group work – Sebastian May

Exploring race & identity in the classroom

Exploring ‘Retention and attainment in the disciplines: Art and Design’, I was surprised to read that while UAL seems to retain students at subject discipline average (94%), the number of students gaining lower or no award is comparatively higher (6%); with a stark yet an unfortunately unsurprising difference between white students and Black student groups (Finnigan and Richards, 2016, p.4). When I began my academic work, I had always imagined that the creativity embedded within Art and Design studies would provide more opportunities for equity, equality and inclusion than other disciplines, and so I am now keen to investigate some of these discrepancies and possible interventions through my own practice.

On white fragility, Robin DiAngelo speaks of a socialisation that shapes our opinions about race “by swimming in the water of our culture” (DiAngelo, 2018, p.101). When we talk about personal identities and narratives, we must acknowledge the communities of which we are part, including our community perspectives. These will contain prejudices, relate to our own points of views and practices; however we cannot use this as an excuse for inaction. I very much acknowledge that even though I open opportunities for students to participate fully as themselves through their creative work and enable them to freely express their identities in the classroom, there remains a power imbalance between me, as a white man, making decisions on how learning takes place and how learning materials are designed, for example. DiAngelo (2018) writes that even though individual white people may be against racism, they can, and will, still benefit from the distribution of resources controlled by ‘their group’, and I feel there is a parallel to be drawn here between this larger social construct and the microcosm of the classroom.

Aaron J. Hahn Tapper’s writing on Social Justice Education, the link to conflict resolution and ‘intergroup education’, is fascinating to me (Hahn Tapper, 2013, p. 422). Much of my work in the classroom positions me as a sort of facilitator to engage students in creative thinking and practice and this can create incredibly positive learning experiences. As the article highlights, this type of work requires an openness and understanding of different identities, and possibly an understanding of (pre-existing) power dynamics and inequalities, from everyone present, me and my students. I hope that the identity exercise I have designed as part of my Artefact will make a positive contribution towards this work.

Aisha Richards (2023) offers through Shades of Noir a range of practical tools, such as the virtual learning netiquette, which I want to explore integrating into my future lectures. I think the website offers a fantastic resource of journals, which could offer students a brilliant insight into this area of work, highlight to them a range of personal narratives to help them reflect on their own identities and creative practices, and support their research. I frequently ask students to consider their own geopolitical, sociological and identity-based perspectives, how these impact their creative work and the stories they tell, and these resources could support effectively such activities.

See my comments on other posts on this topic

Further notes and reflections

The university retains exclusionary practices that align to an old-fashioned idea of Art & Design studies being a privilege to enter in the first place. Art and Design being such a huge field, however, I wonder if there are recognisable differences between art practices and if there are areas of the university that are more successful than others in including everyone.

In my own teaching practice, there are conversations to be had with students about their own identities, particularly in position to the institution and me as their tutor; giving them sufficient time to reflect and respond. Identity exercises, like the one embedded within my Artefact, could foster this.

I thought Josephine Kwhali comment on unconscious bias aligned with Shirley Anne Tate’s lecture on hiding behind unconscious bias, calling on us to stop using the unconscious as an excuse for bias and racism. Kwhali very much addresses staff, but I wonder how we address this with students in a meaningful way.

In my student experience strand of work, I would love to table some of the diversity questions highlighted on the Shades of Noir website. I frequently work with colleagues on experience and curriculum design and these questions are helpful prompts to unpick some of the practices, processes and designs currently in place across UAL online education.

Bibliography

DiAngelo, R. (2018) ‘White Fragility’, Peekaboo We See You: Whiteness, pp. 100–105. Available at: https://issuu.com/shadesofnoir/docs/peekaboo_we_see_you_whiteness (Accessed: 15 June 2023).

Finnigan, T. and Richards, A. (2016) Retention and attainment in the disciplines: Art and Design. rep. York: Higher Education Academy, pp. 1–24.

Hahn Tapper, A.J. (2013), A Pedagogy of Social Justice Education: Social Identity Theory, Intersectionality, and Empowerment. Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 30: 411 445. https://doi.org/10.1002/crq.21072

Richards, A. (2023) Shades of Noir. Available at: https://shadesofnoir.org.uk/ (Accessed: 14 June 2023).

Witness: unconscious bias (2016) ucu black members’ standing committee oral history project. The University and College Union (UCU). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6XDUGPoaFw (Accessed: 15 June 2023).

Whiteliness and institutional racism: Hiding behind (un)conscious bias (2018) YouTube. Chair for Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation (CriSHET) at the Nelson Mandela University, South Africa. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lur3hjEHCsE (Accessed: 16 June 2023).

Refining teaching on the go

This week, I’ve been delivering a series of industry experience workshops for pre-degree students. As the sessions were somewhat spread out, I got the chance to reflect on each day of teaching, including on student engagement, and to amend things as I went on to deliver the next session.

Warm-up exercise asking students about their creative practice(s)

Having delivered the first two sessions, I noticed a few moments where student were confused about the task at hand, so I went back to the original instructions and tidied them up. I also more clearly organised questions, and rewrote rewrote questions to make them more explicit and easier to answer.

Another thing I noticed was that some students struggled with the idea of exploring their identities and embedding personal values within their creative work; a fairly complex subject but something I was keen to integrate within the class.

While I already made sure to spend time with student individually to go through this concept in detail, I also then added another slide to have students collectively think about the idea of identity.

For this, I repurposed an existing exercise (2) to explore biases and simplified it so it allowed me to explore identity as a general concept; this was more fitting for the topics I wanted to discuss, but also more appropriate for the level of experience in the room. The additional ‘identity iceberg’ exercise also give me a chance to engage students in another way, and made the lesson more flexible. The exercise worked particularly well for an online session, where I asked students to contribute their own thoughts about their identities to an online board.

Extract from online workshop and student identity exercise

Aiming to make my lessons more inclusive, I am really keen to connect with students personal identities and backgrounds, however this can be challenging with students that are new to this concept, new to this type of education, and students with whom I haven’t had the chance to build up much of a relationship or trust – which naturally happens when teaching one off sessions.

I’m also finding that students’ limited understanding of English is making it difficult for me to delve into more complex subject areas, so there are a few hurdles to overcome.

I noticed some lulls towards the end of some of the sessions, but I am wondering if this is more my own personal discomfort with periods of silence in the classroom, or if students are truly disengaged. When I move around the classroom some students continue to work on their tasks or seem to be discussing questions, so perhaps this is more something to monitor rather than intervene, but also understand that some students might need silences and breaks, particularly in challenging lessons.

To improve on this, in my online session I made it explicit to students that they would have time for silent or group working, which I think helped them as well as me, setting expectations and avoiding any confusion or discomfort.

Having completed a week’s worth of teaching and looking back, one of the things I would really like to look at in future is students’ level of previous education and experience, as I think some of the topics and ideas that I tabled were too complex for them, even after I simplified them and included additional exercises and support. It may also be worth exploring with students slightly simpler tasks, but giving students the option to delve deeper into areas of specific interest to them; particularly as there tend to be students from many different creative backgrounds in the room.

References

Teaching the identity iceberg: https://adl.org/sites/default/files/identity-iceberg/story.html
The Iceberg—Visible and Hidden Identity: https://www.wondriumdaily.com/visible-and-hidden-identity/

Small group teaching: ideas

Diagram 1. Aspects of Small Group Learning Environment

I recently came across an interesting investigation into small group teaching by Gunn (2007), which I am hoping to investigate further. This is particularly relevant to my own work, which often involves smaller groups of students. An upcoming workshop in which I’ll be co-designing virtual learning environment routes with five students being one example.

Gunn highlights five key areas that influence small group learning: cognitive processes, experiential processes, interpersonal group dynamics, and physical environments. She further outlines that defining and structuring procedures and becoming oriented, conforming to procedures and getting acquainted, and recognising mutuality and building trust, are all key in effective group learning – which I hope to embed within my own session. For example, I am planning to embed a comprehensive induction, warm-up exercises to get to know each other, and discussion, to promote trust amongst the group.

Gunn outlines additional ideas by Johnson & Johnson that are worth considering:

Introduce, define, and structure the learning group
Clarify procedures, reinforce members for conforming to the procedures, and help members become acquainted
Emphasise and highlight the cooperative interdependence among group members and encourage their engaging in both trusting and trustworthy behaviours
Accept rebellion by and differentiation among group members as a normal process and use confrontation and constructive negotiation to help group members establish their independence from each other and the prescribed procedures
Facilitate the members’ committing themselves to and taking ownership of the group’s goals, procedures, and other members
Be a consultant to the group, providing needed material and information resources for the group to function effectively

Bibliography

Gunn, V. (2007). Approaches to Small Group Learning and Teaching. http://www.gla.ac.uk/learn/

Johnson, D. W. & Johnson, F.P. (1997, 6th edn) Joining Together: Group Theory and Group Skills, Boston: Allyn & Bacon.