Microteaching Day

My Session Plan : Containers for Meaning

  • Take a moment to have a deep breath, and unwind your shoulders.
  • Unbox the Chinese New Year gift I was given from a student. Take turns to pass it round – one stage of unwrapping per person, with each layer laid out on the table. Contextualise in relation to my own positionality and not having a deep knowledge of Chinese New Year and it’s cultural resonances but finding the experience of receiving this gift very affective, especially context of my ongoing interest in creating containers for meaning.
  • Discussion : What did you feel as we unboxed that together?
  • The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction : Introduce the text briefly. Handout copies so everyone has one. A Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction is 1986 essay by Ursula K. Le Guin, in which she sets out her approach to writing – her theory of fiction. She starts by telling a story about prehistoric human interactions and how the main human activity would be gathering, and hence how the first cultural objects were containers. She reflects on what impact this version of prehistory has, and what possibilities it opens up in contrast to the version where the ‘Hero’ slays the mammoth.
  • Read together an extract, again passing the text around the group one sentence at a time. The sentences vary in length and we will adhere to the punctuation so we may have very short sentences or very lengthy ones.
  • Construct a container out of plasticene – inspired perhaps by one of the objects on the table
  • As we work on these together – discuss together the text and the questions it raises.
  • If time, pass the plasticene objects around and work on top of someone elses’
  • Finish by in your imagination sealing a word into the container.
  • Closing moment where people can choose to share this if they wish.
The Chinese New Year gift unboxed

References:

Le Guin, U.K. (1986). Carrier Bag Theory Of Fiction. S.L.: Ignota Books. Download avaliable: https://monoskop.org/images/9/96/Le_Guin_Ursula_K_1986_1989_The_Carrier_Bag_Theory_of_Fiction.pdf

Reflections on my microteaching session:

My peers were really struck by reading the text together and most had not done this before. This surprised me, probably because it is a core part of my my own teaching practice and a weekly feature in the intersectional feminist reading group I run. Most of the discussion centred around this, rather than the content of the text itself which I did not anticipate.

Reflections on my peers’ microteaching sessions:

Antonia led a beautiful session on block printing, reflecting on her own practice of printing and graphic design and providing us each with handcut stamps she had made. I made the print on fabric below and found this a very meditative exercise. Everyone responded to this activity in their own way, responding to the context of their own disciplines too, so the person teaching on fashion covered the whole fabric as if it was a seamless fabric design, whereas mine functions more as an art object.

Other peers led workshops pm:

using polaroid photography to rethink portraiture

abstract perspex shapes to create fashion designs. Note: I found the stylished female bodies quite difficult to work with so used my design to obliterate or hid the body – see below.

creating museums of the future using found objects and fictional writing

using a section from Macbeth which we staged as an improv reading

It was genuinely inspiring to see so many different types of teaching practice and I felt like I left with a great deal of ideas to try out with my own students.

539 words

Blog Post 5 : Critique of design critique…

Notes on ‘The design critique and the moral goods of studio pedagogy” (2019) Jason K. McDonald and Esther Michela, Brigham Youn University, USA

I feel uncomfortable with ‘design’ thinking which I see as being very task orientated, focused on usefulness and instrumentalised in some way… all things which I understand as making bad art – not always – but often. So straightaway I feel alienated by this article but I am interested in studio pedagogy so I’m going in…

p.2 ” The intrinsic ends of practice as defined as goods in the sense that, when achieved, people have experienced something that they recognise as good, and that allows them to define themselves as good practitioners, at least within the context of the cultural frameworks that lay claim upon them… And these goods are moral, both because practices have internal expectations of better or worse ways of accomplishing their own ends, and because pursuit of practice-specific goods is accompanied by “implications for others who lives are affected by what [that practice] bring(s) about”… I am instinctively not that comfortable about the idea of morality in the mix here, but of course it is in the mix, in every mix and the way it is contextualised here is helpful.

Summary from the article of the ‘moral goods’ of critiques:

FEEDBACK: getting feedback leading to the development of stronger work

INDEPENDENT THINKING: wrestling things out with your tutor, a space of challenging ideas together or in opposition

UNPREDICTABILITY: openness to new possibilities. Unplanned / unplannable teaching space.

IMPROVISATION: parallels to improv actors, improvising with students a conversation contingent on their input, ideas and work. This ideal of the “emergent environment” is important for the teacher interviewed, own sense of ‘self-cultivation’ – it’s a learning environment for staff too.

MECHANISM FOR INTERVENTION: a way of inputting into students’ process as it is underway as opposed to the beginning or end.

Interesting the description of th double-edged sword of critique: p.3 “a duality of potential help and potential harm”. This idea of harm is expanded on p.15 “if instructors think they know what is good for students, but their ideas are somehow limited or even inaccurate, they might overly emphasise their biased views and miss the bigger picture of what their practice might actually be able to accomplish”.

P.11 “…ONLY ONE WOMAN WAS INCLUDED AS A PARTICIPANT IN OUR STUDY. WHILE THIS IS CONSISTENT WITH THE PERCENTAGE OF WOMEN TEACHING AT THIS PARTICULAR UNIVERSITY….” Emphasise mine. Only 1 out of 6… I struggle with how I can take this article seriously at all… IN 2019… YIKES.

I wonder what differentiates feedback and critique? I would like the authors to define what they mean by critique as it isn’t contextualised enough for me.

References:

‘The design critique and the moral goods of studio pedagogy” (2019) Jason K. McDonald and Esther Michela, Brigham Youn University, USA

thoughts from induction 1

I was feeling very tired, almost delirious, and my eye was struggling with the flickering projector which was on the edge of triggering a migraine. The set up of the room meant that we were all sat in rows obscured by large computer screens. I found it a weirdly hostile space for our first meeting, which made me reflect on how important these moments are and how quickly certain ‘scripts’ can get set within teaching environments. I found initially being vocal about my visual impairment meant that I felt vocal about other things and I ended up feeling like I had been quite disruptive.

I wonder about being the disruptive one.

Articulating access requirements is a kind of rupture – a refusal to participate in the way everyone else is. And this articulation is a of rejection of a status quo, which automatically sets you at loggerheads with all kinds of power dynamics. I didn’t feel like my concerns about the projector triggering a migraine were taken seriously, and this also felt like a different kind of refusal. This, in all likelihood, was not because the staff didn’t take them seriously, but because the layout of the room was so rigid as to not allow alternatives.

Rigid environments demand a certain kind of behaviour; compliance. But what happens when you can’t be compliant? I ended up wanting to sit with my back to the class because the flickering light, even in my peripheral vision, was so difficult to manage. Facing backwards felt like a pretty strong statement which I was almost forced into making, when I actually wanted to be there.

How many of our interactions with ‘difficult’ or ‘disruptive’ students are because we are forcing them to be compliant to an environment or system which they fundamentally can’t participate in?

Hi there…

I’m Katriona, and the Year 2 Leader on the BA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts. I am new in post (Sept 2024). I have overall responsibility for 172 students in 2nd Year. I have my own tutor group of 28 students and do one to one tutorials, teaching and assessments as part of this role. I run the Year meetings and have been experimenting with turning this into a context for students to showcase work in progress as well as where the week to week timetable and events are discussed. I oversee the 2nd Year lecture series, working with colleagues to align it to the 2nd Year and also deliver lectures. I oversee a staff team of 6 fractional staff and 7 associate lecturers. I coordinate the assessment process and also run parity meetings. A key part of my role is to oversee all the students to participate in a series of exhibition projects over the year: a collective exhibition in Nov, a group off-site project in March and an on-site solo presentation in May.

I’m an artist and I make digital artefacts, objects, moving image and installation as well as participatory projects. Recent work includes new commissions at the V&A and Science Gallery London (both 2018); a participatory green screen installation at Autograph (2020); a commission for Disrupt & Reflect, online at IMPAKT, Netherlands (2020-21) and a commission for Sotheby’s Institute of Art that premiered at the V&A (2023).

I started a trade union for artists in 2014, Artists’ Union England and I am currently on the National Executive Committee for AUE.