When considering how I have encountered faith in my own teaching practice at UAL, I was conscious and shaken by how I initially struggled to think of an example. This alone highlighted that being aware of a student’s beliefs or religion is something I need to address through greater awareness and acknowledgement, in order to ensure inclusivity in my teaching. This also surprised me, as in a previous role at a SEN secondary school, the intersections of disability with not only faith, but gender, race, sexual orientation and age for both students and staff was a main concern within my teaching.
This school had an extremely diverse student population and celebrating many different religions was an important part of the school’s calendar alongside the everyday experience for the students (Their Cultural Competency statement). Acknowledging the individual needs of each student and how this interacted with their faith e.g. fasting during Ramadan (and if students needed greater care during this time) was an important aspect of my teaching role. It was vital to make sure each student was fully supported through an individualised approach to enable their participation in the school community.
The following words from Professor Simran Jeet Singh made me reflect on my previous experience, that I compared with my role at UAL where he explains ‘each community is diverse’.
‘One of the real challenges we’re facing in our society is a tendency to try and paint entire communities with a single brush stroke’ (Jeet Singh, 2016)
Therefore at UAL, I understand it is not enough just to acknowledge that faith is important to many of our students, but to understand that there is diversity within communities. The intersection of faith with gender, sexuality or race can result in tensions or impact on how an individual may disclose parts of their identity. For example, in Sabah Choudrey’s Inclusivity guide, they commented that BAME Trans people can experience situations such as:
‘Religious communities overlapped with ethnic communities, and losing one often meant losing the other’ (Choudrey, 2016)
As teachers we need to show students how we can provide support or adaptations, such as giving the space and time for prayer within sessions, that can improve the learning experience without explicitly singling individuals out and risking an identity threat. I thought the idea of providing a visible ‘Equal Opportunities statement’ as mentioned in the guide, could reassure BAME, Trans and QTIPOC that there are positive, visual representations of them could be a good idea moving forward. This also made me conscious about choosing spaces that makes people feel comfortable (particularly external venues for exhibitions and events) as the intersections of faith with sexuality or race, may make some venues unsafe for some to openly visit.
I made some searches on Canvas to see what guidance on already exists from UAL for acknowledging how faith may interact with experience at University, and found the Religious and Cultural Observances Clash Diary and Religious Observance, Working Hours and Leave Staff Guidance as helpful resources to start with.
After looking at the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion report for 22/23, I noted that 29% of students at UAL (26% at CCW) had declared their religion, which is a significant number when you consider that is almost 1 in 3 students. Furthermore I noted that for most colleges there are 2% of students that fall into an ‘other’ category which made me question what other faiths are not being included in part of this survey and how UAL can recognise this to impact and update their guidance resources.
Despite my (shameful) initial blank on how I have encountered faith as part of my teaching at UAL, I realised that religion has actually played a big part in many students’ experience and work. For example, a student’s project last year focused on the words of her pastor and the Christian experience. This situation showed me that as the role of her tutor, it was important to both encourage and guide feedback in group tutorials, so that religion could be discussed in a sensitive yet supportive way through peer relationships. The following words of Kimberlé Crenshaw echo this idea by outlining how aspects of identity are the results of relationships in various contexts:
‘identity isn’t a self contained Unit, it is a relationship between people in history, people in communities, people in institutions’ (Crenshaw, 2018)
In another instance, a group of students responded to a project proposal in a way that disrespected the practices of a particular religion. I realised I may encounter future situations where students pose a threat to others and their beliefs, and this further emphasised that I need to be able to guide my students in understanding discrimination and inequality with the aim to promote a respect for multiculturalism in group discussion. To give me insight on this I turned to Bell Hooks’ chapter ‘Embracing change Teaching in a Multicultural world’, where she explains that creating a teaching environment where ‘there is respect for individual voices’ through alternative strategies can encourage more critical feedback and ultimately benefit students, even if at first there may be resistance to these methods:
‘Moving away from the need for immediate affirmation was crucial for my growth as a teacher. I learned to respect that shifting paradigms or sharing knowledge in new ways challenges; it takes time for students to experience that challenge as a positive.’ (Hooks, 1994)
Thanks for your reflections here Becky. I can also admit that until now, I hadn’t yet properly reflected on the role of faith within my practice at the University. It was refreshing to read about the ways in which you surprised yourself, as well as the examples you’ve pulled from students in your course.
You rightfully brought up the potential for conflict here by sharing your experience of those students who disrespected the practices of a particular religion. One challenge I always feel is where to draw a distinguished the line between criticality, critique, and a situation that causes offense. While it’s less likely that our teaching will directly encourage a deep or discursive examination of any single faith, dissections of faith and faith-based practices may come into our classrooms or our students work. These conversations can be deeply personal, and derisory or dismissive comments can have an impact on student’s experience at the university that extends beyond a classroom space. I worry sometimes about my role in encouraging spaces of cultural critique that might align with one learners values, but ostracise or alienate another.
As your Bell Hooks quote asserts – I guess it does all come down to respect, and how we cultivate this with students.
Thanks for sharing your own experience of encouraging cultural critique and acknowledging how the impact of our comments may have a profound affect on a student if they feel alienated by the discussion – something we can all make ourselves very aware of. It is interesting too, how you mention that it can be challenging to draw a distinguished line between criticality and causing offense. In the situation I mentioned there was, how I perceived it, a very clearly offensive comment made and the challenge was how to acknowledge this directly and support the student understand why this may be derogatory, whilst also allowing room for the student to feel they can discuss their thinking behind it. In this case I do not think it was intentionally made to be hurtful to any particular person or community and perhaps expressed more of a naivety. Therefore your comment about how dismissive comments can affect a student outside of the university space is really important, so that as members of the UAL community we can work towards supporting all students in knowing that they deserve respect and also how to respect others – not just at University but in all situations outside this environment too.
Though I have had some faith related discussions with students, I do think it’s an aspect of people’s identities which is discussed by students much less often than some others, like gender, race, sexuality and class. I do wonder why this is, and whether the university setting has too much of a tendency to frame itself as a secular space. At some point in my teaching I disclosed casually that I am a Quaker, and this enabled one of my Muslim students to come and have an in-depth discussion with me about her faith and how it related to her project at the time. She said that she appreciated knowing that I also believed in a God. While not every tutor should be obligated to either disclose, or indeed have any kind of faith, I do wonder whether, for those of us that do, finding ways of being open about it in a relaxed way can widen that discussion and space for thought. I had also been reflecting on that quote by Jeet Singh about how we have a tendency to think about given communities with broad brushstrokes, and this was something I also reflected on in my blog — the importance of fostering a culture where we really do see each student as an individual, rather than just typecasting them based on faith or any other aspect of their identity. I liked hearing about your work at the secondary school — during the next academic year I am really keen to try and find a way of acknowledging and/or celebrating festivals and holidays from all different faith groups and nationalities, without feeling tokenistic, and I still haven’t quite figured out how I am going to do this!
I think faith has a much bigger impact on the student experience and their connection with their work than is perhaps recognised by UAL – I know from experience that it is rarely mentioned in our department and this is something that I feel is important to address with my colleagues moving forward. I like your musing on ‘ways of being open about it in a relaxed way can widen that discussion and space for thought’ between staff and students that feel happy to share, and I also think that those who do not belong to a faith might value and be valued within these discussions. One of the things I have noticed in my current year 3 work is the inclusion of religious iconography (with no indication of faith being related to this) which can be problematic – most likely this is not intended by the individual but I wonder if opening up these spaces you mention could be a way of bringing more attention to the importance of understanding and respecting those who have different beliefs for everyone. It is admirable that you are finding ways to be more inclusive of religious celebrations next year and I agree that often it can feel tokenistic. As discussed in workshops 3 & 4 with the group, perhaps using subtlety with this such as providing the space around teaching (adjusting workshop timings, tutorial days etc) so that students are available to celebrate or practice their religion without having to ask for time off or missing out on learning could be a way to start.