During the first workshop, we were introduced to the history and timeline of UK higher education and arts pedagogy. We were given a brief overview through a PowerPoint presentation and one of the walls had different coloured stacked on the wall with different years written on.
We were asked to pick up coloured cards with events and policies that had happened in the higher education sector written on them. Our task was to individually pick one card and place where I thought it belonged on the timeline. I quickly picked an event I recognised and placed it. While looking the timeline being assemble, I also recognised other events and policies in a timeline that I have lived through as a student in past and in my teaching practice. As a student, I lived through various events and policies:
- E-learning,
- The Equality Act.
- The Dearing Report (fees + Standards).
- The National Student Survey Launched.
- Foundation Degree Launched.
- Brown Review (Suggests removing tuition fee cap).
In my earlier stages of my teaching practice, I experienced events and policies from the following:
- Brexit.
- The COVID-19 pandemic.
- Online + Blended Learning.
- Hybrid Learning.
There were other events and policies on the timeline that I didn’t know about, like the Robbins Report- expansion of HE, Warnock Report-Special Educational needs in HE, Janet report- Quality assessment in HE, Vietnam war + French protests- Student activism political engagement, which I made notes on to research about it later, and some were answered by other peers asking the question.
In the remaining morning, we delved into social justice, UAL strategy, and the PgCert course learning outcomes. We were then put into a new group of four by using a number system to share individual readings given on Arts Pedagogy and share our understanding and insight with our peers. The article given to me was from Chapter 6 (Orr & Shreeve, 2017) – Signature Pedagogies in Art & Design. Lastly, we had a time of reflection for free writing for a blog post, making notes, or looking up things that had been discussed in the session or just taking a mental break. As a neurodivergent person, the time for reflection was much needed to help deal with information overload.
In the afternoon session Workshop 2, There was opportunity to feedback and give an insight to my group about the reading I chose from Teaching at UAL spark journals (Sams, 2016), How do art and design technicians conceive of their role in higher education? In a peer, we were given a chapter from (Macfarlane, 2004), A time to reflect, and discussed how we can give feedback effectively and make it a positive experience. During this task, I found myself getting overwhelmed and slightly confused as a few papers were getting passed about by the tutors. As we were moving from one topic to another, like the introduction to the Professional Standards Framework, Case study, and peer review and observation, my brain started to zone out. I suddenly felt a big sense of weight on my shoulder and asked myself the question, how will I be able to do all of this and understand everything? The excitement from this morning started to decrease, and I started resonating with my students when they were first introduced to CAD/CAM software or hardware. They are also required to take digital notes, navigate around a PC, keyboard, mouse, and handout given for the exercise, and to follow the demonstration and practice at the same time.
Reference
Orr, S, & Shreeve, A. (2017).’ Art and Design Pedagogy in Higher Education: Knowledge, Values and Ambiguity in the Creative Curriculum,’ Routledge Research in Higher Education,1.
Sams, C. (2016) ‘ How do art and design technicians conceive of their role in higher education?’, Research Papers, Vol 1(2).