March 2023 – Kasia Idzi

Exploring belonging through compassion

Mandala of compassion, [Photography]. *Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest*. Retrieved 12 Mar 2023, from
https://quest.eb.com/search/151_2516945/1/151_2516945/cite

I mentioned before in my blog that I would like to explore the meaning of compassion in education. My interest was piqued by reading bell hooks’ writing (reflection on it in my other post) on love and receiving feedback on my microteaching session that mentioned modelling a compassionate approach.

When thinking about where to start, I turned to the UAL staff website to check what is available there. I came across Belonging through compassion page that provides lots of resources I can delve into and learn about compassionate pedagogies and how they are being implemented at UAL.

I started with exploring the Belonging through compassion site by Liz Bunting and Vikki Hill that curates resources and ideas that support the design of compassionate teaching, assessment, leadership and policies. I clicked through Teaching section and found what I have been looking for.

First thing that interested me was the work of Vikki Hill and Dr Theo Gilbert who recorded the a number of conversations exploring how compassionate pedagogy can be embedded within teaching. I watched Creating communities and Love & oppression parts. I really loved the definition of compassion provided by Dr Gilbert. It is noticing distress in others (our ourselves!) and doing something about it. It is to not normalise the stress.

I think we are often aware of money and other struggles our students may go through, however, calling their time at university as time of oppression has strongly resonated with me.

Both videos made me think about many students in the library when they clearly feel overwhelmed. It is almost every day that I come across a student who is afraid to ask us questions, so they do not expose their lack of knowledge. How can I encourage them? I am very interested in verbal and non-verbal micro skills of compassion that Dr Gilbert talks about.

Next, I will investigate micro skills section on the blog I started to explore. I feel hooked!

Improving teaching

Dall’Alba, G. (2005) ‘Improving teaching: Enhancing ways of being university teachers’, Higher Education Research and Development, 24(4), pp. 361-372. doi: 10.1080/07294360500284771.

Study group. [Photography]. *Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest*. Retrieved 21 Mar 2023, from
https://quest.eb.com/search/139_1927758/1/139_1927758/cite

This text provided a great opportunity to reflect on the course, to think about what we have done so far and what effect this journey has had on me.

It strongly resonated with me, as I felt that it describes my experience on the PgCert course. Exactly like the students in the text I have been exposed to new ideas how to teach (knowledge/epistemology), but also have been given time and space to reflect on how this is changing me and my practice (being/ontology).

I remember starting the course and feeling very self-conscious about sharing my teaching experience with my peers. I was terrified about having my sessions observed and evaluated. It is comforting to read that this is what many students experience when introduced to new and maybe a bit more challenging teaching methods. (p.365)

Looking at how we were asked to collaborate throughout the course, I can see now how I was allowed to learn from my peers. I feel enriched by being able to draw upon “extensive collective experience among course participants.” (p.364) It was especially inspiring to see the other students teaching. In the session I observed students were included in learning by providing their views and knowledge on the lesson’s subject. It inspired an icebreaker activity I am going to do in my next session.

I think, that by engaging with research literature, collaborating with fellow students and reflecting upon my learning, I have an opportunity to transform as a person and as a teacher. I can already see how studying on the PgCert motivates me to act. I feel more engaged with the community. For example, I started working on the new project (on eco-literacy) with my CSM colleagues, that I may not have done before the course.

Eco-literacy Toolkit

Library Services response to climate change and justice

Exploring climate justice resources available to the UAL members of staff (see my other blog post) inspired me to talk about it with my fellow librarians across the UAL Library Services. I discovered that one of the Chelsea librarians is authorised to facilitate screenings of an interactive film created by the UAL Climate Emergency network. I found this film very informative and motivating and I recommend requesting the viewing of this resource to every member of staff.

I also learnt that two of my CSM colleagues are working on the Eco-literacy Toolkit for our Library Services. I got in touch with them, and I am part of a small group now that works on finding best ways of presenting the Toolkit to the other librarians. We work on the Intranet page that should allow for an attractive and easy to use layout that will encourage our librarians to teach with sustainability and climate justice in mind.

Sneak-peek of the Library Services page for Eco-literacy Toolkit

The Eco-literacy Toolkit consists of the library sessions templates for online and in-person teaching on researching sustainability. It presents several activities we can choose from when planning such sessions. There are examples of the keywords building icebreaker, recognising greenwashing and visualising topic collaging exercises. The Toolkit is designed the way that it can be expanded with time. The librarians will be encouraged to develop this resource further by adding the examples of their sessions and activities. Personally, I cannot wait for the project to be ready, shared and used.

Climate Justice at UAL

Exploring the Staff Development UAL resource

I have been educating myself about the subject of Climate Justice for a while now. I include resources on sustainability and climate justice in all my teaching sessions and I make sure that I purchase relevant materials for the Library. However, I must admit that I feel that I did not engage with Climate Justice staff development programmes at UAL enough.

The Canvas website on climate justice is a great resource, but I had a problem with where to start there. The sheer volume of information had initially overwhelmed me. I started by clicking the links and ended up feeling lost with 10 tabs being open at the same time.

Then, I came across a Climate Glossary that is a beautifully designed document explaining vocabulary that we need to understand if we want to start an informed conversation on climate justice. Just going through the definitions makes it clear how the climate justice is interconnected with social and racial justice and how we cannot talk about one without the other. I will share this document with my students together with links to the UAL websites on sustainability (that I do share now).

UAL-Climate-Glossary

Learning about the UAL leading CATALYST; a series of workshops was especially useful. In April there is a workshop on carbon literacy that I am interested in. This 8-hour course situates learning about fundamentals of climate change in the context of our daily lives and UAL.

I have also read the document on embedding climate justice in the curriculum. I am working now with it to see how I can use it to enrich my practice as a librarian. I will update this in the blog posts after attending the aforementioned training.

climate-and-social-justice

bell hooks “all about love”(preface and introduction)

Reading for Values and Ethics in Teaching seminar

Background photo by Michael Heinrich: https://www.pexels.com/photo/green-leaf-tree-72509/

I chose to read the bell hooks’ text recommended for Values and Ethics in Teaching seminar, as her book has been on my reading list for some time now. I read, re-read, and re-read this text again. I found it absolutely captivating. I find it difficult to think about this text in the same category as the other books and articles I read for the course so far. It defies the standard responses I would usually have when reading for my studies. bell hooks writing cannot be easily reflected upon in terms of agreeing with the author or thinking how it relates to my academic practice. It relates to all aspects of life – probably not that surprising as the author talks about love, the subjects that we all are emotionally invested in. What was great about this text is how love is also looked at as a research subject. It was fascinating and very informative to learn how differently men’s and women’s writings on love can be perceived (or are they different altogether?).

I was especially captivated by the author talking about love in connection to social justice movements and how the most important of them “have strongly emphasized a love ethics” (hooks, 2000, p.XiX). This, and the fact that love is so intricately connected to belonging (“…where I felt loved, where I felt a sense of belonging.” p. X) brought the compassionate pedagogies into my mind. My interest in them has already been peeked when I received my feedback on the microteaching and I want to explore meaning and place of compassion in education further.

Microteaching – object-based session

I had never run a microteach session based on OBL in my practice before. I wanted to use objects meaningful to me. First, I thought of using something from Poland that reminds me of the country and/or my family. Then I thought of the zine collection that I used to work with at the LCC Library and how I can do a microteach session using zines.

Zines were popular in my circle of friends when I was a teenager. In the communist Poland they were our source of information about music and culture. Zines being uncensored and underground publications made them highly sought and very often we had one copy to share between all of us. A lot of zines were published in Poland in the 70s and 80s. Freedom of speech they gave their makers was an especially important feature of this kind of publication at that time.

I want also to reflect here on how great an idea it was to ask us to do a microteach object-based session as an exercise. Every microteach on the day I took part in the workshop was immensely interesting. All the sessions were so different. We witnessed a talking cactus (I know!!), we learnt how to tie a classic bow, had to describe an image to others in a way they could imagine it, wrote stories, screenplays, made zines and collages. I had learnt so much in a short time. For example, I got a new idea for my slides design and learnt easy to follow guidelines for writing Alternative Text.

Lectures – further reading

Haynes, A., Haynes, K. (2012). 53 interesting things to do in your lectures. Wicken: The Professional & Higher Partnership.

Creativity, conceptual artwork. [Photography]. *Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest*. Retrieved 11 Mar 2023, from
https://quest.eb.com/search/132_1223204/1/132_1223204/cite

I have followed our seminar on teaching formats by reading the above book. I have concentrated on finding the most relevant information for my practice and things that I could improve on for my next lecture.

Objectives of the lecture:

to say what lecture will cover and what its structure is may still not indicate clearly what students should actually get out of the lecture.
specify what students should know, understand or be able to do after the lecture. Basic formula is ‘At the end of this lecture you should be able to…’
Using active verbs can help – for example: define, list, name, write, recall, identify, illustrate, explain, demonstrate, use, perform, apply, analyse, compare, discuss, organise, conclude, evaluate, select.

Buzz and problem centred groups:

Asking the students to work in pairs or small groups and setting a task or discussion topic can help to engage them with the lecture.

In the session I am planning now I could ask the students to find images and/or videos relevant to their research subject (costume or theatre design) – just after presenting our audio-visual online resources.

Flagging:

It is better to be over-explicit when explaining the tasks than to assume that the students already know what and why we are doing what we are doing. It is crucial for the students to understand what they are supposed to get out of the lecture.

Handouts:

Some of the advantages of using handouts mentioned here have been new to me (or just something that I have not thought about before). Most important advantages of the handouts that ‘speak’ to me are:

less likely to disadvantage non-native speakers
have additional information on what we are saying in the lecture, as well as references to useful sources
help to remember.

Teaching formats & strategies

I found it particularly useful to discuss in groups our approach to different types of teaching. As a librarian I do not teach in some of the environments that other people in my group do – for example I do not have experience of running crits. It was great to hear about this side of teaching and find it relevant to what I do with the students too. For example, in my group we talked about language barriers, time pressure and learning by doing when it was our turn to think about advantages and disadvantages of Presentation/Crit/Review teaching formats. All the issues we discussed I can easily relate to when seeing the students in small groups or one-to-one tutorials. It was especially interesting to talk about ways that we can make language more accessible. We reminded ourselves about the importance of using plain English and watching the pace of our (and the students!) speech.

My next session with the students will be a lecture and I was most interested in hearing what others have to say about their strategies for this teaching format. The biggest issue with the lectures seems to be the students’ engagement. We talked a lot about making this format of teaching more interesting, in both, in person and online environments. After taking part in online workshops on the PgCert and the discussion with my group I think of using at least one new method I came across (or heard about) during this first unit to keep the students interested in my session. I am especially drawn to using the Padlet in a more engaging way than I have so far.

Unit brief reading and designing library session in its support

The segment dedicated to planning our teaching was especially helpful in organising my thoughts on how to prepare for the session I am scheduled to run on the 16^th of February 2023: a library briefing for the second year BA students on the PDT programme at Wimbledon. Looking at the brief (for the unit that the session supports) using four areas suggested in today’s workshop was helpful in starting to plan the session:1. Questions to be answered 2. Opportunities 3. Things to be amended 4. Areas for future research. Recording the responses on paper and sharing with others was very engaging and I am looking forward to using what I learnt in further development of the briefing.

Working on the unit brief – initial ideas on the library session to support creative research and writing

After the seminar and discussing benefits and disadvantages of lectures as teaching format with my group I read 53 interesting things to do in your lectures by Haynes, and Haynes (more about it in this blog post). It helped me to design the lecture further. It stated that telling the participants what we are going to do in the session is not sufficient for them to understand what they are supposed to learn. I have never stated the learning outcomes in the session before and the reading inspired me to start doing so.

Learning that handouts are less likely to disadvantage non-native speakers and help with additional references to useful sources, motivates me to have the PDF version of my slides to share after briefing. I will include an example of referencing on the image, as many students reported having issues with it.

PDF that was shared with students after delivering the session:

CR-Library-briefing-on-Othello-

Icebreaker exercise

Eight quotes about teaching

Photo by DSD: https://www.pexels.com/photo/selective-focus-photography-of-two-penguins-689784/

The ice-breaking exercise started a day with lots of inspiring discussions. The two quotes that sparked my interest were:

“Teachers, like their students, have to learn to love the questions, as they come to realize that there can be no final agreements or answers”
Greene, M. (1988) The dialectic of freedom. Teachers College Press: London.

“If students’ initial ideas and beliefs are ignored, the understandings that they develop can be very different from what the teacher intends”
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., Cocking R. R. (eds.) (2000). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and SchoI. The National Academies Press: Washington, DC.

I think they both encourage asking more questions when working with students to get to know them and initiate discussions. This would allow for peer-to-peer learning and recognition of the students’ needs – very beneficial to the students and myself as a teacher. I will keep this in mind when designing and delivering the next teaching session.

Additionally, I think that the first quote is especially relevant and important to the art and design studies.