Wednesday 21 October 2009

Profile 3

PGCLT
Les Bicknell Profile 3

Use your knowledge of how students learn to inform theoretical debate and approaches to practice-based problems.

My experience on the PgClt course has inspired me to more positively address issues within my teaching, it has delivered a supportive approach and provided a framework to signpost, facilitate and support change. The opportunity to engage in debate with a peer group of colleagues enabled me to deconstruct and examine in detail a range of what turned out to be common issues and more specifically explore the experience of thinking within learning.
The experience of becoming a student again has enabled me to consider the fate of the students I work with. It has been interesting to consider Biggs suggestion that creating a good environment for teaching depends largely on two things: ‘Getting students to agree that appropriate task engagement is a good and impelling idea (otherwise known ‘as motivation’), and the kind of climate we create in our interactions with students.’ During the course I have experienced many different examples of the student experience and I am, through reflection and with the support of the theoretical literature, using these experiences to inform how my students learning experience could be enhanced by testing how my teaching environment could be improved. I have been considering stillness and silence as a way of supporting my students rather than giving answers. This way of being enables the students to navigate their own learning. I have been exploring when learning actually happens and flagging this up within practical sessions as good practice to aspire to.

As one gets older I think it is important to recognise ones position within the scheme of things. Analysing my relationships with students has delivered a range of starting points of exploring the hierarchy within the classroom, relationship and responsibility to marking and assessment procedures and developing the curriculum with the students. These issues will be addressed as part of ongoing reflection and discussion with students, peers and particularly at course meetings, appraisals and team review sessions.

As we search for words, which we hope will attempt to explain our position or if one finds oneself in a situation where there is a requirement to pass on knowledge, you find yourself searching back into the depths of your youth for answers. Forgotten fragments of insight presented to you by often now long dead or old people now manifest themselves as either life rafts to cling onto, like a frightened passenger on the titanic or they are dispersed, as if nuggets of gold, by a John Wayne type character, to a deluded youth eagerly signing up for war in a Sunday afternoon black and white film.

Is it really as simple as this?
I am drawn, as I often have been during my research into this training to the three tenants of Buddhist thinking – nothing is fixed or permanent, everything has consequences and change is inevitable.

What is an art college for?
There is a Start Treck episode where a member of the Q continuum, an omnipotent race who have and will exist for ever and can exist at every physical point in all universes at a sub atomic level at every moment in time, in all realities both real and imagined. So what does he do with this gift?

The idea of an Art College is truly wonderful; it has the possibility to be full of creative possibilities, a space of glorious opportunity with unlimited fascination.

At one point we see Q in a field dressed scruffily trying out the role of a scarecrow where he has been passing time for several millenniums.

Up until my enrolment of the PgClt what had been my recent response to coming into contact with the phenomena of Art School latterly Norwich University College of the Arts?
I have tried out various roles from ‘maverick tutor’ to ‘jobs-worth’ via helpful but ineffective ‘paper-pusher' – this has its equivalents in deep, surface and strategic learning.
I set out this analogy as a possible context for understanding and interpreting my approach and reasons for engaging in the PgClt and subsequent intentions, outcomes and conclusions.
I have witnessed and been part of successive waves of ideologies that have deconstructed and fragmented through misrepresentation, misunderstanding or active distain, what was and could be a truly radical alternative to a mainstream, primarily capitalist consumer structure the majority of the western world is engaged in.
Warnock (2000) in Art for All. Their Policies and Our Culture. lays out a potted history of recent art policy history. Basically Thatcher and her government inherited an arms length policy where government distributed money to universities on their own terms. This was usurped by a central government initiative, which involved concepts of access, subject to quality assessment and in turn judged by fixed performance indicators and I thus was transformed from an artist to a cultural industry. Any sense of an alternative was taken away. To know this is to understand at a fundamental level how creativity is viewed by those engaged in defining and ‘supporting’ such activity. There are ongoing parallels when we talk about current ideology – the knowledge economy, as criteria for change.

My action research proposal and attempted reconstruction as a teacher could be viewed through the context of religious penance or one of recognising a need to analyse my role as teacher alongside issues of responsibility to the students and the larger project of taxation and individual relationship to government. At the core is a desire to see beyond my constructed paradigm and break down the filters I had constructed through which to view the world.

The students that tutors and lectures meet in the first year of the degree are on average younger than ever, this is evidenced within the figures gathered from HR at NUCA. We are taking students directly from A levels and for the first time we have an under 18 year old attending the BA Textiles Course. This is not a problem but there are certain structures that have to be set in place. The students have undertaken eleven years of rigorous mark led learning within their learning lives. They have an ability to deconstruct instructions or briefs and identify the aims and objectives of an assignment and they then focus their energies toward this activity. They have the propensity to look to their relationship to the learning outcomes and create work that addresses these issues with the exclusion to everything else. They are superior strategic surface learners. These students need special care and support when they are confronted with the idea of lateral thinking and open ended problem solving. They could be said to be in a state of crisis and needing special and specific support. But one could also point out that through their experience of the rigorous, strategic, criteria led learning they are aware of both how and what they are learning which will empower them in their ongoing pursuit of information and lifelong learning.

An issue I have recognised through my experience of teaching is that there appears to be three basic types of student. The first category are committed, intelligent, developed learners who have often fought to take an art subject as a GCSE and A level option as the secondary school system attempted to channel their learning through supposedly more academic subjects. If you choose to do Art at a secondary school today and have an academic sensibility you have to be very committed. These students will do well often in spite of the systems they encounter at BA level.
On a tangential issue art colleges could be seen to of academicised’ themselves to ingratiate them to a new target audience – parents, carers and people responsible for the paying of student fees introduced in September 1998.
The second type of student is ‘sort of’ interested in creative activity, but in effect more practical, ‘good with their hands’; they are often channelled into art by a lack of academic choice. If left alone these students cause no trouble and will leave as they arrive. They may though be disillusioned as to their new role in the art world – that of ‘knowledgeable audience’. The idea that all art graduates will become practising professional artists has to be a folly. With a larger number of people going onto both further and higher education the population, in theory, will become more educated and therefore consume more creative and ‘cultural’ activity and the arts needs these people to purchase work, populate the art galleries, theatres and music venues. But there is a space for these people to become a knowledgeable audience
Then there is the last category – the individuals who do not know why they are in higher education, or if they do it is so that they are not somewhere else. These individuals are in constant need of support; they use a disproportionate amount of staff time and will depart from higher education lost and confused, often through being asked to leave. We are operating under an illusion, a fallible structure, which does not acknowledge the existence of these groups, and therefore their specific needs are not being addressed.
I think we are working within systems that at both a practical and at a strategic level do not recognise these students’ needs and therefore fails them. I am attempting to engage with this new paradigm by investing in constructing systems which will recognise, encompass and eventually encourage their learning needs.

At a time when the evidence around us supports the need for an understanding of the interconnectedness of things we appear to be fragmenting education and the individuals engaged in both delivering and receiving education – over the past 10 years with the proliferation of increasingly specific courses we are developing bodies of students who appear fractured and isolated both emotionally and academically. The idea of connectedness and collective thinking which I have outlined in my action research project is seen as a way of engendering happiness and with that comes a more fulfilling and richer learning experience. Studies undertaken by Mitra (2007) outline the value of learning in groups. The work of Etcoff (2009) around the pursuit of happiness shows that people are happiest when “in flow with others”. I work on courses with very specific remits but I will endeavour to develop learning experiences whose structure corresponds to good practice in regards to group work and individual development.


Make a presentation to peers in a professional context.

I am familiar with the activity of delivering presentations to peers in a professional context and had prepared a PowerPoint presentation that outlined the starting points, thinking, research, history and outcomes of my Action Research Learning. My intention for the presentation on the residential element of the course was that it was for information. This was appropriate as I had discussed the work extensively with peers and students. I had also undertaken and completed the Action Research project. What was helpful was the conversation around how to write the Action Research Report and how to position my proposed intervention after the initial intervention. It was also helpful and supportive to be passed a note by a tutor that the research I had been undertaking was worthy of a pedagogic paper, something I had never seen myself engaged in. On reflection the experience did yield interesting outcomes. The idea of repositioning myself as somebody who writes as opposed to somebody who makes and is active practically is revelatory. As a result of my research I have been looking at the Technology Entertainment Design (TED) series of lectures on the web and analysing what makes them work so well. There appears to be no one way to deliver a presentation at a TED conference, there are many different ways. But what many of them have in common is that they are thoughtful and consider the audience. They were often concerned with storytelling, they reminded me of campfires or the best dinner parties I have been to, they also had passion, the person telling their story really believed and wanted you to do so too. I came across the TED Commandments
1 Thou Shalt Not Simply Trot Out thy Usual Shtick.
2 Thou Shalt Dream a Great Dream, or Show Forth a Wondrous New Thing, Or Share Something
3 Thou Hast Never Shared Before.
4 Thou Shalt Reveal thy Curiosity and Thy Passion.
5 Thou Shalt Tell a Story.
6 Thou Shalt Freely Comment on the Utterances of Other Speakers for the Sake of Blessed
Connection and Exquisite Controversy.
7 Thou Shalt Not Flaunt thine Ego. Be Thou Vulnerable. Speak of thy Failure as well as thy Success.
8 Thou Shalt Not Sell from the Stage: Neither thy Company, thy Goods, thy Writings, nor thy Desperate need for Funding; Lest Thou be Cast Aside into Outer Darkness.
9 Thou Shalt Remember all the while: Laughter is Good.
10 Thou Shalt Not Read thy Speech.
11 Thou Shalt Not Steal the Time of Them that Follow Thee.
Throughout watching the presentations I have been reflecting on my own relationship with presentation. My initial thoughts were focused on Thou Shalt Not Simply Trot Out thy Usual Shtick. Yes the students need something new but if they haven’t heard it before isn’t it okay just to roll out what you did for last year’s 1st year. The answer has to be no so that it is fresh for you. This is so that there is personal learning and a current engagement with the subject. I have been considering what I have experienced since I last gave the presentation/seminar/lecture. So I have been re-evaluating all my presentations – not just the ones for the PDP. This has entailed in some cases slight rewrites and in others wholesale rethinking. Yes to 3 and 4, you have to tell your story with passion to take people with you. I am a believer in passion – it rubs off. It is always important to comment and connect with other speakers, to recognize common ground. Art is a serious matter but sometimes laughter and humour can emphasis your point. It can also help with connecting with the subject and help with remembering the content of the presentation at a later date. No you should never read what is on the screen. Why would you do that? The screen offers the potential to take people on a journey; the text can be more appropriately disseminated through email or old school handouts. So TED has changed my way of presenting. No but reflecting and analyzing what works has supported decisions already made and informed and supported the direction I need to take.

Critically evaluate your current practice and identify areas for enhancement.

Attempting to explain something to somebody who has never undertaken the activity you are trying to explain requires skill and if this is not available then training is required to deliver this service. We are no longer working with students who ‘learn like we used to’ – whatever that means – the need to understand how the student in front of us learns is essential if we are to teach them with any degree of success. It is thought that without an appreciation of how students experience learning, specifically the learning experience of the course they have signed on to, any methodological choices made in their teaching risks being initially ill informed and eventually creates a negative experience. This miss directed use of resources would eventually lead to inappropriate and potentially harmful activity leaving generations without their voice, a lack of understanding led by the experience of hierarchy or lack of empathy is a real issue.
Or has current thinking around teaching become misdirected. Has the role of teaching been undermined and are teachers deferring to a student body that are themselves lost and confused with the lack of direction offered to them from individuals who are supposed to be leading them. This circular conundrum can only lead to an intellectual and moral vacuum. It would appear that nobody is making the connection between the body politic and what is happening in our educational institutions. A lack of discipline and direction is at the root of this problem. This talk of discipline is interesting and would seem to be at odds with ideas of happiness, a concept I have been looking at as a result of my research around Buddhist monks. Reading Gilbert (2009) and Richard (2008) has confirmed my belief in the relationship between happiness and empowerment. Studies undertaken by Gilbert reveal that those happiest are those who feel they have power over decisions that are made which affect their lives. I have decided not to complete timetables around the use of time within the sessions where there is flexibility. I intend to finalise the use of the time through discussions with the students. Thus empowering them and in theory providing happiness.

This idea of recognising, utilising, encompassing and seeing potential in a state of change is something that I have recognised in my role within community development and place forming projects over the past 20 years. But now this thinking has encompassed my practice as a teacher. I used to consider the creative possibilities for learning and teaching to be closed – this is no longer the case. There is a desire to accomplish what I value through actively considering the idea of the 4 lenses of reflection defined by Brookfield (2007). The idea, that of learning to see our autobiographies as teachers, by seeing through the eyes of our students, by measuring against our colleagues experiences and by exploring theoretical literature I can see the potential to grow as a teacher and indeed as a person was a revelation.

I arbour the brutality of socialisation – I recognise the issue of my own autobiography - of poor teaching and a lack of care from 70s comprehensive educational system and then a reliance on ‘the system’ and a denigration of responsibility within my own latter role as a teacher.
I realised that I have been attempting to get to know my students as people – to see through their eyes. Whilst exploring these connections to my students through asking questions which enquire into their lives during pre and post college hours, beginning to see them as whole rounded people. I believe this information will enhance my teaching because by understanding the context of my students learning it will inform the educational journey they are on, which in turn will support my decisions in how they should be taught. So my students become individuals.

With the interactive learning and individually led learning that we are advocating we are building a generation of learners, who in theory don’t sit and wait to be told, or even read the manual but whose first instinct is to engage. We are equipping them for change and adaptability within a future of lifelong learning. They are able to become active in the engagement of problem solving and the provision of solutions. It is exciting to consider the opportunities and possible careers they will build with this new way of thinking and subsequent behaviour – one can’t help but look to models evidenced within the science fiction genre. At its core with its reflection on the now, projected into the future and vice versa it would have been near impossible for previous generations to envisage the patterns of behaviour we are now engaged in that to us have an everyday occurrence - checking emails, using mobile phones, etc (although
Star Trek did have the communicator). It is exciting to project where we might go with this new thinking, where working together and with a common goal will present new possibilities.

How do you learn? What do you value? I have been attempting to develop what Marton (1988) calls a ‘phenomenography of learning’ in an attempt to support my students learning with a more specific course of learning. The PgClt course has given me the language and more importantly through the reading material I have been pointed towards and the specific research I have undertaken a new context in which to understand my practice.

Use appropriate theoretical principles to design and propose a small-scale action research project within a particular sphere of professional practice

When considering the development of a series of workshops to explore and illustrate problem solving and lateral thinking I looked into my own visual arts practice. Examining past sketchbooks and written documents created when I have undertaken collaborative residencies. Workshops with dancers and musicians in particular support my current interests in ideas related to the hybrid and collaboration. Sound and movement have more in common with the idea of book than the contents of book; words and pictures. When reflecting laterally on the book and the idea of what a book is concerned with one comes to the conclusion that it encompasses concepts such as sequence, control and the ordering of space in time. The book itself is a hybrid composite artefact constructed in sympathetic collaboration with a range of artists and crafts people working together. The writing, reading and general research I have undertaken on the PgClt course has reinforced and supported what I already did within my role as a teacher. This has given me a new confidence to take control, of my job, that of teacher but also coordinator of that teaching, to understand my position within the structure of learning within both University and National frameworks and a recognition of European initiatives such as the Bologna agreement.

One stream of feedback from the research I undertook at the beginning of my action research, when attempting to gather comments from the students as to their thoughts around PDP was a general commentary around the impenetrable language used by teaching professionals. This is of course something already recognised and an issue I have identified myself within the institutions I am associated with both as a student and a lecturer. In my position as Senior Lecturer on the BA Textiles course I was invited to be on the panel rewriting the learning outcomes as part of the revalidation of the course. I attempted to bring a level of plain English to the proceedings. This intention has continued in the session created for the BA Textiles PDP titled learning agreements. It attempts to provide the students with the tools to deconstruct the handbook into a language they understand. This bridge or conduit between distinct positions or recognised differences, in this instance between academic and the practical, is a position I am familiar with, in my practice within community engagement situations of public art commissions. The role of the Lead Artist according to the Introduction and overview from Public Art South West (2009) is to facilitate the “master planning of design teams to comment upon and add to the design process, not necessarily resulting in specific commissions. To produce public art commissioning strategies, including briefs for recommended commissions. Oversee the recruitment and work of commissioned artists. Possibly undertaking commissions themselves. To lead teams of other professionals such as architects, lighting designers or structural engineers to respond to major commissioning briefs. To work alongside Public Art Consultants to comment upon and bring an additional creative dimension to strategies for delivery, for example in regeneration schemes.”

Reading Buckley (2007) it appears that one the main problems with implementing PDP for people teaching in Higher Education was their inability to define, both what it is and more importantly what it was for. This resulted in a variety of distinct practices and interpretations. But the basic problem appears to be that it is difficult to set learning outcomes and therefore assess with parity or indeed create meaningful learning outcomes full stop. The documentation around PDP appears to be around apportioning responsibility for delivery. This ‘top down’ initiative instigated through a need to present a route to employment from the government but delivered by a group of people who do not value or understand the need or the instructions.

There is much writing about PDP and its relationship to employability, especially the paperwork emanating from government education departments including the user guides published by the Generic Centre of the Learning and Teaching Support Network. One could argue that this is a slippery slope. It could be useful to look at how Local Arts Authority Administrators have spent a decade explaining the value of the arts through their role in the social fabric of our society be it health and social services or behaviour and public order. This argument is then used to raise money by illustrating how the arts can decrease mental health levels through dance workshops or reduce knife crime with drop in graffiti workshops. No. Arts Administrators have started to support value and promote the arts because they are valuable – in themselves. It is beholden to those of us who work in institutions that are involved in the teaching of art and its inherent values to follow a similar route if we are not to forget why we are involved in art.

The concept of assumed knowledge is ingrained within institutions of higher education that are engaged in art training. The data gathered by NUCA HR illustrates that the majority of the tutors who are currently teaching on graduate and post graduate courses at NUCA have themselves attended art education institutions. In fact it is now impossible to apply for a teaching post and then work within such institutions without passing through this particular eye of the needle. We are in essence a closed society talking mainly to ourselves. The majority of attendees on the PgClt Course is evidence of this fact.

To know who you are could be seen to be at the core of human development – with the answers to the question who am I? Anything can be accomplished. The discovery of one’s own ‘authentic voice’ could be perceived to be at the heart of any critically reflective process but is this in turn just a reflection of the current values we place on self – this century of self. 2,500 years ago the Buddha said that when we learn to accept things as they are we are on the road to finding happiness. When we cease to strive for happiness in the future we find it in this moment. Getting what we want doesn't make us happy, being happy with what we have does. Craving causes misery, acceptance and peace makes us happy.

Brookfield (1995) in becoming critically reflective states that ‘When we practice critically we regard curricula as constructed and therefore can be deconstructed and dismantled and re framed by one’. This reflection as manual of dissent sounds like a call to arms – to man the barricades. But I am drawn to The book of 5 rings by Miyamoto Musashi and the tenet to merge with your enemy and destroy from within – keeping your friends close but your enemies closer as Marlin Brando in the Godfather would of said. As teachers we are easy targets in today’s economic climate to isolate, blame and then make inconsequential. Old strategies must be employed with new rigour – be ever watchful.

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