This week was about feedback, how to give it and how to receive it. The session kicked off with a discussion regarding a 25 min video on “Performing with an invisible audience”. by Hattie Walker. She gave me some tips on how to give an interesting and interacting sessions. Click here to watch the video.

Key tips I thought were interesting and will implement into my own teaching sessions are:

• Creating a connection with my audience by broadcasting my personality
• Embracing the awkward silence because it’s normal.
• Not over thinking the session, keep it simple.
• Implement interaction using tools such as Padlet and Whiteboard.
• Watch the session back for self evaluation

The second part of the session was discussing a piece of fictional text regarding a female professor and her response to receiving feedback and giving feedback. Click here to read the text.

Stephanie is the professor a postgraduate Research Methods Course who has amazing achievements and is very accomplished. Attends church and is a writer editing a major journal in her specialist field. She doesn’t see her teaching course as real work an seems more interested in her major new research grant proposal.

At the end of her course her students complete an evaluation questionnaire. The feedback from students where not what she expected and didn’t receive the negative feedback well. Some of the comments where:

• “Boring readings, which were too theoretical”.
• “Being used as Guinea Pigs or being experimented on in regards to student self assessments”.
• “Not making lecturer notes and presentation slides available online”.

In my small group of 4 we discussed this question in relation to the the character. “Do Female High Achievers Find Teaching an Obstacle”?

This derived from her proception of her self and defensive behavior toward the feedback the students gave her teaching methods. Her high achievements have given her a huge ego. As the students feedback challenges her positionality she dismisses their opinion.

The three key issues with her character that stand out to me where feedback acceptance, giving feedback and self reflection. There is also a lack of pastoral care towards the students as she dismisses their feedback as retaliation to low grades.

If she deals with those three issues and establishes a true relationship with the students the level of respect will change the classroom atmosphere and create a safe space.

But maybe as she doesn’t see teaching as her real work she hasn’t really thought deeply about how to create a relationship with her students and stand as a dominant academic.

Seems as though teaching is in the way of her real passion for the research grant proposal. Is teaching an obstacle for her to speed through and get out of the way?

This session was a great opportunity to explore the emotional aspects between the educator and learner relationship.

To help delve into this topic I read some notes accompanying a lecture by Lindsey Jordan written in June 2020, called “Love and belonging in the educational realm”.

A few key points that stuck out to me was a quote from Anna Julia Cooper “Belonging is intersectional and ultimately perhaps (you may not agree) individual”.

I received a strong sense of belonging from the text and quotes from Cooper. I would agree with the above statement in a sense that belonging is an individual decision to take ownership of your circumstance. Its not about seeking acceptance from others to feel a sense of belonging. Our experiences are individual.

Another piece of text that has influenced my thinking process was ” The Art of Loving in the Classroom: A defense of affective Pedagogy”.

Which talks a lot about affective pedagogy being about feelings and emotions between the educator and learner. The relationship between these two positionalities both play a role in building a sustainable relationship to achieve a common goal. Whilst keeping the relationship appropriate and professional.

The text stresses how important the role of the educator is in creating the citizens. Made me respect the type of person the student will become after achieving there qualification.

The student will develop and mature over the period of the course and such the relationship and interactions with the teacher will help sculpt the development of the student. I’m sure teacher who exercises affective pedagogy would produce a very different character/citizen compared to a teacher who’s exercises utilitarian pedagogy.

After reading both texts, they made me really think about how I would build and create and environment of a balance between affective pedagogy. The outcome of understanding I feel is far more valuable to the development of the student in both academically and within society.

Opens them up to their own interpretation of what they have learnt and their individual experience. The sense of belonging will develop naturally once the correct environment is created and the relationship sustainable.

This week I was introduced to the TEF system, wasn’t aware of this awarding system before this week. Although the system is awarded through several measures, its seems to be heavily weighed upon student review, feedback and success.

Although some institutions are able to receive a bronze reward but then are able to move up the award system based on their own research and findings. Gives the prospective student a slightly bias impression on the institution based on the award given. Evidence of why the awards are given should be made simpler and easy to access.

Been reading Monica Vilhauer’s 2010 Understanding Art; interesting read. I like the language used and the flow of the content allowed the information to settle nicely. However the analysis of the different types of art work was repeated through out.

The understanding of the play between a piece of art and the spectator, the roles each played was interesting. The description on and development of the word play itself and how this is achieved and not achieved made me revisit some of the work I’ve produced in fashion. My thoughts on how each piece of Menswear created wouldn’t exist or wouldn’t be of value if someone didn’t want to buy it. If its not purchased is it really of any value?

Imitation and interpretation also played a major role in this piece of text, explaining the difference in roles each played in relation to the original and how this is transformed in the eye of the spectator or not.

This weeks learning process has been fun and playful, listening to peers thoughts on the text and the TEF awards system, was refreshing. This did give me some time to really reflect on what my own teaching methods would be and how I can measure it’s success.

Really informative session and lovely to get to know everyone and their teaching practices. Learning about lots of different pedagogy practices has broaden my thoughts on the subject. Such as Engaged Pedagogy, Object based learning and the comparison from student to industry life interested me also. As I have first hand experienced this transition.