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My artefact: windows, screens & reflections

“Human beings are magical.

Bios and Logos.

Words made flesh, muscle, and bone animated by hope and desire, belief materialized in deeds,

deeds which crystallize our actualities…”

Sylvia Wynter

Introduction

My inclusivity artefact is a Toolkit for creating online safe spaces for teaching with a specific focus on introductory meetings with students. I am using the term inclusivity as “…inclusive, equitable and anti-discriminatory practices…” (Burke & McManus, 2011, p. 5) and using the word equitable in the sense of providing what is needed even if that means offering more to some based on need and not the same to all.[1] Inclusive pedagogy is understood in terms of themes identified by Miriam David, cited by Shades of Noir (SoN, 2021).[2] Digital inclusion relates to internet connection, digital skills, and digital accessibility.

Atif Choudury, CEO of D & A (Diversity and Ability) thinks about inclusion in these terms:

“Although often thought of as one and the same, simply put, diversity is counting people, inclusion is about insisting people count”.

(Choudury, 2021, my notes)

It is in this spirit – insisting people count – that I will address inclusivity in the Toolkit. Special consideration will be given to mental health issues and race given the ongoing issues around the attainment and the pandemic.

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My context

Since academic year 2019/20 I have been in a new role as Year 2 Leader of BA Hons Painting at Camberwell College of Arts leading a year group of over 100 students, 2 fractional staff and Associate Lecturers. Year 2 is a large and diverse cohort with identities that comprise intersections of various characteristics in layered and complex ways.[3] Kimberlé Crenhsaw’s term intersectionality is relevant for the way in which identity can encompass many characteristics.

My Toolkit is aimed at creating a sense of comfort and belonging drawing on the SoN definition of safe space (SoN, 2017). The SoN article about safe spaces highlights the intersectional issues around safe spaces that may allow someone to feel safe in one way but not in another. This underlines, for me, the importance of an inclusive approach.

Since the ongoing pandemic forced much teaching online, I found the online teaching presents a challenge for both staff and students when online space can make all those present feel literally very remote.[4] With a large, diverse year group this remoteness and distance is problematic. I felt that it is an extremely important issue, especially reading the report on attainment which highlights belonging in the executive summary (Finnigan & Richards, 2016, p. 3). And so, the issue of online welcoming safe space, again, seems fundamental to me for student engagement, belonging, retention and attainment. There is also a high prevalence of mental health problems, especially anxiety, among my students and I wrote previously about mental health inequalities disproportionately affecting those of African-Caribbean heritage.[5] The pandemic intensified these problems and given them urgency.

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Toolkit for online safe spaces and introductory meetings

The Toolkit takes the form of a PDF leaflet/booklet that can be shared with other staff and be sited online in a Toolbox folder.[6] In addition to suggested ‘ground rules’ for a safe space online, drawing on the growing debates and insights about digital in/exclusion (D’Clark 2020; Galanek & Gierdowski 2020; Martinez, 2020; Singh, 2020; Jisc, 2021) the Toolkit suggests good practices to take account of mental health issues and disability. This would include considerations about anxiety and mental health as hinted at in another post including, for example, students themselves deciding whether they are ‘on camera’, best use of the chat function, online whiteboard (a cursor or digital pencil is not a camera) & encouraging students to choose an image for their avatar that isn’t necessarily a photo of themselves but represents them and helps everyone to remember each other.[7] The toolkit would also encourage staff to think about introductions respecting pronouns and their own positionalities with checklists to think about their privileges (McIntosh, 2020).[8]

Reading the SoN case study about faith I was struck by how important the introductory meetings are with our students.[9] For this reason the Toolkit focuses on ideas for these meetings. Hahn Tapper has stressed the importance of creating experiences with not for students and so these are something staff involve themselves with too (Hahn Tapper, 2013). These include icebreaker ideas inspired by Pen Portraits (SoN website) and ideas for an e-tivity ‘spark’ (Salmon, 2002) to prompt a conversation. My favoured type of spark for online work is a short video, for example, to generate discussion about how everyone is managing with the pandemic.[10] And also a video spark to open a discussion about positionality & what it means to make art from a place of positionality as described by artist Christina Quarles.

HepworthWakefield, Christina Quarles studio visit Los Angeles, California, Sept. 2019

My Year 2 students embark on a journey through an ambitious range of units in which they are expected to develop a relationship between theory and practice from their own perspective. The first short unit of the year invites students to identify their interest or something they feel strongly about and write a manifesto. An informal discussion at the beginning of the year about positionality would help students to grasp this idea as it is often overlooked which leaves some students struggling later in the year. A discussion about positionality would also start a conversation about identity and intersectionality as well as enabling everyone to get to know each other.

This last point is about the individuality of a student is important to focus on. An embrace of “the individual and individual difference” has been characterised as central to inclusive learning and teaching (Hockings, 2010, p. 1). Shirley Anne Tate has spoken on the importance of this in terms of attainment (Tate, 2019a). Freire sees dialogue as one of the central elements of his critical pedagogy and within dialogue: humility, hope, faith, love, and critical thinking (Freire, 2005). From a student perspective, these aspects of Freire’s dialogic pedagogy seem to me to be vital ingredients for an inclusive and welcoming safe space. Choudury has said: “True inclusion moves at the speed of trust” (Choudury, 2021, my notes). The importance of building trust is also emphasised by Cowden and Singh whose work updates and carries forward Freire’s ideas (Cowden & Singh, 2013, p. 92).

Embodiment

In previous roles teaching contextual studies I was more distanced from students in the sense of not having a studio tutor group. Previously, at Wimbledon College of Arts, prior to my current role, my first meeting with students might often have been for the delivery of a lecture, or seminar, in a lecture theatre, meaning I would inevitably have to be behind a lectern. Consequently, I introduced myself in a formal context in terms of my academic interests. In this sense, I found myself inhabiting – especially due to my academic subject area – the status of what bell hooks has described as, “the objectification of the teacher within bourgeois educational structures” (hooks 1994, p. 16). hooks further describes how such a position upholds “the idea of a mind/body split, one that promotes and supports compartmentalization” (hooks 1994, p. 16). In my current role such a position seems undesirable, if not untenable even, especially in online contexts. Reading bell hooks, the materials on belonging and needing to create a welcoming environment, the mind/body split seems too stiff and formal.  The online environment exacerbates this disembodied and sterile position requiring strategies and conscious effort to counteract it. We are, after all, embodied, as the opening epigraph by Silvia Wynter (Wynter, 1995, p. 35) celebrates.

Presence

Ironically, the idea of embodied pedagogy goes against the grain of my natural disposition and so in the context of thinking about safe spaces for students, this takes me out of my own space of safety. In discussing affective pedagogy, in a talk called ‘Building a Pedagogy of Care with Social and Emotional Presence’, Sarah Rose Cavangh stresses the importance of being yourself above all (Cavangh & Eyler, 2020). Presence is important when thinking about embodiment. In the context of thinking about pedagogy as presence David White has described presence as inherent in face-to-face teaching and physical spaces as “presence machines” (White, 2020 video). Whereas he identifies online teaching spaces as non-places using Marc Augé’s term that describes the transient, anonymous places of modernity.[11] White describes a pedagogy of placemaking through presence, “…which first-and-foremost facilitates connections and forms of interaction, creating social, intellectual, and creative presence…” (White, 2021).

Figure 1 The Learning-as-Becoming Model

Whilst White highlights the need to create presence online, his perspective fails to take account of identities and diversity. Reflecting on belonging in terms of issues equality diversity and inclusion, Krys offers a different mapping, highlighting intersectional complexities and shortcomings, captioning the diagram with the comment:

“Each element represents a different piece of the full human experience. Addressing only one or two of these falls short on gaining, what I think is the full human experience — a sense of belonging”.

                                             (Krys, 2019)

When thinking about creating a sense of belonging or placemaking, the presence of the tutor –– my presence –– also needs to be considered.

Power

Freire’s critical pedagogy advocates breaking down the hierarchy of power relations between teacher and student in favour of dialogue (Freire, 2005). However, reading both the reports on attainment and embedding equality and diversity, it is clear that race, or ethnicity, is central to addressing the issues (Finnigan & Richards, 2016; Finnigan & Richards 2015). Following the insights of Shirley Anne Tate’s work this includes the tutor’s racialised presence too, especially the effects of whiteliness in education. (Tate, 2019a; Tate & Page 2019b). In the past, I thought about cultural diversity in terms of course content, in other words, in terms of academic matters. Yet as Tate describes: “…whiteliness is not seen as the problem because racism is…” (Tate, 2019b).

The report Art For a Few (Burke & McManus, 2010) draws attention to the disparities across class of applicants’ cultural capital (Bourdieu) and the disadvantages of lacking this. Reflecting on this, I was very aware that, as someone from a working-class background, I had zero cultural capital when entering higher education but I am now at the opposite end of the spectrum. Singh’s infographic raises the question: ‘From Cultural Dominance to Cultural Humility: Where do you fit in?’ in relation to race and coloniality (Singh, 2021). For me this means being mindful of not simply extending and enriching my own cultural capital through diversity in an imperialist way or subsuming everything into a western perspective.

The possession of whiteness (Frankenburg, 1993, p. 1) and cultural capital are themselves inevitably implicated in any interactions with students in terms of how I am perceived as occupying the authority of a white lecturer whether I like it not and this means I hold power even if I attempt to divest myself of it through student-centred pedagogy. Illman has observed the “..the space that whiteness take up…”, referring to social justice debates, but equally applicable to thinking about teaching (Illman, 2018, p. 45). This is one of the main limitations to any critical pedagogy I practice, unless I think about the effects of my whiteliness beyond academic content and its delivery. Stupart puts it this way: “Can whiteness be visible, and not be an authority?” (Stupart, 2018, p. 16).

Evaluation

In relation to social justice, digital inclusion has been promoted lately in the UK as “a basic human right” (Burnham, 2021) and the university offers a hardship fund for internet connection, laptop, or smartphone. However, there are limits on equity within digital spaces, and how far the implementation of ideas in the Toolkit, or staff, can mitigate inequalities that affect teaching and learning, engagement and belonging.  Examples, of this include students in China who are sometimes unable to access Moodle or, as in the case, of two other students, also not in the UK, who found the internet connection unstable and lacked bandwidth. A surprise of the pandemic has been that some students have engaged more online than before and felt empowered by use of the chat function to ask questions and join in. This has included students with disabilities and echoes what artists such as Oreet Ashrey discovered (Ashrey, 2021b).

One of the challenges for me is increasingly large year groups. As Year Leader, I often find myself meeting very large groups or the whole year cohort. In such a context I am concerned that the student experience is in danger of becoming anonymised and having a colossal workload means that there is limited time to address this.

Limited ‘contact hours’ means that it is difficult for me to build continuity and consistency with students, especially when the Year 2 student journey involves many different units and input from a wide range of staff from different course teams.

Conclusion

“…dialogue cannot exist without humility”

Paulo Freire

Chief among the lessons learnt from this unit has been the scale of racism in many forms as described in workshop discussions and SoN materials. As a white woman I am shielded by my skin colour from harsh realities of this. Working in an art college as a white member of staff, it is too easy to imagine that this is a liberal and progressive environment, when in fact social media hashtag campaigns and SoN show that this is a myth, one with which staff and the colleges may flatter themselves.

As a result of the unit, as well as building on the Toolkit in an expanding Toolbox in the future, I feel motivated to apply for Curriculum Development funding towards an EDI project around storytelling and counter-storytelling (Hatton, 2015, p. 119) addressing identity and draws on previous seminars I used to run on narrative in art and film in which voices of autobiography and biography called into question larger social and political ‘grand narratives’ or official histories (Bhabha, 1990, p. 218). However, firstly, in the spirit of Freire’s ideas of dialogue (Freire, 2005, p. 90) I will be talking to students to find out what may interest them and be vigilant about not imposing my voice, or whiteliness (Yancy, 2014), on such a project.

[1] The idea of inclusive I am using here encompasses the protected characteristics covered by the Equality Act of 2010 and the Public Sector Equality Duty of 2011: age; disability; ethnicity; gender reassignment; maternity and pregnancy; religion or belief; sexual orientation or class. (Shades of Noir, 2021).

[2] Creating individual and inclusive space; developing student-centred strategies; connecting with students’ lives; being culturally aware.

[3] I mentioned in a previous blog post, for example, about incoming students from the same Eastern European country who will not speak to each other due to differing social and political identifications and allegiances Smithard, P. (2021) Race Part 1 https://paulainclusivity101.myblog.arts.ac.uk/.

[4] For these reasons I am rejecting the concept ‘brave space’ (Aaro & Clemens, 2013; Palfrey, 2017) which is used as an alternative for difficult social justice issues as this does not seem appropriate for a welcoming introductory meeting with students.

[5] Smithard, P. (2021) Disability Part 5 https://paulainclusivity101.myblog.arts.ac.uk/

[6] I should perhaps declare that, despite pandemic restrictions now lifted, as someone designated ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’ official advice is that I continue to work from home.

[7] Smithard, P. (2021) “Thoughts towards an Inclusivity Toolkit’ https://paulainclusivity101.myblog.arts.ac.uk/

[8] https://www.mypronouns.org; McIntosh, P. https://www.collegeart.org/pdf/diversity/white-privilege-and-male-privilege.pdf

[9] Smithard, P. (2021) Faith Part 3 https://paulainclusivity101.myblog.arts.ac.uk/

[10] Smithard, P. (2021) ‘Rashid Johnson and his Untitled Anxious Red Drawings’ https://paulainclusivity101.myblog.arts.ac.uk/

[11] Airports; rail station concourses; shopping malls; etc.

Bibliography

Aaro, B. & Clemens, K. (2013) ‘From Safe Spaces to Braves Spaces: A New Way to Frame Dialogue Around Diversity and Social Justice’ in ed. Landreman, L. M. The Art of Effective Facilitation: Reflections From Social Justice Educators Virginia: Stylus Publishing.

Ashrey, O. (2021b) We’ve been preparing for this our whole lives in Pause.Fervour. Reflections-on-a-Pandemic

https://www.harun-farocki-institut.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Pause.Fervour.Reflections-on-a-Pandemic.pdf

Bhabha, H. (1990) “The Third Space Interview with Homi Bhabha’ in (ed.) Rutherford, J. Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. London: Lawrence & Wishart).

Burnham , A. (2021) ‘Digital Inclusion as a basic human right’

Available at:

Digital inclusion as a basic human right

Accessed: 7 August 2021.

Choudury, A. (2021) ‘Diversity is about counting people, inclusion is about insisting people count!’, WEA lecture, 28 April, 2021.

Cavangh, S. R. & Eyler , J. (2020) Building a Pedagogy of Care with Social and Emotional Presence

Available at:

(Accessed: 14 May)

Cowden, S. and Singh, G. (2013) Acts of Knowing: Critical Pedagogy in, against and beyond the university. London: Bloomsbury Publishing

Stevenson, C. (2015) in ‘Identity, research and the arts curriculum: Counterstorytelling as academic practice’ in Towards an Inclusive Arts Education, 2015, London: Trentham Books.

D’Clark, R. S. (2020) COV-ID and Digital Exclusion

Available at:

COV-iD and Digital Exclusion

(Accessed: 9 August 2020)

David, M. (ed.) (2010) Improving Learning by Widening Participation in Higher Education. Oxford: Routledge

Frankenburg, R. (1993) White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. London: Routledge.

Freire, P. (2005) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Continuum.

Galanek & Gierdowski (2020) ECAR Study of the Technology

Needs of Students with Disabilities. Louisville, CO: ECAR.

Available at:

https://er.educause.edu/-/media/files/library/2020/5/studentsdisabilities2020.pdf?la=en&hash=19DDE1F3FC12A1F70F9485A8EFFF122EEA4D1860

(Accessed: 30 July 2020)

Hahn Tapper, A. J. (2013) ‘A Pedagogy of Social Justice Education: Social Identity Theory, Intersectionality, and Empowerment’. Conflict Resolution Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 4, Summer 2013.

Hatton, K. (ed.) (2015) Towards an Inclusive Arts Education, London: Trentham Books.

Hockings, C., Cooke, S. and Bowl, M. (2008) Learning and teaching for social diversity and difference in higher education. York: Higher Education Academy.

Available at:

https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/system/files/OER_CS_Christine_Hockings_Active_Engagement.pdf

(Accessed 6 August 2021).

Available at:

Oreet Ashrey

Hockings., C. (2010) Inclusive learning and teaching in higher education: synthesis of research, Knowledge Hub report. York: Higher Education Academy.

Available at:

https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/uploads/production/document/path/2/2735/Inclusive_teaching_and_learning_in_HEsynthesis_.pdf (Accessed: 10 May 2021).

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

Israel, A. & Mackey, C. (2019) UAL Attainment Gap Report. London: Arts Student Union.

Available at:

https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/62935733/artssu-attainment-gap-report-14nov

(Accessed 27 July 2021).

Illman, A. (2018) ‘Whiteness in Higher Education’ in ‘Peekaboo We See You: Whiteness’ in ToR, Shades of Noir

Available at:

Accessed: 27 July.

Jisc, (2021) Beyond the technology: Inclusive teaching and engaging students through the chat panel, 23 June 2021

Available at:

https://www.jisc.ac.uk/podcasts/beyond-the-technology-inclusive-teaching-and-engaging-students-through-the-chat-panel-24-june-2021

Accessed: 27 July.

Krys (2019) Belonging: A Conversation about Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, The Medium 22 January 2019.

Available at:

https://medium.com/@krysburnette/its-2019-and-we-are-still-talking-about-equity-diversity-and-inclusion-dd00c9a66113

(Accessed: 5 May 2021)

McIntosh, P. (2020) On Privilege, Fraudulence and Teaching, as Learning: Selected Essays 1981-2019. London: Routledge.

Martinez, B. (2020) May 2020: Digital Wellbeing and Mental Health during a Pandemic and Beyond.

Available at:

https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2020/5/may-2020-digital-wellbeing-and-mental-health-during-a-pandemic-and-beyond

(Accessed:  24 April, 2021)

Collective Text: Oreet Ashery and students at the Ruskin School of Art

(Accessed: 7 August 2021a)

Palfrey, J. (2017) Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces: Diversity and Free Expression in Education. London: The MIT Press

Salmon, G. (2002) E-tivities: a key to active online learning.  Routledge, London.

Shades of Noir, presentation, ual, 13 April, 2021

Pen Portraits

(Accessed: 21 May, 2021)

Shades of Noir, Safe Spaces: what are they, and why do they matter?

Available at:

Safe spaces: What Are They, and Why They Matter?

(Accessed: 4 June, 2021)

Shades of Noir, Intersectional safety in the classroom

Available at:

Intersectional safety in the classroom

(Accessed: 7 August 2021)

Singh, G. (2020) Supporting Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic (BAME) students during the COVID-19 Crisis

Available at:

Supporting Black, Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) students during the COVID-19 Crisis

Singh, G. (2021) ‘From Cultural Dominance to Cultural Humility: Where do you fit in?’

Available at:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iiKZV2N_AudzuPyOLlFVTAOliXyg-OF9/view

(Accessed: 24 July 2021)

Stupart, L. (2018) ‘The White Academic, or growing a skin in the game’ in ‘Peekaboo We See You: Whiteness‘ in ToR, Shades of Noir

Available at:

(Accessed: 27 July 20210

Tate, S. A. (2019a) Shirley Anne Tate, Tackling the ‘BPOC’ Attainment Gap in UK Universities, Royal Central School, 18 March, 2019

Available at:

(Accessed: 27 July 2021)

Tate, S. A. & Page, D. (2019b) ‘Whiteliness and Institutional racism: hiding behind (un)conscious bias’ in Ethics and Education, 13:1, pp. 141-155.

Yancy, G. (2014) “Introduction” in (ed.) Yancy, G., White Self-criticality beyond Anti-racism: How Does It Feel to Bea White Problem? Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

White, D. (2020) Desituated Art School (A Provocation)

(Accessed: 5 August 2021)

White, D (2021) Pedagogy, Presence and Placemaking: a learning-as-becoming model of Education.

Available at:

http://daveowhite.com/

(Accessed: 17 May, 2021).

Wynter, S. (1995) “The Pope Must Have Been Drunk, the King of Castile a Madman: Culture as Actuality and the Caribbean Rethinking of Modernity” in Ruprecht, A. & Taiana, C. (eds.) Reordering of Culture: Latin America, the Caribbean and Canada in the Hood. Montreal: University of Carleton Press.

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Race Part 4: Shades of Noir resources

https://issuu.com/shadesofnoir

The SoN Safe Space Crits is a resource that has been promoted to my Year 2 Painting students via posters in the studios (pre-pandemic) and on Moodle too. I heard it said, by a white colleague, something to the effect that they shouldn’t be needed because all crits should be safe spaces. Whilst I understood that, I also thought that it missed the point: that it’s about who is leading the crits, crucially, BIPOC artists and lecturers.

I was vaguely familiar with Shades of Noir (SoN) prior to this unit but had not properly understood what SoN does until now and had not explored all the website. I had however linked to a SoN resource several years ago at Wimbledon College of Arts when I took on a project to update the Fine Art course paper reading list and a colleague I worked with on this transformed it into an online space: https://www.theedit.site My aim was to decolonise the suggested reading that was on the existing list by adding more references to BIPOC, feminist and disability texts or resources but perhaps, with hindsight, make inclusive is a better term. The endeavour was limited somewhat by the need to retain quite a lot what was already there which had historically been built up over the years by previous and existing course staff. I linked to the SoN ‘Reading Recommendations’ google site of books at the end of the section ‘Cultural Debates’ which was a new section heading I added. Reflecting on this now, and looking through the SoN website, I would like to link to all the Terms of Reference (ToR) journals on issu website. The www.theedit.site sits on fine course Moodle sites as a resource to guide students with research and some suggestions of books on different subjects in recognition of the fact that it is difficult to research without knowing some titles or what would be appropriate for fine art study. The ToR would add content to read directly online around identity, especially race, and there is an engaging balance of image and text, with text pieces that are not too long, as well as resources for further research.

The Creatives database on the SoN website is a resource I would also like to link to or, preferably embed, on our Year 2 Moodle site so that students have access to it in the same place that they are regularly accessing other course materials. By doing so it would give priority to BIPOC artists, designer and filmmakers who might be less well-known to students. Quite a few of the artists in the database are ones that I have included in my teaching, Hannah Black, Martine Syms, Oscar Murillo, and others but there are plenty whose work is not familiar to me. This resource will be a great point of reference for me as well when planning teaching content for lectures, seminars or reading groups.

The ‘Tell Us About It’ project is also something I would like to promote to students as I think they would find it very empowering, especially at points where a student may feel like they are struggling. I am also inspired to think about students I may know who might be interested to offer their own examples too. As with the Creatives database and the ‘Reading Recommendations’ google site, it is one thing to find information and another to know what to do with it once it is found, or why it has been recommended to a student by a member of staff. For this reason, I think that these resources can be useful in a tutorial context as part of a discussion about how to use research. Although it goes without saying that the pandemic has difficult for everyone students and staff alike, some of the online teaching has been an opportunity to screenshare and show students where and how to find research material and demonstrate navigating databases or annotating PDF files etc. This has not been possible in studios, or in the lecture theatre very easily, and Camberwell College of Arts has no seminar rooms. In the Year 2 that I lead students are expected to not only begin researching more independently but also develop a research base for their artwork and this culminates towards the end of the year with an essay and a research proposal for a dissertation, live project, or work placement. By linking or embedding these resources I can support this and encourage students to explore culturally diverse references.

SoN article

I was interested to read the SoN article with Dr Gurnam Singh about supporting Black, Asian and minority ethnic students during the pandemic. This has been uppermost in my mind during the past year or so. One of the first issues I tried to address was support for students from China and Taiwan who were encountering what was termed ‘coronaracism’ before the lockdown in March 2020. With a colleague in a different staff team at the time – Denise Kwan – I was able to compile a list of places where these students could find support. Also, earlier this year Denise Kwan was instrumental in putting together a self-care collaborative zine that was aimed at Chinese and south-east Asian students which I embedded in our Year 2 Moodle: https://issuu.com/denisekwan/docs/a_zine_for_collective_care

The article by Singh addresses some of the key difficulties with the pandemic and online teaching: some students don’t necessarily have a place to study and make art at home or lack a good internet connection or laptop, and yet as Singh also identifies, there some aspects of online teaching have empowered students. For example, students who were not attending college attended more online or students who would not speak up during lectures or tutorials found use of the chat function during online meetings gave them confidence to ask questions. UAL hardship found was accessed by quite a few of my Year 2 students for better technology to support their studies but this took a while.

I agree with Singh that a sense of belonging is important, especially for attainment, and this is something that was identified in the report by Finnigan and Richards about Retention and attainment. Intuitively, I started an online film club for this reason during the first lockdown in the summer term of academic year 19/20. Year 2 students at this time were suddenly dispersed across the globe and a regular place to connect with others on the course that was not to do with assessed coursework seemed important. It was not feasible to steam a film for us to watch synchronously so the arrangement was that I directed students to a specific film each fortnight which would be free to watch online (via Box of Broadcasts, kanopy, youtube, etc.) Then in the alternate weeks we would come together online to discuss it informally. The film was a focus allowing us to connect with each other, but the discussion could also spiral off into a range of different topics from hair dye to pets to the meaning of life. For a couple of students who attended regularly it was something of a lifeline: one was from Indonesia and missing her family back home and stuck in a shared flat with all men and missing female company and another has quite severe, specific learning needs and was living alone in lockdown which was difficult for him.

SoN video Gender Fluid

A video that I could use in my teaching is the SoN Key Term Gender Fluid. It’s suited to discussions that we have when talking about gender, identity and representation and is short and simple. This would be a good starting point therefore from which to develop work with students. A resource I usually use is the Thames and Hudson book Is Gender Fluid? The book has a good balance of text and image and in fact the graphic design approach for the series was to use a zine-format style layout. I recommended this to a neurodiverse student during dissertation supervision and it was found to be really helpful where other research material was too dense and theoretically complex.

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Race Part 3: retention and attainment

Tam Joseph, UK School Report, 1980, acrylic on canvas

“Art and Design educators need to be aware of the power they have in encouraging or discouraging students to develop their own practice”

Terry Finnigan and Aisha Richards

Having worked at ual for some time and attending many of Duna Sabri’s workshops about her research here, I was familiar with many of the points in the report by Terry Finnigan and Aisha Richards, ‘Retention and Attainment in Art and Design’ (2016), especially section 4. However, seeing the data set out in section 3, and reading that in the light of having just explored the issue of unconscious bias in a previous blog post, the data is still disturbing to see: an attainment gap of 33%.[1] It’s hard not to see this as also linked to the chart in Appendix A that shows a very low percentage of BPOC staff in art and design education. In over 25 years working in art schools in higher education I have never worked in a staff team that had any BPOC permanent staff until now for the first time at Camberwell since academic year 19/20, where there is only one, and I can think of only one or two in all that time that were on temporary contracts; I find this staggering.

In her TEDX talk on attainment in 2019, Shirley Anne Tate says something that chimes with my own thoughts about this, that the awarding gap (formerly termed attainment gap) perpetuates the problem of academia as predominantly white. This is borne out by the writings in the book, Inside the Ivory Tower: Narratives of women of colour surviving and thriving in British academia, which “positions academia as a space dominated by Whiteness and patriarchy”[2] and the essays powerfully reveal the multiple effects of this. Josephine Kwhali writes in her essay that:

“I came to realise that academic success was not necessarily linked to intellectual ability or merit but was a manifestation of deeply entrenched class, gender and ethnic inequalities”[3]

Tate begins the talk by speaking about her own experiences as a student during her first degree and the “cold climate” created by institutional racism and racist microaggressions. For her a few lecturers who saw her as an “individual” and “not a number” enabling her to stay on her course and graduate. But hearing her speak about the things that students are still telling her 35 years later, it seems that little has changed and that Tam Joseph’s ‘UK School Report’ from 1980 is also still relevant 41 years later. Tate highlights seven racist myths that are created and maintained, demolishing each of them in turn in her talk.

Shirley Anne Tate, Tackling the ‘BPOC’ Attainment Gap in UK Universities, Royal Central School, 18 March, 2019

*

Before reading the report, I had also watched film The Room of Silence (2016) in which mostly BIPOC students speak about their negative experiences around race and racism at Rhode Island School of Design describing how they:

“…felt alone…”

“…so confused about race…”

“…never forget the idea of you being opposite, minority other…”

“…there’s a select few group of people [Faculty] who either care to be aware of these issues or are aware about these issues…but as a collective institution nobody gets it…”

The social media campaigns such #UALSoWhite, or #ualstillsowhite show that, in addition to the material in the report, these issues concern students here too and reveal what is at stake: racism; racist microaggressions and confusion. This underlines the importance of a sense of belonging which is highlighted at the start of the report on retention and attainment. In addition to the problem of lack of diversity in staff teams, the creation of a sense of belonging or inclusion seems to me to be also fundamental to addressing retention and attainment issues.

The film goes on to show students explaining the phrase “the room of silence”: the way a studio crit will fall silent when artwork about race, identity or sexuality is presented for discussion. The reasons that students give for this are that staff don’t appear to know how to discuss these subjects when they are present in their own student’s artwork or that they don’t want to discuss it. One student commented, “…we’re lacking a critical framework for problematic art that is made”.[4] It’s possible that when artwork about these topics is presented that staff or students may feel that critiquing the artwork could be seen as an attack on the student who has produced it if the subjects are very personal or autobiographical. However, it strikes me that there are several possible pedagogic strategies that could be used in such situations. But first and foremost, this requires a ‘safe space’ to be created in the crit and skill on the part of the tutor as well as knowledge of the subjects presented or at least the ability to identify pertinent questions and issues for consideration.

By focusing on the student voice, the film highlights the power of the tutor and the effects of this power as described by Terry Finnigan and Aisha Richards in the opening quote of this post. It is the power of the tutor that is one of things that stood out for me reading the report. The power relations must be seen in terms of the inequities with higher education settings mentioned above. To situate them in such a context enables the problem of retention and attainment to be seen as an issue with pedagogy and not the student themselves. It also exposes the underlying issues and assumptions that are made by staff. Peter Day in his article about the studio crit writes:

“The ability to be self-reflective is not necessarily innate amongst students nor is the ability to be original or innovative, nor have students necessarily achieved these skills prior to university”.[5]

He also found that students who defined themselves as alienated, separate, or different to their peers were the same ones that felt “intimidated, scared and frightened” by crits. This does not surprise me at all.

As someone who has mostly taught art history & theory, aka contextual or critical studies, when I was first participating in studio crits on a renowned fine art course at another London college (not ual) I recall being horrified at the adversarial nature of the situation. The organisation of the crits there involved several tutor groups and their staff across 3 years groups fortnightly in one crit. This created a very large arena and heightened the gladiatorial style of the event. I found the situation intimidating even as a member of staff despite having knowledge and subject expertise. The set-up also meant that the first crit event of the year resulted in new, first year students who had just arrived on the course, having to present in front of everyone including final year peers.

I would go further than Day and suggest that crits, and the crit situation I describe, clearly privileged the most confident students who often were also those who had the most cultural capital (Bourdieu), white, middle class and home students. Day write in the conclusion of his article that there is a need for:

“…transitional skills into higher education and an exposition of the teaching and learning styles, not prescriptive education but self-efficacy, independent and innovative learning”.[6]

As someone who, historically, has been less involved in studio crits I have never felt that they necessarily must be a given on a studio course. Where I work at present the convention is to have group tutorials and crits, but the distinction can be blurred where they are led by the students own tutor (the difference would be that group tutorials are about developing work in progress, whereas a crit would respond to finished artwork with an emphasis on reception of the art rather than its making) and a group tutorial could arguably serve the same purpose. There is undoubted benefit for students in hearing discussion of each other’s work, learning the vocabulary of the discipline, learning to identify critical issues or how to frame questions, etc. One artist I know says that crits taught him how to teach but that was an experience gained on an MA degree where students have more experience to begin with. Reading the report though I feel that it is perhaps important to go further than Day and to question what is already custom and practice so that things like the crit can be either be rethought anew in ways that support and empower students or abandoned altogether.

*

“…if we do nothing, nothing ever changes…”

Terry Finnigan & Aisha Richards
Tam Joseph, The Hand Made Map of the World, 1983, acrylic on board

All the themes covered in section 4 of the report Curriculum, culture and custom in Art and Design: cultural capital; art and design pedagogies; inclusive curriculum and identity work; assessment in art and design and art and design teachers implicate the central and instrumental role of the tutor and their power in various ways. For me this emphasises the importance of understanding this and thinking about pedagogy as much as content. For this reason, I found Deborah Gabriel’s model of what she calls ‘3D Pedagogy’ in her essay ‘Teaching to Transgress through 3D Pedagogy: Decolonizing, democratizing and diversifying the higher education curriculum’ interesting for the ways that she thought through curriculum and pedagogy together.[7] In a series of contextual seminars I ran for two years recently on Art, Identity and Representation I attempted something similar during the seminars students were organised into small groups to collaborate on making a zine responding to these themes and their research through poems, drawings, social media conversations, all documented in the zine itself. Each group showed their zine in the final seminar as we sat around a large table and the seminar was a great success which I measured by the level of critically-engaged discussion but also by the fact that I had very little to do in my role as lecturer that week and that I too could learn from their insights and ideas. I felt I had manged to subvert the teacher-student hierarchy and we also laughed together a lot too that day. Unfortunately, the organisation of the new fine art curriculum means it is no longer possible to run a series of context seminars separate from studio teaching.

Finally, it would be a mistake to see the power dynamic between teacher and student simply in terms of hierarchy without taking account of race in that dynamic. The report makes very clear that race is central to any attempt to address attainment and that includes the race of the teacher. With this in mind, reading through the Terms of Reference publication on Race, the key point I will be taking away from reading the report and the studying the other resources is the need to consider my whiteness as a factor in teaching and learning interactions with students beyond curriculum and pedagogy. In her article ‘The White Academic, or growing a skin in the game’, Linda Stupart poses a question which resonates with my evolving thoughts:

         “Can whiteness be visible, and not be an authority?”[8]

Part of the answer to this but must surely be in a de-centring of western perspectives as Tam Joseph’s The Hand Made Map of the World evokes.

Tam Joseph, The Hand Made Map of the World, 1983 detail

Question/Provocation

Are there gender differences within the data on retention and attainment?

[1] Finnigan, T. & Richards, A., ‘Retention and Attainment in Art and Design’ (2016) in Retention and attainment in the disciplines: Art and Design, York: Higher Education Academy + https://paulainclusivity101.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2021/07/29/race-part-2-unconscious-bias-universities-and-me

[2] Gabriel, D. “Introduction’, in Gabriel, D. & Tate, S. A. Inside the Ivory Tower: Narratives of women of colour surviving and thriving in British academia, London: trentham books, p. 2

[3] Kwahli, J. ‘The Accidental Academic’ in Gabriel, D. & Tate, S. A. Inside the Ivory Tower: Narratives of women of colour surviving and thriving in British academia, London: trentham books, p. 13

[4] The Room of Silence (dir. Eloise Sherrid) 2016 https://vimeo.com/161259012

[5] Day, P. ‘The Art Group Crit. How do you make a Firing Squad Less Scary?’ in Journal of Learning development in Higher Education, Issue 5: March 2013, p. 12

[6] Ibid. p. 13

[7] Gabriel, D., ‘Teaching to Transgress through 3D Pedagogy’ in Gabriel, D., Transforming the Ivory Tower: models for gender equality and social justice, London, trentham books.

[8] Stupart, L. ‘The White Academic, or growing a skin in the game’ in ‘Peekaboo We See You: Whiteness‘ in ToR, Shades of Noir https://issuu.com/shadesofnoir/docs/peekaboo_we_see_you_whiteness

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Race Part 1: social identity theory and critical pedagogy

“Students are always the best teachers”

Aaron J. Hahn Tapper

I read the article ‘A Pedagogy of Social Justice Education: Social Identity Theory, Intersectionality, and Empowerment’ by Aaron J. Hahn Tapper with great interest as it explores the theory and practice of an organisation which runs education programmes focused on “conflict transformation” through intergroup pedagogy. Where I work I have been warned, in advance, that some students who are incoming into the year group that I lead will not speak to each other as they are from the same East European country but hold different political and cultural allegiances that reflect the larger tensions both in the country and the surrounding region.[1] Hahn Tapper is a Professor of Jewish Studies in the United States and the article reflects his stated interests in “identity formation, social justice, and marginalised groups”[2] but it is not until part way into the article that Hahn Tapper declares his interests in relation to the text: that he is founder and co-executive director of the organisation that he writes about.[3] The organisation broadly works with Muslim, Jewish and Palestinian groups and students. He states his aim is to “describe” not evaluate the organisation’s approach. However, he raises an important question about social justice educational programmes at the end of the introduction: “Do they work?”[4]

I took a while to get into this article (making several stop-starts) because I thought what it was heading in a problematic direction with its use of what I thought was going to be the ‘contact hypothesis’ and social identity theory (SIT) but by page 9 onwards the text began to highlight the drawbacks of the contact hypothesis and the orthodoxies of social identity theory. From this point I became more engrossed in reading the article and motivated to read further and it merited more than one reading as I sometimes noticed something different each time that I studied it. The ‘contact hypothesis’ and SIT were developed in the field of social psychology and have been taken up in theories and practices of discrimination, prejudice and stereotyping. The ‘contact hypothesis’ has been contested but the spirit of it still holds some power as seen in this interview with Michelle Obama[5].

“It is hard to hate close up”

Michelle Obama

Hahn Tapper identifies the ‘contact hypothesis’ for the fact that it was one of the first theories of intergroup education theory, with its emphasis on shared humanity and ‘common bond’, but rejects it for the drawbacks, mainly: if conditions are not ideal then it worsens rather than helps foster understanding between groups. For this reason, Hahn Tapper describes his organisation as preferring to utilise SIT. Social Identity Theory has had a more compelling history and has its origins in the work of Henri Tajfel.

Hahn Tapper carefully distinguishes his organisations use of SIT from what he calls “orthodox” SIT and emphasises that “all intergroup interactions cannot be reduced to larger social identities”.[6] He also goes on to add that “it is critical to create the space to interpret elements of their interactions as also being interpersonal”.[7] Instead SIT is combined with intersectional ideas about identity. The interest in intersectionality is utilised for the way in which it reveals how structural inequalities are linked to social identities thereby exposing privilege and this brings me to the first thing that I learnt from the article.[8]

Deexceptionalisation: exposing privelege

Hahn Tapper digs into the how of revealing privilege by describing the way in which intersectionality is used: by approaching each instance of oppression or conflict as distinct whilst also maintaining a consideration of the wider patterns in social groups which it also manifests.

“no participant is sui generis and no conflict is entirely one of a kind”

Aaron J. Hahn Tapper

Hahn Tapper sees this approach is enabling participants to: “reexamine”; “reunderstand” and “reimagine”.[9] Further, Hahn Tapper quotes Audre Lorde, “there is no hierarchy of oppression”. This strategy reveals what Hahn Tapper describes as the “false binary” trap whereby members of groups in conflict are situated as innocent or guilty instead showing “…all groups to various degrees, are victims and perpetrators, innocent and guilty” as well as the active and passive roles played in oppression. More broadly, the intersectional approach described in the article enables participants to examine both their individual and social identities but not at the expense of one or the other. In the words of Tapper, it is “not reductionist but sophisticated and multiperspectival”.[10]

It was interesting to read about how issues were addressed within groups. In my year group at ual, there is a large, 40-credit, unit that is about group collaboration. I am not directly involved with this, but I do have a tutor group and so I hear from my individual students about conflicts and difficulties within the groups my students are working in, though I am unable to intervene in that context. However, there are, from time to time, problems in the studios which can range from disputes about space to conflicts between cliques and the approach described as deexceptionalisation is a very thought-provoking one. Hahn Tapper writes of SIT-based programmes presupposing that:

“all communities have dominant narratives: communal stories that groups tell themselves and others that shift according to time and place. Yet a given student might not accept the dominant narrative of the communities with which she identifies”[11]

There are many artists that I can think of whose artworks explore the complexities of their own story within a larger narrative or history. For many years, for example, I used the 1986 film Emergence by Pratibha Parmer which was constructed as a montage of several artists’ and poets’ work: Sutapa Biswas, Audre Lorde, Meiling Jin and Mona Hatoum in a discussion of such subjects. In a recent roundtable discussion about the work of Stuart Hall (Stuart Hall Foundation 30/07/21), the academic Brett St Louis made a valuable point about the use of stories saying that it is not a story in itself that necessarily is significant but its political referent. This seems important in the pedagogy that Hahn Tapper describes. In other words, the linking of the personal & the political. However, utilising similar examples in teaching with a conscious aim towards resolving conflicts is not something I had hitherto considered. But the approach that Hahn Tapper describes also involves several other components.

What might a pedagogy of social justice look like in practice?

What a pedagogy of social justice might look like in practice is one of the other things that I learned from this article, especially the centrality of identity to this. As well as SIT and intersectionality, the other elements Hahn Tapper describes in his organisation are summarised in the diagram that he places in his text.


Figure 1 The Core Pillars of the Organizations Pedagogy of Social Justice Education

These pillars of a pedagogy of social justice are combined towards key goals that underpin all the programmes that Hahn Tapper describes:

explore students’ understandings of their individual and group identities

deepen students’ awareness of the existence of social inequalities

assist in developing students’ conception of the interconnection between social inequalities and social identities

examine the roles students play in both perpetuating and working against patterns of inequality

empower students to work toward societal transformation in and through their identities

There are some similarities in this with my own beliefs about education and the art education that I, and others, are striving to offer at ual but with important differences too. Some of the aspects of Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy highlighted by Hahn Tapper chime with my own views about the transformative power of education for both individuals and society. In my positionality statement at the start of this blog I hinted at how this has its origins with two schoolteachers in my teens who, with hindsight would have undoubtedly read Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I also wrote in another post about the idea that we might be producing people not products when we are educating our students; artists that are socially engaged and ethically-minded.[12] Hahn Tapper highlights the emphasis Freire places on identity in this pedagogy, identity both of, the student or participant, and the teacher. Hahn Tapper draws attention to the importance of experiences with students NOT for students; experiences that integrate their voices too. They key here is that this pedagogy involves a highly discursive format.

“Students are approached as if each participant is a living text, so to speak”[13]

This approach also flattens somewhat the traditional hierarchy between teacher and student. This is something that is important that I feel I and others need to do more of though there often too many constraints in terms of budgets, time, and resources but I know how vital these experiences can be. Colleagues at Camberwell a few years ago took part with students in projects to celebrate 100 years of the bauhaus during which they flew to Germany to take part in events. I heard from staff and students about how amazing and transformative this experience was for everyone involved.

*

One significant difference between the approach Hahn Tapper describes and the education that we are engaged in at ual is that Tapper writes of the sessions being led by “facilitators rather than teachers” and adds “facilitators are professionally trained in intergroup dynamics” [my italics]. It was interesting to me to see Hahn Tapper write this as he had earlier mentioned students gaining self-understanding, and reconsidering what they wanted to do with themselves, which read to me more like a therapy session. I was also feeling whilst reading the article that leading sessions such as those in these programmes would necessitate a very high degree of skill and expertise in navigating difficult and possibly volatile situations that might stem from delving into personal experiences and oppression. Hahn Tapper suggests teachers focus on content only whereas facilitators focus on process. I feel that this distinction is too simplistic however, in the context of the pandemic and moving teaching online, I think that process needs now, more than ever, a lot of consideration.

I was interested to read towards the end of the article about the use of creative forms of education in these programmes (texts, trips, films, and other media). Ultimately, the goal being in using these, is the same as I and others have for our students: “to complicate students’ understanding” and “leave them with more questions than answers” and to start a “deeply reflective process but not to finish it”.

Question/provocation

How might this model of pedagogy take account of social anxiety or neurodiversity?

An additional question/provocation

How could this be adapted in the pandemic context of online teaching and learning?

References

[1] I am deliberately not being specific about where and what exactly for reasons of confidentiality.

[2] University of San Francisco https://www.usfca.edu/faculty/aaron-hahn-tapper

[3] Hahn Tapper, A. A Pedagogy of Social Justice Education: Social Identity Theory, Intersectionality, and Empowerment in Conflict Resolution Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 4, summer, 2013, p. 412

[4] Ibid. p. 413

[5] https://study.com/academy/lesson/contact-hypothesis-definition-limitations-criteria-for-successful-contact.htm

[6] HahnTapper, op. cit. p. 420

[7] Hahn Tapper, op cit. p. 421

[8] Hahn Tapper, op. cit. p. 421

[9] Hahn Tapper, op. cit. p. 421

[10] Hahn Tapper, op. cit. p. 424

[11] Hahn Tapper, op cit. p. 424

[12] https://paulainclusivity101.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2021/05/26/disability-part-4-disability-and-critical-pedagogy

[13] Hahn Tapper, op. cit., p. 429

Bibliography

Freire, P. , Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 2005, London: contiuum

Mind Changers, Henri Tajfel’s Minimal Groups, 2011, BBC Radio Four https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00yw6km

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Thoughts towards an inclusivity artefact

Rashid Johnson, Untitled Anxious Red Drawing, 2020, oil on cotton.

Proposed artefact:  Toolkit for inclusive online safe spaces.

The Toolkit would be a PDF leaflet/handout/booklet. My proposed artefact ties together many different strands of thinking and reading during the Inclusivity unit, and before, when the pandemic forced teaching online in the summer term a year ago. Since watching the video about the artefact, I have scaled down the ambition of the toolkit towards “small change”. The proposed toolkit may be slightly tangential to what is expected, in the sense that I envisage this as something that I could share with my staff team, and also the other year group teams, and so is more about how we teach in terms of inclusive practices not about what students might learn.

My context: leading an undergraduate year group of over 100 students and working with 2 fractional members of staff and quite a lot of Associate Lecturer’s in the Year 2 team. Unlike many of my colleagues, I am not an artist or designer (I have a background in history and theory of modern and contemporary art, design and film).

My positionality: as well as being an educator, I have an interest in mental health and have training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and have worked as a volunteer psychotherapist at Lambeth and Southwark mind Psychosis Therapy Project. I have, for a long time, been also interested in social justice and class.

Rationale: when the pandemic caused a ‘pivot’ of our teaching to online modes of working this felt very sudden, so sudden in fact that some described it as ‘emergency remote teaching’ not what might usually be thought of as online teaching and learning.[1] Many staff, including myself, felt ill-prepared for this rapid shift. Over the past year to now, I have been reading and thinking about online pedagogy but much of the existing literature or resources about that does not directly address issues of inclusivity and diversity, whilst the resources and literature around inclusivity have generally not addressed online teaching and learning. I would like to bring some of the insights of these 2 spheres of literature to bear in my Toolkit.

The toolkit would draw upon some of the conversations that myself and colleagues have had around online teaching and learning and make some good practice suggestions and ideas around inclusivity with the reflective statement exploring in-depth why. For example, colleagues have shared with me thoughts and frustrations about students not being on camera during online sessions such as tutorials or small group tutorials. In some universities, especially in the United States, it is becoming common to insist on students being on camera and this is included in the course documentation. I believe it is wrong to insist on this and students should choose whether or not they appear on camera. Anxiety, or social anxiety, is quite prevalent among my students and in a previous blog post I wrote about how disproportionate numbers of those of African-Caribbean origin are affected by mental health problems.[2] Anxiety can manifest about being on camera and then potentially implicates these students, but also any student with a range of mental health struggles from depression to body dysmorphia. The camera is a mirror and as such a potential trigger for all manner of anxiety that would not be conducive to learning.  There are other intersectional dimensions to this too connected with gender and sexuality and trauma. There is some literature on trauma and pedagogy that I can draw on for this. Social class too is a factor when home may not be a suitable learning space (a student of mine last year took a year out this year because of this). The pandemic has itself now created trauma for some.

Thinking about the SoN case study related to a female Muslim student of Iranian origin where the first encounter a student had with the tutor was problematic, thinking also about the Pen Portraits idea for an icebreaker, in the interests of scaling back the ambition of the Toolkit, I am thinking that it might be focused on the introductory meetings with students that staff have which are so crucial in establishing a welcoming and inclusive online safe space.

[1] Hodges, C., Moore, S., Lockee, B, Trust, T. , Bond, A. (2020) ‘The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning’, March 27

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teaching-and-online-learning

[2] https://paulainclusivity101.myblog.arts.ac.uk/

Bibliography

Coaston, J. (2019) ‘The intersectionality wars’ in Vox, May 28, n.p. https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/20/18542843/intersectionality-conservatism-law-race-gender-discrimination

Crenshaw, K. (1989) ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics’, University of Chicago Legal Forum, Vol. 1, Iss. 1, Article 8.

Crenshaw, K. (1991) ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color’, Stanford Law Review, Vol. 43, No. 6 (Jul.) pp. 1241-42.

DelosSantos, (2021) ‘A Conversation with Mays Imad: Trauma-Informed Pedagogy and the Art History Classroom,’ in Art Journal Open (AJO) March 11.

Fanon, F.  (2007) Black Skin White Masks. New York: Grove Press.

Farr, R. (1995) Mirage: Enigmas of race, difference and desire. London: ICA/INIVA.

Freire, P. (2005) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Continuum.

Gopal, P. (2021) ‘On Decolonisation and the University’ in Textual Practice, 28 May

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0950236X.2021.1929561

Hatton, K. (2015) Towards an Inclusive Arts Education. London: IOE Press.

hooks, b. (1994) Teaching to Transgress. London: Routledge.

Lacan, J. (1994) ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function’ in Écrits: A Selection. London: Tavistock Publications.

Montacute, R. & Holt-White, E.  (2021) Covid-19 and the University Experience, Research Brief February. London: The Sutton Trust

Rapanta, C, Botturi, L., Goodyear, P., Guàrdia, L., Koole, M. (2020) ‘Online University Teaching During and After the Covid-19 Crisis: Refocusing Teacher Presence and Learning Activity’ in Postdigital Science and Education 2: 923-945.

Read, A. (1996) The Fact of Blackness: Frantz Fanon and Visual Representation. London: ICA/Seattle: Bay Press.

Silverman, K, (1996) Threshold of the Visible World. London: Routledge.

Urēna, C. (2019) ‘Decolonial Embodiment: Fanon, the Clinical Encounter and the Colonial Wound’ in Disability and the Global South, Vol. 6, No. 1., pp. 1640-1658

Shades of Noir Faith Case Study https://www.shadesofnoir.org.uk/education/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Shades-of-Noir-Case-Study-Faith-WEB.pdf

Toolkit on Intersectional Mainstreaming, ERASMUS+ Student and Alumni Alliance www.esaa-eu.org

Pedagogies of care https://sabresmonkey.wixsite.com/pedagogiesofcare

Mental health inequalities factsheet https://www.centreformentalhealth.org.uk/publications/mental-health-inequalities-factsheet

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Faith Part 3: Case study

In the Stimulus Paper ‘Religion in Higher Education’, Modood and Calhoun identify some of the changes to religion in public life the UK over recent decades. One of the features of this which both authors agree on is the increase in visibility of Islam in society since 9/11 due mainly to politicians, the media and faith groups and charities raising awareness about Islam.[1] Some of the implications of this have been very complex and are mentioned in the Stimulus paper as: increasing importance of Muslim faith among young people; Islam becoming prominent in public affairs; fear of extremism a “major and distorting issue” in which “Muslims are disproportionately targeted”[2] Islam an object of public anxiety. I read the Shades of Noir (SoN) case study in this context, having just read the Stimulus paper previously.

*

The SoN case study on faith highlights a situation in which a female, Muslim student of Iranian origin was left feeling “under attack” by her peers in an educational setting. A discussion about artwork which depicted her wearing a hijab spiralled into a situation where prejudiced views, for example, that she must have been forced to wear a hijab and stereotypes of Islamic women as sexually oppressed, were allowed to escalate with the subject of terrorism becoming part of the conversation as well.

There are a range of problems in the case that arose: firstly, a tutor who, in the very first week of term, had declared to her students that she was an atheist without creating an opportunity for her students to discuss or share their own faith beliefs or ideas about religion. For students, lecturers are privileged authority figures who also represent the face of the university for students. From the description of the case, it appears that the tutor declared her view that religions were ‘manmade constructs’ in a hierarchical manner from a position of power enabling her to have ‘the final word’. To make matters worse, this was the first week of term and likely one of the first, if not the first, encounters with this member of staff that her students will have experienced. I would imagine that the student concerned will have found this an intimidating and excluding meeting. In the first week of term most students would probably have been feeling nervous, especially when first meeting their tutor. The statement of the tutor’s atheism, and the manner in which it was delivered to her students, will have set the tone for subsequent discussions.

The situation in the case study further reveals a problem in the handling of the discussion: it failed to interrogate or challenge prejudice and stereotyping when the direction of the discussion was becoming apparent. At this point there was a missed opportunity for a genuine learning experience where media and visual stereotypes could have been explored. If the situation had been handled more skilfully by the tutor, I think an art college environment would be a very good opportunity to do this. Furthermore, a sensitive and adept handling of the discussion could have supported the student in talking about her artwork and the responses of the group and ‘demystify’ their perceptions or unconscious bias. However, the encounter the tutor had with students in the first week of term makes such an approach unlikely, if not impossible, as a very different style of pedagogy was evident in the phrase “left no room for discussion”. Hence the student seems to have been ‘abandoned’ in the discussion by a member of staff who had made her views clear in the very first week. To what extent did this create an atmosphere, or style of teaching, in which the rest of the students felt that it was permissible to talk like this?

The case study includes the information that the discussion “turned very quickly”. It’s possible, in a bustling college setting, that more than one person could have started speaking at once, as well as at speed. The casual informality of studio environments, as opposed to a lecture theatre or seminar room, could have also contributed to laissez faire attitudes on the part of the students as well as the tutor. However, this could have been avoided by the tutor adopting a different style of pedagogy from the outset but also by setting some ‘ground rules’ for meetings such as this, and if this were agreed from the beginning, it could have stopped the situation turning very quickly. I believe there is no harm in a pause during discussion in which everyone has a few moments to think or reflect before speaking. 

In other words, my immediate thoughts when reading the case were that a ‘safe space’ had not been created. The resources offered by SoN about how to create a safe space are very useful. Inclusion of a diverse range of artists in a curriculum with the names offered by SoN would help too. My final thoughts on reading the case were: did the tutor ever even know, or come to realise, that the student had been left distressed in this way? Did the student stay on the course? The case, therefore, raises the more general issue of the importance of creating a welcoming environment in which each and every student can feel that they belong.

*

The case study also raises serious implications for the college or university institution given that the 2010 Equality Act made religion a protected characteristic as the student in the case study is Muslim. Moreover, there are other intersectional features of the student’s identity: she is also both female and Iranian which add other dimensions to this which also both fall under the categories of a protected characteristics. In the Stimulus paper by Modood and Calhoun, I learnt that in recent years the intertwining of “racial and religious stereotyping in the perception of others” has become a growing issue and is seen “most notably in the phenomenon of Islamophobia”.[3] Or put another way, that Muslims have been “racialised…as if they were a racial group”[4] The paper implicates the media and public discourse in this.

Furthermore, the case study raises the issue of Islamophobia. In a talk late last year, Tariq Modood addressed precisely how Islamophobia might be identified.[5]

Tariq Modood’s 5 tests for determining Islamophobia

Does it stereotype Muslims by assuming they all think the same?

Is it about Muslims or a dialogue with Muslims, which they would wish to join in?

Is mutual learning possible?

Is the language civil and contextually appropriate?

Insincere criticism for ulterior motives?

The subject of Modood’s talk was to distinguish reasonable criticism from Islamophobia and he acknowledges that it is not a litmus test, and that discourse can have a mixed character. Following his 5 tests for the case study I would conclude that this was Islamophobia.

[1] Calhoun, C. & Modood, T. ‘Religion, the public sphere and higher education’ in Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education, 2015, London: Leadership Foundation for Higher Education

[2] Ibid, p. 16

[3] Ibid, p. 11

[4] Ibid. p. 12

[5] Modood, T. Distinguishing Islamophobia from Reasonable Criticism, 19 November 2020 for MEND (Muslim Engagement & Development) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZd-wSUNGnw

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Faith Part 2 (ii) Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education

‘Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education’ is a Stimulus paper published in 2015 comprising 2 papers written to generate debate about the role of religion in British society and politics and the resulting issues for higher education institutions.

Paper 2 ‘Religion, the public sphere and higher education’ by Craig Calhoun

“Religious students are spread widely in UK universities but only a handful of our universities are overtly religious”

Craig Calhoun

Craig Calhoun is an American Professor Of Social Sciences currently working in the United States. In this interview he describes the differences between the UK and US in terms of religion and public life.

Prof Craig Calhoun in conversation with the William Temple Foundation

At the time when this paper was published Calhoun was Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and this informs his perspective too. Calhoun’s companion paper responds to and build on Modood’s text. He begins by echoing Modood to highlight the contradictions around the religion in Britain: that Britain has been seen in recent decades to be a largely secular society and yet religion is a prominent in public institutions.

Calhoun draws on his experience as Director of LSE to highlight the complexities of the question of religion in universities with examples of areas of conflict: free speech (British history shows religion used to both promote or suppress); Israel-Palestinian political question (Pro-Palestinians he found have been neither mainly Palestinian or Muslim); fear of extremism (government PREVENT policy aimed at terrorism but implicated public anxieties about Islamic religion); gender, gender segregation and sexuality (matters of social justice or personal faith?)

The ‘vaguely Christian’ UK

Calhoun starts this section by emphasizing how different the UK is when it comes to religion in public life compared with America or countries in Africa or Latin America. He asserts that, “public knowledge of the place of religion in British history is scant” for which he gives no evidence and which I think is highly debateable. Given the visibility of religion in public life, as he claimed, he seems to be at risk of contradicting himself. Many of the institutions of public life that involve religious are steeped in visible history and British culture more generally. There are other debateable assertions in this section too: media and public discourse falls “particularly on non-Christians” or “public attention falls mainly on Muslims”; “multiculturalism is a discourse dominated by Islam”. Calhoun does, however, attempt to draw attention to the complexities of the intersection of religion and race” “religious identities are only partly about religion…and have a range of concerns not strictly religious”. Perhaps here Calhoun has in mind the kind of distinction or question that Kwame Anthony Appiah put forward in his first Reith lecture on creed: between religion and belief?[1]

Calhoun builds on Modood’s idea of religion as a public good, “public engagement with religion – including in universities – offers opportunities for both learning and achieving the public good”. [2]. But he also goes further to say why, “substantial segregation of ethnic communities – some of which are also defined by religion – is one of the greatest barriers to strongly shared citizenship and public values in Britain”. [3] This echoes Modood’s concern with national identity and nation states and which I find deeply problematic. Whilst acknowledging the complexities of ‘integration’ he sees universities as having a role to play in this. Where Modood makes a plea for ‘religious literacy’, Calhoun again goes further on the last page to state that for universities,

“The challenge…is not just for religion to be the main focus of discussion on some occasions…It is for religion to be part of discussions of many topics on other occasions”.

Both papers beg the question of whether it is appropriate to embed religious discussion and religious literacy in non-religious studies courses in universities? Modood and Calhoun put a huge burden of responsibility on universities in their discussion of the role of religion in the public sphere and Calhoun extends that burden to individual academics. Both recognise the challenges of what they set out whilst offering few answers. In the meantime, the question of religion in higher education for lecturers, or for me working in London, is how to create a teaching and learning environment and curriculum that is sensitive to the faith beliefs of a diverse and international student body?

Provocation

Sonia Boyce, Lay back, keep quiet and think of what made Britain so great, 1986,
charcoal, pastel & watercolour on paper

At a time when an international debate has been raging about the decolonising and abolition of the university, how is it possible to think about religion and the university in the UK without addressing the role of religion in Britain’s history of colonialism and the university as implicated in that history too?*

*I don’t think it is.

[1] https://paulainclusivity101.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2021/06/01/faith-part-2-i-religion-in-britain-challenges-for-higher-education/

[2] Calhoun, C. ‘Religion, the public sphere and higher education’ in Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education, 2015, London: Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, p. 18

[3] Ibid. p. 18

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Faith Part 2 (i) Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education

“…the biggest cultural difference is religion…”

Tariq Modood

‘Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education’ is a Stimulus paper published in 2015 comprising 2 papers written to generate debate about the role of religion in British society and politics and the resulting issues for higher education institutions.

Paper 1 ‘We don’t do God? the changing nature of public religion’ by Professor Tariq Modood

Tariq Modood is a Professor of Sociology, Politics and Public Policy and the context of his paper – cultural diversity and national identity – and what is at stake are described in this interview where he says “..the biggest cultural difference is religion”.

Tariq Modood on Religion as a Challenge for Society

Western European moderate secularism

In this section of his paper Modood first addresses the statement that “Religion is a public, not just a private good”. To begin with it is not clear whether this heading is a statement about the separation of religion as public or private, a debate about this or a claim that religion is a public good.

Modood starts this section by stating that:

“It is understood that organised religion can play a significant role in relation to the ethical; voice, social wellbeing, cultural heritage, national ceremonies and national identity”[1]

There is a lot to unpack in this statement, it begs the questions: understood by whom? What is meant by “organised” religion? (In the UK context is he meaning the Church of England or all of the main faiths in the UK?) The word, “can”, is key here as this is a debateable claim, who agrees with this and what does the “can” involve? Is not organised religion and its role in national ceremonies and identity controversial when the UK is a multi-faith society? And what is ‘national identity’ to the UK not least when Brexit revealed sharp demarcations between geographical areas and the debate about devolution is ongoing. Two examples of the role that organised religion can take in society, offered by Modood, include “family stability” and “economic hope”. I think there is an assumption here about what family might mean, the nuclear family or extended family? But is ‘the family’ a stable unit and what of ‘blended’ families, are they stable? There is a growing debate about family abolition.[2] And what is “economic hope”?! Hope is not a tangible or concrete policy or strategy. Modood does conclude by acknowledging that organised religion is not necessarily always a public good, but his point is that, ultimately, religion can and does have important social and political effects for public life.

Modood writes about ‘the national church’, remarking that non-members can feel ownership or association with it. Modood’s example in discussing this is the public response to the Church of England (C. of E.) failing, in 2012, to agree to appoint women bishops, a decision reversed two years later perhaps as a result. I don’t agree with Madood here that this indicates non-members of the church feeling ‘ownership’, or association, with the C. of E. What is at stake is that the national church, by virtue of it being national, represents the population of the UK and such decisions are made, in a sense, in our name.

Madood also raises the question of whether it is legitimate for the state to be involved in promoting the ‘public good’ that organised religion offers (if that claim is accepted). The notion of the ‘public good’ appealed to here is not clearly defined but was hinted at earlier with ideas about ‘the family’ etc. that are contentious and highly politically charged.

Changes in religious demography

I learnt in this section about the ‘secularisation’ that has been taking place in the UK over the past decades. The research data for this has been widely reported and has emphasised the lack of religion of young people.[3] However, Modood’s paper draws attention to some of the complexities around this: spirituality, ‘belief without belonging’ and ‘implicit religion’(?) are still evident; Christian faith has become “vicarious”; university students declare a religious faith more than other young people. Modood also highlights the effects of immigration:

“…not just the settlement of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs from the 1950s onwards – but also more recently the growth of Black-led, especially West African, Pentecostalist churches, and the over-crowded Catholic churches as Poles joined their congregations”.[4]

One of the consequences of this that I found very interesting is that it has transformed London from one of the least religious areas to one of the most (and that large towns and cities are now more religious than small towns and villages). Modood also cited the findings that religious people tend to have larger families and so he predicts the growth of religion in the UK.

At the end of this section, Modood reveals that, although younger people are less likely to declare a religious faith, those that do have a religious faith have a high level of commitment to it and it place in their life. This was particularly so among Indians, African Asians, Pakistani and Bangladeshi young people and rising among young Muslims. This implicates religion as an equality, diversity and inclusion issue for the students that we teach here in London.

The public sphere

The issue of inclusion and equality, generally, is developed towards the end of the paper in the section ‘The public sphere’, in particular, in the context of post-9/11 and a rise in Muslim consciousness along with public campaigns and conflicts, stating:

“This is partly due simply to the stresses and strains of accommodating new or previously marginalised minorities and is not peculiar to religion or Muslims as such. Specifically, it parallels campaigns in relation to ethno-racial, gender and sexual orientation equality”.[5]

Despite this, Modood also finds reasons to be argue to suggest that there is not “a crisis of secularism” pointing to ‘the nature of the British state-religion connections’ offering examples of support and cooperation.[6]

However, I found the way in which Modood oscillates between references to the public and private spheres in the paper to be oversimplified. Also, when Modood refers to private is he referring to what might be called culture (including the habits and customs of faith)? Thinking about all of this I recalled an essay that I reread quite recently, for different reasons by Homi K. Bhabha. Discussing human rights in a different context (and debates framed by questions of the global and the local) in the essay “On Minorities: cultural rights” Bhabha tackles the complex questions of national identity, minorities, rights and the creation of ‘new minorities’ by problematising them to say something relevant here, that this:

“…reveals a liminal, interstitial public sphere that emerges in-between the state and the non-state, in-between individual rights and group needs…Subjects of cultural rights occupy an analytic and ethical borderland of ‘hybridization’ in a partial and double identification across minority milieux”.[7]

Bhabha also alludes to “…the underlying fear here…is the ‘creation of new minorities’…” something that Modood also refers to when he writes of people being uncomfortable with the ‘over-religionising’ the public sphere and complicated further by the intersection of racial and religious stereotyping. Bhabha cites Seyla Benhabib,

“historically the strong pursuit of collective goals or ‘goods’, commonly referred to as nationalism, has usually been at the cost of minorities – both national and ‘migrant or diasporic’…”[8]

Bhabha turns to poetry for responses to these complexities, a poem by Adrienne Rich, Inscriptions, which for him embodies the spirt of the hybrid subject he writes about:

“The subject of the poem is literally, the sphere of the proximity of differences – race, class, gender, generation – as they emerge in a range of intersecting public spheres – the street, the academy, the political party, the private diary – to claim a right to representation”.[9]

The questions the poem explores relate to the relationship of an individual within a larger community of belief and belief that is larger than the individual as “chiasmatic doubles”.

Modood ends his paper with an appeal for ‘religious literacy’ and understanding in Higher Education “but not in a narrowly religious way” instead “in a context of wider social divisions and group power relations, especially racism, ethno-religious exclusions”. [10] However, this final statement also evokes all the complexities of cultural difference and translation in a global world for which there too are no easy answers.

[1] Modood, T. ‘We don’t do God? the changing nature of public religion’ by Professor Tariq Modood’ in Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education, 2015, London: Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, p.10

[2]  Silverstein, S, “Family abolition isn’t about ending love and care. It’s about extending it to everyone, 26 April, 2020, open Democracy https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/family-abolition-isnt-about-ending-love-and-care-its-about-extending-it-to-everyone/

[3] McCallum, S. ‘70% of young Brits are ‘not religious’, 21 March 2018 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-43485581

https://humanism.org.uk/2018/03/21/7-in-10-young-people-in-the-uk-are-non-religious-new-research-finds/

https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2018/04/06/generation-noreligion-what-the-data-really-shows-about-youth-religiosity

[4] Modood, T. ‘We don’t do God? the changing nature of public religion’ by Professor Tariq Modood’ in Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education, 2015, London: Leadership Foundation for Higher Education. p. 8

[5] Ibid. p. 10

[6] Ibid p. 11

[7] Bhabha, H. K., ‘On minorities: cultural rights’ in Radical Philosophy, Mar/Apr 2000 https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/commentary/on-minorities

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Modood, T. ‘We don’t do God? the changing nature of public religion’ by Professor Tariq Modood’ in Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education, 2015, London: Leadership Foundation for Higher Education. p. 12