RochelleFryblog

As part of the thematic analysis process I decided to write this reflection to bring back my own memories and insights while I’m about to familiarise myself with the data.

The plan was to take a walk with my students, as in the style of the Guy Dabord and the Situationist’s ‘Derive’. . but also inspired by a workshop described by Page (2018) where students were asked to consciously engage with a journey they do regularly and collect artefacts.

Since I thought it might help students focus on what was happening while they walked I made a worksheet including some open tasks encouraging sensory engagement, eg note down three smells, describe three surfaces you touch…. I also added a grid to enter sketches, giving them the idea of collecting many small things, notes or sketches.

The walk was part of a bigger session. I decided that the best way to approach the research project was to integrate it into a normal Saturday club session. So my questionnaire would be part of the reflection questions we normally do, the walk was part of a South London gallery trip session. I thought this would be a good flow from exploring the surrounding area and streets, to then exploring the exhibition which included works by Rita Keegan including smell, visual, and sound.

The students were 14-15 years of age so I had devised a way that we’d stay altogether and no-one go missing. I enjoyed planning this and writing up the task sheets. I printed the sheets in 5 different colours and had three copies in each colour, this was a way to get students into groups of three according to the colour sheets they were given, and the idea would be to have a leading group of three on the meandering walk every 5 – 10 minutes, who would take us somewhere to pause and explore, then we’d be led by the next group, and so on. So the teachers would not lead apart from when we had to get to the gallery or back to college. The rest of the time we would relinquish control and be led around by the students with the rest of the group.

I had made a detailed plan for the morning but allowed some flexibility as I knew I’d have to adjust things. I was feeling lucky because there was a dry weather forecast.

We met at Wilson Road building, I had a student Ambassador assisting me. We gave out the paper worksheets and I gave a short introduction talking about mindfulness, the ‘derive’ and the journey being the important part and not the end destination.

We set out, first pausing at a churchyard down the end of the road. I knew there were places in the area that would be great to explore, but it was important to hold back and not to advise on this, since it was meant to be a journey led and discovered by the students. It was more about happening on things.

A feeling of joy started to creep up on me while we were walking. Partly because the plan, which took a lot of thinking and working out seemed to be going ok. Partly because I also was enjoying being present with it. Some of the group were excited to take the lead a few others were tentative and not really sure what to do with their power, but everyone seemed engaged and together in our endeavour.

There were some significant moments I remember. We spent a bit of time in the churchyard at the beginning of the walk, a group had gathered right at the back around a dustbin, I walked up to see what they were doing, they were looking at flyer stickers stuck to the top of a dustbin. They were very excited composing photographs, a bit later one student told me that he would use some of the images he was collecting for a school project about environment. I thought this important, since I wanted to create an open activity that could inspire ideas. These images/stories didn’t get recorded in my data however. which has led me to the conclusion that I needed to do this once in order to learn about how to do it better a second time around.

Another moment was one group led by a particular student who seemed on a mission to get us somewhere, I had to ask him to find a place for us to pause as it was going on too long and would run into the next groups time, around this time we stopped in an intersection of roads there were flats and houses, it was very grey and urban. A group of boys had been picking small purple flowers, I’m not sure where they got them from but since it was late November it seemed like they were from a planter, (I had made one rule not to collect anything that belonged to anyone, and there is a law against picking wild flowers), but in the spirit of the walk I thought I had to let things go (within reason), they were all standing together looking at their flowers.

Despite the dry forecast it was actually light drizzle and was very cold, so I was concerned that students would be less willing to take part. However that didn’t turn out to be the case. Though there was a lot of talk about the cold, things went ahead and students were enthusiastically engaged. At one point it did start to rain more heavily so I decided to get us to the gallery and continue the last group’s walk on the way back.

Looking back and having first reviewed some of the data, I’m wondering whether this activity led the students into a similar way of collecting information when we got to the gallery and If this would have been different if we had gone in cold. My impression is that it did give a more focused approach. It all nicely tied together since the exhibition by Rita Keegan involved an installation that was not only visual but included smells and audio.

On the last group’s walk we ended up in a playground at the back of a small park and they hung out and played, which was also great, again I had to confront my own assumption that this wasn’t proper work and they’d lost focus. I appreciate this as another important part of our journey. Later I noticed that one student had mentioned it in their reflection, which reinforced this for me.

I think the walk was successful though with hindsight I would have put a few more things in place to be able to collect better quality data, not that it was bad, just that I realise there is opportunity to do it better.

References

Page, T. (2018) Teaching and Learning with Matter Arts 7, no 4:82

Debord, G. (1994). The society of the spectacle. New York, Zone Books.

Today was our last tutorial for the Sip. I had a small breakthrough, as I decided to record my presentation as a way to overcome my recent anxiety. This was actually a good learning process and helped me review my presentation. So I will definitely do this for the final submission.

The feedback from the group was very helpful. It’s been a really supportive tutorial group. Some things I could improve now seem obvious; spent too much time on the context and not enough time on methods and approach. I also could be more specific with language about my research methods and theory. I need to add UAL policy about access to higher education and wider participation.

I feel like now I need to go back and refresh my memory about what I’d learnt in the early part of the Sip, then I can review what my activity design in relation to research methods to get some clarity. This will be a good place to start working with the data.

22nd November 2021

Today I managed to present something in a seminar without having a panic attack, (it seems to be a current theme).

The seminar was focussing on data analyses, there was a lot to take in, but I’m feeling positive.

I am starting to visualise my project as a whole entity, even though there’s still so much to do.

I really enjoyed one of the tasks working with some data of a transcribed conversation, deleting words to create a poem. Time was tight, ten minutes to do this, so I couldn’t think it through, but just worked intuitively and randomly. I noticed I was often looking out for phrases about feelings or ambiguous statements. While working I began asking myself questions about other ways I could be selecting data, and some of the methods I’d read or heard about started popping into my head, like using ‘I’ statements, or looking at metaphors. I was also aware of a need to make meaning out of what I was doing, and how I could manipulate meaning by the way I edit, which was a good lesson when it comes to realising the pitfalls of analysing data.

This activity reminded me of an idea I might borrow from a book of graphic design assignments (Paim et al 2014), referring to “Loose Associations” by Ryan Gander where subject matter of a conversation “subtly changes along it’s course as those involved make mental leaps in response to certain triggers.” These changes could be mapped visually, taking a new turn at points where the conversations subject changes. I like the idea and am considering visually mapping conversations in my data, perhaps with a different set of rules that correspond more with the research question. Something to experiment with.

References

Paim, N. Gisel, C. and Bergmark, E. (2014) Taking a Line for aWalk Assignments in Design Education, Spector Books. p83

Don’t hide the mess!

One of the key points I’m beginning to understand is that the process of action research is a messy one, and that’s ok. This is something that my tutor mentioned in a recent catch up chat. It was reassuring as I have felt lost with which way to go with it this past month. My question has changed back and forth. Although it’s been stressful not yet pinning things down, I can see the not knowing exactly what I’m doing is definitely a valid part of the journey.

This week I attended the 2nd SIP Seminar and turned up feeling behind with things. I heard that most people were experiencing the same. Again reassuring. Since then I’ve been talking to my line manager and the outreach team about working with the CCW Art and Design Saturday Club on my research question and so I’m seeing this could work.

My new question: How do students experience materials/led activity with regard to ideas generation and creativity? (still needs work) I’m planning to collect data from the reflections written by my students about their activities. I’ve been thinking a lot about the methods and really liked what I read about focus groups in Vaughn et al (2013) especially the qualitative nature of this approach, it’s flexibility to work alone or in combination with other research methods, and the possibility of dynamic group interaction. Because of these elements I’ve really wanted to use a focus group as a method, but I’m realising that this may not work so well for my students who are aged 15. It might be hard to recruit willing participants who would get into a flowing conversation without some input from myself as from past experience teenagers can be reluctant to contribute in group discussions. Instead I’ve opted for using something that is already part of my lesson plan, reflective questions, which I can tailor to work with my research question. I’m hoping to also work in some group discussion activity before responses are written which, I hope will give some benefits of the focus group, and I won’t be relying on this alone, it will work as a warm up to thinking about the questions individually.

SIP Workshop 1 on the PGCert programme

Yesterday I attended the SIP workshop which was a day long seminar introducing methods for research and this unit brief.

I hadn’t yet identified my research question, but there were lots of activities to work through ideas as well as advice about how to choose a topic that is doable in the time frame.

From doing the prep reading I’m beginning to realise that learning about this area is helping me come closer to processing and refining my ideas. As in the way I teach ideas generation for art and design projects, action starts the process off, to get the creative juices flowing where ideas follow activity.

Research of this kind is something that is new to me, I’ve already learnt a lot, for example I’d not encountered action research at all and what it means. I heard about some of the methods but did not think of them in terms of the benefits and disadvantages and the theories that form a wider context.

I have been going back and forth between a couple of different questions to work on. It was good to be able to talk to other students and get the sense that a lot of people are at the same point and need to refine their initial questions and ideas before properly getting started.

The questions that I worked on were:

Rochelle question(s): How can I be more sustainable with my practice and maintain a rich playground for creativity and ideas generation.

How does  our engagment with the physical affect our learning, either online or in the physical classroom/ the psychogeography of learning.

This morning another popped into my mind about how we experience coming back to the physical classroom after a year and a half of learning and teaching online. I think this one might be useful to reflect on, but also it is something that is happening to us this term and would be current in everyones minds and experience.

The task for this session was to prepare and deliver a 20-minute synchronous online learning activity based around a physical or virtual object.

The object I based the activity around was a scrunched paper ball. I thought this would be an accessible object, that participants could easily make in their own space. I was interested in mixing a physical activity with the digital, so this was a good starting point.

I researched haptic drawing references and resources and found the following reading useful; On Making Haptic Drawings & Accordion Fold Books (2015) by Stephen Vincent, and Touching to see: Haptic Description and 21st Century Visuality (2016) by Kate Haug.

Participants were asked to describe non visual, sensual experiences of the paper ball through drawing. Touch and sound were the starting points to introduce the use of haptics in drawing and experiencing art. I referred to a drawing by the artist Stephen Vincent from my research, who makes haptic drawings from sounds at poetry readings.  

The initial plan was over complicated for the twenty minutes time frame, so I pared it down, while aiming to keep a sense of the activity unfolding. 

The experience of doing this session was enlightening. I hadn’t fully appreciated the insights I would gain from both delivering and hearing peer feedback. It reinforced my ideas and encouraged me to think further about how we could incorporate physical experience in online learning contexts.

I enjoyed an activity led by another group member where we created a story together. While doing this I was able to appreciate a group building task on the Collaborate whiteboard which gave a chance to joke with other group members, creating a sense of much needed connection in the online context.

OBL Feedback

• Really lovely use of ordinary materials
• Great framing of the activity at the end with a quote and reference
• Relevant context to what we’re all experiencing
• Fun and calming exercise, gave me an opportunity to be reflective
• Not overwhelmed by information, became more engaging as time went on, good development
• Tangible element of pen and paper combined with digital drawing at the end was a great combination
• Presentation of slides was very clear and set up very well
• Non classical nature of holding the paper was revolutionary and led to an interesting way of avoiding a pressured outcome

Seminar on 1 March

I found the reading and resources for this seminar really helpful for teaching online. The video ‘Performing to an invisible audience’ especially so. I had been feeling anxious and blocked with planning for online sessions. Part of the difficulty was that I missed seeing faces and being in the same space physically with students. On top of this the young age group I teach tend to be quiet and need encouragement to contribute. So not only was I missing faces and bodies, there were a lot of silences to deal with. I was stuck on finding strategies to encourage engagement. While delivering I felt stiff and found it hard to be my natural self while simultaneously attempting to make the online class engaging and informative.

The list of tips from the video were great. ‘Embrace the awkwardness” resonated. Reminding myself this at the beginning of a session allowed me to relax. Something as little as checking in with this phrase before a session, was a real breakthrough for me. I realised that previously feeling less in control and powerless teaching online had been a problem. In my sessions I often encouraged students to let go of perfection to free them up. I was in need of listening to my own advice here. More advice from the video; ‘Be kind to yourself’ and ‘Don’t aim for perfection’.

Watching peers delivery online and witnessing their ‘mistakes’ or awkwardness also helped. After some reflection I realise that as an observer I hardly register these moments that don’t go to plan for someone else. This helped me remember my self talk when I first started teaching about the audience being ‘on your side’. In the shift to teaching online I had forgotten this.

In the video another bullet point tip was ‘accept silence isn’t necessarily a bad thing’ time is needed to process. I found verbally asking a question and asking for contributions on mics and chat had mixed results. Sometimes lack of responses would throw me out of my zone for the remainder of the session. I found using the whiteboard a good antidote for this, It allowed anonymity for students who felt under the spotlight. I spent time drawing or writing something on the whiteboard while allowing their processing time before they could respond to questions, it took the awkwardness away and freed students up to play a bit with their contributions.

So I’ve worked through my initial difficulties with switching to online delivery, and found some ways to relax into the online platform. I now feel more inspired to be creative with it, a work in progress.

15th February 2021

The theme for today’s seminar was love, care and belonging. I explored the following resources to prepare for this seminar; Bell Hook’s, All About Love, Introduction chapter and The Art of Loving in the Classroom: A Defence of Affective Pedagogy by Alan Patience.

I made the following notes to prep for the Seminar.

Bell Hook’s book All About Love. 

• She focuses on romantic love and is concerned with how we learn about love.
• Tells her personal story about being heartbroken, and her own relationship to love.
• Discusses love in modern society and says it is generally considered suspicious or dismissed by new generations, (Tina Turner ‘What’s Love got to do with it?’, a rap singer who says “ (love) what’s that? I’ve never had any love in my life’
• Different gender beliefs and experiences of love, says that women are taken less seriously in talking and writing about love. Women yearning/men receiving. She says when she tried to talk about love to friends they say ‘go get therapy.’ I say get some better friends Bell.
• The message I took was that we are in danger of neglecting our emotional sides, being instinctive or talking to our hearts. That we value intellect, over emotion. And this is bad for society. 

The Art of Loving In the Classroom: A Defence of Affective Pedagogy

• Patience introduces this essay as a defence of a form of teaching that he says has been eroded by ‘the culture of the new capitalisim’ Sennet 2006. He calls this teaching affective pedagogy.
• He outlines two kinds of pedagogy, Affective Pedagogy and Utilitarian Pedagogy
• Affective Pedagogy is described as involving the value of a discipline and a value imparting this to students. Challenging students while respecting developing intellects, and engaging students in what he calls ‘dramatic friendships’, 
• It’s learning as an end in itself incorporating a means to an end. Here there is value and joy in the process of learning and subject matter.
• Love comes in here. The Dramatic friendship involves love
• This love is likened to familial love, a nurturing, selfless love. Open and positive.  
• ‘Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving.’ Fromm 1961
• Patience says in modern society Affective Pedagogy is being eroded , Utilitarian pedagogy is given precedent.
• Utilitarian Pedagogy is defined as a more authoritarian approach, where the goals are more important, it involves rote learning and drilling. Hence the relationships and experience  in the classroom would be 1 dimensional and hierarchical.
• In the modern world utilitarian pedagogy is pushing aside the affective pedagogy.

Comparisens

• Both talk about a better society as a result of incorporating love into the equation, both warning of a world without love.
• A question of giving and receiving come up in both, Patience quotes Fromm 1961 ‘Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving.’ Hook says ‘Most men feel that they receive love and therefore know what it feels like to be loved; women often fee we are in a constant state of yearning, wanting love but not receiving it.’
• In the last para in Hook she talks about the transformative power of love, I think this is what is meant with regard to affective pedagogy, how love can create the best nurturing environment for teacher and learner.

Reflection

I really enjoyed thinking about these two pieces of writing and this topic. I was especially interested in Patience’s essay. The affective pedagogy is described as knowledge and learning as a mutual endeavour between teacher and student. The relationship established is essential in creating the best learning outcomes. Though these outcomes may be less definable and are tied up with gaining insight from a teacher whose experience involves intuition as well as knowledge. It is  “ As much about feelings and emotions as it is about learning outcomes”

The relationship between teacher and student is compared with familial relationships, where the kind of love is selfless, open and nurturing.  Being both a mum and a teacher I can relate to a crossover here, I know that there are many points in both where I’m opening myself up, creating a very open, positive frame of mind.

Both Hook and Patience seem to say that we as are losing connection with ourselves, the importance of the emotional in regard to our development and learning impacts society, politics and education. They both made me think of the exciting possibilities for us, if the balance in our value system could shift from the current market driven model to something softer, where our mental health and wellbeing is more important, where we are encouraged to follow our intuitions, and listen to our hearts.

Taught to believe that the mind, not the heart, is the seat of learning, many of us believe that to speak of love with any emotional intensity means we will be perceived as weak and irrational”

I got the feeling Hook is getting us to imagine the power of being able to talk about love more openly and intellectually, and learn about love and what impact that may have. It reminded me of an the artists Lora Mathis’ work, radical softness talking about emotions as taking a stance of power and not weakness.

Patience quotes the British idealist Philosopher Oakeshott: ‘the imparting of practical knowledge entails complex emotional as well as intellectual interactions between teacher and student.’

This rings true to me. When things are going really well in the classroom, it seems down to an interaction between me and students that involves a mix of me being myself and showing my personality as well as the content of my plan. I’ve noticed that part of my struggle with transitioning to online learning is because I rely on soft skills so much. Being physically present with a student seems so necessary to be able to pick up all the nuances of body language and using intuition to read what is going on for a student emotionally and intellectually. It makes perfect sense that both intellect and emotion play a role a learning. I’ve realised now how reliant on my intuition and reading emotion I was to create a place where students are inspired and engaged.

I have been learning how to create this online, I’ve found it interesting that it is also possible to achieve a this connection in the online context, for example with the use of emojis and playing music, having a playlist for students to choose their own music.

I thought it funny and ironic in light of covid that Patience described the extreme version of utilitarian pedagogy as a dystopian vision of call centres where teachers deliver rote, drill-like lessons to students remotely. Though it’s been tough converting everything online, I see that there is still potential to keep the love alive in teaching online.

In this text Vilhauer presents Gadamer’s concept of play as an ‘event’ of understanding that occurs in the experiencing of a work of art. Play is described as a movement, back and forth between the players, play is something that happens between the participants.

I can see how this concept is significant when thinking about educational relationships with regard to what understanding is, or how it is arrived at in a ‘back and forth’ activity between teachers, learners and colleagues. I think the idea used about presenter and spectator in education could be more than literally teacher presenting and student spectating, but potentially moving in all directions, between all participants a mutual recognition or understanding is possible.

Gadamer says play involves variety and spontaneity. This has made me reflect on how unpredictability can be embraced in teaching. Though at times I can find unpredictability in a lesson unsettling, I think it’s fruitful nonetheless. Perhaps it is necessary for anything meaningful to come out of the lesson. Meaning can be generated through the play in this context.

This is discussed with regard to how we experience an artwork, text, or drama. A moment of recognition of a truth, an interpretation.

I really liked the concept that as a player you commit to the activity of play, you get yourself lost in it. Gadamer says the human relationship to play differs to play in nature in that there is choice and intention in human play. The behaviour that the players have to undertake is actively allowing themselves to be taken by the game, where they can experience relief and freedom from the burdon of having to initiate. This to me is suspension of disbelief as in the theatre but applied to teaching. The ‘freeing up’ is important in the learning experience, like a safe zone.

In my teaching practice I sometimes present methods and processes to generate good quality ideas. I think about the creative process with students and literally use games to experiment and encourage them out of their comfort zone. These are word games, games of chance and using rules for a drawing. A successful outcome might be when a student can re-frame their expectation of a work, they can value some aspect of the work through play that had previously been overlooked.

Reading Villhauer’s essay has inspired me to think about reinforcing this aspect in my practice, re-looking at some of my existing plans that incorporate games and maybe involve some new ones. I struggle with leading group discussions, this is my weak point. Our seminar about play and measurement introduced games for group discussion and got me thinking about how individuals contribute differently in this context. I think if I can bring some aspects of play into this area it might help me to embrace discussions, where I’m normally outside of my own comfort zone.

Summary of presentation for 18th Jan:

Hello, I’m Rochelle

I teach in a few different contexts as a VL and AL. I’ve been delivering short courses at UAL for the last 10 years, I run the Saturday Club North at CSM and work on the Insights program with Outreach at CCW. I also work at City University London teaching drawing to first year Engineering students.

This year my cat helps me with teaching online.

My background is in Fine Art, and sculpture in particular which I continue with these days. I find my art practice and teaching feed off each other. In both areas I have become interested in the flow of creativity, ideas generation, and the processes and methods used to create, like game-playing and chance.

​I chose this piece of writing by a BA student because I am interested in the spaces we learn in and how they affect us. Especially so now that we find ourselves teaching and learning from our homes. I’m also interested in the parallel between learning and a walk through the city streets, the emphasis on the journey rather than the end.

Inside, in between and out: How can psychogeography be beneficial to teaching and learning in higher education?​

Ngọc Triệu​

Spark Journal Vol 3, No 1 (2018)​

https://sparkjournal.arts.ac.uk/index.php/spark/article/view/87​