My unit 1 tutor feedback included the word ‘principled’ when describing my teaching in the observation. I was pleased about this, as important facets of my teaching practice encompass inclusivity, belonging, and fairness along with promoting respectful sharing and listening amongst the students. My positionality statement in which I include my family states, ‘I am a white man, married to a black woman, together we have a daughter who is bi-racial.’ This is hugely important to me and the application of my racial values when working with others and the diverse student cohorts at UAL. Being mindful of how these cohorts feel in the teaching spaces. Is there a sense of belonging and inclusion? This permeates into all areas of my practice, the visual references that I use, historical and contemporary points of reference, looking beyond Europe to include an array of examples and the consideration and visibilty of diverse teaching teams in academia and industry.
The Ethics workshop challenged me to delve a lot deeper to explore a wide range of resources. The consideration of language and how questions are constructed is something I have not considered before.
In the Sage Research Methods ‘The Tools At Hand’ Survey Questions I was interested to read about pretesting questions for meaning and task difficulty amongst other things. I extensively use questionnaires within creative projects to start conversations to help orientate students into the Discovery phase of a new project brief or self-initiated task. The due care and consideration of what these questions mean and why they are being used proved to be extremely useful when considering the questions for my employability workshop questionnaire as part of this research process.
When and where possible I connect personal and lived experiences to my teaching practice. My research and teaching practices are Autoethnographic. Qualitative research that explores interests, motivations, and subjective experiences was the catalyst to use the Let’s Be Brief Value Canvas within this project research as a precursor to exploring Employability. This adaptable canvas can be used to contemplate skills and interests or as a useful tool within project development. You can view this canvas in the Participant Facing Documents section on my blog.
Let’s Be Brief Value Canvas © Let’s Be Brief (2020)
