As we explore the range of policies, frameworks, strategies, codes, principles, guides, regulations and more … available to use within our creative arts context, I begin to wonder how I position my own academic practice within this peculiar and complex higher education environment. Indeed, what are my values? How do I position them against this vast area of existing materials? How to prioritise what’s available to me, and against my own values, ethics, morals and beliefs?
In my practice, flexibility, creativity, and empathy are values that I continue to embrace and embed within different approaches. In some way, these become lenses through which I use other tools, such as some of the frameworks discussed in our recent workshop.
The UK Professional Standards Framework makes for an interesting reflective tool through which I can sense check my own approach but also my own value system. Its’ three dimensions (Activity, Knowledge, Values) are relevant to all parts of my practice, although there are areas around assessment and providing feedback which I have yet to develop in more detail. Where the framework lacks substance is around truly understanding students, which is very much part of my work around student engagement and experience.
I also wonder about the focus on developing professional practices, inherent in the UKPSF and other frameworks. Within my own practice, I have been exploring spaces of play, opening up more creative spaces for students to engage, explore and learn.
For example, it resonates with me what Gielen and van Heusden outline in A Plea for Communalist Teaching, where they discuss how teachers should “facilitate interactions between students and encourage them to learn from each other”, something which play can beautifully facilitate, sometimes in a disruptive way.
It may be difficult to argue that these spaces directly impact professional development, however I do believe these spaces are critical in the development. If spaces become a tool however, does the lack of disruption they offer counter their initial purpose or use?
Similarly, looking through UAL Principles of Climate, Racial and Social Justice, which explicitly hone in on very specific themes, I wonder how I am able to make small interventions within my own teaching practice to integrate at least parts of the framework and integrate these with my own values along the way; the university’s principles of practice make for a brilliant technical guide. For example, where I am unable to make changes to course handbooks, how can my delivery or management of a course, or simply the way I engage with students make a different that meets some of these asks, as well as my own values and aspirations within teaching and learning? Much of my practice focuses on creating new work, using materials and products, so there may be some easy ways to integrate environmentally-friendly and socially conscious modes of production. I am also thinking about ways my team could bring on board a Climate Advocate or Coordinator to evaluate what we do more broadly.
Bibliography
Gielen, P., & de Bruyne, P. (n.d.). (2012) Teaching Art in the Neoliberal Realm Realism versus Cynicism.