mmilitsiPGCert

One of the supplementary readings from Workshop 1 (Social Justice & Education) that has been key in my perception of structural racism within the UK university structures and superficial attempts to address it, is Disaggregating the Black Student experience (Broadhead, 2022). It brought into view the inefficiency of developing a range of policies under the UK Equality Act 2010 that placed legal responsibilities on universities to prevent discrimination through varied compulsory staff awareness and development training programmes adhered to the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) agenda. In my experience completing antiracism e-learning modules or attending antiracism workshops to evidence that my teaching practice is aligned with the social objective of the UAL Performance, Review and Appraisal (PRA) process (Inclusion of an EDI anti-racism objective is mandatory) doesn`t address structural racism in any meaningful way. Broadhead sees this approach as tokenistic and touches upon the complexity of the UK university structures in terms of the lack of diversity and poor representation in anti-racism educational leadership to drive change forward.

What makes this argument coherent is the obvious; the ironic perversity of denying the involvement of those with lived experience in driving changes is in itself racism. Broadhead brings into a discussion South African-born professor Randall Whittaker, pro-vice-chancellor at Leeds Arts University and board member of AdvanceHE to offer his view on the reasons why previous policies have failed to close participation, non-continuation and awarding gaps between black and white students. He also argues for the disaggregation of the homogenous classification of different ethnic groups such as BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) and BME (black and minority ethnic) in data collection to unmask educational inequality.

Whittaker being one of the few senior managers from a minority ethnic background in the UK university context reflects on the importance of lived experience and empathy in higher education policy development and decision making. He recalls his own journey growing up during apartheid in South Africa as a creative overcoming many obstacles before schools were open to people of colour and led him to university so he could leave South Africa to pursue opportunities abroad. Whittaker epitomises how leadership structures need people with lived experience of belonging to marginalised social groups because they bring knowledge, insight and motivation to make changes. When students can relate to you and understand that you have some idea of their experience I think you are able to help them (Whittaker, 2022).

Students come to university with a unique set of experiences and cultural/spiritual nuances, which will ultimately impact on their perception of the university as an institution along with its staff, practices and norms (Singh, 2011). The arts in the UK have been influenced by the canon of western arts for centuries excluding a variety of cultural practices and perspectives inhibiting therefore progress to really explore indigenous arts and creativity (Whittaker, 2022). Students’ sense of belonging at the institution is threatened by exclusionary practices, which in turn contributes to a reluctance to stay and finish their courses (Singh, 2011). Whittaker calls for strategies to disrupt conventional art pedagogies and curricula that have been prevalent in the arts since the 1950s highlighting that academic teaching staff should be supported to develop arts pedagogies suitable for now.

To instigate change the assumption that the HE institutions and those who work in them are less disposed to discriminate should be challenged; there is a clear role here for leadership and management in empowering staff to be active in addressing their own assumptions, practices, fears and biases. Students should also be challenged to think from a cultural capital point of view as the outcome of an arts education is often seen to be the finished work rather than the critical, reflective learning that it has been undertaken in producing that work (Broadhead, 2022).

Both Broadhead and Whittaker argue that the conservatism of arts education needs to be recognised and critically analysed, rather than assuming the sector is inevitably innovative and inclusive. Within my teaching context it is pertinent this assumption to be challenged in order to make changes in my own academic practice and facilitate learning spaces that are more inclusive. The prospect of progressing into the PgCert Inclusive Practices unit necessitates recognition that racist structures underpin all institutions, and that it is the responsibility of everyone to combat this in their own professional context and life practices (Inclusive Practices unit brief, 2024).

References:

Broadhead, S. (2022) Disaggregating the Black Student Experience, Access and Widening Participation in Arts Higher Education: Practice and Research, Springer International Publishing, pp 51–68. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central

Brown, A. D. (2022) Identities in and around organizations: Towards an identity work perspective. Human Relations 75 (7), pp. 1205-1237

Singh, G. (2011) A synthesis of research evidence: Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Students’ Participation in Higher Education: Improving Retention and Success. Available at: EvidenceNet, Available at: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/black-and-minority-ethnic-bme-students-participation-higher-education-improving

Further References/Reading:

Freire P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin Random House UK

Savage P. (2023) The New Life: Mozambican Art Students in the USSR, and the Aesthetic Epistemologies of Anti-Colonial Solidarity. Art History Volume 45, Issue 5: Red Networks: Post war Art Exchange, pp 928-1150. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8365.12692

Case Study 1: Knowing and responding to your students` diverse needs.

Contextual Background

The Diploma in Professional Studies at UAL is an optional form of study that asks students to spend at least 100 days in a work placement or series of work placements and to reflect on this experience between the second and final year of their BA studies. As a DPS tutor, I start working across the CSM BA Jewellery Design and BA Textile Design courses during stage 2 study to help students prepare for the out-in-industry year (approx. 80-120 students initially express interest undertaking the diploma with the option to opt out and progress into stage 3). During this time students are struggling to start thinking of how to approach professional practice, place themselves within industry and get the confidence to apply for placements.

Evaluation

To meet the students` diverse needs and lay the groundwork for understanding the nature and regulations of the diploma, preparatory tutorials and college briefing sessions on Careers & Employability, Health & Safety in the workplace, Disability Service, Student Funding, and Visas are set in place between the Spring and Summer terms of their stage 2 study. I offer 1-to-1 tutorials to facilitate space for dialogue about student placement plans with a focus on communicating their skills and creative ability through portfolios, CVs and Cover Letters to potential placement providers. Interrelated aspects I encounter as particularly challenging during these sessions for students are:

• consolidate their creative, practical and transferable skills gained through stage 1 and stage 2, so they can contextualise speculative placement applications;

• gain confidence and take ownership of their learning despite their learning differences and/or cultural background;

• accepting that the transition between academic study and real-life-experience is an integral part of the student journey and comes with challenges.

Moving Forward

Helping students to consolidate their creative, practical and transferable skills gained through stage 1 and stage 2, so they can contextualise speculative placement applications so far sign-up individual tutorials along with relevant sessions (CV, Portfolios, Cover Letters, Interview Advise) delivered by the UAL Careers and Employability service that I also join are in place. But having to juggle Year 2 main study demands and project submission deadlines with experiential professional practice learning opportunities is an additional pressure. As a result there is a poor turn up to these key sessions and tutorials, and even if students attend, not always benefit. This combined with the lack of well-defined paid internship roles that students could simply apply without the need of sending speculative applications have been ongoing challenges since I was appointed to this teaching job 5 years ago.

The difference however between before I started the PgCert and now is the way I view student difficulty to reflect on their existing creative abilities and how their personal experience, insights and evolution throughout their studies are already relevant to industry more than they think at the first stages of preparation to the year-in-industry and future professional development; to bring this into the student awareness the Microteaching Task: Object-based Learning and relevant content (i.e. the OBL session delivered by Judy Willcocks and context on the multi-sensory aspects in object-based sessions and instinctive reactions to objects as a key part of experiential learning in art/design context that can enhance learning awareness, encourage object analysis and critical reflection) could be applicable to my teaching context.

Looking back although I had no indication of my peers` teaching contexts the task to prepare and deliver a 20-minute learning activity based around an object brought to light how they approach OBL from a wider perspective, an opportunity to experience a rich variety of ways of teaching with objects.

One of the ways to taking this idea forward and experimenting with a new strategy would be apart from the 1-to-1 sessions to also deliver small group sessions and give the option to the students to either bring to these sessions their CVs and portfolios or an object or objects that can relate to. It could be anything, an outcome from the BA Jewellery and Textile design courses` project briefs, process, a tool they use, a material, a drawing, something they own, purchased, or even local currency, an object that reminds them of home and gives them sense of space and belonging. Part of the task could be a brief Curriculum Vitae of the object(s) and brief portfolio that illustrates/echoes the objects` background to bring it to life and render it employable. Interacting with their peers during the session is a opportunity for students to utilise a variety of already existing transferable skills including communication, team working, research and analysis as essential to any professional practice context.

My desired aims are students to step out from main study briefly and reflect from the perspective of their life-experience (e.g. cultural background, identity, learning differences) on how they make aesthetic decisions, form their understanding of key concepts (i.e. branding, style, ethics), relate to materials, see objects beyond their disciplinary training and more rooted in themselves, engage with objects more deeply and recognise what excites them most in the creative process. An exercise not to lose sight of the obvious and mundane, how their practices can actively link to who they are, how their past experiences can impact on their present learning experience as a continuum (Dewey 1938).

This way of engagement as a learning activity although it comes with limitations, it has the potential to start shaping an enquiry-based approach towards professional practice that often is alien to students, and a massive trigger of insecurity that relates to future employment within the creative industries. Yet, within my teaching context and remit what I can influence is the conditions for students to gain confidence and take ownership of their learning by facilitating space for reflection and providing the tools for the students to customise each of these learning opportunities to serve their immediate (e.g how to place themselves within industry and start applying for placements) but also their future professional goals upon graduation and beyond. This type of OBL activities could also be an attempt to enter the students` emotional worlds so that I can get some sense on how they are reaching to learning and offer more constructive guidance to approach industry in a way that is relevant, individualised and meaningful to them.

Through re-encountering myself as a learner I identify the terror students associate with learning something new and difficult. Students studying art and design in higher education are on a journey that involves identity transformation. As Kinniburgh (2014) points out in the context of design, students are developing dual identities as students and professionals from the moment they embark on their studies (Orr and Shreeve, 2017). Identifying the discomfort that arises from the uncertainty of a new territory (e.g. a year-in-industry) as a threshold concept (Osmond, 2009) is to look at ways working with students to scaffold transition and to potentially come close accepting that the transition between academic study and real-life-experience is an integral part of the student journey and comes with challenges.

Case Study 2: Planning and teaching for effective learning

Contextual Background

The Diploma in Professional Studies is an optional form of study that asks BA Jewellery Design and BA Textile Design students to spend at least 100 days in a work placement or series of work placements and to reflect on this experience between the second and final year of their BA studies. When students progress into the diploma year and are in professional placements, I  support their progress (approx. 60-80 students) through a structure that enables the cohort to navigate challenges within diverse professional settings, meet the requirements to qualify for the diploma and successfully complete the year. 

Evaluation

My main teaching format is online compulsory 1-to-1 progress tutorials (one each term or more depending on student individual circumstances). These sessions are tailored to the students` individual needs with a focus placed on sustaining an enquiring attitude towards industry learning. My aim is  to keep students engaged from the beginning of the academic cycle to enhance placement learning awareness in reference to the different levels of student commitment, suitability of placement activity and response to real-life-experience that is significantly differentiated from the college culture.

Discussions with students within the context of professional practice are never straightforward and inevitably tend to be intimate at times; keeping track of student progress, fostering a safe space to elicit student perception on the inevitable shift in their creative identity that industry learning entails and ultimately involves a repositioning of self in relation to their subject of study and worldview are ongoing concerns about the effectiveness of my teaching approach developed so far. 

Moving Forward

One of the strategies already developed to provide active support to students during the 1-to-1 sessions persisting through difficulties they encounter and make connections between new knowledge and existing understanding of their discipline as well as ensuring they submit assessment points for the final reflective summative placement report is diary-keeping.

The diary is a tool for students to gradually compile information for their placement report and it is not assessed however, students are asked to submit extracts from their diaries periodically throughout the year; these submissions help me to build a picture of student engagement with both their placements and their ongoing professional research and development. The diary extract submissions are also revealing difficulties students may encounter (i.e. welfare, terms/conditions of placement activity, ISA adjustments) which allow me to detect, openly address during progress tutorials and offer guidance.

It is a pedagogic challenge to empower students and encourage the practice of diary-keeping to play up aspects of placement learning that drives their creative potential whist they are often struggling to cope with the demands and resentments of unpaid full-time work. This dissonance between meaningful learning and actual world of practice and its constrains comes with ethical contradictions involved in performing an inclusive agenda and offering a cohesive student-centered learning experience. An affirmation on the effectiveness of the diary-keeping as a pedagogic tool to offer a more individualized and thorough support to the students is literature about the framework informed by the work of Michel Foucault. 

Mark Barrow`s article on Assessment and student transformation: linking character and intellect is concerned with the productive effects of educational processes such as assessment regimes in shaping students individuality by using methods like supplementary material (learning diary or journal), facilitating in this way self-reflection and self-examination to play out power relations inculcated in teacher-centered approach to learning. Drawing on Foucault`s Technologies of the Self, rooted in the historical constitution of the self – a genealogical investigation of moral practices outlined as epimelesthai sautou, “to take care of oneself”, a precept which permits individuals to effect by the own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies, souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being (Foucault, 1982), the article exemplifies how diary-keeping as a confessional tool (considering the practice of confession is at the heart of Foucault`s ethical study) enables students to confront their self, monitor their development as designers and consider their being in relation to the truth game of their discipline. 

As a chronological record, the learning diary exposes the developing character of the student in relation to the real world dynamics and the rules for the production of truth in their discipline that mirrors the discovery of the truth concerning oneself which with guidance influences the conditions to support students to set their own rules of conduct and foster in themselves the potential to be better able to care for the self.

In my teaching context encouraging more actively placement students to disclose themselves in an individualised process of learning requires the students to sustain a coherent narrative about their working practices, their thoughts and feelings about their developing course specific skills in respect to their own being as experience. In this process students are constantly updating and revisiting the narrative through ongoing analysis of placement activity in reference to their developing character. With emphasis placed on the application of discipline focused theoretical understanding to real situations as they are gaining experience of the workplace students could better integrate industry learning into a coherent personal argument which in return assists the students in dealing with the real power relations of the world of work.

Case Study 3: Assessing learning and exchanging feedback

Contextual Background

To meet the learning outcomes and assessment criteria of the Diploma in Professional Studies, students need to evidence 100 days minimum of placement activity and a 3,000-4,000-word Placement Report, describing and evaluating their learning and experiences, skills/employability enhancement and career development which leads to a pass or fail outcome.  

As students are reaching the end of the year in industry before they return to college to resume their main study, ensuring they can contextualise placement learning and submit their final reflective summative placement report in reference to the transfer of disciplinary knowledge to actual world of practice and then back to academic study has been a key challenge.

Evaluation

As described in case study 2 Planning and teaching for effective learning my main teaching format already developed to offer active support to students throughout the year are online 1-to-1 progress tutorials. These session are driven by student individual circumstances and also provide context about the diary and placement report project brief. Since the outcomes of the placement year are evaluated on a holistic pass/fail assessment with no grading scale to measure the level of performance, assessing learning and exchanging feedback needs to be explicit to clearly indicate how well the learning outcomes are achieved and what the higher expectations aligned with meaningful learning are. As the nature of the diploma is defined by experiential work-based highly individualised learning conditions, it is essential to build in possibilities for dialogue early in the year to negotiate educational objectives and evaluative criteria that echo the student motivation/need, changing circumstances and shift in their creative identity that industry learning involves.

Keep developing a strategy to best facilitate a dialectic space that constitutes a fair, outcome-led assessment process enabling both teacher and student to track the development of learning and capture the whole learning experience as well as demonstrating that the objectives of the year are met has its complexities and limitations.

Moving Forward

Literature in preparation to workshop 3 & 4, The Learning Outcome Debate about assessment regimes in art and design based on functional models for fair frameworks of assessment was enlightening. Addison in Doubting Outcomes in Higher Education Contexts: from Performativity towards Emergence and Negotiation outlines examples of alternative pedagogies and a set of productive dialectic practices; frameworks like CHAT (Cultural, Historical, Activity, Theory, rooted in Vygotskian Theory as a framework with a focus on mediation in deploying cultural tools to aid the subject (learner) in addressing their object (motivation or purpose) with an apparatus to provide the necessary uncertainty that creative activity requires (Addison, 2014).

In my teaching context that falls into experiential/industry learning constituted outside the university culture for a year (yet still embedded into an in-between stage of the main subject of study), tolerating uncertainty is part of the learning outcomes; ambiguity and uncertainty are positive conditions and prerequisite for creativity and a creative pedagogy in higher education. To thrive in uncertain and unknown futures, students require resilience and an ability to manage ambiguity and uncertainty (Orr and Shreeve, 2017). The tension then between the real world dynamics and creative educational context needs to be at play as a driving force not to be resolved or overcome but explored and considered as a determinant of the quality of outcomes of student learning. It is in the process of continuous self-examination, self-reflection (as detailed in case study 2 through diary keeping) evaluation, synthesis and analysis of the real-world relationships, opportunities and constraints and/or apparently unrewarding experiences of placement activity that students are provided the potential becoming empowered to consider and conceptualise their discipline and its limits in reference to an assessment regime that “maps onto the world rather being defined by itself” (Davis, 2001). 

Aiming for an assessment experience that has utility beyond creative education and promotes a deep approach to learning means enabling students to make their own judgements about their performance and how they develop their disciplinary knowledge, work ethic, core attitudes, beliefs and values about their subject of study and the professional world for which they are preparing. In my local context of teaching a deep approach to learning also means preparing students for uncertain times; to use assessment as an authentic educative experience and not as a one-off, isolated event requires opening up space for genuine reflection allowing students to disclose their emotional world, the development of mind and character and breadth of their experience. This provides me some sense about the methods and intellectual processes on how students are reaching to the learning outcomes so that I can offer more constructive and individualised feedback and guidance to approach new forms of experience and the next act of production in their final year. Attached the project brief and a specific example of a placement report and assessment feedback as a reference.

References:

Addison, N. (2014) Doubting learning Outcomes in HE Contexts: From Performativity Towards Emergence and Negotiation, (pp 313–315), International Journal of Art & Design Education. Available at: https://23045626.myblog.arts.ac.uk/files/2024/04/Addison-2014-Doubting-Learning-Outcomes.pdf

Barrow, M. (2006). Assessment and student transformation: linking character and intellect. Studies in Higher Education, 31(3), 357–372. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070600680869

Davies A. (2022) Writing Learning Outcomes and Assessment Criteria in Art and Design. Available at: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=3967630f5169ed34ca2fa378abca07f977ca7c82

Foucault M. (1988) Technologies of the Self. Technologies of the Self, a Seminar with Michel Foucault, pp 16-49. The University of Massachusets Press

Orr S. & Shreeve A. (2017) Art and Design Pedagogy in Higher Education: Knowledge, Values and Ambiguity in the Creative Curriculum. Routledge Research in Education

Willcocks J. (2018) Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection: Object-based learning and the modern art school curriculum. Judy Willcocks Copenhagen Presentation. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3O7MM5WuFo

Google/Wikipedia Entry (2024) Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural-historical_activity_theory

Google/Wikipedia Entry (2024) Liminality. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality

Further References/Reading:

Dewey J. (1938) Experience and Education. New York: Free Press

Jung C. (1961) Memories, Dreams, Reflections. An Autobiography. London: William Collins Books

Rogers B. (1961) On Becoming a Person. A Therapist View on Psychotherapy. London: Robinson

Shreeve A. (2008) Transitions: variation in tutors’ experience of practice and teaching relations in art and design. Doctor of Philosophy Thesis [PHD] Lancaster University. Available at: https://pure.roehampton.ac.uk/portal/en/studentTheses/an-exploration-of-how-creative-arts-lecturers-in-higher-education

The idea of threshold concepts developed by Meyer and Land (2003) in the context of the ETL (Enhancing Teaching Learning environments) project, Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (3): implications for course design and evaluation paper (Rust, 2005) introduced me to concepts embodied as akin to a portal opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking, representing a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress. Threshold concepts defined as potentially transformative points in the student`s learning experience can also entail a shift in the student`s identity. The result may be that students remain stuck in an ‘in-between’ state termed as a state of ‘liminality’, from the Latin meaning within the threshold. Threshold concepts as crucial gateways to mastering a discipline require learners to accept the loss of earlier the security of a previously held conceptual stance to enter less familiar and sometimes disconcerting new territory.

Encountering Jannis Kounellis`s installation, a physical blockage of a threshold (currently on display at the Tate Modern) resonated with me notions of the troublesome learning space that students reach within the context of professional practice and the relativity of their own discipline/subject of study to the real-world relationships, opportunities and constraints. Opting for an experiential work-based additional year between 2nd and final year study the portal from academic study to the year-in-industry often appears bricked up rendering this transition unsettling and disorienting. The complexities of the transformation that students undergo is particularly evident within this stage of liminality as they are stepping out of main study and experiencing a shift in their creative identity and positionality that active learning and professional practice entail.

Kounellis`s instructions to use stones that are sourced locally from the place where the work every time is exhibited brings the real, natural life into the gallery setting. Reminiscent of farmland walls, the work interrelates with the specificity of the location the stones are originated from as a one-off event that in itself is in a perpetual state of becoming, never fixed but ever shifted and reconfigured since the first time was conceived and exhibited in 1969. Each stone block, a living entity colonised by invisible yet active micro-organisms, is telling when you look closely; discoloration, irregularities, erosion, moss and algae build up, all the physical attributes of a material that speaks of the topography, the endless interactions that support life, the natural and man-made features of the place that the work is displayed. Open to interpretation, what constitutes this physical blockage of the threshold is the tension between choice and non-choice, resolution and irresolution, permanence and impermanence bringing into play a reality effect that echoes the human experience and collective memory, a metaphor of liminality, a middle stage of a rite of initiation to enter a new territory, a way of thinking, a state of being continuously subject to chance and change. An embodiment of ‘the passage of human history, of the changing of the human self and its products’ (Thomas McEvilley, 1986).

Similarly, in my teaching context it is that troublesome learning space and blockage of the threshold that can influence powerful transformative points in the student experience and positioning of self in relation to their subject of study and worldview. Helping students to develop genuine understanding of a troublesome concept means to also prompt students to engage with personal knowledge to restore continuity between their discipline and the everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are universally recognised to constitute experience. It is imperative therefore the learning environment to facilitate the connections between lived experience and world of practice opening up a field of possibilities that the creative activity as an ongoing process of becoming and future learning can take place.

Apart from the need of integrative learning environments and opportunities for active student engagement, structured guidance, application and discussion, to help students accept the troublesome nature of a threshold concept as an essential part of the learning process also necessitates deep listening. ‘This requires to cultivating third ear that listens not for what the student knows (discrete packages of knowledge) but for the terms that shape a student`s knowledge, her not knowing, her forgetting, her circles of stuck places and resistances’ (Ellsworth1997:71). Addison adds, there has been much discussion of the importance of ‘not knowing’ within art education; ‘a kind of liminal space where not knowing is not only not overcome, but sought, explored and savoured; where failure, boredom, frustration and getting lost are constructively deployed alongside wonder, secrets and play‘. A set of productive dialectic practices, highlighting the difficulties and delights of learning through continuous making, a process of never quite reaching goals (Addison, 2014).

References

Bachelard G. (1958) The Poetics of Space. Boston, Massachussets: Beacon Press, pp 223

Mcevilley T. (1986) Essay: Mutual Prophecies: The Art of Jannis Kounellis, Jannis Kounellis, Exhibition Organized by Mary Jane Jacob. Publisher: Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art

Rust C. (2005) Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge (3)*: Implications for Course Design and Evaluation, Improving Student Learning Diversity and Inclusivity. Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development, pp 53–63

Further References/Reading:

Baudrillard J. (1968) The System of Objects. London: Verso

Christov-Bakargiev C. (1999) Arte-Povera. London: Phaidon Press

Dewey J. (1934) Art as Experience. New York: Penguin Group

Dewey J. (1938) Experience and Education. New York: Free Press

Google/Wikipedia Entry (2024) Heterotopia (space). Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotopia_(space)

Google/Wikipedia Entry (2024) Liminality. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality

Google/Wikipedia Entry (2024) PBL (Problem Based Learning). Available at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem-based_learning

Hanh T.N. (2013) The Art of Communicating. London: Penguin Random House UK

Hunt J.D. (2022) Genius Loci: An Essay on the Meanings of Place. London: Reaktion Books

Meyer JHF and Land R (2005) Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge (2) –
Epistemological Considerations and a Conceptual Framework for Teaching and Learning, Source: Higher Education, Vol. 49, No3, Issues in Teaching ad Learning from a Student Learning Perspective : A Tribute to Noel Entwistle, pp. 373–388

Steward S. (2019) The Ruins Lessons. Meaning and Material in Western Culture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press

Winnicott, DH (1971) Playing and Reality. New York: Basic Books

The reading activities in preparation to workshop 3 & 4, The Learning Outcome Debate introduced new to me concepts about principles of constructive alignment (Biggs 1996), teaching/learning activities and assessment tasks and how such systems enable programme teams to design intended learning outcomes based on a functional model for fair frameworks for assessment. Nicholas Addison in Doubting Outcomes in Higher Education Contexts: from Performativity towards Emergence and Negotiation, states that these systems can be appropriate for some disciplines, in Art & Design education however, given its complexity and multifaceted contexts limit and inhibit students` input, particularly as students move towards self-initiated activities and objectives LOs discourage difference, close potential and homogenise learning identities.

Reasons why learning outcomes are so important, the benefits/opportunities, challenges and limitations of outcome-based learning have started resonating with me but how to best adapt an evidence-informed approach within the UK Professional Standards Framework ‘areas of activity’, ‘core knowledge’ and ‘values’ expected of HE teachers are not explicit to me neither how applicable can be to my local context of teaching. Alan Davies`s document Writing Learning Outcomes and Assessment Criteria in Art and Design outlines the purposes of outcome-led learning in art and design and identifies misconceptions about the purpose and significance of setting learning outcomes and assessment criteria as an opportunity for the students to define the approach they take to learning and clearly understand how and at what level they are expected to achieve these learning outcomes (and ultimately meet the assessment criteria) but also for universities to establish how to move forwards to a learning paradigm which supports autonomous learning.

Davies presents the challenge to articulate learning outcomes promoting both cognitive attributes and measurable achievement within the ambiguous terms associated with art and design such as creativity, imagination and originality. Implications involved with teaching and assessing only those outcomes that can be easily measured by dis-aggregating what is to be understood into more measurable entities, itemising processes and learning in parts; a surface approach that can lead to far too many generated outcomes so the students are not concerned about overall intention but about developing a strategic approach to meet only the basic requirements to pass stages without delving into the most important aspects of the subject of study.

This inevitably compromises a holistic and integrated understanding by the students which is more consistent with a deep approach determined by criterion-referenced and student-centred assessment schemes that encourage students to become more independent as learners, to develop a more sophisticated conception of the discipline they are studying that map onto the world rather being closed and defined in terms of itself. The extent to which as argued by Mark Barrow in the article Assessment and student transformation: linking character and intellect (2006) assessment might incite students to reflect on themselves, on their normality or deviance as an act of ‘deliberate aesthetic and ethical self-forming’ (Bleakley, 2000, p.417), and thus on their progress towards meeting the transformative goals of higher education and towards being expert in their chosen discipline.

So instead of manoeuvring students into correct and functional form of thinking it should be inculcated in the students an attitude of personal inquiry and learning achievement resulting from engagement in not only pre-specified set tasks by programme teams and intended learning outcomes. Davis states, that as students advance through their course they may be responsible for setting their own learning outcomes. These can be referred to as negotiated learning outcomes.

But how the assessment regime in art & design can encourage students to take ownership of their learning and explore the boundaries of their discipline, enabling them to discover for themselves where their values lie in terms of their approach to learning and the nature of their subject? How assessment can give students a structure, not to cling to but to negotiate with?

‘LO systems dismantle the affective relations that underpin the sociality of learning, the give and take of human interaction. Rather, if a degree of trust were opened up to allow teachers to design programmes with the use of open frameworks (e.g. CHAT), learning could be negotiated to meet student motivation, disciplinary imperatives and social need, enabling teachers and learners to assess meaningful activity.” (Addison, 2014)

References

Addison, N. (2014) Doubting learning Outcomes in HE Contexts: From Performativity Towards Emergence and Negotiation, (pp 313–315), International Journal of Art & Design Education. Available at: https://23045626.myblog.arts.ac.uk/files/2024/04/Addison-2014-Doubting-Learning-Outcomes.pdf

Barrow, M. (2006). Assessment and student transformation: linking character and intellect. Studies in Higher Education, 31(3), 357–372. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070600680869

Davies, A. (2022) Writing Learning Outcomes and Assessment Criteria in Art and Design. Available at: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=3967630f5169ed34ca2fa378abca07f977ca7c82

Google/Wikipedia Entry (2024) Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural-historical_activity_theory

Google/Wikipedia Entry (2024) Ipsative. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipsative

Microteaching Task: Object-based Learning / Friday 9February 2024 / LCC T11.07

The first online seminar led by Judy Willcocks, Head of Museum & Study Collections at CSM, and Georgina Orgill, Assistant Manager of the University Archives and Special Collections introduced object-based learning as a pedagogy to explore the various ways we experience physical and digital objects. 

Judy Willcocks`s preparatory watching, thinking & doing (video on the archives and the UAL study collections and short film, Emotional Responses to Objects) prior to the Object Based Learning session provided context for the history of the Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection as well as addressed the multi-sensory aspects in object-based sessions and instinctive reactions to objects; how a response to an object is formed based on an individual`s disciplinary training, cultural background and/or life experience. How the exploration of the emotional or extra-rational responses to objects as a key part of experiential learning in art/design context can enhance learning awareness, encourage object analysis and critical reflection (Willcocks, 2018). References to framework which encourages deep forensic examination of objects such as methodology based on the work of Jules Prown that coined the phrase Material Culture in the 1980s and advocated a staged examination of objects through description, deduction, hypothesis and the material qualities of objects deducing from a close examination before moving on to storytelling offered a deeper understanding of the online seminar. Further reference to Perspectives on Object-Centered Learning in Museums by Scott G. Paris addressing the issue of object engagement in a museum setting, the meaning of an object not held inherently within the object itself rather a transaction between the object and the learner, Jerome Bruner`s attributed interest and curiosity as being the key motivations for learning, Lev Vygotsky`s investigation on object-oriented action, the ways humans use objects as mediation aiding in memory, reasoning and how learning is being constructed by the learner contextualised the session.

Dr Kirsten Hardie, graphic design historian and cultural theorist also refers to constructing meaning through interpretation of objects as part of process of learning, encouraging analysis and critical reflection. In a report from the Innovative Pedagogies Series, the reconsideration of the value of particular objects and university museum collections suggest how objects can be used to facilitate learning by presenting key pedagogical case studies that highlight activities created to enable and advance object-based learning (Hardie, 2015).

As a response to the online seminar, relevant contextual material and Microteaching task brief I prepared a 20 min learning activity based around an object. I approached my peers as they truly are, a group of teachers from different disciplines. I viewed the task as an opportunity to initiate a discussion by showing an object in an interdisciplinary way on the assumption that the focus on object engagement isn`t necessary discipline specific but rooted to own experience, visual literacy (ability to read objects and find meaning from them), critical/analytical skills and aesthetic judgment.

I used Judy Willcocks`s Emotional or Extra-rational Reading of an Object questions as an exercise that encourages the readers/participants to be self-aware, explore their inner world and question their habituated responses to objects.

THE DIGITAL SOANE was a competition initiated by the Royal College of Art Jewellery & Metal alumni to create a series of pieces for Sir John Soane`s Museum to enhance digital techniques in craft.  

3D scanning specialists scanned the museum’s bust of Sir John Soane using hand-held equipment before 3D before 3d printing it and digitally fragmented it. The fragmented pieces were then used as the starting for the creation of a new object by the RCA Jewellery & Metal alumni through the programme`s Thinking Digital Initiative in 2014. The digital fragments 3D printed in various materials were given to the participants of the competition that we re-interpreted them into a range of outcomes to the displayed and potentially sold at the museum’s shop.

My response was to recreate my Fragment (back of Sir John Soane`s head) in a piece of wood, washed up from the shore of the river Thames. I took inspiration from Soane`s Design from a bridge named Triumphal Bridge across the Thames that won the Royal Academy gold medal in 1776. The accolade was a milestone in Soane`s career as led to a scholarship to travel to Italy for 3 years. It was during this period that his close friend and fellow student James King had drowned on a boating trip to Greenwich. Soane, a non-swimmer, was going to be with him but decided to stay home and work on his design for a Triumphal Bridge.

The architectural drawing and this serendipitous incident are piecing together a narrative comparable with the fragmented nature of Sir john`s digitally “shattered” bust originally made by Francis Chantrey and the nature of the museum housing not only drawings, architectural models of Soane`s projects, large collection of paintings, sculptures, antiquities but also curious objects such a large sea fungus, a skeleton, a plaster beaver, a bent twig, a lock of Napoleon`s hair preserved in a ring. The film A Triumphal Bridge and a Boating Trip to Greenwich in 1776 and in 2014 shows process, how Soane`s fragment of his bust is digitally reproduced (CNC milled) on the surface of drift wood sourced from the Thames foreshore is an attempt to tell the story of an object. The Thames is here considered as a museum, composed of a plethora of flotsam and jetsam objects, mingled together with objects from all periods; a democratic coexistence of objects subjected to chance.

Once out of context the object is released from its history, the marble bust, Soane`s home, a part of a body, the proximity to something intimate as human hair. Bare from associations the driftwood was presented to my peers. I referred to the story behind the object and based on Judy Willcocks`s Emotional or extra-rational reading of an object exercise I asked my peers to reflect on their immediate reaction to the object, their emotional, physical responses, what the object reminded them of, made them think of, how does that influenced the way they encountered the object, if they could relate this object to themselves or their lives, how and/or if triggered their imagination, if they felt comfortable touching an object sourced from the Thames foreshore:

References:

Hardie K. (2015) Wow: the power of objects in object-based learning and teaching: Innovative Pedagogies Series. Higher Education Academy. Available at: https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets.creode.advancehe-document-manager/documents/hea/private/kirsten_hardie_final_1568037367.pdf

Willcocks J. (2018) Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection: Object-based learning and the modern art school curriculum. Judy Willcocks Copenhagen Presentation. University of the Arts London. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3O7MM5WuFo

Willcocks J. (2021) Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection: Emotional Responses to Objects. University of the Arts London. Available at: https://arts.ac.libguides.com/c.php?g=686452&p=4906489

Further References/Reading:

Artech 3D (2014) The Digital Soane: How Artec 3D scanners bring together new technologies and contemporary art. Available at: https://www.artec3d.com/news/digital-soane-how-artec-3d-scanners-bring-together-new-technologies

Google/Wikipedia Entry (2024) John Soane. Available at:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Soane

Hidden Architecture (no date) Triumphal Bridge. Available at: https://hiddenarchitecture.net/triumphal-bridge/

Lever J. (2005) Sir John Soane`s Museum Collection Online: Rough preliminary designs, some attributed to George Dance, and design ‘for a Mausoleum to the Memory of James King drowned June 9. 1776’ , 1776-7, with J.M.Gandy perspectives, 1799-1800 (19). Available at: https://collections.soane.org/drawings?ci_search_type=ARCI&mi_search_type=adv&sort=7&tn=Drawings&t=SCHEME117

Militsi M. (2014) Digital Soane: A Triumphal Bridge and a Boating Trip to Greenwich in 1776 and in 2014. Available at: https://vimeo.com/110061495

Sir John Soane`s Museum (2007) A New Description of Sir John Soane`s Museum. Sir John Soane`s Museum 11th Revised Edition

Summerson J. (1978) The Architectural Review: John Soane and the Furniture of Death. Available at: https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/john-soane-and-the-furniture-of-death