Teaching in an Age of Anxiety
Contextual Background
Part of the landscape of teaching practice with my cohort of nearly 160 BA Fine Art 2nd Year (2Y) students is anxiety. This impacts on students’ attendance, learning and well-being. As a necessity, strategies for alleviating anxiety need to be integrated into any planning for teaching to be effective.
Evaluation
Anxiety is of particular concern within H.E. Davies (2025) summarises, “Universities appear to have become especially conducive to anxiety disorders, with full-time students more likely to report them” [ibid p.13]. This is compounded by the fine art context in which teaching is characterized as “a pedagogy of ambiguity where skills are not simply competencies, but the ability to operate in the complexities of uncertainty” [Austerlitz et al (2008) p.125].
There are systemic drivers behind this epidemic of anxiety, but within my role as 2nd Year Leader I need to focus on changes I can affect on a local level. I have focused on my own training and undertaken a Mental Health First Aider course. Whilst useful, the course isn’t H.E. specific and doesn’t take into consideration in-balances of power and the way mechanisms of assessment add stress to student-staff interactions.
One strategy I have tried, is to make myself accessible to students outside of teaching to help alleviate anxiety. For example, I run an Open Office every week at the same time. I offer tea and coffee, snacks and a listening ear. The Open Office has become an effective mechanism for catching a wide range of students’ anxieties before they become overwhelming, enabling me to signpost students to relevant support.
Moving forwards
3 areas to develop in terms of the culture and ethos of 2Y:
Staying with the Trouble
I need to build a community on 2nd Year that is trying to find ways of locating ourselves within complexity, rather than trying to climb out of it. There is no outside from the complex and multi-layer crises that face these students. As such rather than offer simplistic non-solutions, “…Staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present, not as a vanishing pivot between awful or edenic pasts and apocalyptic or salvific futures but as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings.” [Harraway (2016) p.1]
Making Kin
I believe peer support networks are one of the strongest protective factors I can offer my students, and we encourage the students to work collectively e.g. developing collective exhibitions. I can be more intentional about creating social opportunities where the cohort mixes and gets to know each other. This is about embedding small gestures e.g. making sure that every tutor integrate into all their sessions ice-breaker activities. “The task is to make kin in lines of inventive connection.” [Harraway (2016) p.1]
Cultures of Celebration
I want to develop a culture of celebration amongst staff and students, and an obvious opportunity is around the Y2 Exhibitions, particularly the Private View events. Supporting student programmes of performances during these events can add vitality. As Solnit (2016) writes in relation to finding energy to continue climate activism; “Much has changed; much needs to change; being able to celebrate or at least recognize milestones and victories and keep working is what the times require of us.” [ibid p.140]
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References
Austerlitz, Noam, Blythman, Margo, Grove-White, Annie, Jones, Barbara Anne, Jones, Carol An, Morgan, Sally, Orr, Susan, Shreeve, Alison and Vaughn, Suzi (2008) Mind the gap: expectations, ambiguity and pedagogy within art and design higher education. In: Drew, Linda, (ed.) The Student Experience in Art and Design Higher Education: Drivers for Change. Cambridge, Jill Rogers Associates Limited, pp. 124-148
Davies, W. (2025). Another Age of Anxiety: Psychological Distress and the ‘Asset Economy’. Theory, Culture & Society. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764251316403.
Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press.
Solnit, R. (2016). Hope in the Dark : Untold histories, Wild Possibilities. Edinburgh: Canongate Books.