Pedagogic Research in the Arts University
11th January with Lindsay Jordan, James Corazzo & Catherine Smith.
The aim of this session is to demystify research through sharing two projects in progress. This will help me to consider the potential of relative methods for researching questions that I want to explore. I need to start thinking about what aspect of my creative practice to investigate as part of this course. Start ‘noticing’ – looking closely & carefully will influence the way I think, such as: how our international students always sit together, often translating for each other. How could I make them feel more integrated & be confident in presenting? What activities could I propose without singling them out? The discipline of noticing can be a way into research as a reflective practice, deciding, choosing a subject as both method & theory. Our guest lecturer James reminds us that we are already carrying around questions, interests & curiosities. “The things that stay with you can be a starting point to your research. “I have never thought about this, how a small observation could grow into a blog post, an academic paper perhaps even a published article or book. I need to keep my eye on things. people and the relationship between the two. Educational research use social science methods, cases studies and narrative enquiry. I can use my skills, visual practice and capabilities in terms of the way I think in the context of an Arts university.
James talks about the importance of space and how to facilitate students learning. We begin with an ice-breaker: ‘What are your feet touching? What is touching your feet?’ The materiality of getting in touch with our entire self. The activity & drawing exercise helped us to feel connected as a cohort despite attending the lecture online. He speaks of ‘material noticing’s’ – ‘Thing-Power: the curious ability of inanimate things to animate, to act, to produce effects dramatic and subtle.’ (Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. J. Bennett 2010) For example, tutorials on a sofa as a subtle way to create dialogue & discussion on an equal level. The relationship between learning and space is rarely talked about but we learnt that pedagogy is inherently a spatial practice.
Our studio spaces for GB&I are not conjusive to staying and working beyond the taught session. How could we change this? Encourage interaction and general use? Also consider what gets ‘said’ in learning spaces? Educational research priorities discourse. ‘Theory is a vehicle for ‘thinking otherwise’ offers a language for challenge & modes of thought other than those articulated for us by dominant others. The purpose of such theory is to defamiliarise present practices & categories and to open up spaces for the invention of new forms of experience.’ (Intellectuals or Technicians? The urgent role of Theory in Educational Studies. Stephen Ball 1995) Consider humans, materials or things and the interaction between them, how that can change the education experience.
We learn about his research – the ‘side by side’ sofa tutor. A ‘faux’ room set within the studio space and a pair of sofas became the archetypal signifier of ubiquitous learning. They became the center for teaching and learning by legitimatising informality. Allowing more vulnerable conversations, less confrontational almost therapeutic, to occur. I experiment with my own version of this during a class this week. When only a small group of students attend my Attainment workshop on Communication I sit ‘with’ the students and encourage another staff member to do the same. We have an open dialogue as colleagues and tutees about branding, our professional experiences and that of students from a non-European background. It’s enlightening and engaging for all of us, discussing different cultural norms & learning from this shared experience.
Catherine asks – ‘What happens when workshops happen?’ ‘Education is the kindling of a flame not the filling of a vessel.’ We are helping students fulfil the potential that is already there in them, ‘Studio education is not delivered. Studio education is forged.’ (Art and design pedagogy in higher education: knowledge, values and ambiguity in the creative curriculum. Orr, S. and Shreeve, A. 2018) Her working research question also considers how knowledge production is constituted through Socio-materiality: the social (people) and the material (things) relations in arts higher education. The session concludes with us being asked to draw something we’ve noticed at UAL that interests us. Introducing us to ethnographic mapping – graphic elicitation as a method for research, a useful way to understand the world. Things are slowly becoming clearer to me, consider what is still ‘muddy’?
