On BA illustration I am a transition tutor and provide a series of workshops for both second and third years to support their student journey and progression aims for post-graduate life. I aim to support all students achieving the most out of the course by providing this additional teaching in conjunction with Academic Support. Through taking attendance and researching UAL’s data dashboards, I am aware that there are students that regularly do not attend these workshops, and that this may impact on their attainment 1. Through this intervention, I want to address why some students are not accessing transition workshops, and the strategies I can employ to continuously evaluate and create a more inclusive learning environment.
To do this, I aim to directly involve the students in BA illustration to understand what it is they want and need from the course. I look to Paulo Freire’s teachings in Pedagogy of the Oppressed for further reading on why this is important:
‘a pedagogy which must be forged with, not for, the oppressed (whether individuals or peoples) in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity.’ (Freire, 1970)
My strategy will be to co-create forms of feedback with the students, asking them how they feel we could make things more inclusive on the course and relate this back to their illustration practice. Furthermore I aim to collect student influences and share them amongst the cohort so that a sense of community and openness can be fostered within the studio. This practice once established as part of my role, could be echoed at the beginning and end of each year in order to embrace the diversity of individual year groups. I aim to further understand bell hooks ‘Engaged pedagogy’ to support this, in order to emphasise that each student has a ‘valuable contribution to make to the learning process.’ (hooks, 1994)
Key References for further reading:
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York Seabury Press.
Hooks, B. (1994) Teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom. London: Routledge. (Chapters 1 – 5)
Hooks, B. (2010). Teaching critical thinking: Practical wisdom. New York: Routledge.
(Teaching II – Democratic Education, III – Engaged Pedagogy)
Smyth, J. (2011) Critical pedagogy for social justice. New York : Bloomsbury Academic and Professional. (Chapter 3: Students as Activists in Their Own Learning)
Decolonizing the Curriculum:
https://www.arts-su.com/campaigns/policy/decolonising-the-curriculum/
How inclusive is object-based learning? Jenny Lelkes
Spark Journal,Vol. 4 No. 1 (2019) ‘Libraries, Archives and Special Collections’ special issue:
https://sparkjournal.arts.ac.uk/index.php/spark/article/view/110
- The UAL data dashboards for BA illustration show international students have attained less 1st’s and 2:1s than their home counterparts for the past 5 years (4% improvement during this time). There has also been a 4% drop in attainment since 2019 for students with a declared disability, and 17% since last year. Furthermore when looking closer at the data dashboards to see the relationship to Academic Support, I can see that Home Black, Home B.A.M.E, ‘Home Mixed’ and ‘All Declared Disability’ students have 0% data for attainment in the 1st or 2:1 category for 2022-2023, which means that all these categories had less than 10 people accessing Academic support on BA Illustration. When you compare this to 100% of home white students who accessed Academic support attaining a 1st or 2:1 this highlights the need for an intervention. ↩︎