Becoming a Student (again)
“It matters how we arrive at the places we do” Sara Ahmed (2006)
Context (student)
Taking on that newcomer feeling and reinhabiting the position of the student – finding the right door, stepping into the classroom, figuring out which desk to sit at – all the trepidation, the sensations of being new, of not knowing what’s expected, not knowing other people, feeling vulnerable and curious and excited and daunted.
It’s a lot. Even from the position of someone familiar with moving around the very building the session’s being held in, and with years of experience of different education settings and different teaching approaches and materials. As an educator it’s too easy to forget just how overwhelming this position can feel.
Context (tutor)
My pedagogic practice has developed incrementally over the past 25 years in significantly different settings, from teaching English, to Theatre Studies, to working with Forum Theatre (Boal, 1979) in communities across Southern Africa, via art school educations in the UK, numerous art and design industry jobs, through my art and publishing practice and, for the past decade teaching at London College of Communication.
Over that time, I’ve come to understand that practising empathetic[1] teaching is at the forefront of my values as an educator. Starting the PgCert course there’s a unique opportunity to reflect on the practices that can inform my development as a tutor through the position of the student. I intend to draw on this experience to identify orienting exercises and methods to make my practice more inclusive. Our first taught session provided some helpful insights around structuring sessions for inclusivity:
- Taking into account lateness – not briefing all the important information at the top of the session
- Providing a clear overview of the day with timings and breaks
- Employing a range of teaching materials and tasks to suit diverse learners e.g. some more tactile and some more discursive tasks
- The arrangement of the room into a number of tables organised in a certain orientation with a given number of places
- Providing materials for an initial exercise
Each of these elements offered a sense of assurance that the facilitators knew what they were doing and that a model of empathic tutoring was being engaged with. The pacing helped to texture the session with moments of greater intensity and more casual energy.
One of the group activities was to chronologically order a timeline of events that have shaped Higher Education. This activity had the following characteristics:
- Felt like a meaningful icebreaker
- Provided common ground for people unfamiliar with each other to engage in group activities for the first time together
- Introduced movement around the room and exchange between participants
- Helped to reduce assumptions about getting things right and wrong
I intend to try something similar on the next unit I run with year 2 undergraduate students. I want to bring the aspect of balancing a sense of discovery whilst introducing collaborative communication that this exercise captured. The task is thematically oriented without overloading information. It provides space for varying levels of interactivity depending on individual learning styles, and evokes a generally playful atmosphere, introducing exchange and fostering community building.
Some of the challenges these elements could help address include lateness, diverse cultural experiences of education and communication, and a range of learning styles which could impact positively on retention for students who might otherwise experience alienation.
Images of terms relating to comfort, and an NVC Needs List in a year two workshop
References
Ahmed, S. (2006) Queer Phenomenology. Durham, NC, Duke University Press
Boal, A. (1979) Theatre of the Oppressed. London, Pluto Press
hooks, b. (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. London: Routledge
[1] My understanding of empathetic teaching is an approach that’s based on the values discussed by practitioners such as bell hooks and Paulo Freire. In Teaching to Transgress, hooks devotes a chapter to discussing Freire’s impact on her practice as a pedagogue (“Paulo Freire” pp45-58). For hooks contesting ‘the politics of domination, the impact of racism, sexism, class exploitation’ (p46) underpins her motivation. Seeking out a pedagogy of liberation she cites Freire’s definition of mutual aid: “Authentic help means that all who are involved help each other mutually, growing together in the common effort to understand the reality which they seek to transform. Only through such praxis–in which those who help and those who are being helped help each other simultaneously–can the act of helping become free from the distortion in which the helper dominates the helped.” (p54)