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Aim:

I have mentioned in blog #3, my aim was to discover if it is possible to encourage an emotive response to an item of unfamiliar clothing, and whether the emotive response could be empathy. The session was part inspired by the work of Anthropologist, Daniel Miller. It was also influenced by the writing of political theorist, Jane Bennet. Bennet’s book, ‘Vibrant Matter, a political ecology of things’ is a fascinating look at the ‘life’ of objects. Bennet questions the human worldview of objects and encourages a reconsideration of the relationship that humans have to the world, in the hope of creating a relationship that is more linear, as opposed to hierarchical. Bennet states “to begin to experience the relationship between persons and other materialities more horizontally, is to take a step towards a more ecological sensibility.” (Bennett, 2010, p. 10)

Bennet relays a moment when she noticed a collection of debris in a storm drain one morning. The debris was not in any way unusual, but it was in the act of noticing the debris that led to a consideration of “stuff that commanded attention in it’s own right, as existents in excess of their own association with human meanings…stuff exhibited its thing-power: it issued a call, even if I did not quite understand what it was saying.” (Bennett, 2010, p. 4)

Therefore, my intention, by slowing the participant’s movements on the street, and by encouraging observation through increased intimacy, was to encourage active observation, followed by active imagining, and then, hopefully an activation of the emotions, particularly empathy.

This was something of a test, as I had not done this before. It was new territory for me and for the participants. Therefore, the activity became a form of primary research. As a research method, I would align this to an object orientated process. However, due to the time constraints, it was more object orientated interview as ‘speed dating’; which I found to be quite effective.Due to the limitations of the word count in this reflection, please refer to the teaching prompts handed out in the images below, to gain an insight into the questions that the participants were asked and the session timings.

Feedback:

“I really found your session particularly inspiring”.

Conclusion:

I was pleasantly surprised that, in the participant responses (recorded in the images below), some found that through slowing down, they were able to notice a previously unseen object, and that by reducing distance, empathy could occur.

Learnings from feedback:

Provide clipboards, for students to lean on, helping with their response writing.

Give further contextualisation following the activity, perhaps in class with additional slides, where the session could be unpacked further and connected to wider socio-political issues, such as transit migration, forced migration, fast fashion, waste colonialism, the climate crisis, the list goes on!

• I intentionally did not want to do this before the activity, as I did not want to give any ‘clues’ as to what the significant object (clothing) was.

I am using this fourth blog post as a final reflection on the Theory, Practices and Policies unit, with particular regards to the Learning Outcomes. I have been inspired by many of the materials delivered during the unit, and I found the micro teaching to be particularly rewarding. As a result, I have adapted my teaching practice, because of critically engaging with the policies and practices that were embedded in the unit. Overall, the first unit has been a very rewarding, and reflective experience. I have come to appreciate, by being a student again, how nothing is ever completed, there is always space for positive change, and to thrive on the change.

This new learning has inspired me to change my approach as an educator. As a result, I have adapted recent Formative Assessment presentations with Year 3 students. This was implemented on Tuesday 11^th March, with very successful outcomes. At the core of this change was enabling the students to choose their preferred style of feedback model, which positively impacted on the student experience. Without the inspiration of the Theory, Practices and Policies reading material, this would not have happened.

Furthermore, I have developed new teaching processes, as outlined in the teaching observations. These processes seek to disrupt the traditional hierarchy and passiveness of the teaching space. I have embraced risk taking and fostering a sense of shared vulnerability among the staff and students on the course that I lead. The positive results of this are evident in the student and staff feedback following the session.

The course handbook for the PgCert states that I would consider implications for my own practice. In conclusion, I do see this now, and I have a revived confidence in my approach as an educator, while I am also very much looking forward to the next unit on the PgCert.

As soon as I learned that we would be conducting a microteaching session, I was very much looking forward to it. The reason for this is largely based on some internal questions that I have been considering, regarding my teaching practice. While I view the micro teaching session as an opportunity to experiment with my approach to potentially working on these questions in class, at some future point.

To shed some context in this area, I want to introduce the importance and relevance of clothing as an integral part of my teaching practice. I work at London College of Fashion, so of course clothing is a central aspect to the teaching here. Furthermore, I work on the Fashion, Styling and Production course. As a course, we encourage our students to use clothing as the primary mode of expression, of communication and storytelling, in the projects that they work on.

I am interested in the emotive qualities of clothing, of clothing as a vehicle to communicate not just how we wish to look, be that style, trend, identity with a ‘tribe’, but to communicate how we feel, and how clothing can expand on this emotive aspect. In turn, I am very much interested in empathy; can clothing, by way of its emotive connotations, be used to trigger empathy? And in doing so, can it connect people who may not share the same experiences, but can nevertheless empathise?

A key text is the book Stuff, by Anthropologist, Daniel Miller. The text is important because it highlights the inconsistencies in the widely held presumption, from a Western/Eurocentric perspective, of clothing’s ability to only reveal the ‘surface’ – and in doing so, to be inherently superficial. Miller highlights that in many cultures, what and how people wear clothes, is in fact a highly nuanced language that describes how they feel, as part of a particular group within society. According to Miller “Clothes are our most personal possessions. They are the main medium between our sense of our bodies and our sense of the external world” (Miller, 2010, p. 23).

One frustration I have with the typical (Western) approach to clothing in many student interactions, is that the interaction stops short of the emotions. Miller states “After all, the aim of anthropology is understanding, in the sense of empathy” (Miller, 2010, p. 22). Therefore, I want the micro-teaching to be part influenced by ethnography, a branch of Anthropology. While I recently re-watched the documentary, Paris is Burning. (Paris is Burning, 1990) In this, the protagonists discuss how, when performing to an audience, they use clothing to communicate how it might feel to be a rich, white American, with career prospects and unlimited opportunity, while they have none. So, they are using clothing as a form of empathy, while at the same time, highlighting the glaring lack of equal opportunities to black and Latin American communities in 1980’s America.

So, in the microteaching session, I would like to explore clothing, as a path to observation and empathy.

References:

Miller, D. 2010. Stuff. Polity Press.

Livingston, J. 1990. Paris is Burning. Off-White Productions.

Since starting this unit, an occurring theme that I have been considering and reflecting on in my teaching practice, is that of shared vulnerability. It strikes me that vulnerability is very much part of the practice of teaching. In my experience, on the PgCert, and in the first time for a while, I have considered my own vulnerability as a practitioner. This has led me to consider more acutely the vulnerability of those I work with on a daily basis, the students.

I discussed my interest here with my personal tutor, Karen Matthewman. Karen kindly suggested that I look further at “embodied experiences…particularly about bell hooks, and how she talks about the importance of being vulnerable in the classroom”.

This enquiry led me to an article titled Teaching to Transgress: Subjective Educational Experience in the Model of Engaged Pedagogy of Bell Hooks. The article unpacks bell hook’s 1994 seminal book, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom.  This book is from the position of a black feminist critique, which highlights the importance of social constructs such as race and gender as being implicit in affecting student’s ability to feel included in the education system.

I was particularly interested in understanding more on the model of engaged pedagogy and understood from reading the article, that, according to Watkins how a subject acts in the social environment, such as education, are never neutral, but are, as the author highlights, “filled with mechanisms for solidifying and transmitting specific inequalities” (Watkins, 2019, p. 12).

hooks posits that it is through inclusive teaching, including students in the process of teaching, that a transformation can take place, through a subjective experience of education. This, as I understand it, is about trying to connect with students, understanding their individual positions, asking them to participate in the teaching, so teaching ‘with’ them as individuals, rather than teaching ‘at’ them, as a homogenous group. This, according to hooks “is a central goal of transformative pedagogy” (hooks, 1994, p. 39). So, to be more inclusive, teachers need to consider how to create spaces for shared vulnerability, so that there is an opening up of the teaching space, where students feel more included. This is something that I want to work on, as a test, in a teaching activity that I will refer to in my case studies. The reason behind this, is that I feel that there is a void in how tutors continually push students to perform (in assessments, both formative and summative), to take risks, to question their own intentions, and to be open to feedback in tutorials, while tutors take no risks. I would like this to change, by creating a space for more inclusive practices in the teaching space.

References:

Email conversation with Karen Matthewman, 03/02/25.

Watkins, G J. (2019) Teaching to Transgress: Subjective Educational Experience in the Model of Engaged Pedagogy of Bell Hooks. CULTURE – SOCIETY – EDUCATION NO. 1 (15) POZNAN.

Hooks, B. (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. London: Routledge.

The first workshop session in the Theories Policies and Practices unit, was interesting to me as a teaching practitioner. Firstly, it was interesting to observe the groups’ responses to the readings that we had been allocated. It was comforting and funny, to hear that many in the group felt as I did, that the texts, at times, were hard to access.

The article that I was allocated was titled An a/r/tographic metissage: Storying the self as pedagogic practice. According to the article, educational discourse for artists, researchers and teachers would be broadened through considering “the self-in-relation to theory and practice”(Osler, T, Guillard, I, Garcia-Fialdini, A and Cóte, 2019, p. 109). This at first seemed like a perfect article for the unit, as it appeared to be aligned with the inner reflective process of considering one’s values and processes as (art) practitioners and aligning them with a teaching practice. I immediately felt, as both an art practitioner and teaching practitioner, that I could relate to this.

However, on reading the four case studies in the article, I found there to be several issues with the texts that I found quite frustrating. I don’t want to single out any one text, but I found there to be a combination of inaccessible ‘academic’ language, that quickly became alienating. While there was a presumption in the text that the reader would/should know what the term ‘a/r/tography’ was, without any contextual explanation or unpacking. I was also disappointed that the writing in the articles at times felt highly cliched and romanticised approach to art practice, bordering on Victorian romanticism. As a practitioner, both artist and teacher, I realised that I actively try to reduce my use of overly emotive language. I try to speak in plain English. I value this, as I think it is important in teaching spaces to keep language accessible to all, particularly when teaching on a very large cohort, with many international students, and with many students who do not come from privileged backgrounds.

When faced with an article such as the one we were given, I found the result of this was one that can result in an undermining of my confidence, with academia, and writing in general. However, on reflection, and in a form of new confidence gained from the shared experience of how the group responded to the article that we read, I understood that perhaps I am not ‘bad’ at academic writing, I just don’t like badly written academic writing.

On this point, I am drawn to the writing of bell hooks, whose work, according to Watkins “intentionally appears far from intellectual elitism, and much closer to the modes of expression typical for lower social classes”. For hooks, the intention was to “look at other forms of speech, linguistic practice and rhetoric than exclusively characteristic for the academic discourse.” (Watkins 2019, p. 10)  In doing so, she disrupted and critiqued the hierarchy of academia, from a position of feminist theory.

References:

Osler, T, Guillard, I, Garcia-Fialdini, A and Cóte, S. (2019) Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, Volume 12, numbers 1 & 2. Concordia University.

Watkins, G J. (2019) Teaching to Transgress: Subjective Educational Experience in the Model of Engaged Pedagogy of Bell Hooks. CULTURE – SOCIETY – EDUCATION NO. 1 (15) POZNAN.

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