PG Cert 2025

Mwala Káa – Nevermind in Newa language.

An act as though to allow boiling water to simmer down. To accept.

Keepa Maskey (MAPS, 2022-24)

Introduction

I am currently making a film called Changes in light about decolonising library spaces. I am working in collaboration with librarian Marilyn Clarke, who brings her lived experience as a queer person of Jamaican heritage to the project. One of the fears I bring to this work, and my work with global majority students within the white spaces of academia, is that despite my anti-racist intentions, my residual racism remains evident. Robert Jenson describes this fear so clearly when he asks,

‘[w]hat if non-white people look at us and can see it? [..] What if they can look past our anti-racist vocabulary and sense that we still don’t really know how to treat them as equals?’ (Jenson 2005:7).

I recently presented some research at Cambridge University and I was the only white person in the room.  As a teenager, I used to waitress in these exact rooms for the white, male fellows. Here, my white privilege intersected with my single-parent, working-class background (I can pass easily as middle class until I meet the middle class). I had simultaneous, confusing glimmers of insight into what it is to be outside the normative frames of reference, whilst also at the centre of Oxbridge privilege.

In a project called Circling (again) working with people with chronic pain – I ended one session by running as fast as I could because I needed to relish the fact that I could.

One of my students has recently shifted from ‘she’ to ‘they’. If I forget, I feel disappointed with myself and then resentful if my menopausal fog is perceived as a cis-gender lack of care.

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One of the risks of doing the kind of positional reflection above within teaching contexts is that students of colour may be called on as race experts (Garrett 2024, Sadiq 2023) and feel that other elements of their identity are less valued. In the 2nd cohort of MA Performance: Society (MAPS), a black student, who embraced post-racial perspectives, made it clear that they were not interested in focusing on racial agendas within class. I wanted to bring intersectional EDI work into the room, but recognised the energy this can require from racialised minority students. I am also aware of how damaging avoidant behaviours can be, such as those articulated in the ‘Room of silence’ documentary (Sherrid 2016) where tutors’ reticence to engage with race-based work is seen to reinforce the whiteness of the space. My solution, drawing on embodied pedagogies (Clughen 2023), pedagogy of discomfort (Boler 1999, Head 2014), and critical pedagogy (Helguera 2011, Billings, 2019) was to let the materials, anecdotes, and movement practices lead to positional reflection. The intervention I reflect upon in this writing hopes to work in the same way, bringing issues into relief through materials and lived experiences rather than an issue-led approach.

Context

MAPS is a low-residency course focused on socially engaged practice. In its first year, only one student used English as a first language. Language brings intersectional issues to the fore, privileging certain knowledges over others. A student called Robert Deguzman wrote that ‘western vocabularies [relating to social practice] do not have any purchase in my local intellection and are not part of our way of doing and seeing’ (Deguzman 2024). He went on to use Filipino words/concepts to articulate his relationship, as a member of the Filipino diaspora, to socially engaged practice. The word Pakikipagkapwa, for example, challenges individualist notions of Western subjectivity by offering a definition of self tied to a recognition of one’s place with others.

It’s challenging when courses like MAPS, which aim to offer inclusive and situated learning opportunities, still rely on knowledge that pertains to be universal and detached from lived intersectional experiences. As Garrett observes, simply decolonising reading lists does not disrupt the structures of whiteness (Garrett 2024:10), and academia continues to marginalise through its privileging of certain knowledge forms, particularly those rooted in written, Western traditions that often devalue embodied or experiential knowledge.

As a dance researcher, my practice is embodied, yet its validation depends on its articulation in words. While I use performance and visual practice in my teaching, the course’s primary mode of exchange remains English and word-based, reinforcing the exclusions the course seeks to dismantle. I cannot change MAPS unit descriptions and criteria. What I can change is whether students feel their ways of knowing can find a place of value within these unit frames. 

Ways of knowing 

I plan to build on Robert’s work, influenced by the In Other Words project (Ilie n.d),  by developing an intervention called Ways of knowing. Ways of knowing is a shared course dictionary that contains multiple ways of knowing that work to re/define socially engaged art from a decolonial and inclusive perspective.  The dictionary will hold different understandings of what social practice can be and is, for people on the course. It will be used in consecutive cohorts as a future resource for each new year.

Belonging

Ways of knowing could be used at the start and end of the course to build a sense of community. Students would add a word to the dictionary from their preferred language (regional, ideolects, slang, colloquial, formal, patois, private, technical) that resonates with their approach to socially engaged practice.

Challenging and enriching accepted ways of knowing

Students would be invited to examine key words within the unit description through the lens of their intersectional positionality. They could then offer words, images, or performances from their own socio-cultural lived understandings that resonate, challenge, and enrich the forms of knowledge foregrounded within the unit.

Please see Unit 2 Intervention plan post for more detail about the aims, form, and logistics of this intervention.

Reflection 

The original name of this intervention was In our own words. However, after noting Sadiq’s (2023) point about the way diversity is often homogenised within EDI work, I changed it to Ways of knowing to invite a multiplicity of experience and reduce a binary sense of polarity between student and institution.

Following tutor feedback, I expanded the emphasis from nationality-based language to other forms, such as queer slang, to invite a wider intersectional approach. I also expanded from solely language-based to practice-based entries in response to my peer group feedback. This creates more choice as an agent for inclusion, enabling neurodivergent students and those with specific learning differences to engage in multiple ways.

Current student feedback indicated the importance of avoiding a centre/periphery model where the unit keywords dictate the responses. This led to a version where students choose any words that are key to their situated practice.

‘‘I am also interested in this [intervention] not only as an artist, but also as a Ukrainian because my country was colonised by a neighbouring empire and this issue is echoed in the current war. ‘(Mariia Proshkovska, MAPS 2023-2025)

I currently have one Russian student and two Ukrainian refugees in the class. There is a risk, as Mariia’s feedback suggests, that focusing on different languages foregrounds difficult political contexts such as these. My sense is that it’s better to find space for these tensions within this contained practice, rather than not acknowledge them.

There is also a danger of exoticism in this intervention – where words in different languages come to represent an entire culture or are instrumentalised as a way of bringing western understandings into relief (Spivak 1988). One way of offsetting this is by keeping the resource moving and growing and inviting the students to decide how they want to use it.

Evaluation

As part of starting this work, I would ask the students how they would know if it was working. This discussion would allow us to work out ways of measuring it together.

I would be interested in whether this work increases the range of references and terminology in the classroom: if terms from different cultures became commonplace rather than ‘interesting’ in the work.

I would also want to ask students directly if this work affected their sense that their socio-cultural lived experiences were valued on the course.

Conclusion 

To refer back to the white fear I mentioned at the start, I am aware of the seductive power of mastery (Singh 2018) and how easily this kind of intervention becomes a display of my anti-racism rather than an act of anti-racism. I find Bradbury’s question ‘[h]ow do white people gain?’ (Bradbury 2020: 246) useful here because it helps me start from acknowledging my positionality in the space as a given I need to work from and with.

I wish I had started this kind of intervention earlier with the MAPS course, as my sense, from their reaction to it was that languages were an untapped resource that would have helped democratise the classroom.   As Odeniyi’s work (2022) on multilingualism and pedagogy makes clear, the linguistic diversity of students should be seen as a pedagogic resource. Sometimes, in my anxiety and ego as a teacher, I have a tendency to dominate the space and stay with what I know well: this would have helped.

References

Billings, S. (2019). Critical pedagogy. Salem Press Encyclopedia. Salem Press.

Boler, M. (1999). Feeling power: Emotions and education. Routledge.

Bradbury, A. (2020). A Critical Race Theory framework for education policy analysis: The case of bilingual learners and assessment policy in England. Race Ethnicity and Education, 23(2), 241–260. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2019.1599341

Clughen, L. (2023). ‘Embodiment is the future’: What is embodiment and is it the future paradigm for learning and teaching in higher education? Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 61(4), 735–747. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2023.2215226

Deguzman, R. (2024). Performing migration and memories of the ocean [Unpublished MA thesis, UAL].

Garrett, R. (2024). Racism shapes careers: Career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2024.2330861

Head, N. (2014). A “Pedagogy of Discomfort”? Experiential learning and conflict analysis in Israel–Palestine. Politics, 34(3), 263–274. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9256.12042

Helguera, P. (2011). Education for socially engaged art: A materials and techniques handbook. Jorge Pinto Books.

Ilie, C. (n.d.). In Other Words project. Institute of Other Ways. Retrieved May 26, 2025, from https://www.iowdictionary.org/project

Jensen, R. (2005). The fear of white people. In The heart of whiteness: Confronting race, racism and white privilege. City Lights Books. Retrieved from http://www.citylights.com/CLpub4th.html#4499

McIntosh, P. (1990). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Independent School, Winter 1990.

Odeniyi, V. (2022). Reimagining conversations [Podcast]. UAL Decolonising Arts Institute. https://www.arts.ac.uk/ual-decolonising-arts-institute/publications-and-podcasts/reimagining-conversations

Sadiq, A. (2023, March 2). Diversity, Equity & Inclusion: Learning how to get it right [Video]. TEDx Talks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR4wz1b54hw

Sherrid, E. (Director). (2016). Room of silence [Documentary film]. Rhode Island School of Design. https://vimeo.com/161259012

Singh, J. (2018). Unthinking mastery: Dehumanism and decolonial entanglements. Duke University Press.

Spivak, G. (1988). ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ In Nelson, C. and Grossberg, L. (Eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (pp. 271–313). Urbana: University of Illinois Press

Ways of knowing

Ways of knowing is a shared course dictionary that contains multiple ways of knowing that work to re/define socially engaged art from a decolonial and inclusive perspective.  The dictionary would work to hold different understandings of what social practice can be and is for people on the course. It will be used in consecutive cohorts, building over time and acting as a future resource for each new year.

It will be made using a simple word doc format to make the words searchable and not require additional tech knowledge for entries. Links can be added to performances and visual/audio entries. We can add lists of related words/entries under each term.

The intervention aims to :-

• decentre western modes of knowledge concerning socially engaged practice.
• create a shared space of belonging.
• promote inclusion and discussion of different ways of knowing.
• embed connections between academic and lived knowledge.

Below are two ways this could be used within a course/unit

1. At the start

A reflective practice to be used at the start of the course to build a sense of belonging and community.

• Choose a word from your own preferred language (regional, queer slang, colloquial, formal, patois, private, technical) that resonates with your approach to socially engaged practice.
• Add it to the course dictionary and explain its significance within your SEA work.

2. Within Units

Students are invited to examine key words in the unit description at the start of most units.  They are then encouraged to explore their own understandings of these terms, thinking about their intersectional positionality, in part, through offering words from their dominant or preferred language that resonate with these terms.

• Identify where repeated or key terms in the unit brief come from (which authors use them, which lineages they draw on, and places they may have encountered them).
• Think about related words/understandings in your dominant language and write (or create a piece of practice) to act as an entry in the dictionary that explores how these ways of knowing resonate with your socio-cultural, political, or spiritual lived experience and inform your practice.

This task can be used to generate discussion about the forms of knowledge foregrounded within the unit, inviting multiple ways of knowing that challenge and enrich these understandings.

3. At the end

Mwala Káa – Nevermind in Newa language.
I hear this expression frequently in my community. When I’m outraged about something or someone and I’m complaining, elders in my family use this word. An act as though to allow boiling water to simmer down. To accept.
Keepa Maskey (MAPS 2022-2024)

Students would be invited to identify key themes, practices, and ideas that have emerged as significant to their practice over the course. They might use any language that resonates with them, or they might return to the words they chose at the start of the course. Students would either add to their original dictionary entry or create new ones. This would make a useful starting point for their summative final projects, where they bring their work together and reflect on their practice. The two entries above are examples of words students have chosen as they look back on what they have learnt and what is important to their SEA practice at this point.

The range of resources we are invited to review for this Blog task is striking. We move from analysis of racial bias in primary school assessments, to barriers faced by racialised minority PhD students, to two popular videos discussing EDI learning in businesses and universities, and finally, an extract from a Channel 4 programme on racism among school-age children. What stands out is the dissonance between the nuanced academic work on systemic racism—drawing on frameworks like Critical Race Theory—and the reductive or hostile reactions seen in comment sections. I was left feeling bewildered and, frankly, a bit scared.

In the Channel 4 extract from The School That Tried to End Racism (2020), students take part in the “Privilege Walk”, inspired by Peggy McIntosh’s (1990) work on white privilege. One white student says, ‘it feels quite weird’ being left at the front. He seems uneasy but also reflective, aware of the privilege the exercise reveals. Importantly, he doesn’t respond with defensiveness or take it as a personal attack. Yet the comments below the video erupt with denial and anger—racism is dismissed entirely, and those articulating systemic concerns are vilified. The problem seems to sit within the perception of white privilege as something gained rather than, as one teacher puts it, simply ‘not having to live the consequences of racism’.

The Telegraph video (Orr, 2022), set to a background of quasi-classical piano music, frames racial inequity at Cambridge University solely in terms of individual incidents of racism. The implication is that if there are few formal complaints, there is little racism. This erases the systemic context and ignores the University of Cambridge’s own statistics (Cambridge, 2023), which clearly demonstrate racial disparities.

[Fig 1: University of Cambridge EDI report 2022-2023: P52]

Garrett (2024), drawing on Bhopal and Pitkin (2020), presents clear evidence of the way racialised individuals in higher education experience a ‘triple burden’ shaped by classed, gendered and racialised identities (Bhopal and Pitkin in Garrett 2024: 2). Calls for policies that do not acknowledge colour ignore the way marginalised staff and students are held to extraordinary standards.

This is a slide I shared during a talk I was invited to give at UAL called ‘how to become a reader’.

Fig 2 Macdonald slide ‘how to become a reader’ (2025)

Here, I was referring to the intersectional biases built into the criteria used within academic meritocratic systems of promotion, which work to exclude most people from applying. I used the word ‘chap’ as shorthand for the presumed norm: white, male, middle-class, perhaps sporty. On reflection, I regret not being more explicit—perhaps I should have said “white chap” or “cricket-playing (able-bodied) white chap”. The discomfort in the room was palpable. I had misunderstood the tone of the invitation, but several women of colour emailed afterwards to say thank you for naming the unspoken dynamics.

*The differential at UAL is even higher at nearly 15% according to the  2024 data report.

References

Bradbury, A. (2020). A Critical Race Theory framework for education policy analysis: The case of bilingual learners and assessment policy in England. Race Ethnicity and Education, 23(2), pp.241–260.

Channel 4. (2020). The School That Tried to End Racism. [YouTube] 30 June. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I3wJ7pJUjg

Garrett, R. (2024). Racism shapes careers: Career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, pp.1–15.

Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). (2024). Staff by ethnicity, sex and mode of employment 2022/23. Table 27. Available at: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/staff/table-27

McIntosh, P. (1990). White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. Wellesley College Center for Research on Women.

Orr, J. (2022). Revealed: The charity turning UK universities woke. The Telegraph. [YouTube] 5 August. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRM6vOPTjuU

Sadiq, A. (2023). Diversity, Equity & Inclusion: Learning how to get it right. TEDx. [YouTube] 2 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR4wz1b54hw

University of Cambridge. (2023). Equality and Diversity Information Report 2022–2023. Available at: https://www.equality.admin.cam.ac.uk/files/edi_information_report_2022-23.pdf

Intervention notes

In the first year of MA Performance: Society, no two students lived in the same country; only one was based in the UK. It soon became clear that centering the teaching on UK-oriented literature on socially engaged practice, which is my own area of expertise, would not serve this community well. Although the course does not specify a focus on Western socially engaged practice, the term ‘socially engaged’ itself denotes a Western understanding of art that serves a community, being distinct from art that is seen in a gallery, for example.

Language brings intersectional issues to the fore, privileging certain knowledges over others. Robert Deguzman, one of the first students to graduate from the course, wrote that ‘western vocabularies [relating to social practice] do not have any purchase in my local intellection and are not part of our way of doing and seeing’ (Deguzman 2024). He went on to develop a thesis where he used two Filipino words/concepts to articulate his relationship, as a member of the Filipino diaspora, to socially engaged practice. The words Pakikipagkapwa and Bayanihan offer a) a definition of self that is tied to a recognition of one’s place with others and b) the capacity of great things to be done by working together. When Robert explored this work with the group, it facilitated an important dialogue with individualist notions of western subjectivity that run through separations of artist and community, artist and art within some models of socially engaged art practice.

Our own words (need a better title)

I plan to build on Robert’s work by facilitating the development of a shared course dictionary that brings in ways of knowing that can re/define socially engaged art from a decolonial and inclusive perspective.  I want to use it as a way of holding some of the different understandings of what social practice can be and is for people on the course.

I am influenced here by the In Other Words project (editor Cornelia Ilie)

This project promotes critical and co-produced collections of words  ‘which reproduce and disseminate discriminatory discourses’. It has entries in multiple languages in order to promote ‘cross-cultural analysis of meanings, conceptualizations and attributions.’

(https://www.iowdictionary.org/project 26/05/25)

Logistics/Feasibility

Given the fact that the course ends at the end of August, this project needs to start small so as to not give students additional work at this late stage.

We could start with one session deciding which words/terms/concepts have been important to them over the course eg radical care, social practice, community arts, invitation, participation etc. Their final unit work involves a critical reflection on their work during the course, so this activity will also serve this work.

I would then

Invite them to identify where these terms come from (which authors use them, which lineages they draw on, where did they encounter them).

Invite people to talk about similar words/understandings in their dominant language.

Choose an image from their country/ies, life or practice to go with it.

We could then expand the task and invite students to explore their own understandings of these terms thinking about their intersectional positionality e.g

• How do these terms sit within their religion
• How do these terms resonate with their socio-cultural lived experience?
• How do these terms operate within their practice?

A changeable living resource

The dictionary needs to be situated, allowing definitions to be added to and changed over time.

” (…) it is no longer excusable to embalm the dictionary by autopsying its texts, mummifying its functions, and eulogizing its authors; we must, instead, seek a living dictionary, one that circulates in less familiar haunts, among less familiar speakers, to accomplish less familiar purposes”(Lindsay Rose Russell)

Even if we only do this with one word, in the time available, it would still be useful, I think.

Form

This needs to be simple so a padlet would work well. Additional understandings could be added as comments or linked posts and you can use the search function to find particular words.

Future

Our own words could be developed in the future with my teaching in MA Performance: Screen, which starts next year.

What are the words people use for socially engaged practice in the context of filmmaking and documentary?

I normally start each unit by unpacking what is meant by the assignment description and learning outcomes, exploring the assumptions that inform the brief. This task could build on this – by asking the group to pull out key terms/frames of reference being employed

We could build in the writing of one entry as part of an assignment.

References

Deguzman, Robert (2024) Performing Migration and Memories of the Ocean

Ilie, Cornelia In Other Words project. (https://www.iowdictionary.org/project 26/05/25)

All three interviews and talks assigned for this unit underscore the importance of moving beyond stereotypical representations of religion. Each source highlights the harm that stems from a lack of awareness of the diverse nature of religious beliefs—particularly within teaching, intercultural understanding, and sport. They go on to explore the way these issues are often compounded when religion intersects with race and gender.

Kwame Anthony Appiah (2014) urges us to reject monolithic definitions of religion, advocating instead for a nuanced understanding of people’s beliefs, practices, and interpretations. He traces the colonial origins of the modern concept of religion, showing how Western epistemological divides between science and religion positioned non-Western knowledge systems as merely ‘beliefs’. This divide—between ‘belief’ and ‘knowledge’—continues to dominate higher education (HE), where knowledge is often expected to be shareable, repeatable, and grounded in causal reasoning. Such criteria are often at odds with intuitive, spiritual, or embodied ways of knowing.

Catherine Manathunga (2015), like Appiah, critiques the universalising tendencies of Western epistemologies in HE. She calls for specificity in pedagogical approaches to counter the tendency to treat knowledge as ‘universal and un-located’ (Manathunga, 2015: 118). Such an approach allows for the inclusion of Indigenous and spiritual knowledges, which can then exist in dialogue with, rather than in subjugation to, dominant Western frameworks.

Building on Miranda Fricker’s (2007) work on epistemic injustice, Rekis (2016) argues that religious individuals are frequently denied credibility as knowers within secular educational settings. She suggests that this non-recognition often stems from ‘a false understanding’ of the kinds of knowledge these individuals bring. Particularly relevant to HE, Rekis explores the intersectional challenges faced by religious students, noting the dual harm inflicted when individuals feel unable to offer religious experience as testimony, both to the individual and to the classroom, which loses access to the ‘intuitive knowledge’ that could have been shared.

Recent data from the University of the Arts London (UAL, 2024) reveals that 42% of students identify with a religion or faith, with 12% identifying as Christian. This figure surprised me, particularly the prominence of Christianity, and raises questions about why religion is not more explicitly integrated into the curriculum. In the MA Performance: Society programme, students have occasionally shared prayers, rituals, and chants as expressions of performance and knowledge. Discussions of positionality have sometimes included faith, but I have not made an explicit invitation to explore this dimension of students’ experiences within HE.

Notably, 10.7% of respondents selected ‘I’d prefer not to say’ in response to questions about religious belief—a category strangely included among non-religious responses. I acknowledge that religion is deeply personal for many, while for others, it is made visible through choices like wearing a veil. Jawad (2022) uses the term ‘visible Muslim women’ to refer to Muslim women who wear the hijab, highlighting how religious visibility can expose individuals to compounded forms of discrimination at the intersection of race, gender, and religion.

While I remain cautious about explicitly encouraging students to share religious identities in academic settings, it is evident that these identities are already present. What remains is to find respectful and inclusive ways of voicing and engaging with their implications within HE.

References
Appiah, K.A. (2014) Is religion good or bad? (This is a trick question). [Online video] TED Talks. Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/kwame_anthony_appiah_is_religion_good_or_bad_this_is_a_trick_question [Accessed 23 May 2025].

Fricker, M. (2007) Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jawad, H. (2022) Islam, Women and Sport: The Case of Visible Muslim Women. [Online video] BBC Ideas. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos/islam-women-and-sport-the-case-of-visible-muslim-women/p0b9v04h [Accessed 23 May 2025].

Manathunga, C. (2015) ‘Intercultural doctoral supervision: The centrality of place, time and other forms of knowledge’, Teaching in Higher Education, 20(2), pp. 114–125. DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2014.978354.

Rekis, L. (2016) ‘Religion and Epistemic Injustice in Higher Education’. In: Trinity University, Challenging Race, Religion, and Stereotypes in the Classroom. [Online video] Available at: https://www.trinity.edu/news/challenging-race-religion-and-stereotypes-classroom [Accessed 23 May 2025].

University of the Arts London (2024) Religious Beliefs in the UAL Student Population: Annual Diversity Report. London: UAL.

The UAL video introducing the social model of disability asks if people feel as if the world was not made for them. In the following series of interviews offered to us in this Unit focusing on inclusion, the participants reference how a lack of adaptation and an awareness of the impact of intersecting characteristics, in particular, creates disabilities.

Chay Brown refers to the non-verbal insider codes at play within certain male gay social spaces. He articulates the intersectional complexity of trying to decode these spaces as someone who is a) recently moving into this community as a transman and b) as someone with neuro divergent traits that may make intuitive grasp of social codes harder. Brown’s interview makes it clear how an emphasis on one protected characteristic within social justice models may end up excluding part of the community if it is not considered within a matrix of difference (Crenshaw, 1990). The word ‘community’ is transformed in Brown’s practice into something responsive and inclusive rather than something rigidly formed around one characteristic.

‘If you don’t see us we have no place to be’ (Christine Sun Kim, 2024)

Christine Sun Kim and Ade Adepitan draw attention to the intersection of visibility and ability. An absence of representation can signal a diminished value and reduced sense of belonging. UAL’s pedagogic podcast ‘Belonging’ describes this feeling as a key factor in marginalised student retention and achievement. It is noticeable that the 2023 exit stats for disabled students indicate higher overall achievement but lower retention rates: feeling as if you have a place is clearly key.

[It’s noticeable that I have just skipped from Ade Adepitan’s discussion of race to a point about disability. There are hierarchies of protected characteristics that pervade our thinking, which reflect systemic systems of oppression, and there are characteristics that are easier to talk about than others because they evoke feelings of shame and responsibility.]

‘and I think I’m just greedy too’ (Christine Sun Kim, 2024)

It is useful to think of the relationship between desire and disability. Can Christine Sun Kim take up all the space or take back all the effort and time she is owed?

Christine Sun Kim’s inclusion of her daughter in her work brings her role as a carer with her role as artist and deaf activist into the same spaces. Being a carer intersects with other challenges for many of my students, and it is positive that this is now acknowledged at UAL. However, every time an in-person meeting is called with a week’s notice, or scheduled after 5.00, then carers are discriminated against and practices like these remain common at UAL.

Over 50% of the students I teach on MA Performance: Society work with disabilities. For most, their ISA documented disabilities intersect with several other protected characteristics that are not documented. It is interesting that this intersectional approach is not formally explored within disability services. There may be issues connected to privacy that prevent this, but despite the emphasis on social models in the UAL video, practices still seem tied to a medical model of disability. I am interested in finding ways to address this.

‘What do I need to do?’ (Helen, Unit 6: 2025)

The Unit 6 assignment within MA Performance; Society includes a reflective journal, visual essay and presentation. These multiple parts are designed to offer inclusive and flexible modes of engagement. Whilst this design has been commented on positively by both the students and the external examiner, it is not as straight forward as a singular final exhibition or thesis, and students can be unclear about what is expected from them.

In their article examining good feedback practice, Macfarlane & Nicol (2006) argue that independent learning requires students to be able to identify the relationship between their present levels of achievement and what is required by the assignment. Without a clear understanding of what the assignment goals are it is impossible to learn, i.e. self-regulate and develop your own work towards this. They go on to point out that understanding assignment requirements (aligned with course learning outcomes) is not a simple process of ‘transmission’ (Macfarlane & Nicol 2006:200) and supporting this can be challenging.

Evaluation

With Macfarlane & Nicol’s work in mind, I have been reflecting on two key ways students understand the Unit 6 learning aims: reviewing past work and engaging in peer/tutor feedback.

At the start of the unit, students requested previous examples of work to help them understand the assessment requirements. Initially, I hesitated, as I have observed that while exemplars can be useful, they sometimes lead to emulation rather than deep understanding. Care was taken to advise us on the PG Cert, for example, to engage critically with the sample work shared with us. To support critical engagement in MAPS, I provided past examples of Unit 6 work alongside a series of workshops on critical reflection and postgraduate expectations of depth, which is central to the assignment.  So far, students have found this approach helpful.

Macfarlane & Nicol argue that if feedback is solely tutor-led, it does not promote self-regulation—the ability to refine work in response to external goals. I agree that pointing out that a student needs to go ‘deeper’, within formative or summative feedback, does not necessarily help them understand what ‘deeper’ means concerning their own work and how this might be achieved? Liz Bunting also points out that feedback needs to be developed relationally and that what she terms ‘compassionate feedback’ (Bunting, 2022) which honours students’ positionality and expertise, is key to fostering the sense of belonging explored in Case Study 2.

Currently, formative feedback is generated both within group sharing sessions, where students present early work for peer discussion, and individual tutorials with me as the unit leader. However, although peer and tutor contexts are employed, I am aware that there is a distinction between tutor-led feedback, where work is discussed in relation to the assignment criteria, and peer feedback sessions where the discussion is less anchored to the criteria.*

Going forward

I plan to align some of the peer feedback sessions more closely with the assessment criteria so that students can explore how each other’s work meets or engages with these benchmarks.

I will bring in a peer feedback exercise that directly employs the Unit 6 assessment feedback format.

I will consciously aim to co-produce feedback with students in tutorials rather than arriving with it fully formed.

References

Nicol, D. J. & Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006) ‘Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: a model and seven principles of good feedback practice’. Studies in Higher Education, Vol 31: 2, pp 199-218.

Amina Akhmedova, A., Bunting, L. et al. (2022) Interrogating Spaces: Compassionate Feedback. UAL Teaching, Learning and Employability Exchange. [Podcast] October 11, 2022.

Keeping it together

‘they’re cutting the course before the first apples have fallen’ (Sarah, Unit 6: 2024)

In the UAL podcast ‘Belonging in Higher Education’ (2020) Neil Current argues that the key to achieving a sense of belonging – a state directly linked to student outcomes – is a feeling of connection. In January 2024, MA Performance: Society suspended recruitment, pending closure. This decision has negatively impacted both students’ and staff’s sense of belonging at UAL.  There are now only 6 students in the group, as some chose to transfer to other courses, and several have life factors which means their attendance is necessarily sporadic. The remaining students have voiced a need for greater connection with each other. The challenge is to find ways of maintaining a sense of connectivity and belonging within this small online group in Teach Out.

Current and future ways forwards

The following interventions are designed to signal to the student that their presence is important, and that they belong and have a place. The first involves setting up peer-to-peer interviews, where students meet outside of class to ask questions about each other’s work. This has worked well to create a connection with the students who regularly miss class and students said they found it useful to do. To encourage a sense of visibility and accountability, students are asked to document/share their discussions via their Unit 6 Padlet (see below), which I will respond to. We will repeat this as part of a peer-to-peer feedback process later in the year.

In the tutor review of my teaching practice, I was encouraged to give students more agency by inviting them to lead parts of the session. Drawing on this advice, I am planning a series of sessions after easter where students deliver mini workshops that supports the class in an aspect of the assignment. If they are unable to attend, they will be asked to send a workshop plan we can follow. This will a) offer students a useful opportunity to practice running workshops b) make them consider in depth what the assignment asks for and what they, and their peers, might need and c) promote a sense of agency and responsibility within the group.

In their article on teaching in online spaces, Lewis & Leigh (2022) promote the use of online virtual spaces to generate a sense of community. Platforms such as Padlet and Miro are used extensively in online teaching as modelled in the online PG course group. In Unit 1 of MAPS each student was given a Padlet to put their work in progress on. These Padlets were public enabling us to ‘drop in’ and see what each other were up to. Dulfer et al. (2024) argue that peer-to-peer learning is an essential part of community building and so it was great to hear the students suggest bringing this device back into Unit 6 to help maintain peer-to-peer connectivity on the course. Students have now been given Unit 6 Padlets and asked to populate them with their thinking so far by March 17^th.

Finally, I have sought funding to bring two alumni back in as GTAs within the class after easter. The hope is that this will act as a tangible reminder of the wider community of which these last students are a part.

References 

Currant, N., Jethnani, H. et al. (2020) Interrogating Spaces: Belonging in Higher Education. [Podcast] July 22, 2020.

Dulfer, N., Gowing, A., & Mitchell, J. (2024). Building belonging in online classrooms: relationships at the core. Teaching in Higher Education, pp 1–17.

Lewis, L. & Leigh Ross, S. (2022) Home sweet home: achieving belonging and engagement in online learning spaces. Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal. Vol 5:1, pp 71-81.

 ‘Thank you for navigating through the sometimes awkward moments of my silence.’ (Koichiro, Unit 6: 2024)

Context
Over 50% of MA Performance: Society students have specific learning differences, many of which involve challenges around information processing. Some students have said that responding to direct questions in online classes can be stressful because they need time to compose their responses. The capacity to respond to an immediate prompt is complicated by the fact that most MAPS students speak English as an additional language.

The assessment of student engagement is often predicated on their contribution to discussion. Being able to respond quickly and immediately to questions (putting your hand up first in primary school through to mastering a PhD Viva) is still regarded as an indicator of capacity. Over the last 3 years of teaching online, I have gotten better at giving people time to respond, or what Karen Harris refers to as ‘embracing the silence’ (Harris 2022:101). I am more aware of the role of my ego in my desire for immediate responses, and the challenge a faceless room makes to the notion of the tutor as ‘all-seeing and all-powerful’ (Harris 2022:101). Silence in online teaching, has a particular intensity but in no way means that students are not engaging. Some students, such as the one I quote from above, draw on the work of writers such as Ahsan (2022) and embrace silence as a form of activism. Silence no longer makes me anxious, but I am keen to keep finding ways of facilitating engagement that are not predicated on the immediate (debate style) response that still dominates HE.

Current and future ways forwards

I currently invite students to respond to a question by putting 3 words, or an image, in the chat. These individual words/visuals invite a more affective engagement with the question (what the question evokes rather than how you might answer it) and reduce the demand for immediate cognitive solutions. We then use the chat as prompts for further discussion –effectively using the words/images as a bridge between question and response. This technique successfully moves the initial emphasis away from language and demand for fully formed ideas but still asks for an immediate response.

I also employ tasks where students are invited to bring in a 5 minute visual or verbal response to a question, connected to the suggested reading/listening/watching materials, for the following week. This device gives people time to prepare and works well but can invite a summative style of response rather than a process of thinking together.

Moving forwards 
What I would like to try next are strategies that invite something in between immediate and asynchronous responses. Devices that, as Harris writes, invite students to listen until they feel they have ‘formulated something worth bringing to the conversation’ (Harris 2022:101). For example, asking a question to frame class thinking at the start of a session and inviting responses to it halfway through and then again at the end. Or creating a conscious gap between provocation and response by giving everyone ten minutes to read and reflect following a prompt.

I’m also going to try a technique I saw teacher Sophie Hope employ where she offered a selection of pre-prepared questions that students could choose from in a Q and A context. This device took the pressure off forming a ‘brilliant’ question whilst keeping student agency and interaction.

References

Ahsan, H. (2017) Shy Radicals: The Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert. Book Works: London.

Harris, K. (2022) Embracing the silence: introverted learning and the online Classroom. Sparks, Vol 5:1, pp 101-104.