Reflections on Gloria Dall’Alba, 2005. Improving teaching: Enhancing ways of being university teachers and Holmwood, J. 2018. Race and the Neoliberal University: Lessons From the Public University.
How does Gloria Dall’Alba’s account of teaching development in universities correspond with your own thoughts and experience?
The Fashion Photography course structure and curriculum at LCF promotes constructivist learning over the transmission model. The course encourages students to take responsibility for their own learning and encourages critical thinking over and above technical and practical skills. Some practical skills are ‘taught’ but more frequently students are encouraged to learn these skills themselves. We offer the facilities and resources for learning which they can use. Lecture content generally challenges preconceived ideas and ways of thinking about photography and its practice, thus creating new ways of ‘knowing, acting and being’. Dall’Alba writes that ‘knowledge and skills do not ensure a skilful practice’[1], although she does stress that they are important. It is this skilful practice that we encourage on the fashion photography course – knowing as created, enacted and embodied.
I do not believe I hold any absolute knowledge about my subject. While I may have more experience and knowledge than many of my students, they frequently teach me new things – this is the reciprocal nature of the pedagogical relationship. Dall’Alba quotes Heidegger ‘the teacher teaches learning, … his conduct…often produces the impression that we properly learn nothing from him, if by learning we…understand merely the procurement of useful information.’[2]
A couple of my first year students complained saying they had learnt nothing since coming to UAL. The students desire the procurement of useful information, they want to be taught how to be photographers. Our course, while transmitting some of this knowledge, through practitioners’ lectures as well as technical workshops, mainly aims to encourage students to embody being a photographer through experimentation and practice. We guide students towards theoretical texts that will inform their critical thinking, we have class discussions, and we show other photographers and artists practice to promote visual literacy. From this content students are encouraged to undertake research and practice in line with their own interests, building on their prior knowledge. We do try to encourage a pedagogical relationship between course participants, however, with online learning, this is more challenging as students are finding it hard to form a community.
For most of my education, both at school and doing a BA in the 80s, I was ‘taught’ using the transmission method. I then returned to HE in 2013 and, while completing an MA, my learning became primarily self -initiated. At first I felt quite anxious because no one was telling me how I should do things. I felt that I was not receiving enough teaching but it certainly pushed me to go and learn! While the fashion photography course primarily follows a transactional constructivist method, my own teaching is possibly still to transmissive. This is definitely something I need to work on by encouraging students to become actively involved in their own learning.
Reflecting on John Holmwood’s chapter:
John Holmwood’s text, which discusses the neoliberal model of education, and its marketization (notably in the UK and USA, but I have seen the same thing in South Africa), made me aware of that western neoliberal belief in meritocracy will never lead to an equal society nor an educational system that provides equality for all. The neoliberal ‘meritocratic’ system, which highlights individual responsibility as the driving force behind gaining higher education and social advancement, is fraught with structural intersectional disadvantages, particularly in terms of race, class and disability. This text makes it clear that people should not be held entirely responsible for their own success, there are many aggravating societal factors that may lead to a lack of success.
The dangers of the meritocratic system are highlighted in the report ‘Panic! Social Class, Taste and Inequalities in the Creative Industries’[3]. This report investigates the extent to which the cultural and creative industries are not fair and diverse. It examines the way in which people are excluded from these industries due to the intersections of class, race and gender. It points out the continued existence of gender and racialised pay gaps and how cultural taste acts as a gatekeeper. This connects to Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of ‘habitus’ and how taste creates social differences[4] where not everyone’s cultural capital is equally valued.
This marketization of education has led to students feeling like they are clients, and should receive their money’s worth, which is totally understandable. However, they expect their education to be given to them , which links back to my students complaints about not learning anything!
Sue Matthiesson [5] discusses the learner centred approach of Piaget and Bruner’s constructivist theories where students are not considered as empty vessels into which knowledge is poured, rather they learn by making changes to their existing knowledge. A constructively aligned curriculum encourages ‘deep learning’ through an active learning process. hooks [7] reiterates this form of pedagogy, where teachers engage with students and challenge preconceptions, thus providing a situation that excites students, making them to want to learn and which ultimately leads to a transformative experience. I need to improve my pedagogy so as to encourage students to feel intrinsically motivated and excited to learn. I also need to address structural disadvantages that many students face.
REFERENCES
Brook, O., O’Brien, D., and Taylor, M ‘Panic! Social Class, Taste and Inequalities in the Creative Industries’.
Burke, P. and McManus, J. 2009. Art for a few : exclusion and misrecognition in art and design higher education admissions. National Arts Learning Network.
Dall’Alba, G. 2005. Improving teaching: Enhancing ways of being university teachers. Higher Education Research & Development, 24 (4), pp. 361–372.
Fry, H., Ketteridge, S. and Marshall, S. (Eds.) 2015. A Handbook for Teaching & Learning in Higher Education: Enhancing academic practice. 4th edition. Routledge, Oxford.
Holmwood, J. 2018. Race and the Neoliberal University: Lessons From the Public University. In Bhambra, G. K., Gebrial, D. and Nişancıoğlu, K. (eds.) Decolonising the University. London: Pluto Press, pp. 37-52.
hooks, b. 1994 . Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Taylor and Francis. Routledge.
[1] 2005:367
[2] 2005:365
[3] by Dr Orian Brook, Dr David O’Brien, and Dr Mark Taylor
[4] Burke and McManus 2009:21
[5] in Fry, Ketteridge and Marshall, 2015:65
[6] Matthiesson in Fry, Ketteridge and Marshall, 2015:66
[7] Introduction to Teaching to Transgress, 1994