PG Cert 2025

Unit 3 Presentation slides (please note – my plan is to record the presentation and to submit this, rather than the slides, as I don’t tend to stick to them and only use them as a guide.)

Unit 3 Reference list

Adlam, J. (2014) ‘Going spiral? Phenomena of “half-knowledge” in the experiential large group as temporary learning community’, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 22(1), pp. 157–168. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2013.877200

Ahmed, S. (2012) On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Barad, K. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Barrett, E. and Bolt, B. (eds.) (2007) Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry. London: I.B. Tauris.

Bateson, G. (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine Books.

Bondy, E. (2021) ‘Cultivating social justice literacy in education leaders: contemplating bodily and conceptual knowledges’, Teaching in Higher Education: Critical Perspectives, 28(6), pp. 1–15.

Chadwick, R. (2016) ‘Embodied methodologies: Challenges, reflections and strategies’, Qualitative Research, 17(1), pp. 54–74.

Clughen, L. (2024) ‘“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), pp. 735–747. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2023.2215226

Connelly, L. and Joseph-Salisbury, R. (2025) ‘Towards an antiracist scholar-activist pedagogy: putting critical pedagogy and scholar-activism in dialogue’, Teaching in Higher Education, 30(7), pp. 1627–1645. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2025.2449649

Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.

Gendlin, E. T. (1987) Focusing. Toronto: Bantam Books.

Gutiérrez-Ujaque, D. and Degen, M. (2024) ‘Beyond critical pedagogy of place: sensory-embodied learning through the university campus’, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 48(4), pp. 537–556. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2023.2267489

Head, N. (2020) ‘A “pedagogy of discomfort”? Experiential learning and conflict analysis in Israel–Palestine’, International Studies Perspectives, 21(1), pp. 78–96. https://doi.org/10.1093/isp/ekz026

Hegna, H. M. and Ørbæk, T. (2024) ‘Traces of embodied teaching and learning: a review of empirical studies in higher education’, Teaching in Higher Education, 29(2), pp. 420–441. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2021.1989582

hooks, b. (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.

Low, R. (2025) Neurodecolonisation in the Classroom: Roxana Ng and Qigong as Embodied Pedagogy. London: Routledge.

Manning, E. (2009) Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Mason, J. (2002) Researching Your Own Practice: The Discipline of Noticing. London: Routledge.

Nathan, M. J. (2021) Foundations of Embodied Learning: A Paradigm for Education. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429329098

Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2017) Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.

Schön, D. A. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books.

Timperley, C. (2021) ‘“To read what was never written”: Embracing embodied pedagogies’, in Schick, K. and Timperley, C. (eds.) Subversive Pedagogies. London: Routledge, pp. 147-170. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003217183-9

Wagner, A. E. and Shahjahan, R. A. (2015) ‘Centering embodied learning in anti-oppressive pedagogy’, Teaching in Higher Education, 20(3), pp. 244–254. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2014.993963

Wolf, L. G., Hyland, S. and O’Neill, G. (2025) ‘Embracing uncertainty: action research and the collaborative development of an assessment for inclusion framework’, Educational Action Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2025.2535722

Woods, N. and Karakashian, B. (2024) ‘Moving to learn’, in Teaching and Learning Conference 2024 Abstracts. York: Advance HE. Available at: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk

Yunkaporta, T. (2019) Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World. Melbourne: Text Publishing.

Zembylas, M. and Boler, M. (2002) ‘On the spirit of patriotism: Challenges of a “pedagogy of discomfort”’, Teachers College Record, 104(5), pp. 1–27.

V1 ethical action plan

V1 PIS

V1 Consent form

The second version is very similar to the first, but adds an evaluative questionnaire and recognises that the intervention now takes part in an existing taught session.

V2 ethical action plan

V2 PIS

V2 Consent form

This action research project tested the use of embodied spatial pedagogic tasks as a means of resisting the dominance of language-based exchange within a multilingual MA context. The thoughts below are formed from my initial embodied responses to the workshop intervention (see post 5) and the collated responses from student questionnaires.

Collated responses to Embodied pedagogy questionnaire

Collated secondary data from the reflective postcards

The responses from students supported the observation that initiated the study, that language-based discussion, while valued, can reproduce inequities related to confidence, neurotypical modes of processing, and English language fluency.

The findings suggest that embodied tasks offer alternative routes into engagement and were widely experienced as stimulating, and generative. The majority of students reported that these approaches supported their neurodiverse learning needs, reduced anxiety, and disrupted hierarchical classroom dynamics, contributing to more socially just conditions for participation.

Moving beyond binaries and wellbeing

Originally, I wanted to find a form of immediate class exchange that wasn’t reliant on language: a movement-based discussion. On reflection, this original aim risks falling into the binaries that often surround embodied pedagogy (Perry and Medina 2011) where words and movement are deemed incompatible.

I was struck by the warmth and depth of the group discussion at the end of the Unit 4B evaluation session. My sense, from the evaluations/observations, is that it was the embodied practices that enabled them to come to language with more ease and trust. The findings also suggest that it is the movement between embodied enquiry and discussion: the modulation between different ways of knowing that is key. Social justice is not achieved by replacing word-based learning because it is not words themselves that are the sole issue; it is learning the learning environment in which words are used.

‘Bringing attention to moving around the [sic] room in any way that you designed – this really disrupts the authoritative and intimidating environment sometimes found in the classroom’ (Questionnaire)

There is a sense from the literature that generating wellbeing through embodied practices will lead to social justice outcomes (Timperley, 2021 Clughan 2023). This research suggests the opposite: it is the fact that embodied practices generate socially just environments, which then leads to feelings of ease and well-being. A central point to emerge from this project is that the dominant focus on embodied practices as tools for wellbeing risks overlooking their radical social justice potential, as such approaches often leave the foundational inequities of the classroom unchanged.*

What the feedback from the workshop shows is that spatial tasks act as critical pedagogic tools, exposing the dominance of normal learning spatial arrangements that privilege particular types of learning and learners through an emphasis on stillness, language and a hierarchical focus on the teacher. De-hierarchising the space, and the spaces where language is needed allows people to find their own place. It creates fairer conditions that are inclusive for different learners, and it is this that makes people feel relaxed and more able to speak.

‘the sessions exposed me to a part of myself that really values the unexpected’ (postcards)

‘Language is something we are very familiar with and at times the responses we go to or use are almost ‘replicas’ or unconscious repetitions of things we have learned or heard. Whereas embodied practices allow you to tune into more micro, and unknown elements of your personal knowledge.’ (Questionnaire)

These responses point to the importance of uncertainty as a dimension of learning that resists the notion of ‘bankable knowledge’, famously critiqued by Freire (1970:72). However, many students value knowledge as stable and can find the relational demands of embodied pedagogy challenging. As Manning suggests, ‘the body is not a stable form but a process’ (2009:4). Embodied pedagogy therefore involves a high degree of uncertainty, which can be uncomfortable. Even ‘pedagogies of discomfort’ (Zembylas and Boler, 2002), which engage difficult emotional states to make oppression more visible, work towards a clearly defined outcome.

‘I was confused whenever the task was too open ended’

5/12 students said they were confused by some of the tasks. I am aware from Unit 1 feedback and here that I can rely on a sense of performative allure as a teacher (wait and see!) and need to frame practices more clearly to improve inclusivity. However, I question why we are prepared as educators to invite discomfort for some activities (apprehending critical theory for example) and not others. A sense of what can or cannot be asked of students, or what forms of discomfort are allowed, is steeped in colonial discomfort around the body, so I am wary of jumping to ‘regulate’. But I also recognise that movement can make people feel uncomfortable. Menakim’s (2017) work on the somatic precarity experienced by people of colour is important here – as is the anti-racist work of Mitra (2020), who has critiqued the universalist assumptions that go into inviting all bodies to quiet, eyes closed, shoes off, somatic practices.

So, how can embodied spatial practices be used to resist logocentric forms of teaching and promote social justice in HE?

Findings

• they work because they de-hierarchise the learning environment
• they allow students to take space but maintain a collegiate sense of working alongside others
• they valorise multiple ways of knowing
• they create space for people as embodied learners 

 This promotes a socially just learning space that students feel more able to talk in 

 I have ADHD and can often disassociate and this kind of learning was the best experience with academia I’ve had.’ (Questionnaire)

Challenges

• not everyone feels safe enough to move
• not everyone finds managing uncertainty easy

My plan is to now

• improve how tasks are framed in terms of their relationship to knowing/not knowing.
• introduce greater optionality
• work towards making a shareable HE resource that teachers might use to bring embodied practices into their teaching as a social justice tool.

*of course, care can also act as a radical form of anti-oppression (de la Bellacasa, 2017)

Embodied practices, in broad terms, stem from an understanding that the body and mind are not distinct entities, and that thinking/learning is an embodied process (Fraleigh 1996).

I began this research practically by reflecting on my own experience of using embodied practices over 25 years of teaching in HE. Whilst much of this work involved dance/performance students, it has increasingly involved students from other disciplines with no dance experience. This work also draws on my practice as a socially engaged researcher, using movement practices with people with no movement background.

One review takes a detailed look at a singular workshop focused on ‘arriving’ that I have delivered in a range of HE contexts. The other offers an overview of practices used in MA Performance: Screen Unit 4B teaching in Autumn 2025.

Embodied arriving tasks – reflection

Embodied teaching practices used in MA Performance: Screen Unit 4B- reflection

What I notice following this research is that the tasks

a) encourage an awareness of the felt sense (Gendlin 1962) of the body as a form of knowledge

b) encourage an awareness of the learning environment as something situated and changeable

c) require a developed capacity to move between embodied response and abstract thought.

I was struck by the emphasis on spatial practices in the work. Much of it focuses on changing the body’s relationship to space, offering the learning space as a space of movement, rather than fixity and stillness. These spatial tasks draw ‘attention to the ways that our presence and environment shape what we know, how we act, and how we learn’ (Timperley 2021:148), encouraging an awareness of the situated nature of learning. I used this observation to refine the research question and focus the design of the Unit 3 intervention workshop.

How can embodied spatial practices be used to resist logocentric forms of teaching and promote social justice in HE?

Whilst embodied pedagogies take many forms in HE, the literature points to a focus on two main branches. The first involves sensory engagement (attention, objects, mindfulness), which often aims at increasing students’ wellbeing. In Clughen’s article, ‘Embodiment is the future’ (2023), for example, all three examples of embodied pedagogic practices concern sensory ways into increasing student wellbeing and regulation. The second involves a reference to students’ lived experience and the socio-cultural context of their work, which is used more explicitly towards social justice aims and intersects with feminist epistemologies and pedagogies of discomfort (Zembylas & Boler 2002).

The use of movement as a form of knowledge generation, where my practice sits, is less represented in the literature, and this points to scope for greater exchange across dance-based research, practice-based research, and embodied pedagogies. One reason why there is so little dance in the literature review is that they are only reviewing literature and not practice, and practitioners do not always write about what they do.

Workshop plan (with notes about things that changed)

Workshops slides

Workshop images

All references are found in the final post

The aim of this project is to use dance-based practice to add to understandings of how embodied pedagogies can support social justice in HE.

Since starting this PG Cert, I have taught on courses where the majority of the students used English as an Additional Language and a high number had specific learning differences. In Unit 1, I noted the difficulties students experienced with having to give immediate responses within class discussion, linking these difficulties with the colonial dominance of English and neurotypical assumptions about language processing speeds. In this unit 1 post, I expressed a desire to find ways of facilitating engagement that were not predicated on the rapid, debate-style response that still dominates HE, while retaining a sense of immediacy and shared presence.

My teaching practice is rooted in dance and somatic approaches that generate knowledge from embodied experience. I work praxically, drawing on dance researchers such as Sheets-Johnstone (2009) and Fraleigh (1987). While I have always used embodied tasks in my teaching, it is through my more recent teaching with PG students in non-dance disciplines that the social justice implications of this work have become more evident.

Drawing on this work, this project asks

How can embodied pedagogy, and specifically movement-based tasks, be used in HE in ways that resist the dominance of language and support more socially just forms of participation?

In broad terms, embodied pedagogic practices align with social justice aims because they bring into question what counts as knowledge in HE and how we arrive at it in class. In this sense, embodied pedagogy intersects with critical pedagogy, feminist epistemologies, care discourse, and indigenous pedagogy: practices that celebrate the situated nature of learning and knowing.

As Sara Ahmed’s work on institutional power highlights, some bodies are more ‘at home’ in universities than others (Ahmed 2012:13), and expectations around speech, confidence and comportment can marginalise those who do not conform. By legitimising movement, sensation and lived experience as sources of knowledge, embodied pedagogies challenge narrow definitions of academic rigour that often exclude neurodivergent, disabled, and multilingual students.

Wagner and Shahjahan argue that embodied ways of knowing are a vital component of ‘anti-oppressive pedagogy’ (2015: 245) within HE, tracing this lineage through critical pedagogues such as Freire (1970) and hooks (1994). This trajectory is extended by Clughen (2023), who calls for a shift towards embodied learning as a key future direction for HE. Similarly, Hegna and Ørbæk’s (2024) literature review identifies a rapid growth in publications addressing embodied teaching in HE. However, they also note that ‘this emerging field appears fragmented, with limited discussion and knowledge-building across publications’ (Hegna & Ørbæk 2024: 420). Clughen also observes that while ‘embodiment may be everywhere’ (2023:736), it remains poorly understood within learning and teaching cultures in UK higher education. As a small contribution to developing this understanding, the next post begins by reviewing how I have used embodied pedagogy across several years of teaching in HE.

Methodology

This project combines reflection on my long-term research/use of embodied pedagogy, literature-based research in the fields of embodied pedagogy, and reflection in action (Schön 1983) with PG students. As the focus is on situated, embodied learning, the work explicitly embraces what Graves Wolf et al refer to as the inherent ‘mess’ of action research’ (2025:5) where uncertainty and change play a key role in the method. This qualitative approach can respond to change– from storms that disrupt workshops to affective changes in the room

The research works across the fields of embodied enquiry and practice-based research where distinctions between action, data, analysis and findings are less closely drawn and patterns of movement between specific instances and wider patterns are often iterative rather than linear (Barrett and Bolt 2007).  

See Action research diagram here

‘This diagram suggests the ‘act’ becomes the act of reflection/form of action that reshapes the direction, focus and/or scale of the research. In turn, this challenges more cyclical or linear approaches to AR, to think more about iteration and overlaps between AR cycle steps – this feels necessary and especially in the space of practice [..]In the space of practice, action, observation, and reflection often co-emerge. Acknowledging this overlap resists overly procedural interpretations of the AR cycle and aligns more closely with how practice-research actually unfolds.’ (tutor feedback for ARP)

Methods

Somatic practices of attuning to a felt sense (Gendlin 1987) of the body drawn from Contact Improvisation, Alexander technique and Authentic movement, performative scores/prompts, improvisational practices, and creative writing.

Data collection methods

Attuning to embodied responses to the workshop in the moment and afterwards (See notes) as both data and analysis

Blank postcards and questionnaires inviting qualitative responses to the embodied tasks.

Embodied pedagogy questionnaire

I printed out the questionnaires to retain a material, sensory dimension within the process. The postcards were used as this form is associated with public and yet intimate communication. For both forms, students had to write – an embodied act.

Evaluative methods: Trying something new

The unit invites us to embrace new methods, and I used a questionnaire for the first time here. It was designed with a mix of open and closed questions so as not to overwhelm but provide enough space for depth. To analyse the findings, I drew on Ginny and Clarke’s work (https://www.thematicanalysis.net/understanding-ta/ accessed online Jan 2026) on reflexive thematic analysis, as a way of processing qualitative data, where they describe

• A more inductive way [where] coding and theme development are directed by the content of the data;

Letting themes emerge is often an integral part of practice-based research.  When ‘familiarising with data’, I laid all the papers and postcards out on the floor. I moved around them and read them. I choreographed them into groups according to repeated words and words that interested me. I also read them out loud as part of a process of transcription, which brought close attention to their embodied qualitative dimension alongside their literal meaning. See insights post.

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.

****

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.