor Syndrome I think I would have been eminently qualified.
When planning my lecture, I began by thinking about how I could translate my teaching practice during tutorials into a presentation format. I tend to use my personal and professional experience as examples during my tutorials, as I feel that students respond better to personal reflections rather than purely academic examples. On a personal level, I prefer it when my teachers use examples from their own careers to contextualise what we are learning for this reason. Additionally, many of the students are currently facing several setbacks to their projects as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Some have had loved ones become ill, while others have been unable to reach stakeholders due or use the UAL library for research. In order to give these students a boost, I decided to use the concepts of radical vulnerability and radical empathy (Nagar, 2019) to create a lecture that reflected some of the challenges they may be facing now.
As someone who was diagnosed with several chronic illnesses during their first year of University and still managed to graduate on time, I know something about experiencing medical difficulties during a stressful academic time. I have also ‘failed’ professionally a number of times. One of the core aims of MAAI is to teach students to embrace setbacks as opportunities for learning and development of “out of the box” thinking. This lecture was my attempt to give real life examples of how students might utilise proactivity to adapt a ‘failure’ and use it to create lasting and empowering change.
Blackboard Collaborate recording of my mini-lecture on ‘Being Proactive’ for the students of MA Applied Imagination.
After delivering the presentation, several of my colleagues contacted me privately to say that they thought the lecture was an excellent example of reflexive practice. A senior colleague mentioned that they thought I showed “real leadership” in my approach. This helped to boost my confidence and silence some of the impostor syndrome voices I have been living with since I began teaching on the course. Part of that is due to me teaching on an MA course despite not having an MA myself. However, receiving praise and encouragement from colleagues who have been teaching much longer than I have was helpful in boosting my confidence.
Gallery of the PowerPoint slides used in my lecture.
Task 1 Look at the following resources and respond: Visit the Shades of Noir (SoN) consider how you could use this resource in your practice and answer the questions Write a min. 250 word reflection or no more than 10 minute vlog.
How could you apply the resources to your own teaching practice? The majority of the students I teach are from China, which obviously has its own racial and class tensions that I am beginning to understand more and more through my own research and through engaging with my students. I teach on MA Applied Imagination and we have one of the most diverse course teams in the University, both in practice and in terms of race. I am very conscious that when overseas students attend university in the UK, particularly London, these students are not only learning in a secondary language, they are also learning to navigate British colonial racism along with all the language we use to identify and fight against that racism. It is obvious that many of the students in our cohort really struggle with the differences in culture, including how we talk about race in the UK. If I were to plan a lesson around the Shades site, I think I would set up a safe space for my students to read through some articles or ToRs and openly discuss any terms they may be unfamiliar with or unclear on. Perhaps a translation or terminology creation exercise where we explore the language around race used in different cultures. After that I would discuss my positionality (mixed, Jewish, white-passing, disabled) and ask them to discuss theirs in relation to the ToRs they have read. I think this step is essential to fostering deeper understanding because it is very easy as a student reading an academic text to intellectualise a subject and forget to root your understanding of what you are learning within the context of lived experience. I personally do this a lot, so it would be a good exercise for me as well as my students.
How could you integrate the research/work your students do on this subject into your teaching/professional practice? I have to be honest and say that this question makes me a little uncomfortable, because there is a power imbalance between students and staff, the suggestion of “integrating” the work of a student into my own practice feels appropriative. Having said that, I think this very much depends on the work of the students. If the scenario is similar to the one I have outlined above, I would probably work on incorporating discussion of key terms around social justice and race within each session in a way which is accessible and gives the students a chance to feed back their own experiences if they wish to. Can you cite examples? You will share your thoughts within your groups and comment and share further resources you use in your own context. We as a course team have had many discussions around the racism our students have encountered since Covid and how we can provide support for them in a way which is sensitive and maintains healthy boundaries. Too often as academics we assume what our students do and don’t know which can cause harm. I think it is important to arm students, particularly when they come from a different culture, with resources that provide them with context for their experiences in terms of the historical systemic racism in the UK. I think the University should do more to be transparent with overseas students of colour regarding the racism they may encounter attending University here. This is particularly relevant now that quarantine the Black Lives Matter protests are forcing people to pay attention to the catastrophic consequences of white supremacy, racism and anti-blackness worldwide. As a result I deliberately try to introduce resources and discussion around intersectionality during every tutorial I conduct, and I encourage students to examine and challenge their own perspectives around race, gender and sexuality.
Task 2 Read Hahn Tapper (2013) ‘A pedagogy of social justice education: social identity, theory and intersectionality’, Pp. 411- 417 (and see diagram on p.426) this can be found in the blog PDF within moodle. Discuss two things you learnt from the text. And one question/provocation you have about the text. Write a min. 100 word reflection or no more than 5 minute vlog.
“Although this is not necessarily a problem—the heterogeneity surrounding an idea can potentially add great depth to its meaning—when a term is used without simultaneously offering a definition, its meaning can become inconsistent or even superficial.”
The quote above really stuck out to me, I often think about this in terms of the dictionary definition of racism as “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.” vs the social justice definition “The individual, cultural, and institutional beliefs and discrimination that systematically oppress people of color (Blacks, Latino/as, Native Americans, and Asians).” (National Conference for Community and Justice website) The former being the definition which is frequently weoponised by people displaying white fragility so that they cannot be held accountable and who also make claims towards “reverse racism” (which makes 0 sense since the reverse of racism is anti-racism).
Relating this to Tapper’s discussion of different conflict resolution methodologies in the text Contact Hypothesis (exposure to an opposing group in a positive way can cause toxic ideas about the group to dissipate over time due to cognitive dissonance) and Social Identity Theory (SIT), “SIT posits that intergroup encounters must be approached in and through students’ larger social identities.” I saw some distinct parallels between the two. In both cases the former allows for little introspection or challenge to behaviour and does not take into account the lived experiences of the people involved, whereas the latter provides much needed context and nuance for the situation at hand. I do find it strange that so far on this course there have been no active workshops around conflict resolution, particularly pertaining to highly charged topics such as race, religion and disability. Again the assumptions made by an academic body – namely that we all empathise and manage conflicts in a way which is healthy- can cause harm to both staff and students and needs addressing.
Task 3 Watch the student film ‘Room of Silence’ from Rhode Island School of Design https://vimeo.com/161259012. Write a min. 100 word reflection or no more than 5 minute vlog
Watching this I felt completely frustrated and angry, there is so much to unpack. I was lucky enough to have academics of colour teaching me when I was at university at Middlesex, and at the time I naively assumed that every Fine Art course was similar – since the arts are so liberal. It was only after speaking to friends who graduated from other universities that I was made aware of the lack of representation of BPOC academics across all teaching levels. Obviously this is a disgrace – for multiple reasons. The thought that these students have paid for an education which they are essentially not receiving because of the lack of knowledge and racism of the faculty is infuriating. Experiences like mine, where students of colour are supported by staff of colour and the reading and references are wide-ranging and attempting to be inclusive, are obviously unicorn-like in their rarity. What stuck out to me the most is the emotional labour the students in the video all had to perform. It is clear that managing their own emotions and expectations as well as those of their fellow students and their teachers is exhausting and will affect their work, but when it comes to assessment these factors are obviously never considered and they are clearly contributing to attainment gaps between white and BIPOC students.
Task 4 Review ‘Retention and attainment in the disciplines: Art and Design’ Finnigan and Richards 2016. Discuss two things you learnt from the text. And one question/provocation you have about the text. Write a min. 100 word reflection or no more than 5 minute vlog
Reading this report I was immediately struck by two points, the concept of “talent over privilege” and the idea that students are encouraged to “take risks” but desire certainty and safety from tutors. For me, the concept of talent itself is tricky, and very coded by the overwhelming concept of the white, cis-het male genius artist archetype. If we extend that further, of course it is easy to be a “genius” and feel safe to take risks with your work if you have privilege and are in the majority. If you have precedent and an entire canon and cultural model to support your behaviour and work you would think nothing of “shaking things up”. However, students of colour may come from backgrounds where they are already taking a significant risk by going to art school in the first place, rather than a career which is deemed as being more “solid” e.g. doctor, lawyer, engineer etc. The flip side of this is that because of racism, when students of colour do take risks with their work they are often penalized for it as seen in the “The Room of Silence” film, their tutors do not know how to effectively critique the themes in their work or are deliberately obtuse when challenged about their lack of knowledge and racist teaching practices. In both cases the lack of awareness in the faculty and the policies of the university as a whole is a serious issue which HE institutions seem to only want to address or combat on a surface level.
How could you apply the resources to your own teaching practice?
How could you integrate the research/work your students do on this subject into your teaching/professional practice?
Can you cite examples? You will share your thoughts within your groups and comment and share further resources you use in your own context. Write a min. 250 word reflection or no more than 10 minute vlog.
Reflection: Looking at the site it is clear that many academics at UAL have thought very deeply about the relationship between the arts and religion. Despite artists coming from various backgrounds the arts are now considered “secular” (read religiously neutral), but I wonder what that secularity actually means and if it participates in the erasure of artists who make faith-based work. It seems that if artists or creatives are making work about faith, it is very often branded as “controversial” or “challenging” (Dazed, Sinclair 2015) or, perhaps it is only the works that can be labelled as controversial which attract attention.
Thinking about this idea of the supposed neutral/secular religious attitude of the artworld made me think about radical pedagogy and it’s acknowledgement of the inherent biases within teaching and pedagogical frameworks. I think the resources on the site could be used to open up a respectful safe space discussion with students about their ideas around what is controversial and what is secular when it comes to religion/faith in an arts setting. Within the context of the course I teach on, MA Applied Imagination, it could be useful to ask students to use the site as part of their research in order to create their own intervention which would then have the potential to be turned into a case study for the university.
It is important to be as inclusive as possible when it comes to subjects such as belief or faith, if students share their research/feedback with me and reveal that there are areas of sensitivity which need to be discussed or refined regarding the course curriculum or my personal teaching practice I would take this into account and adjust accordingly. For example, if during a lecture I unintentionally used an image offensive to a particular faith and a student informed me of this, I would immediately remove the image from the presentation and ask for greater clarity and context so that I could pass this onto my colleagues and do my own research.
Task 2: Choose a minimum of 3 headings from the ‘Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education.’ Stimulus paper (Modood & Calhoun, 2015) The PDF can be found on Moodle. Discuss two things you learnt from the text and one question/provocation you have about the text. Write a min. 100 word reflection or no more than 5 minute vlog.
Reflection:
Dogma (1999) – Belief vs Idea scene
Reading through the ‘Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education.’ Stimulus paper (Modood & Calhoun, 2015) I immediately thought of this scene from the Kevin Smith film Dogma (1999). Chris Rock plays the character Rufus, the 13th apostle who was edited out of the Bible because he is black. In this scene, Rufus and the protagonist Bethany are discussing the concept of absolutism or dogma, versus having ideas or philosophies that can grow and change as we do.
The film is both an irreverent and reverent exploration of Catholic dogma, and it is clear that Smith, as a lapsed Catholic, is attempting to reconcile the beliefs he was raised with, with the ideas he has now. Because my thoughts immediately went to this film while reading the text, I wondered what I would do if a student of mine made a film like this? How do you provide critique of the work without seeming to either critique their exploration of ideas or their religious beliefs? Religious literacy can help with this to a certain degree, but we also have to factor in compassion and discernment as important factors here and take each situation on a case by case basis rather than having a blanket rule for all. If I as a tutor am stifling the creativity of a student due to my own beliefs or biases, that is an issue. It’s also important for me to ask the right questions of the student; in an attempt to direct their line of inquiry, and if I am unfamiliar with their religious practice, to research what I can.
Modood mentions secularism in his text, and hints that secularism has its own bias but presents the illusion of neutrality. I would have liked to see him examine it further, because secularism has its roots in a Utilitarian philosophy, which roots in Christianity. To say that any outlook/philosophy is presented in a “secular” society is completely removed from religious ideology or faith based ideas is erasure of both cultural and historical context. I agree with Modood that this seems to be particularly prevalent in Higher Education but I wonder if religious literacy classes without direct confrontation of racism and/bias is enough?
Task 3: Listen to the Kwame Anthony Appiah Reith lecture on Creed. Write a min. 100 word reflection or no more than 5 minute vlog.
Reflection: I really enjoyed this lecture and Appiah’s playful but well researched take on this subject. As a black, gay, man his positionality leant an interesting perspective to the talk. I found it hard to listen to the antagonistic comments from religious people in the audience with regards to his sexuality. Again, I wondered how I would navigate a situation like that if it occurred while I was teaching? How do we as educators practice religious literacy/sensitivity when the beliefs of one student are hostile to the sexuality of another? Could I truly be neutral in that discussion? Hopefully I never have to find out, but I think it’s important to consider these questions because they force me to interrogate my own politics.
Task 4: Read the terms of reference from SoN around Faith
Reflection: Reading through the ToR a few things jumped out to me about my own positionality in terms of religion. My mother is white, Jewish and an atheist. My father is Jamaican, was raised as a Christian, and is an atheist. Both were shocked when I showed an interest in religion, and expressed my beliefs around the existence of a higher power. Over the course of my life, I’ve become very interested in theology, practices of belief , philosophy and where they all meet in the middle. Thinking about my own spirituality, I really resonated with to the note from Raman Mundair when they are discussing the increasing popularity of Santeria, Oshun and witchcraft, defining them as: “A practice of faith and higher power that connects the practitioner with a conduit of history, DNA, epigenetics, myth and nature.” I also felt a connection Sahar Amer’s piece, Surah Yusuf for a couple of reasons. The first is that the story of Joseph is also a central pillar of Judaism. The second, which is completely self interested, is that the name of Aziz’s wife – the one who tries to seduce Yusuf and when she is rejected, has him thrown in jail instead – is Zulaikha, my name (Zuleika) being the Anglicised version. There is even a beautiful epic poem, Yusuf and Zulaykha by Jāmï, dedicated to the star-crossed pair.
Now that the lockdown is in full effect due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I find that I am relieved I no longer have to go into the University to teach or learn. As a person who is immunocompromised, with multiple chronic illnesses, I was beginning to wonder how I was going to navigate refusing to come into the university to preserve my own safety.
There is a lot of rhetoric around the virus “only being dangerous for the old and sick”. The implication being twofold: that it is fine for the healthy to catch it because they will survive, and that it is also fine to continue to put those of us classified as ‘vulnerable’ at risk, because they were sick anyway. It’s very difficult to hear and see colleagues on the PgCert, as well as some of my students, espouse this opinion without reacting negatively to them. I have had to give myself strict rules around engaging with any Covid related propaganda or conversation that is centred around opinion rather than verifiable fact. This is partly so that I protect my mental health, and partly so that I can maintain professionalism with colleagues and students when faced with a conversation which essentially says it’s ok for my safety to be compromised for the comfort of others. How does a person remain professional and objective in the wake rampant racism and ableism induced by a pandemic?
As a person who is chronically ill I am used to working from home. I have been remote working for the best part of two years, the nature of my disability dictating that I have a flexible schedule which allows me to rest when I need to. In an odd way, this has prepared me for the current climate of online teaching and learning. Due to my illnesses I am often housebound, and have frequently had to adapt meetings, lessons and workshops to suit an online format so that I can participate from home if I am having a bad day. I am also used to being at home for long periods, with little connection with the outside world – simply because I am sometimes incapacitated for weeks at a time. It has been interesting to watch the world adapt to a way of life that I adopted some time ago as a matter of a very different kind of necessity and survival.
Being used to this kind of working, I find that I am having to remind myself that the current lockdown situation will be a huge adjustment for many. I find that it is hard for me to be compassionate towards non-disabled people who are complaining that they have to stay inside all the time to protect others. I am struggling with being compassionate for the extroverts wrestling with their mental health because they find themselves cut off from others. I have been chronically ill for 8 years now, and very few people have shown compassion or understanding for people with disabilities – both during and prior to this pandemic the response for the disabled and sick has been largely contemptuous.
Within a teaching context, this raises interesting questions for me. I have had to put aside my own feelings and resentments and focus on remaining compassionate to my students. At times this has tested me, particularly when I have needed to reassure my students of their safety within the university when I feel unsafe myself. The majority of the cohort on the MA Applied Imagination course are overseas students from China. As a result of this, myself and my colleagues have already engaged in multiple, difficult, conversations with our students about what would happen to the course in the case of a lockdown. A few of my students have also come to me asking me where they can go for help and support due to the increased anti-East Asian racism they have experienced as a result of Covid. In the wake of so much uncertainty prior to the government’s recent decision to take the UK into a lockdown, we did our best to reassure them that the course would continue either in person or online and our leadership team began making preparations to move the course entirely online for the foreseeable future. Luckily our course does not involve the teaching of any practical skills, such as jewellery making, a difficult subject to teach remotely.
At the moment, many of my students are currently self-isolating in hotels or their rooms after travelling home. Some were unable to catch flights or trains and are ostensibly stuck in overseas student accommodation in the UK. Of those that were able to make it home, a few of them have mentioned that their home environment is not conducive to learning; with interruptions, sick or elderly relatives, difficulties with internet connectivity, lack of access to laptops or computers all presenting barriers to learning. I have frequently reminded my students that I am here to support them with their studies, and I have also signposted them to the university’s counselling and support services. Beyond that, I have also been encouraging my students to take a break and rest. Many of them have mentioned that they are finding it hard to stay motivated and to concentrate while they are being bombarded by constant updates via social media and the news. I remind them that I have no answers, but that I can share with them what I have been doing to protect my mental health and hope it works for them. I have been taking a social media break and my brain a rest from studying by engaging in other activities such as automatic writing and drawing. It is an intense time, and we must acknowledge and make space for the emotions which come up for us now and make time for self care. Some of my students have also taken up automatic writing and say it has helped. Either way, I have been encouraging them to engage in a self-care activity that helps them to feel centred and calm.
So far the major barrier to online teaching has been the poor internet connections of the students who have returned to their home countries. As Zoom is not a UAL approved calling platform, Blackboard collaborate is the main virtual classroom software we use at the moment
. Unfortunately it has a limited bandwidth, meaning that mics need to be muted and cameras need to be off if a student isn’t speaking with me. This removes a lot of the visual cues students give while learning, such as nodding to show that they understand. It also adds to the difficulties with language barriers, since body language contributes so much to what is being said. Bad internet connections causing students to miss minutes worth of tutorials are also adding to the challenge of teaching online. At these times I find myself reminding the students, and myself, to be patient. Most people are working in new ways here and it will take time to troubleshoot and formalise some of the processes. It is a good lesson for them on resourcefulness, resilience and making lemonade, although the situation is of course far from ideal from the perspective of a healthy student who had envisioned an exciting year of study in London.
After reading through the resource, Russ Harris’ guide to mental fitness in Covid-19 which Lindsay shared with us on Moodle, I also shared it with my students during my latest tutorial in the hopes that it would help them to feel supported. Soon they will have about 8 weeks of independent study and it is my hope that by that time I will have imparted the importance of rest and self-care as essential factors in their learning and development as researchers. So far it seems that some of them have taken my words to heart, but only time will tell the impact this series of lockdown will have on their work. I have faith that we can all rise to the occasion, finding compassion for one another and ourselves in the best ways we know how.
Bibliography
Harris, Russ. (2020). Face Covid: How to Respond Effectively to the Corona Crisis, PDF document. Available at: https://moodle.arts.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/902172/mod_resource/content/2/Russ%20Harris%20guide%20to%20mental%20fitness%20during%20C-19.pdf
Prior to this session we were asked to review a video from the Paulo Friere Project called Why Critical Pedagogy? and prepare some thoughts in response to the following prompts:
What are the central concerns of critical pedagogy?
In what ways does critical pedagogy relate to UK Higher
Education?
How does critical pedagogy relate to your own practice?
Discuss one thing you have learned or surprised you
from the film
Discuss an aspect of critical pedagogy that you would like
more information/clarification on.
Critical pedagogy (CP) is widely concerned with decolonizing the curriculum and creating a program of study which recognizes the biases (unconscious or otherwise) of the curriculum designers themselves. In this way CP seeks to utilise socialist and intersectional models of education to create alternative modes of learning. These modes are usually student centred: focussing on empirical teaching and learning and rooted in activity based learning rather than didactics.
The responses from my colleagues in the session were interesting and mirrored many of my own thoughts. Many of us were already utilising critical pedagogy in our teaching practice without even knowing that it was a practice at all, which was a pleasant surprise. This kind of innatism is mentioned briefly in the Friere video and is to a certain extent linked with empirical teaching and learning as it relates to teaching in non- Western communities or communities of colour. If this is the case then CP provides a practice for unlearning the damaging pedagogical methods which signify a colonized curriculum and re-establishing a connection with innate embodied knowledges which allow us to bring out the best in our students.
This kind of teaching has particular scope in Arts Higher Education settings which are less formal and rely on group centred teaching and learning practices such as crits and group tutorials. Considering this in relation to my own teaching on the MA Applied Imagination course, I am contemplating ways that students can be encouraged to utilise their own knowledge base and trust their initial instincts when it comes to their research projects. Many of them come from authoritarian educational backgrounds where this way of thinking has not been encouraged, and the concept of trusting their initial instinctual thought process is alien and scary. I am interested in utilising CP to in essence give them permission to trust in the exercise of process based (rather than results based) learning. Transitioning them gently from the absolutism of other forms of formal education into the ambiguity of arts education.
There was a general consensus that while the film attempted to demonstrate critical pedagogy and apply an understanding of intersectionality to teaching practice, there was a distinct lack of diversity featured in the film itself – i.e. all the academics featured were white and the majority of them appeared to be over 40. Additionally, the video was difficult to follow at times, with editing and graphics which could possibly be difficult to read or follow for people who are neurodiverse or have visual impairments. There seemed to be a disconnect between the content of the film and the visuals produced which was jarring. This highlighted to me that the resources we use lessons in can provide valuable teaching moments for students to engage their critical thinking on multiple levels. Even if students don’t think the resource is valuable or completely correct in its execution this gets the students thinking/engaging with their thoughts and feelings about how the ideas featured in the resource can be produced/portrayed differently.
During the course of the day we were also asked to engage with a couple of exercises or tasks which enabled us to draw from our different intersecting identities and lived experiences and use them to explore the concept of positionality. For example, I as a white passing, middle class, mixed-race Jewish woman living with a chronic illness occupy a unique set of privileges, biases and challenges. My Jewish Zayde (grandfather) used to say “We all have our meshugas!” which essentially much means we all have our stuff to deal with in life. This applies as much to students as it does to staff. Being aware of my positionality means that I am conscious of how my meshugas can and will affect my teaching. Over and above that, how can I use my unique set of circumstances to enhance and inform the learning of my students? Perhaps through radical honesty, acknowledging that the supposition that teaching occupies a neutral space is false and admitting that we all have bias/encouraging students to explore this in a safe space? Approaching situations from a place of empathy and cultural awareness in the first instance and attempting to embed those principles into my teaching time. Following on from this it is important to realise that safe and inclusive spaces do not look the same for everybody, neurodiverse or disabled students will have different access requirements and part of creating a teaching environment which is inclusive is doing one’s own research and asking the students themselves what their access requirements are e.g. comfortable chairs, taking breaks, use of stimming/sensory tools in class, choosing videos that have closed captioning etc.
Later on in the day we discussed the Equality Act (2010) and protected characteristics which were put in place to prevent legal discrimination against anyone on the grounds of:
Gender reassignment Age Disability Marriage and civil partnership Pregnancy and maternity Race Religion and belief Sex Sexual Orientation
As educators we have a personal and professional liability to our students as well as our colleagues to prevent and flag discrimination wherever possible. However, within an institution which has its roots in colonialist patriarchal ideals, it is difficult to do this. Policy and bureaucracy abounds, and the burden of proof often falls upon those who have been victimized and traumatised in the first place – often resulting in cases of discrimination being dropped due to sheer exhaustion and the emotional strain proceedings like that take on the bodies of the oppressed. UAL does have an anonymous complaints service in place via the “Tell Someone” campaign, in order to give students who may be too afraid to come forward with complaints a voice within the University. We discussed the importance of signposting students to the various services within the university, such as counselling, disability services, tell someone etc and what impact being armed with knowledge and resources can have upon the general and educational wellbeing of students.
Overall I feel that I learned a lot in this session about using the experience of the student to help them to learn. A couple of the exercises that we did during the seminar such as active listening and the simple act of writing down our various identities were very helpful in beginning the dialogue around self reflection and its importance as part of a healthy teaching practice. I’m looking forward to utilising the methodologies we learned of today in my own teaching moving forward.
