My students are very close to completing their projects and are now at the stage where we are asking them to reflect on their journeys as researchers. Recently, they were given a brief to submit a draft version of an Evaluative Report of their research projects for feedback.
MAAI tutorials take place on Monday afternoons and the submission deadline for the draft report was 12am GMT on Monday 2nd of November. As all, bar one, of my students are currently living in China, this did cause some confusion around what time the submission deadline actually was. Luckily though, it gives me just under a week to assess their drafts and put together some feedback ahead of the next tutorial. After reading the drafts, it is clear that they all need to improve in the same areas: providing personal reflections on their interventions, concisely summing up their projects, describing theories essential to their practice, and staying within the word limit.
At first I wasn’t sure of the best way to tackle the issue. I don’t wan’t to spend the whole tutorial giving 6 people the same feedback as that can get quite boring. I am also thinking about issues we have had with building a thriving ‘course community’. All of my MAAI colleagues have complained of the same issue, despite frequent encouragement, the students are reluctant to engage with one another and give each other feedback during tutorials. My personal experience is that any invitation to give their classmates feedback is either met with silence or hand clapping emojis, which is frustrating. I don’t think any of us want the students to rip each other to shreds during sessions, but we also want to encourage them to challenge, inspire and share resources with one another.
Thinking about some of the research I have been doing for my SIP project on building explicit strategy instruction into lessons may be the answer here. I have also been doing research on assessment for my case studies and found a very useful PDF from the Teaching & Learning exchange. In Eliminating Inequality in Formative Assessment, Duna Sabiri provides three top tips: • Develop students’ conceptions of what makes ‘good’ work, e.g. by asking them to comment on previous students’ work. • When students talk about their work, what are you listening for? How do you think students perceive and understand your formative assessment of their work? • Help students interpret the feedback of others and develop their capacity to contest it.
Based on the above, I would like to create a group activity that invites the students to critique a previous MAAI evaluative report against the course Learning Outcomes and the brief they were given. Unfortunately I am not able to find an example of a past report on Moodle, so I think I will use an essay of my own In Praise of Shewolves which I wrote for a the recent Shades of Noir Terms of Reference Disabled People: The Voice of Many. Luckily the structure of my essay is close enough to the format outlined in the brief that they should be able to see the parallels between the two and evaluate it accordingly. I don’t think I will tell them that this is an essay I have written otherwise they will be reluctant to critique it properly! I also think I will need to provide them with individual written feedback as well, to allow for any absences and the ever present language barrier. That way they can take some time to reflect on the critique I have given them without the attention of the rest of the class.
Lesson Plan
Step 1 (20 mins)
Inform students that we will be doing a group activity.
Ask them if they would like me to record the session so they can refer back to it later.
Make sure the draft evaluative report briefing document is on screen.
Send them the links to the Learning Outcomes on Moodle and the Shewolves example essay and ask them to read through both.
Remember to give them warnings 10 mins and 5 mins before the time is up in case anyone needs a few extra minutes.
Step 2 (60 mins – 10 mins per student)
Invite each student to provide feedback on the example essay. What does it get right? What do they think could be improved?
Ask them to consider what grade they would give the essay based on the brief and the Learning Outcomes.
Check for learning, do they understand why I have asked them to do this?
Step 3 (50 mins)
Ask students to evaluate their own draft reports against the Learning Outcomes and the brief.
What do they think they could improve?
What do they think they have done well?
Is there anything from the example essay they think they could use in their own work?
What do they think of the critiques given by the rest of the class? Do they agree or disagree with their colleagues’ assessment of the example essay?
Break (15 mins)
Step 4 (35 mins)
Open up for questions about the brief and course in general.
Check for learning, what will they be taking away from the tutorial?
Remind them that they will also receive individual feedback.
Finish.
Takeaways
Students should leave with a better understanding of how to critically analyse their own work.
Students will hopefully feel more comfortable giving one another feedback on their work.
Students will have a better understanding of what a ‘good’ essay/reflective report looks like.
Students will have a better understanding of the marking process from the perspective of the teachers.
Greater transparency of the marking process.
Students feel better prepared to edit their work ahead of the winter independent study period.
Bibliography
Sabri, D. 2020. Eliminating Inequality In Formative Assessment. [online] Arts.ac.uk. Available at: <https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/190153/AEM-Eliminating-Inequality-Formative-Assessment-PDF-288KB.pdf
Be aware of the ethical implications of what I am asking. Some people may have very deep-seated trauma related to procrastination and distraction for a number of reasons, including experiencing ableism because of neurodivergence.
How can I be ethical in research of this nature?
Depositing information – how will I use key skills and competencies to facilitate my interventions?
Think about the comical aspects of teaching and play and how this relates to my project. Can procrastination be fun?
Devices: can procrastination be a tool/device for learning. See Kothari “If you are what you eat then what am I?”: Food as a device.
Could I create a toolkit via an app or device?
Suggestion – create an intervention which forces students to procrastinate and see what happens (thanks Odette!)
Suggestion – create an intervention which encourages participants to think of procrastination as a creative space rather than a barrier.
What does it look like to live “outside efficiency”?
Why do artists procrastinate?
Reference – In Practice PDP blog series.
Presentation Slides
Reflection
Overall I think the presentation went well. All of my colleagues thought that my field of research was interesting and asked lots of questions/gave me plenty to ponder moving forward. Lindsay stressed that I needed to be very clear with my participants about what I was going to use data I will gather from my interventions for and who I will share it with. She also advised me to think about how “deep” I want my participants to dive in terms of the inner workings of their own minds, since I am not a therapist this could enter dangerous territory if I am not clear in my professional boundaries.
I am definitely keenly aware that I need to spend more time investigating different research methods as well as looking up codes of ethics when it comes to creating interventions. However, because of the enthusiastic response from my colleagues I think this project definitely has “legs” and I am excited to explore it further and see where it leads.
Youtube video of my digital Microteaching session.
Unfortunately I had just moved house when we conducted the mictoteaching session and I was unable to find my tripod. As a result I couldn’t set up a second camera to film the sculptures with like I had planned. Not having two cameras like I had originally intended left me quite frazzled, and I am conscious that I say “um” a lot in this video and am not as composed as I would have liked to be.
Overall I was really pleased with the way my colleagues on the course interacted with the lesson I had planned. I think having the Padlet ready and waiting to go really helped in this regard. Since the camera quality on my laptop is not very clear because it is old, I am very glad I made the decision to use a picture of the sculptures from my degree show as a background image on the Padlet. That way even if the video quality was not clear they were still able to participate in the session. Each person wrote more than one response and some were very keen to embrace the new method of description I was asking them to think about.
I really appreciate the feedback my colleagues gave me. One piece of critique was that it would have been helpful if I had written the instructions down and added them to either the Padlet or in the chat box on BlackBoard Collaborate. I usually try to do this when I teach my students but I quickly forget about it when I become frazzled. However, if I am going to discuss small changes in teaching practice which can make a huge difference in terms of accessibility, writing down instructions and putting them in the chat or on a slide on screen is an important step. I also think I may have given myself too much to do in terms of monitoring, and there were times when there were awkward silences while I waited for the responses on the Padlet to come in. In the future I think I will try to streamline the session so that there are less moving parts and more discussion. As you can see from the video, there is a lot of me speaking and them listening. Although the participants were active and engaged on the Padlet document, perhaps it would have been better for them to say what they were thinking out loud.
8 minute ‘microteaching’: Objects and Artefacts ‘Interaction with artefacts deepens students’ learning.’ (Schultz 2012, p.185)
‘Object-Based Learning’ may be used to develop any of the following (not an exhaustive list):
Observational skills
Visual literacy (ability to ‘read’ objects, to find meaning from them)
Design awareness and knowledge
Team working
Critical analytical skills
Drawing skills
Communication
Aesthetic judgement.
Understanding of key concepts (e.g. branding, style, ethics).
Research skills and confidence
Inspiration
Your task is to prepare and deliver an eight-minute learning activity for your tutor group (via Collaborate Ultra), based around an object. You can approach this activity imagining your tutor group are your students, or as they are (a group of teachers from different disciplines and with different levels of experience); it’s up to you.
Tip: When choosing your object, think about your desired learning outcome(s) – the above list may help. Then think of an activity (for example, a question you want them to discuss and answer about the object) that will lead to the outcome(s) you are hoping for.
Prior to the lockdown, I had mentally prepared to conduct this session in-person but I hadn’t written a lesson plan for it. At the time of writing I have just moved house which I do not recommend anyone should do in a pandemic. I am wondering if I will actually be able to locate the objects I want to use for my microteaching session in time!
The objects I plan to use are some porcelain life casts I created for my degree show titled the Diaspora Series. Inspired by my own positionality as a mixed race woman with a complex family dynamic who is frequently read as white, I took casts of my face and the faces of my half siblings and deliberately fragmented them as a reference to the way the identities of mixed people are perceived to be fractionary by others. The work is an attempt to deconstruct theories of race, racial ambiguity and stereotyping – specifically focussing on assumptions we make about a person’s race based on how they look. I always found describing these casts quite difficult, as there is so much charge around how we describe the facial and body features of black people and POC. Because I enjoy a challenge, and think it it useful to embrace difficult conversations in a teaching context, I wanted to use these objects in my microteaching.
During the Inclusive Teaching and Learning unit we were asked to respond to this video by Christine Sun Kim, a deaf artist who uses the vibrations from sound to make her work. In the video, Kim references the fact that the culture of the world privileges hearing and how that affects her life and work. Thinking about this in the context of the Diaspora Series I began thinking about the “white gaze” and how racism is largely dependent on the human tendency to privilege sight above other senses. I considered my own disability, remembering a time when I had double vision and thought I would lose my sight completely due to complications caused by Lupus. I was in my first year studying Fine Art at Middlesex and terrified that my career as an artist would be over if I lost my vision. An example of the profound effect internalised ableism can have on a disabled person.
Thinking further on this, I realised that I actually knew of very few disabled artists in general, and of no blind or partially sighted artists at all. After a bit of research, I came across the work of Joseè Andrei, a painter, sculptor, photographer and psychologist, who also happens to be blind. Andrei uses touch and sound to describe her works, vocalising what the objects “look” like since she cannot describe them the way a sighted person would. Sadly there is little more information about Andrei available to me beyond this, except for the trailer for Fabrizio Terranova’s 2010 documentary called Joseè Andrei: An Insane Portrait (sadly I have not been able to locate a copy of this film online to watch it in full). After viewing the trailer I decided I wanted to explore alternative ways of describing objects in my microteaching session.
Still of Joseè Andrei working.
In my original – pre Covid- plan, participants would have been asked to either wear a blindfold or close their eyes and describe the way the Diaspora sculptures felt in their hands by calling out their descriptions. For example: smooth, cool, delicate, thin. We would then have repeated the exercise with the blindfolds off to compare and contrast the way participants described the objects once they were able to see them. Inviting them to consider how they may be unwittingly privileging sight over other senses in their teaching practices and therefore potentially excluding any blind or partially sighted students they may have in the classroom. However, due to all teaching sessions being moved online, I now have to rethink my plan.
Lesson Plan
Phase 1 – Setup
Set up two cameras, one which will focus on me and the other which will enable participants to see the face casts on screen at all times.
Lay out sculptures in well lit area so that participants are able to see them and have a clear idea of them in terms of texture, colour, shape and material.
Set up a Padlet document ahead of the session and post the link to the Padlet in the chat so that people can participate in the activity.
Phase 2 – Context (2 mins)
Switch on first camera but turn off video for the second.
Briefly provide participants with history of and context for the objects. Why did I make them? Why are they relevant?
Include information about the Christine Sun Kim video which provides further context for the session.
Possibly share my own positionality as a disabled person who has experienced partial sight due to being sick.
Phase 3 – Padlet (2 mins)
Switch on second camera and show participants the sculptures.
Ask them to describe the ‘positive’ porcelain sculptures on the Padlet using whichever words come to mind. Wait for responses.
Prompt participants to consider how they would describe these objects to someone who is partially sighted or blind. How can they describe the objects using more inclusive language? Wait for Padlet responses.
Phase 4 – Negative (2 mins)
Highlight the way the topic of description opens up when we remove the ‘privilege’ of sight from our language.
Invite participants to explore describing the ‘negatives’ or moulds I used to create the porcelain casts using this new method. Wait for Padlet responses.
Phase 5 – Round Up (2 mins)
Explain how making small changes to our language and teaching methods can make a big difference in terms of accessibility.
Invite participants to challenge their methods of making and teaching to embrace accessibility.
Takeaways
Participants leave session thinking about accessibility in the arts, particularly within a teaching and learning context.
Participants consider how they can make their lessons more accessible for partially sighted or blind people
Participants understand that the semiotics and semantics of language matter in the context description, whether that be audio or close captioning.
Alternative music video of Bruno Mars’ The Lazy Song featuring Leonard Nimoy.
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is
self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”– Audre Lorde
This essay is an attempt to reflect upon
the knowledge acquired over the course of the Inclusive Practice Unit of the
Higher Education in Art and Design PgCert. Drawing heavily on the concepts of
“radical pedagogy” (Friere, 1970), “radical empathy” (Nagar and Shirazi ,
2019), “reflexive practice” (England, 1994), “radical rest” (Carmichael 2020),
“idleness” (Russell, 1932) and “inclusive pedagogies” (Connor, Gabel, Gallagher
& Morton, 2008) as they pertain to disability, racial diversity and the
Capitalist socio-political model of education, I created Bringing Lazy Back
(BLB), an artefact (workshop and reading list[1])
designed to advocate for rest as a necessary component of learning rather than
as an inconvenience.
Positionality
and reflexive thinking
To do this I must reflexively outline my own positionality. Kim England states in Reflexivity, Positionality and Feminist Research that:
“… reflexivity is self-critical sympathetic introspection and the self-conscious analytical scrutiny of the self as researcher” (England 1994).
My interest in rest as a pedagogical
practice is deeply personal. When I was 22, at the end of my first year
studying Fine Art at university, I was diagnosed with three chronic illnesses –
Lupus, Hypothyroidism and Anaemia[2]
– after being hospitalized. As a chronically ill person, I am always tired and require more rest than
most non-disabled people. I constantly feel guilty for needing to rest more,
particularly as an artist with a largely collaborative practice. Prior to my
diagnosis, I was attending classes during the day in Hendon, living in
Tottenham and working nights in a bar in Dalston. I am obviously not the first
student to overwork while studying, however, I believe that lack of rest,
paired with the stress of daily 4 hour travel times, contributed to the onset
of my disability[3]
(Equality Act 2010). Post-diagnosis, I overcompensated and overworked in an
attempt to mitigate my physical vulnerability and “pull my weight” in
collective projects, leading to further hospitalisations, and the decline of my
mental health.
As a woman of mixed Jamaican and
Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, my natural propensity to overwork is compounded by
internalised cultural tropes of exceptionalism – those who are “othered”[4](powell
and Menendian, 2020) in our society, must be “exceptional” in all regards to
achieve success. As Gabrielle Smith outlines in Resting In Peace While Living (A Complicated Notion) many Black and
mixed-race people (white passing ones like myself included) have “complicated”
relationships to work and rest (Smith 2019). Smith describes in detail the
indoctrination as a result of survival modes (see also Paperny, 2017) brought
on by intergenerational trauma that Black women and femmes especially are
subject to, the phrase “work twice as
hard to get just as far” ringing in our ears with every tap of the
yardstick.
These tropes have strong roots in racist
stereotypes around “laziness”[5],
and in the Capitalist ideology that to produce is virtuous[6] (Woiceshyn, 2019): rendering
any action which does not lead to production (rest) sinful by comparison. The
desire to be a “model minority” (Barokka 2017) is pervasive[7],
toxic, and cannot be underestimated – it is a hydra with many heads. While
teaching on MA Applied Imagination (MAAI), a course comprised of majority
overseas students[8],
I began to interrogate the interplay between concepts of rest and idless, their
relationship to ableism and Capitalism, and how these are cross-culturally
mirrored. BLB was my attempt to facilitate the consideration of the
interlocution of these themes and the way they all contribute to teaching,
learning, creativity and creative burnout (Graves et al, 2011)in my students.
It is a response to what I see as a significant lack of time off and
opportunities for “reverie” (Graves, 2011 pg 209).
Rest-less
Full time MA programmes last one academic year. Students on MAAI are required to work through the holidays to “make the most” of their learning time. 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. The expectation is that students will be able to manage their own time effectively. However, this does not help learners who struggle with executive function[9] skills, such as time management or goal setting (Melzer et al, 2018), due to disability. As outlined by Lynne Meltzer in Executive Function in Education, when educators build “explicit strategy instruction”, rest breaks and time management, into the structure of the curriculum all students benefit. While educators cannot be wholly responsible for how students manage their time, the power imbalance between staff and students creates a duty of care[10]. Extending this further, we can surmise that not actively including the explicit instruction of rest is a side-effect of the murky language around reasonable adjustments which allows institutions to further exclude students of variant needs while posturing as inclusive (Reeve, 2007 cited in Graves, 2011). We need to make sure that learners have the tools, and the time, to “learn to relax into work” (Graves, 2011 pg 211).
Working under the proviso that “no one’s
body functions perfectly, or consistently or eternally” (Shakespeare and Watson
2002, cited in Bhagat and O’Neill, 2011) and that “laziness does not exist, but
unseen circumstances do” (Price, 2016) I built Bringing Lazy Back around 4
pillars:
In giving students express permission to rest, reinforced by a
comfortable environment, I will create an environment where they feel safe to rest.
Distraction is a natural aspect of
learning which should be embraced instead of punished (Bui, 2020).
Distraction is usually an indication
that one needs rest, not that they are “lazy”.
“Idleness” is a useful tool for learning
and creativity. (Russel, 1932) (See also Metz, 2020)
This is of particular relevance now that students are expected to continue their studies during a pandemic. As a collective both staff and students were in the middle of processing the traumatic global effects of Covid-19 and likely needed a break (Barbash, 2020). The shift to digital teaching impacted my ability to test BLB as I would have liked. Designed as an immersive experience intended to disrupt the usual operation of classroom dynamics, it was difficult to replicate the relaxing environment[11] I had planned when coping with poor internet connections[12], dysfunctional webcams[13] and persistent interruptions from relatives[14].
Fig 1
Fig 2
It was clear that I needed to make adaptations . With the twelve-week “intensive independent study period”[15]drawing closer and considering the already packed schedule of MAAI students, a two-hour session engaging with the power of rest and distraction was out of the question. Instead, I began to implement aspects of BLB; frequent comfort breaks, articles on rest and inviting learners to document when they became distracted (Bui, 2020) into my tutorials. The feedback was mixed. One learner from China said that he found the language in an essay I sent him, Bertrand Russell’s In Praise of Idleness, difficult to navigate. While resting after this session, I considered this feedback. In the moment, I had reassured him that the text was dense, and thanked him for being honest and sharing with me. Upon reflection, I felt that I had missed something crucial. I had included this article within the workshop specifically because it is long-winded and would provoke the reader to become distracted. For the purposes of the lesson, this would have worked well to highlight distraction as a part of learning – especially when reading academic texts. Knowing that it may be a difficult read for some, I still suggested it, perhaps out of a misguided desire not to patronise students who have English as a second language. However, recommending this text out of context had served to further estrange him from the concept of rest, rather than allow him to embrace it. I had not been reasonable enough with my adjustments.
Fig 3
Conversely, feedback from my colleagues on the lesson plan for BLB was positive. They liked that I had built explicit instructions into the fabric of the lesson and that I had also included how long each segment of the session should take. They recommended that I explore the work of The Nap Ministry, a collective of African American artists who “…facilitate immersive workshops and curate performance art that examines rest as a radical tool for community healing.” (Hersey, undated)[16]. As outlined above, I had layered the concepts and rest tools one atop the other in a way that my colleagues said was simple but effective[17].
Fig 4
Fig 5
Fig 6
Takeaways
To conclude, the difference between these two scenarios further illustrates to me the need for feedback from staff and students with variant levels of ability and diverse backgrounds. It also highlights the need for surrender as an act of radical vulnerability and radical pedagogy (Nagar and Shirazi, 2019). Surrender to the academic process of reviewing one’s practices and adapting accordingly. Surrender to feedback even when it confirms or confronts our internal biases. Finally, surrender to the power of rest and self-care as a tool for learning, change and resistance.
Woiceshyn,
J., 2019. The Virtue Of Production |
Capitalism Magazine. [online] Capitalism Magazine. Available at:
https://www.capitalismmagazine.com/2019/10/business-virtue-production/
Bhagat,
D. and O’Neill, P. (eds.), 2011. Inclusive
Practices, Inclusive Pedagogies Learning From Widening Participation Research
In Art And Design Higher Education. Croydon: CPI Group.
Bui, K., 2020. How Keeping A “Distraction Journal” Completely Revitalized My Workflow & Productivity. [online] The Financial Diet. Available at: https://thefinancialdiet.com/how-keeping-a-distraction-journaling-completely-revitalized-my-workflow-productivity/
Powell, J. and Menendian, S., 2020. The Problem Of Othering: Towards Inclusiveness And Belonging – Othering And Belonging. Available at: http://www.otheringandbelonging.org/the-problem-of-othering/
Meltzer,
L., 2018. Executive Function In
Education: From Theory To Practice. 2nd ed. New York, London: The Guilford
Press.
Jazeel, T., Kent, A., et al (eds) 2019. Nagar, R , The World Through Radical Vulnerability, in Keywords In Radical Geography: Antipode At 50. 2nd ed. Hoboken, Oxford: Wiley Press.
David
J. Connor , Susan L. Gabel , Deborah J. Gallagher & Missy Morton (2008):
Disability studies and inclusive education — implications for theory, research,
and practice, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 12:5-6, 441-457
Khairani Barokka (Okka) (2017) Deaf-accessibility for spoonies: lessons from touring Eve.and.Mary.Are.Having.Coffee while chronically ill, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 22:3, 387-392, DOI: 10.1080/13569783.2017.1324778
Footnotes
[1][ Lesson plan for the workshop and reading list are contained in Appendix A.
[2] Autoimmune diseases such as Lupus frequently
“travel in packs” with secondary conditions such as hypothyroidism, migraine,
diabetes etc.
[3] Disability is defined under the Equality Act
2010 as: “…a
physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative
effect on your ability to do normal daily activities.”
[4] Powel and Menendian define the practice of
“Othering” as a “set of dynamics, processes, and structures that
engender marginality and persistent inequality across any of the full range of
human differences based on group identities.” [Original italics]
[5] Black people have frequently been portrayed
in popular culture as lazy criminals in a racist attempt to dehumanise us.
[6] Worth noting is that our modern concept of
“virtue” is heavily influenced by Plato’s dialogues in which he outlines
happiness/goodness (eudaimonia) as
the ultimate aim of all moral thought and posits that the virtues/excellence (arete) are the only means of attaining goodness
via their disciplines.
[7] Khairani Barokka refers to her desire to be a
“model minority” in her essay Deaf-accessibility
for spoonies: lessons from touring Eve and Mary Are Having Coffee while
chronically ill as being one of the reasons she overworked and experienced
burnout while touring the performance across the country.
[9] For example those who are neurodiverse, chronically ill or experience
poor mental health. Although there are various definitions for executive
function across academia, Melzer classifies executive function as “…a broad
term describing the range of skills required for purposeful, goal-directed
activity, socially appropriate conduct, and independent regulation of action
and affect (Denckla, 1994).”
[10] As defined in the legal sense as “a requirement that a person act
toward others and the public with watchfulness, attention, caution and prudence
that a reasonable person in the circumstances would. If a person’s actions do
not meet this standard of care, then the acts are considered negligent, and any
damages resulting may be claimed in a lawsuit for negligence.”
[12] Many of my Chinese students have been
self-isolating in hotels after travelling home from London. The Wi-Fi was
frequently unreliable and they often missed large portions of their lessons as
a result of poor connectivity and bandwidth.
[13] It is very difficult to gauge how engaged a
learner is in the session being taught when their webcam is off and their
microphone muted.
[14] During one tutorial a student’s guardian
interrupted twice to ask if they wanted anything to drink.
[15] Summer break. During this time students conduct research for
projects they have designed themselves in the units leading up to this point.
They do this with a “light-touch” facilitation approach from staff.
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.
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
