I thoroughly enjoyed each one of the micro teaching activities!
It was great to see how something very simple could lead to such varied discussions and design outcomes.
These are the slides I used to introduce my activity:
Who’s responsible for session engagement?
We had a very good group discussion around this question.
I loved the point that ‘Engagement should start before the session’ to build curiosity and set expectations rather than the students showing up not knowing what to expect. This could be done with an e-mail in advance, a homework task / some reading or a teaser at the end of the previous session.
This was a very inspirational session especially because of the rich discussions we had in our groups.
I was partnered with P. to discuss how care can be integrated into a particular session or aspect of our practice. I found it very fitting that throughout the discussion about care he was rocking his weeks-old baby on his shoulder. Working or joining a session online from home sometimes means having divided attention or added responsibilities so this was a good example of recognising the individual needs in the moment and accepting that one can only do their best at any given time.
Patience, A. (2008) The Art of Loving in the Classroom: A Defence of Affective Pedagogy. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 33 (2), pp. 55-67
Summary
Allan Patience talks about the current political and cultural inclination to shape education to use utilitarian pedagogy (i.e. prepare students for specific types of jobs for economic and political benefit of the ’elite’) over affective pedagogy (i.e. support students in becoming independent thinkers and therefore functioning participants in democracy).
by Francisco Gaspar, Spark Journal Vol 3, No 1 (2018), Student Contribution
https://sparkjournal.arts.ac.uk/index.php/spark/issue/view/7
The basis for Gaspar’s commentary on educational practices is the commercialisation of graphic design in university which mass produces students with the same thinking.
Lower requirements lead to higher student satisfaction which is a factor that attracts new students and in term fills the courses and keeps funding up.
Thoughts on Vilhauer’s chapter ‘Understanding Art: The Play of Work and Spectator’ (2010).
Starting to read Gloria Dall’Alba’s account of teaching development in universities I constantly stopped to google some of the terms, especially and repeatedly ‘Ontology’ and ‘Epistemology’. I’m sure my understanding of these terms will grow as the course goes on, but I decided to make them into something visual that made sense to me and that I could reference easily while reading. Naturally I drew some bread and a toaster.
I have always enjoyed learning new languages and the influence of language on culture and design, so the research of Victoria Odeniyi was particularly in my area of interest.
There is a fascinating relationship between construction of your native language and one’s perspective of design as well as methods of learning foreign languages and taking in learnings in a foreign language. The most basic example of this is probably writing direction which dictates how one might interpret forwards and backwards and the direction in which a piece of design/art/information is approached innately.
I’ve been teaching at LCC on different courses since 2014, for the past 4 years on Y2 of BA Graphic & Media Design. I did some teaching at different unis around London and in China before that but have never had any formal teaching training. Looking forward to getting insights into teaching concepts, methods and didactics.