Race

In Hahn Tapper’s essay ‘A pedagogy of social justice education: social identity, theory and intersectionality’ (2013) opens with the following quotes:

A teacher needs to create experiences with, and not for, students, integrating their experiences and voices into the educational experience itself (Freire 2006). 

Teachers’ and students’ identities are thus tied to one another in an interlocked relationship (Rozas 2007).

—The above made me think that Intergroup work / Intercommunal dialogue includes the relationship of tutor-to-student rather than just student-to-student relationships. Apart from everyone’s positionality / socio-cultural identities, what else forms this? What can shape this? 

—What does the interlocked relationship that I have with students look like? Thinking about this on a one-to-one as well as a group basis.

As a young, white but not English, assigned female at birth non-binary member of staff, I find it easier to relate to female and queer students as well as students whose english is not their first language. Because I look young, I feel some students find it easier to be informal or to talk openly, while in certain cases, I have felt students challenging my position / knowledge / experience (especially when I first started teaching). I maintain certain ‘formalities’ to ensure that students, even if they read me as young, maintain a professional and respectful (to everyone) tone such as: not cursing in tutorials, not shaming anyone, being on time, not talking over each other.

I ask students more questions than give answers and I avoid being the first voice to give feedback in group tutorials, as an opportunity to bring attention to peer to peer exchange. I also try to incorporate sessions that are outside the classroom environment (drawing safaris, exhibition visits, sculpture trails) so students and tutors can exist in different circumstances that are less prescribed. I also ask students who is working alongside their education or have caring responsibilities, so I can make sure to make adjustments for students that in class such as have a tutorial with them earlier in the session, make sure they know all the information etc.

How can I shift this and in what way would I want to shift it? 

—How can one explain to students that we are working towards forming the course together? What actions can speak of this? 
Offering projects and briefs that allow students to bring their own interests.
Offering a set of options of briefs / outcomes for students to choose from rather than prescribed expectations.
In the past I have run a workshop on character design. Most students on IVM are obsessed with designing characters and have plenty of knowledge on how to approach this. While running the workshop, I have asked students what would they do next, do they have any exercises / tools that they use and then invited the rest of the class to try their suggestion out. Can this apply to other situations?
Inviting references
I run an optional session every Friday afternoon. I have asked students in writing and in the sessions what kind of sessions they would like to have (animation, ceramics, print, storytelling etc). I then planned a term’s worth of activities from those suggestions.

—The above quotes also reminded me of one of the sessions of the previous unit on Compassionate Assessment. Someone in the session spoke about students feeling that assessment is done TO them rather than WITH them. With regards to assessment, we ask students to assess the work of their peers, mark their own work and evaluate their work in relation to the rest of the cohort in group crits, reviews and showcases. Yet, it still feels like this is still miles away from assessment feeling like a collaborative process between staff and students. The ability to hold formative as well as summative assessment has definitely helped assessment become dialogical. In addition, when working on certain courses / year groups there has been sessions scheduled to discuss written feedback and grades with students. This helped students understand that there was space for reflection on both the side of the tutor and the student, to ask questions and potentially to set goals for future units. 

—When Francesco came to observe my teaching in the previous unit, he positively remarked that I asked students at the end of the session what other sessions / practitioners students would like me to invite for the weekly programme Society of Makers. He also extended the potential of this process by suggesting making an online Moodle poll that reaches all the students of the course rather than just the ones that are in the room in this particular session. I thought this was a beautiful suggestion and can enrich next years programme. I have taken this on and proposed it to my Course Leader. I would like to to push this further and potentially use it as the starting point for my intervention. 

—How do pedagogies of ambiguity and inclusive practices work with one another? When I was reading about pedagogy of ambiguity I found myself torn between mocking the 21st century neoliberal art university structure that funds itself by sending people into a world of precarity by mimicking that uncertainty within structures that are meant to feel safe and supportive while also supporting notions that one needs to learn to make their own way. It also made me question how I work with ambiguity when I teach. 

The briefs we are writing for students should be open for everyone to bring what they want to the table. It is even better when they introduce a ‘methodology’ that can be applied to any content, or a series of diverse methodologies that students can choose (or allowing students to build their own methodologies?) Equally sometimes briefs offer options with regards to the outcomes that students have to create. Certain briefs are completely self initiated. 

We also have sessions that are optional. Usually, we have 3-4 different optional workshops running at the same time. One of it is always life drawing as students have asked for this. 

When having one-to-one tutorials I ask students how they are and how their projects are coming along. After they talk through their journey I ask them questions such as: what are your biggest successes up to now or what are you enjoying the most in this project? What do you think is going really well for you here? (I think some of this came from the affirmative enquiry / policy session from the previous pgcert unit) After they answer I ask them: and what else? And what else? In this way, I want them to stop thinking of tutors as the people with the answers. I want them to also reflect, identify and make their successes concrete through articulation. I sometimes re-iterate their successes in agreement. This allows the opportunity to bring new vocabulary or contextualise with a term / a process, a reference while at the same time extending something a student has mentioned. By asking them what else a few times, I am asking them to take further note, look deeper beyond the obvious, to be critical of their work or maybe reflect on the process / ways of working rather than the outcome. By asking again and again, some students have asked me: are there more successes? This might make students feel positive, that they have achieved things that might not be obvious to them yet. I then ask them what they think they could develop further. By using questions rather than answers, I try to not impose my views of what a good project might be but work with a student through ambiguity together and give them a reflective toolkit. I then ask them to form an action plan / to do list, we form this together. 

Tutorials are probably the easiest format to integrate dialogical and collaborative processes as well as crits. Yet what other models allow this working together like that? Our course has an open artist reference resource that students can add references to…