Today John mentioned the work of a Phd student who used Paracosms (the notion of world building and how this might impact reality) as a tool for research. I liked this a lot and considered how I could use this as a method to determine my ARP. Every year day, as educators, we are constantly making small changes and amendments to the course, its structure, its delivery, the way we interact with students and what we ask of them. Having already finalised the first two Units of the term, which were full of changes, I found myself this summer struggling to see a meaningful space for an ARP project. I always think back to the essay: The Reflection Game: Enacting the Penitent Self (Marcfarlane & Gourlay, 2009) and its criticism of the performative nature of academia. I’ve had a strong sense of this throughout the PgCert because of its timed nature, a lot of the tasks felt like they inserted themselves awkwardly into the reality of what it means to teach, resulting in reflections or responses that sometimes felt slightly disjointed to my teaching experience(1) but very much curated to what I thought my tutors wanted to see. Tangentially We had an interesting discussion today in class regarding the absurdity of academic language, how impenetrable it is but also how it often seems to be quite self serving – academia for academia’s sake. I myself find it difficult to separate myself from this world at times. I think I could have made more of an effort throughout the year to position myself with more authenticity, rather than trying to perform the role I thought was expected of me.
However, using Paracosm as a method and imagining an ideal world of what I would hope our course to be, one thing that often comes up is the question around what it means to be a Masters student and how we can empower our students to become ‘masters’ of their subject. Influenced by a Frieran pedagogy (Frierer, 1980) I think that celebrating and encouraging a sense of independence in the students is crucial to create spaces of empowerment and equality. Often we find ourselves with cohorts that are extremely dependent on us. They seem desperate for our guidance and struggle to make decisions without our approval. We try, year on year, to establish a dynamic of equality but we never quite succeed. This becomes especially apparent in group crits where more often than not, rather than a group discussion the sessions turn into one on one tutorials with an audience, each students waiting for their turn quietly, rarely responding to each other despite encouragement from our part. What I would like to develop is a framework that affords more interactivity with students – a space where they feel empowered to contribute and feedback to each other’s work without relying so much on our input.
I find it difficult sometimes to express ideas (in writing) in a way that doesn’t feel clunky. So, in the spirit of being authentic and true to my process, here is a link to a spider diagram mapping my thought process.
Colour code:
Blue = problems connected to identified issue
Yellow = suggestions for improvement
Grey = references, theory and bibliography
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I am therefore considering turning my group crits into more of a ‘Design-Fair’ format, where students display they work in progress and interact with each other: sharing and giving feedback and creating a sense of collective within the classroom.
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Footnotes:
1. For instance, I was given the ‘Tools at Hand’ text (Converse & Presser, 2011) to read as preparation for the workshop today and felt very frustrated by it. I couldn’t understand why this text had been given to us, being so disconnected from teaching environments and contexts. I struggled to see the value in it, aside from being an academic text relating to interviews, the 23 pages felt very indulgent and I found myself yearning for texts and references that would actually positively contribute to my research.
Bibliography:
Converse. J. M & Presser, S. (2011) Tools at Hand In: Survey Questions, Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Freire, P. (1972) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York. Herder and Herder
Macfarlane, B & Gourlay, L. (2009). The Reflection Game: Enacting the Penitent Self. New York: Routledge. Available at: https://moodle.arts.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/1503958/mod_resource/content/1/Macfarlane%20%20Gourlay%202009.pdf