A very rich and active session today. The topic, affective pedagogy, really resonates with everyone. I suppose this is because we are a caring bunch.

A great deal of discussion centred around one of our readings by Allan Patience. This was an essay on Affective Pedagogy. There were a number of points which provided great stimulus for discussion.

A number of us found that we all had a technical teaching role at UAL and we discussed the modes in which we interacted with students in reference to Paul Oakenshott’s terms of Technical and Practical knowledge. We agreed that we aspired to providing practical knowledge to students (technique informed by experience and choices) as opposed to the rote factual collection of techniques which Technical Knowledge refers to.

A PLAN FOR INTEGRATING CARING INTO MY PRACTICE

Caring relationships I have with students are few and far between. They rely on the rare circumstance when a student is assigned to work in my area and has a particular drive to succeed. There are many students who simply pass by without the real opportunity to benefit from a more meaningful relationship. With my colleague Roshni we came to the conclusion that this was due to a combination of lack of continuity and lack of exposure. In short, not enough “face time” with students. If I could get to spend more time interacting with students then I could better facilitate a caring relationship with them. Because we would know each other.

THE PLAN:

to create opportunities for face-to-face interaction in a more low pressure setting. In other words not a production meeting, not a large group tutorial, not a skills tutorial. I want to create informal social drop-in surgeries to discuss technical queries and concerns. My first impulse is to create “Dr. Mike’s Making Surgery” an opportunity for students to show up and ask questions or test their ideas in a low key environment.

Loved reading about play and how it relates to art. Vilhauer is distilling Gadamer’s thesis in this chapter of his/her book. Coming from performance, the notion of Play is crucial to not only the process but also the presentation of work with an audience. The work really only becomes successful when the audience joins in the “game”. This involves them divining and understanding what the “game” is, and then being willing to surrender to the “game”.

I imagine that we are also reading this as educators. Indeed there can and should be the notion of play within an educational context. Certainly, my fondest memories of education were of classes and tutors who were able to invite us into an activity so completely that we forgot that we were learning. We were just doing something that engaged us and that we felt connected with. I wonder if this is actually a different level of brain function, when one is fully focussed and committed to an activity. As someone who aspires to being an educator I want to get some of the superpowers that engage and inspire students. For me this would be a combination of confidence, openness and a strong sense of play.

Our first taste of course content has been engaging and thought provoking. It has provoked several thoughts in me! It was somewhat strange being given a macroscopic look at the structures of higher education. These are policies organizations and concepts that, I must confess, I have largely ignored as I have seen them is distant and irrelevant to my practice on the ground. The humble day-to day activities of education seem far removed from the statistics and overall political questions presented by James Wisdom today. Of course they are not. Everything is connected. I should know and understand the big picture as it will, ultimately affect me and those I work with.

I pick one of James points out as it surprised me. A simple statistic that caught me off guard.

The overall benefit to the taxpayer for each person who completes higher education is 110,00 per man and 30,00 per woman.

Two shockers in that statement. First that higher education is so financially beneficial to the state. I think James may have called it “a financial no-brainer” or maybe that was me. An educated population is a financially productive population. Certainly not the only indicator of contentment or success, but definitely an important indicator. The other, much more depressing point in this statistic is the huge disparity between male and female income benefit over the years. Multiple explanations for this I am sure. A big one is pay disparity, additionally, societal expectations on gender regarding “breadwinning”. Important to note however that this does not mean that women’s education is less valuable to society as a whole or to women in particular. Only that the financial outcomes are significantly different.

Another of James statements did surprise me and I struggle to believe it. That students as a whole don’t choose their educational path based on earning potential ….REALLY?……REALLY? I think that students and prospective students are extremely sensitized to future earning potential in the current climate. The whole system has been monetized due to the introduction of fees. Students see HE as much more transactional. They are making a financial investment and expect a financial return. Their choice of degree will affect that return. Surely it is no coincidence that more esoteric subject areas are underpopulated by people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. If, as a student, my family is going into debt to give me an opportunity to “better” myself then I have a huge pressure to pick a degree that will give me the most chance of good pay and security. That might not be ceramics or literature.

I want to talk about Victoria Odeniyi’s lecture too. Her presentation on research surrounding language and international students feels so relevent to current work with students at UAL today. We have so many students for whom english is a second language.

I was interested in her reference to “multi-modal language”, in other words language in different forms, text, speech, image. We talked about this use within the online learning framework. I find the use of verbal and textual language simultaneously quite difficult. For me It creates a neurological dissonance. Verbal speech and written speech are processed in different parts of the brain. Can they really be integrated seamlessly on the fly? Tutors giving online classes are expected to lecture and lead discussion as well as monitoring a chat feed and interacting with that as well. I was impressed that James, Victoria, and Lindsay were all doing this very well yesterday. I wonder if I could do this? I feel like I would lose my train of thought. As it is, as a participant I cannot concentrate on a lecture and monitor the chat. How do tutors do it? Monica, my partner, suggests that we just have to give ourselves the space to pause and check the chat window. Change language modes. Perhaps this ties in with our other discussion with Victoria around the value of silence and pauses during class interactions.

I am doing some background reading and starting with “Learning to Teach in Higher Education (Ramsden). Only just in the first few chapters but hitting on things that are worth recording.

Chapter 3 “What students learn” has resonated. To my surprise, the chapter seems quite cynical about student learning in Higher Education. Studies with tutors say how they express disappointment at the lack of depth in the student learning. How the goal of students embracing overall ideas and integrating fundamentals into the way they approach novel challenges and questions within their discipline seems to be elusive. Often, it seems. students absorb and hold on to concrete, practical, and technical skills and methodologies. They learn the specifics required to illustrate proficiency, but the overall understanding of the subject seems absent.

I have to say that I often observe this, to my dismay, in my work with students. I often am amazed, working with third-year performance students in the practical development of their work, how they make statements and put forward creative ideas that seem completely uninformed by the course curriculum through which they have travelled. They often make choices that I would expect from a novice or someone relying only on stereotypes of work in performance. “What have they been doing for the last two and a half years” I wonder. I question whether this is a result of the course structure or perhaps simply low student achievement. This experience really does echo the sentiments in the reading.

I should say that as a technician, I feel one step removed from the learning path of the students I work with. I am there to support their learning and input to what they are already doing. I suspect that I could make a significantly larger contribution to their learning if I had a closer connection to their curriculum and learning path, if I really understood what they ere being taught theoretically. If I understood the expected learning outcomes. Also, if I felt more empowered to intercede and interact with them intellectually in the situations which are very much at the “coal face” of the creative process.

I am optimistic that as I continue reading “Learning To Teach in Higher Education” there will be a transition from the rather cynical chapter 3 to more enlightening discussions of the potential for learning.

Well, here I go stepping out into the unknown! Stepping out of my comfort zone.  It has been some 35 years since I last took an academic course, so feeling a bit rusty but hope that it will all come back like riding a bike.

I work as part of the Performance Technical team at CSM.  We spend much time working with students.  supporting their technical needs and also encountering their ideas at delicate beginnings.  I really look forward to interacting with colleagues and tutors to develop skills related to how I work with students as an arts educator.