I did not experienced many issues when designing these documents. I think we were provided with very good templates for this task. Additionally, I worked on most of the issues that I could have come across here when I was designing the Ethical Enquiry form for this project.
I used these forms to get consent from the participants for both the questionnaire and focus group too.
I found this chapter very useful in terms of introduction to ethics, even though many of the areas discussed here felt too advanced or far from I am planning to do. I think this chapter was complimentary to the article on ethics that I also read for our ARP unit (Banks, 2016).
Ethics should be considered at every stage of the research process
Ethical issues traditionally have been though in term of risks to participants and data gathering. “However, ethics should underpin every single step of research, from the first germ of an idea to the last act after dissemination.” p.35
Theories of ethics: deontology (including ethics of justice), consequentialism (including ethics of care), virtue and value-based ethics.
“It can be helpful for researchers to review ethical theories and standpoints if they want to deepen their understanding of the philosophical basis for their decisions. Researchers may also find it useful to review ethical codes and other resources that suggest ways of putting these theories and standpoints into action.” p. 39
Transformative methodological frameworks such as feminist, emancipatory, decolonised and participatory research – they “are creatively designed to be more ethical by addressing and reducing power imbalances between researcher and researched.” p. 39.
Something that it is interesting to learn more about, especially in the context of my project that involves thinking about including our students’ voices more in my teaching. It is important to remember not to wear only one set of lenses (gender for example).
“After all, nobody is ‘only’ a woman, or a person of colour, or someone with a disability. An intersectional approach does not attempt to take into account every aspect of someone’s identity but aims to accept and reflect the complexity of identity and examine the relationships between different aspects of identity and their implications for power relations.” p.40.
Some other take outs from this chapter:
Recent trends in ethics “represent attempts to broaden the domain of professional ethics beyond dilemmas and decision-making requiring rational judgement (ethics as individual decision-making) and beyond conformity to codes of ethics and rules of ethical conduct (ethics as external regulation). Instead, a situated ethics is proposed, that places dilemmas and decisions in a broader social, political and cultural context and sees responsibility in a wider, more relational sense, beyond the isolated individual decision-maker.” (Banks, p. 35-36)
The list of ethical dimensions very useful. Each dimension made me think of how I can relate it to my profession and my positionality. I read more about the dimensions I found most relatable or important for my project.
“(1) Framing work—identifying and focusing on the ethically salient features of a situ-ation; placing oneself and the situations encountered in political and social contexts; negotiating/co-constructing frames with others (including service users and colleagues);
(2) Role work—playing a role in relation to others (advocate, carer, critic); taking a position (partial/impartial; close/distant); negotiating roles; responding to role expectations.
(3) Emotion work—being caring, compassionate and empathic; managing emotions; building trust; responding to emotions of others.
(4) Identity work—working on one’s ethical self; creating an identity as an ethically good professional; negotiating professional identity; maintaining professional integrity.
(5) Reason work—making and justifying moral judgements and decisions; deliberation with others on ethical evaluations and tactics; working out strategies for ethical action.
(6) Relationship work—engaging in dialogue with others; working on relationships through emotion, identity and reason work (dialogue work)
(7) Performance work—making visible aspects of this work to others; demonstrating oneself at work (accountability work).” (Banks, p. 37)
I focused on role, identity and relationship work. I think they all are closely related, and they made me focus on my role within the University, Library and my Team more.
Role work: “involves judging what roles to take with particular people in particular circumstances, how and when to shift between roles, when a degree of professional closeness or greater distance is right and negotiating roles with service users and others. (…) Ethical dimensions are highlighted when conscious dilemmas and choices over role positions arise—for example, between carer and controller; educator or advisor; ‘friend’ or professional.” p.41.
In my role as librarian, I need to negotiate my role at the service point (Information desk), 1-2-1, group, face to face sessions with students and staff (teaching part of my role), as well as supporting library users in our space – both technically (when they print, use software or need to find the books) and very often emotionally (when they are stressed before deadlines).
Identity work: “is the work people do through talk, interaction and demeanour to construct and negotiate who they are—their personal and social identities. (…) ‘Ethical identity work’ (identity work in the ethical sphere) involves practitioners working specifically on their ethical selves—for example, as morally good social workers, caring professionals, committed practitioners or fair-minded people.” p.42-43.
These words speak to me strongly. This is a motif within ethics and generally action research area that engages me with my studies and work. I feel that it is closely related to compassionate pedagogy that I got interested in during our first unit on the course.
Relationship work: this term is used “to cover the work of engaging with others, building relationships of trust, getting to know people and caring for and about them over time. The relationships may be with service users, colleagues, officials or members of the public. (…) Relationship work is a key feature of the ethics of care, which highlights the importance of attentiveness (noticing the need for care), responsibility (taking care of others) and responsiveness (of others to the care given).” p.44
My main takeouts from the first part of the workshop:
What is ARP?
Working in groups
I found it very useful to discuss the article that was assigned to me in a small group in the workshop. It was great to get to know the fellow students and learn about our roles within the UAL and how our work influenced the reading of “Views on Interviews: A Skeptical Review”. I reflect on the article in a separate blog post. We had different levels of experience in using the interviews in our research and it was very helpful to hear from more knowledgeable colleagues.
Engaging with research ethics
The workshop is a good starting point for thinking of my project’s research ethics and how I can approach it. I found looking at BERA Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research very engaging and thought provoking. I want to give this text more time to make sure I understand its implications better. First thoughts on reading:
This is another great article that provides an introduction and an overview of one of the research methods. I’ve never used the interviews in research, and I think that reading this text gave me a good basis to start thinking on if I want to use this method, and if yes, how do I want to approach it.
Major positions taken to interviewing:
The article made me aware how complex the interviews as a research method are. There is lots of things to consider before conducting the interviews, such as my positionality, positionality of the respondents and ways it is going to influence our interaction; how and what language we use. What are my motives or motives of the interviewees? What is ‘knowing’ and ‘telling’ – how do I factor this in?
At this stage of my studies and planning for the unit, I think I would like to use interviews in my research. It is crucial for me to learn a bit more about it and will need to read more on the subject.
This article is very useful, especially for someone who is quite new to the idea of action research (AR) (me included). The author introduces the idea in a very approachable way and provides more in-depth information on conducting the research in an educational setting.
What is action research?
“Action research is a term which refers to a practical way of looking at your own work to check that it is as you would like it to be. Because action research is done by you, the practitioner, it is often referred to as practitioner based research; and because it involves you thinking about and reflecting on your work, it can also be called a form of self-reflective practice.”
Focus of AR
The author mentions the following aspects of AR:
Planning AR
This is a particularly important chapter for me. The set of questions forming the action plan provided a starting point in thinking about my project for the ARP Unit on the PgCert course. Before reading this text, I felt overwhelmed by this unit and starting my own AR. I’m still a bit anxious, but also excited now when I gathered more information on the subject.
“The main point is to identify an area you wish to investigate and be reasonably clear about why you wish to get involved”
Other important points:
Gathering evidence
To gather data about the situation you can use variety of methods: journals, diaries, notes, audio and video recordings, surveys, attitude scales, pictures and so on. You can use different methods at different times. You will need to compare the first set of data with the later sets and see if you can say that there are any changes, that you can show that you influenced the situation.
Importance of working criteria (connected to your values) – for example if you believe that all people should be treated fairly – what evidence you may have to show that they are treated fairly.
“To show that you are living in the direction of your values, you need to search your data archive, and produce pieces of data that meet the criteria. When data match the criteria, those pieces of data become evidence.”
And finally, the quote that in my opinion describes the AR in very encouraging way. I find it motivational:
“Action research is one way to influence social change. If everyone did a bit extra for someone else, the world would instantly be a happier and more productive place for all.
We have been using Shades of Noir journals a lot this term on PgCert and I found lots of very interesting readings on a diverse range of subjects here. I often found myself reading more articles than we were asked to, and I believe this has already enriched my practice and me as a person too. I can see the change in how I evaluate the materials I use in teaching as well as in how I choose the books and e-books that I purchase for the library.
I want to start using SoN in my practice too. I want our students to learn from SoN content, to enrich their world views and find themselves represented in the readings they do for their research. SoN journals subjects cover such a wide range of topics that they can be useful on any course at the art college. I am planning to look through them and choose a few articles that would be especially of use to the courses I am supporting as a course librarian, and introduce them in my sessions.
I think it can be as simple as using an article from SoN when teaching about referencing – the title itself can trigger a further interest in students. I think the SoN would be also very useful in the creative writing and research sessions.
We are working on coming back to the series of events called Speakeasy that we used to run a few years ago at Wimbledon. The Speakeasy is a library event for students, staff and anyone else who is interested in talking about creative writing for performance and sharing their favourite pieces. We also welcome people to come along and just listen to the words spoken. I think it will present a perfect opportunity for me to bring and share SoN content and talk about our identities and positionality. .
“Everyone, to one degree or another, is a member of a multitude of social groups that are shaped in relation to ethnicity, gender, nationality, religion, socioeconomic class, and other categories. “ (p.417-418)
Two things that I’ve learnt from the article:
Questions I have about this text:
How can I relate what I have learnt from the article of it to my practice as librarian? The reading definitely has raised my awareness of social justice education and its workings, and I can see a potential of evaluating my practice against the core pillars illustrated above.
“ A little bit of consciousness might be very welcome..” Dr Josephine Kwhali
In this short video Dr Josephine Kwhali talks about how we should stop hiding behind the unconscious bias regarding racism in academia. I love the way the talk is delivered and use of humour to illustrate how ridiculous using unconscious bias as an explanation for racism in the universities can be (or is). This video made me question my whiteness further, especially when Dr Kwali says that she became conscious of race/ism when she was four. That highlighted my privilege of not having to think about my race almost at all for many many years of my life – whether when I lived in Poland or now when I live in the UK. It inspired me to look for more resources on whiteness and how it can be used in allyship. This influenced my choice of the next resource for this blog.
“The personal development and allyship of the ‘White Academic’ is, therefore the basis of which to productively challenge marginalisation within Higher Education. One such way to challenge the White foundation is through means of the curriculum in place and its development. (…) Challenging students to look beyond familiar eurocentric and white practitioners can broaden their understanding of their subject and in turn encourage change in institutional culture” (p.46)
In this article author explores how the White voice can be utilised for the purpose of challenging racial discrimination – in this case within education. It made me think about my race and how almost invisible it had been for me when growing up.
I can relate to many observations made by the author, having very similar positionality to him in terms of his race and class. Having not experienced a lot of marginalisation (regarding race) and growing up in very white, racially homogenic city in Poland, I also need to acknowledge my ignorance towards racism that People of Colour experience on a daily basis and push beyond my White bubble on many occasions . This can make me feel awkward or even uncomfortable. The author says that our fear can slow change and reminds us how important exploring the implications of Whiteness is in dispelling that fear. He encourages us to challenge our White perspective and use our voice in implementing change in education.
However, within the Critical Race Theory (CRT) there is a lot of conversations surrounding the “White Voice”. It can be a problematic force within education when presenting our own interpretations of the People of Colour experiences. It is crucial “that any change must be implemented through the Allyship and not independently of an intersectional community. This is to ensure that the White voice does not again gain more power, but acknowledges, raises up and implements the needs of the ‘othered'” (p. 43)
Two things I learnt about:
A question/provocation I have about the text:
“Therefore, it is important to build trust with the student group to ensure that the students will find their voice. The tutor’s role here is key.” I think it becomes more and more difficult with the growing numbers of students and less and less time we can spend with individual students.
I’ve focused on the following three headings: Multiculturalism, Religion and dissent in universities and Religion as a public good.
Reading ‘Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education’ has challenged my opinion that religion is a private matter. Being an atheist and not participating in religious ceremonies since turning 16, I am very distanced from believe and religion. The text was a reminder that religion provides a vital inspiration to many people in defining and discussing what should be counted as public good. This means that “attempts to exclude it [religion] from the public sphere are intrinsically repressive to it; toleration of private belief is not a substitute.” (p.19)
Another important take out for me was reading how activities that cross religious boundaries can be beneficial for integration of the students. What does it mean for my practice? I am not sure yet. Definitely something for me to explore and think about further.
The text touches upon a very important aspects of faith and religion that can be (or are) intolerant. Especially issues surrounding sex and gender can be problematic. “Discussion of different ‘non-binary’ sexual and gender identities is growing on universities campuses” (p.17) and this can be liberating for some students, but unsettling for others. I will investigate further how as teachers we can we support our students (and each other) when dealing with some of the above issues.
The images in this article have got my undivided attention. They are so powerful and expressing my issue with many religions in regards how they perceive women. Bridgett’s answers to SoN questions were very short and expressed her strong opinions. I found it refreshing. I come from ‘old school’ academia and find it difficult to deviate from staying neutral in my teaching and writing. I find it liberating to go through my PgCert reading list and learning more and more about how our opinions matter and can be used in teaching.
It reminded me of Freire’s writing: “Education as the practice of freedom—as opposed to education as the practice of domination—denies that man is abstract, isolated, independent, and unattached to the world; it also denies that the world exists as a reality apart from people. Authentic reflection considers neither abstract man nor the world without people, but people in their relations with the world.” (2000, p. 81)
I am a bit overwhelmed by amount of information and a depth of this lecture.
Two things I am taking away from it now are:
At the end of the lecture there was one question from the public that resonated with me a lot. Is there anything that as educators we could do to help address fundamentalism? Can we educate people so they can move from truth fallacy, sectarian way of thinking towards doubt and fluidity of thinking? It reminded me of critical pedagogy and importance of a dialogue in it – how we cannot enter a dialogue with each other in absence of doubt. (Freire, 2000, p.39) I think we cannot start this dialogue without foregoing an authoritarian outlook in teacher-student relationship. However, it does not mean undermining teacher’s authority as knowledge expert – as this could mean that a teacher “allows their classroom to be governed by the authoritarian power of the educational system” (Keer, 2016, p.69)
References:
Freire, P. (2000) Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Keer, G. (2016) ‘Barriers to critical pedagogy in information literacy teaching’, in K. McElroy and N. Pagowsky (eds) Critical library pedagogy handbook. Chicago, Illinois: Association of College and Research Libraries. pp.65-74.
For this blog I chose to reflect on 3 resources from our recommended reading:
Checking the UAL disability pages was a great exercise to inform myself on what is available to our staff and students in terms of the university support. I found some information on our websites that I didn’t know or forgot about. I am in a process of creating a short skill share session for our library staff regarding what I have just learnt. I want to improve (or remind our staff of) what we know, so we can support our users better. Students know that there always is someone they can talk to and/or ask questions in the UAL libraries (with our information desks staff 9am-10pm during the term time) and it will be good to have up to date information available to them.
The second and third resource are both interviews.
First one is with Vilissa Thompson #DisabilityTooWhite hashtag creator and the second is with Rebekah Ubuntu, a multidisciplinary sound artist and university lecturer. I found them both very inspiring and interesting, especially as they both talked a lot about intersectionality of their lived experience.
Vilissa taught me a lot about what it means to be an ally. It was a reminder of how important it is that my voice of a white and able-bodied person does not power over the group of people I want to be an ally for.
Rebekah’s text gripped my attention from the first few words. I love how creative they were in interviewing themselves. I found Rebekah’s statement summing up their positionality, when they say that we are all of our coexisting identities all of the time, especially important. I think it is crucial to all of us to keep this statement in mind when we interact with our students (or colleagues) to enable a meaningful dialogue between ourselves.
Both interviews made me think about my positionality and biases that I may have. They strengthen my desire to learn more about different people and their experiences. This will be very helpful in my professional live where I meet and support staff and students that come from very diverse backgrounds. This inspired me to start looking at how I can enrich our library resources, so they can represent or teach more about disabled people of colour.
Reflections on other resources on disability that I engaged with:
For me this film is about art and our experience of it through senses. Christine’s art is all encompassing. I was transfixed by her performance and creativity. Being deaf person working with sound she made me question some assumptions I might have made about people with hearing impairment. It definitely was an unexpected element of the film that Christine works with sound. Her art made me pause and look at my experience of the world from a different perspective.
It made me think of a role of surprise and unexpected in learning and teaching. How less conventional material can help starting discussion and prompt changes in our thinking. In terms of my practice, I think that working with zines and artists’ books gives me an opportunity to incorporate a subject of disability into teaching. I will research what is being published on or by disabled artists at the moment and enrich our collections, so it be used in object based learning sessions.
2. Barokka (Okka), K. (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), pp. 387-392. doi: 10.1080/13569783.2017.1324778.
“Pain hides in plain sight. This assumption, that what another feels they perceive confirms absolutely: you are not in pain, is not unfamiliar to anyone who lives with chronic pain, lives the exact opposite truth. Yet the shock of distance, of misunderstandings from human beings so close to our bodies, to the truth as we inhabit it in our bodies, can be something else entirely.” (p. 387)
“As I imagine is the case for most, the sheer impossibility of human communication is why we attempt to bridge it anyway, by writing, speaking, creating, by existing ingroups, by sustaining ourselves for the attempt to bridge gaps.” (p. 388)
These two quotes resonated with me the most. Having lived with a medical condition that flares up for a few days each month and causes pain for at least a week each time, I could relate to the author of the article very well. I am a very energetic, generally fit person and it is very easy for others to dismiss my pain when I am ill. On many occasions I heard comments how I do not look ill and was met with disbelieve when needed to leave work or class, because I was in too much pain.
How both this reading and my personal experience can be used/incorporated in my practice? It definitely made me more aware of hidden disabilities and inclined to listen carefully when students or colleagues talk about not feeling their best.
When designing or delivering the sessions I make sure to make space for questions and breaks, so whoever needs a breather does not need to ask for it. I design tasks and activities in the sessions with different levels of engagement. I always communicate that I do not expect everyone to do all the tasks and leave the students a freedom to make a choice.
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!