Category: Uncategorised

1. Shades of Noir (SoN) – how I could use it in my practice?

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. .

2. Reading: Hahn Tapper. A.J. (2013) ‘A Pedagaogy of Social Justice Education: Social Identity, Theory, Intersectionality and Empowerment.’ Conflict Resolution Quarterly 30(4) DOI: 10.1002/crq.21072

“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:

• The article introduces social identity theory (SIT), as one more fitting than contact hypothesis to use when working with different and/or conflicted groups. It highlights the importance of larger social identities and intersectionality too. However, SIT approach poses a risk of reducing individuals to larger collectives. “When used in a rigid way, neither approach creates sustainable social change beyond, at best, an infinitesimal number of participants” (p.418)
• Deexceptionalizing students (staff) and the conflicts they are part of – a very interesting point that every conflict can be similar in many ways – “all groups, to various degrees, are victims and perpetrators, innocent and guilty. All of us play active and passive roles in the structures of oppression in which we live.” (p.422) Knowing this and using intersectional point of view help with re- evaluating and transforming ourselves and relationships with others (other groups).

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.

3. Watching Witness: unconscious bias – Part of the UCU black members’ standing committee oral history project.

“ 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.

4. Illman, A. (2018) ‘Whiteness in higher education’, In: Peekaboo we see you: whiteness. (2018) London: Shades of Noir. pp. 40-47.

“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)

5. ‘Retention and attainment in the disciplines: Art and Design’ Finnigan and Richards, 2016.

Two things I learnt about:

1. I was shocked to learn about an attainment gap of 33% between students from ethnically diverse backgrounds and white students within Art and Design. “31% of Black British Carribbean and Black British African students gain an upper degree in comparison to 64% of White students.” (p.4) I knew about issues with an attainment, however, I have never known how big this gap is. The report is from 2016 and I would like to learn if there is any change in the numbers,
2. “Ethnic diversity among staff is important for both Black and White students, as it provides positive role models, as well as a range of perspectives that enrich learning and demonstrates an institution’s commitment to diversity. (…) With a greater diversity of staff comes more expansive creativity and genuine new opportunities opening up.” I consider this fragment of the report as one of the most important. Having diverse body of teachers is a great way to address issues with cultural capital, that affects so many students and staff withing Art and Design.

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.

• Calhoun, C. and Modood, T. (2015) Religion in Britain: Challenges for higher education. London: Leadership Foundation for Higher Education.

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.  

• Shades of Noir (2017) ‘Interview with Bridgett Crutchfield’, in R. Mundair et. al (eds) Higher power: religion, faith, spirituality & belief. London: Shades of Noir. p.32-33. 

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) 

• Kwame Anthony Appiah Reith lecture on Creed.

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: 

1. Understanding that religion does not consist mainly of a body of believes but of practice and community (what do religious people do and who do they do it with). 
2. Understanding that religious doctrine can be driven by practice not as commonly thought the other way round. It means that religion can change and evolve.  Women rabbis and priests can serve as example of such changes.  

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.

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For this blog I chose to reflect on 3 resources from our recommended reading:

• Disability and dyslexia. (2023) Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/students/student-services/disability-and-dyslexia (Accessed: 13 May 2023).
• Confronting the Whitewashing Of Disability: Interview with #DisabilityTooWhite Creator Vilissa Thompson. (2016) Available at: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/confronting-the-whitewash_b_10574994 (Accessed: 13 May 2023).
• Ubuntu, R. ‘An Inquiry into Disability + Intersectional Identities’, Shades Of Noir, . Available at: https://shadesofnoir.org.uk/content/an-inquiry-into-disability-intersectional-identities/ (Accessed: 13 May 2023).

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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.  

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Reflections on other resources on disability that I engaged with:

1. Film by Christine Sun Kim

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.

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

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. 

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. 

Eight quotes about teaching

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.

Evaluating – Chapter 6 of Macfarlane, B. (2004) Teaching with integrity: the ethics of higher education practice. London: Routledge Falmer. 

I read the case studies first.  

I could relate to Professor Stephanie Rae experience in many ways; however, I found her reactions quite defensive. She took the comments very personally and I think this could cloud her judgment and prevent her from thinking about using the feedback in a constructive way. I think we all can feel a little embarrassed about someone else seeing our students’ feedback or be a bit frustrated with the comments that we find unfair. These are some of my fears and feelings that I experience now knowing that my sessions are going to be observed and commented on this term. Reading about Stephanie has helped me to prepare for the coming evaluations, or dare I say, even looking forward to them. 

Stephanie made a few assumptions that I think could prevent her from evaluating her teaching methods. For example, when learning that students would like more handouts and the slides available before the lecture, she thinks that this would be ‘spoon feeding’ them. Instead, she could think why it is that they asked for the extra material and how to design the handouts that they can inspire further inquiry rather than provide a ready answer.  

Another assumption that Stephanie made was when she learnt about the students still not understanding the assessment and thought that the comments were coming from the students with poor attendance and low marks. I believe it would be much more constructive to look at the assessment format and evaluate if she could make it more accessible, without making any judgments about the students. 

After reading the case studies I came back to reading the whole chapter. I agree with author that a variety of methods should be employed to evaluate the quality of teaching. Very interesting point made here is that students “are not always best placed to make evaluations in areas where they have no expert knowledge (…).” Additionally, the learners may actually mark down our teaching methods when we introduce a problem-based approach, or one based on a critical pedagogy. Very interesting! 

My name is Kasia Idzi and I am an Assistant Academic Support Librarian at Wimbledon. I provide library support on the Performance Design and Technologies undergraduate courses, and for the CCW researchers and PhD students. I am interested in information literacy and teaching with library and special collections. This blog  records my learning journey on PgCert in Academic Practice.