001 – reflections on reading for workshop 1

My allocated reading for the first workshops was ‘The New Life’: Mozambican Art Students in the USSR, and the Aesthetic Epistemologies of Anti-Colonial Solidarity by Polly Savage. The text provided used case study of Cejuma and his cohort. 

Situation: Students (such as Cejuma) were offered scholarships – Bolseiros –  to study in USSR, including in art schools. There was a solidarity between decolonial resistance movements on the continent of Africa and Soviet project, albeit one which implied a hierarchy and a specific power dynamic. This also included transference of aesthetic language that was further used to examine this dynamic. 

The movement of students into these scholarship programmes were not presented as idealist or utopian, but rather as a largely a practical decision amongst recipients who had a desire to leave difficult/more poverty struck and unstable homes and the political uncertainty of their community. This movement was reflected in the approach of the USSR’s attempt to conceive a unified Uzbekistan identity. “Role of USSR to bring Uzbek forwards’ — reflective of “‘official nationalism’ a homogeneity imposed from above through state action”. 

Therefore, we can conceive Cejuma’s ‘excellent’ grade as one which reflects the labour undertaken to reach Russian standard and suggests an aesthetic and technical alignment with the values of the institution. As his worked developed, Cejuma was not reproducing the aesthetic ideaology/demands of pedagogic authority, but rather “emphatically oriented to an alternative political community”.

So using techniques from Russian teaching ‘Russian standard’ and exporting/anchoring vision to Mozambique’s newly found independence from Portuguese empire “a quiet negation of Russian universalist paradigms” 

This was interesting to me in considering how we approach teaching a mixed cohort of both home and international students. There is, on the one hand, a certain expectation from international students to be educated in western art practices. I remember a tutorial with a student in the past who felt that they had not learnt enough about historical western art practices to make ‘convincing’ work which could be contextualised in a place like London. However, there are many other students who understandably feel that there is a lack of understanding on the part of academic staff of their cultural context and artistic approaches. 

I try to take an expansive and diverse approach in references or examples I give to students. I am building a breadth of resources/artist references which seek to be culturally and ethnically diverse. There is still, however the issue not so much of aestehtic transfer, but the difficulty of having conversations around these works when the building blocks are 20th century western. For example, in discussing Weerasaktul’s work (a Thai filmmaker), I am still relying on film theory etc which are produced in a western context. Therefore, what needs to diversify are not merely surface/aestethic, but also from a foundational level which can also then invite reading western cultural output through a philosophically eastern lens etc. The transfer of information needs to be more than a institutional gesture but really a way of thinking about practice. 

Reference:

‘The New Life’: Mozambican Art Students in the USSR, and the Aesthetic Epistemologies of Anti-Colonial Solidarity by Polly Savage

002 – silence: reflections on reading for workshop 2

For the second workshop, I read one of the previous case studies provided ‘Embracing the Silence: introverted learning and the online classroom’ by Karen Harris.

The research uses the scenario of online teaching as a way to think about silence and teaching. We often demand interaction as a sign of engagement, however, the writer prompts us to think about background happenings, allowing for time to think and reflect during teaching/learning exchanges. Online teaching has prompted this thinking due to its sliding scale proximity and enabling to take a moment to pause, to think.

From my teaching experience, there is a duality. Teaching online has allowed both for increased distance and more intimate proximity owing to the removal of the body and the tangible awkwardness from non-interaction. There is often a temptation in in-person sessions to feel responsible for filling the silence however in reality that absence can prompt more thoughtful engagement. There will always be students who are more or less engaged although their silence is not necessarily a marker of disengagement. 

Online spaces do often allow for more productive 1to1 sessions as students are in a place where they often feel more comfortable however there needs to be a situation in which this can happen

The disparity between living arrangements and teaching arrangements means that this is not necessarily always as smooth. Also, Wi-Fi frustrations often eat time. There is also less time for small moments where you are building a relationship rather than delivering which I think is productive in the long run.

Reference:

‘Embracing the Silence: introverted learning and the online classroom’ by Karen Harris.

003 – technologies of the self: confessional models in teaching and learning

Reading Mark Barrow’s article ‘Assessment and student transformation: linking character and intellect’, I was interested in how modes of ‘confession’ was utilised in assessment context as evidence of learning. The study was undertaken at a vocational school utilising in-depth interviews which is not attempting to provide a dataset or overview, but rather more personal and student focused observations which is contextualised using Foucault’s writings. 

He argues that students are encouraged to disclose themselves to their lecturer who acts as an expert, judge, mentor, guide etc. This model of evidenced learning in the west is argued to be a mode of building a member of society who ‘knows oneself’ and can demonstrate this to a superior. He problematises this idea of the ‘educated self’ in which students are expected to increasingly be ablel to measure themselves against the standard of the institution (and therefore, against the expectations of the teacher). For example, students may be examined in such a way which measures how much information they have copied during class and absorbed. Consequently, knowledge is measured by how well they are able to reproduce information. In the case of art or design based learning, students whose examination included both the ‘test’ and supplementary material, there is a perception that this material necessitates a demonstration of a personal connection with the exam object. 

There is a clearly a problematic framing of the student as a confessor which invites power imbalances and excludes modes of knowledge building which falls outside of this relationship. Who is the confessor and who is the keeper of knowledge?  

This can be considered in parallel with this passage in bell hooks’ ‘Teaching to Transgress’:

“when professors bring narratives of their experiences into classroom discussions it eliminates the possibility that we can function as all-knowing, silent interrogators. It is often productive if professors take the first risk, linking confessional narratives to academic discussions so as to show how experience can illuminate and enhance our understanding of academic material”. 

There is a repurposing of the confessional tool at work here in which what is being confessed is not evidence of learning, but rather an invitation to draw together different experiences of learning in a more holistic approach. In particular, in the context of teaching in arts education where the personal is naturally closer to the surface in all teaching and learning exchanges, the proposition of drawing on personal experience (within appropriate boundaries) can position what is being learnt as ‘useful’ both in the context of assessment but more importantly, in building a framework for curiosity. In my teaching practice, in particular when working with foundation level students, there is a balance between creating a transitory space between further and higher education. This includes the shaping of assessments and preparing students for the different ways in which their outputs are looked at. For example, there is an increased focus on ‘decoding’ assessment criteria which is often at odds with school experience in which there is only one way to be ‘right’. This transition is most productive when we are working with a pass/fail system where students are not academically punished for experimentation, for trying things that do not work out. 

Reference: 

‘Assessment and student transformation: linking character and intellect’ by Mark Barrow

‘Teaching to Transgress’ by bell hooks

004 drawing the line: time management, stress and financialisation of education

Reading an interview with Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi titled ‘Autonomy and General Intellect’ in the anthology ‘Contestations: Learning from Critical Experiments in Education’ I was interested in his depiction of the shifting status of the university as symptomatic of the “cancellation of the autonomy of knowledge as the essential feature of the modern institution of the university”. It is evident from my experience both as a lecturer and as a student, that the position of the university is vulnerable to profit models that do not make sense when undertaking a long term project of education and facilitating knowledge production. Both my learning and teaching experience has been defined by ongoing industrial action: ranging from strikes to assessment boycotts. These are in response to reasonable requests for job security and workload management. Recently, Goldsmiths, where I recently completed my masters, announced redundancies of 1 in 6 academics in their restructuring in addition to the sustained precarity of their staff which has been ongoing since I was on my BA, almost ten years ago. 

There is undoubtably an atmosphere of uncertainty and fatigue which shapes the university experience for staff and students alike, one which is difficult to negotiate through learning objectives and assessment criteria. The relationships between staff/students, academic colleagues and the invisibility of university management are shaped by this backdrop of financilisation. Many students struggle to study and live in London, paying high fees while attempting to balance full-time work and studying. Similarly many staff are left unemployed for 3 months of the year with a vague and uncertain potential of returning at the start of the academic year. Or not. 

hooks’ insights have been invaluable in better understanding what is in the remits of my position as a lecturer. She writes: “teachers must be actively committed to a process of self-actualisation that promotes their own well-being if they are to teach in a manner that empowers students”.  Much of the labour of teaching is not the in-person sessions, but rather the emotional, immaterial labour of saying the right thing, of balancing the too-much and not-enough: be that drawing the line between contracted hours and personal life, or the limits of pastoral care. Discussing this with my colleagues, this kind of care seems to disproportionately affect the student/lecturer relationships with female staff members. 

I believe that hooks’ analysis of an empowering lecturer is accurate. From experience, when I have a better work-life balance and greater confidence in my job security, I am a more patient lecturer. Moreover, teaching on the foundation course in which most students are not paying fees, there is space for experimentation, both taking risks in trying new strategies as a teacher, but this is also visible in the work produced by students. Our relationship as non-transactional does generate a more productive environment for staff and students alike. 

My ongoing question: where to draw the line?  

Reference:

‘Autonomy and General Intellect’ by Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi in Contestations: Learning from Critical Experiments in Education.

‘Teaching to Transgress’ by bell hooks

‘Goldsmiths academics to strike over ‘incomprehensible’ redundancies’ by Rachael Hall https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/mar/28/goldsmiths-academics-to-strike-over-incomprehensible-redundancies