As a Technician, I have only had minimal input into lesson planning, so when faced with the task of delivering a Microteach, the first thing I did was to read the brief and the supporting material closely. I quickly decided on an object, my very worn and continuously mended cashmere sweater, as a lot of my thoughts about teaching are affected by my concerns with sustainability issues in my industry. The obvious approach to a teaching activity was to prepare a workshop around learning the technique of Sashiko mending, the element I wanted to highlight in my object. But in the process of identifying the Learning Objectives I wanted to set, it became clear that what I wanted my cohort to take away from my session was a broader examination of their own personal relationship to mending and the sustainability of their own clothing. I asked myself whether this was possible, given the time restraints and decided to at least make an attempt. I hedged my bets by telling myself I would time a rehearsal of my lesson and if it was too long, I would revert to a workshop style session.

I began by gathering information around the technique of Sashiko itself. Then I expanded my circle of enquiry to the wider issues around sustainability of clothing and cashmere in particular. Having amassed this body of information, I looked at the structure of the lesson and how to present the information in a way that would amplify the physical presence of my object in drawing out conversations, thoughts and discussions. At each step, I tried to imagine what responses I might get from my cohort. I was also conscious not to appear judgemental or to be forcing my opinion on the cohort.

I tested a number of activities for potential learning outcomes; group work around a number of provocative statements about planetary resources, brainstorming, word association and round table discussions. Finally, I arrived at the framework of storytelling to at once remove the judgemental element and to engage the emotional response to the harsh reality of the situation.

I began my microteach with a question: Imagine you have a sweater that you have had for a few years and have just discovered a hole in it. What would you do with it? I asked my colleagues to write down a few thoughts on how they would answer this question, then asked them to hold the thought of this imaginary sweater in their minds as I described my journey of how I went about answering this question. I felt that this would encourage them to approach the information I presented in a collaborative frame of mind and in a mindset of interrogation. In conjunction with the tactile quality of handling my sweater and the visual representation of the time and care that I had taken with it, would provoke a more visceral and instinctive response to the subject. I asked them to examine the sweater and to note the worn patch as an example of ‘before’, and the tiny sashiko stitchings as examples of ‘after’. I talked them through my struggles with finding a sustainable solution to extending the life of my sweater, using this as a framework to introduce facts and information around some of the issues, accompanied by visual images to accommodate neurodiverse learners. And then I asked them how they might now answer the question I first posed to them in the beginning of the session. I was hoping that I had given them enough provocations to spark thoughts and discussion on the impact of sustainability in their own lives.

I did manage to race through my story in under 20 minutes and we did have time to go around the group to elicit individual responses to my ‘lesson’, which as a whole showed engagement with the topic and a real attempt to make some sense of its relevance to their own lives. Although all the themes I covered in my presentation I felt were necessary to build the narrative arc, it resulted in a mild preoccupation with time keeping and less interactivity. I think more pauses for direct discussion at intervals throughout would have drawn out more conscious parallels about how mindset affects behaviour change. I was also aware that there was not as much directed attention to the ‘students’ as I would have liked; eye contact, checking for understanding and gauging levels of attention. There were encouraging responses from the practical, saying that the lesson had shown them how easy mending could be and they would try it, to the philosophical, how it made them think about the affect of their own actions on other people and places. I would have liked a bit more time for discussion to be able to determine the participants responses. I had wrestled with whether to state the learning objectives more overtly at the beginning of the session, but did not want to prejudice how the individual responded. This made it more difficult for me to quantify the outcomes, but felt that overall, the Learning Outcomes were within touching distance, if not fully realised.

The feedback was generally positive and someone suggested that this could be developed into a workshop around thinking about sustainability. I was relieved that I was able to elicit the learning outcomes I had set out to achieve and it has given me some confidence in my abilities as an educator.

As a final thought, I was also interested to note which types of information produced the most thoughts and questions in the cohorts’ minds: surprising statistics, emotive images, hard hitting text or performative storytelling. If there was a way of measuring the response to each of these, I would be interested in which of these educational tools was most effective.

This week began with a perusal of Allan Davies’ Learning outcomes and assessment criteria in art and design. What’s the recurring problem? Network, Issue 18: July 2012. I had to look up the references to Bloom’s 1956 Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals in order to understand the thesis of Davies’ argument.

I broadly agree with the necessity to standardize assessment criteria to ensure a fair system of grading. This is especially nuanced in the creative arts, as some of the received wisdom of what is ‘good’, can be in danger of depending on subjective opinions. Style or fashion can be very culture specific and to critique something, it is important to have an understanding of the context in which it is being presented. The student must believe that their teacher understands their context. The objectivity of the teacher is important to ensure trust in the fairness of assessing creativity.

Bloom’s taxonomies of prescriptive language may be difficult to apply to the particular nuances of the creative arts. Davies, instead, presents a model of deliberate ambiguity; having some over-arching structure to the learning outcomes while leaving space to explore divergent pathways.

‘So, I suggest, in art and design whilst it is important that students know what they have to do on any course of study, it is not necessarily through published learning outcomes. Learning outcomes might be seen as necessary for administrative purposes but they are not sufficient in helping students develop an idea of what they will be learning and how they will go about it. Indeed, in a highly supportive context, learning outcomes might be so generalised as to only define the landscape and the boundaries of their intended learning. The knowing of what to do becomes developmental and personalised.’

Identifying and refining keywords and outcome descriptors can paradoxically lead to confusion and a sense of meaninglessness in the brief.

Rather than measurability, the focus should be on meaningfulness

Art and Design uses the process of iteration to research, develop, review, synthesize and repeat, over and over until a successful conclusion is reached. Assessment needs to accommodate this process.

Unless a teacher has been party to the design and development of a programme, he or she will not necessarily understand how what they are expected to do fits into the whole. Programme design in such a complex landscape is often a negotiation of the language that embraces it. Only the course designers have a real understanding of how things fit together.

As a Technician, I am not party to the assessment criteria and this affects my ability to advise students. Even when I have read the Learning Objectives for the course module, which we are not routinely given access to, they can be (following Davies’ suggestion) deliberately ambiguous. So I have to make certain judgements about what I feel is important, when I am teaching students, and then cross my fingers and hope that the course teams would agree with me. Which in most cases, they would. But in those circumstances where there is doubt, I usually frame this to students in terms of the different choices they can make and the reasons they might have for choosing one over the other, and leave it to them to make their own mind up. The student will have been party to the introduction of the Learning Outcomes (LO) in their initial brief for that project, where they should have discussed the LO’s in more detail and so they should be the best judge of what to take from my advice. This becomes part of their ‘research’.

Interrogation: how does this verbal categorization of learning outcomes tied to assessment criteria affect students whose mother tongue is not the language in which it was written. Is there a nuance in the understanding of the descriptors which could be culturally driven and therefore exclusionary to some groups of students?

Week 1

Duly logged on at 9am with a mild dose of trepidation. The class moved at pace through the ‘getting to know you’ stage and neatly segued into discussion about some pedagogic topics drawn from material introduced to the groups during individual presentations. There was a really lovely circularity to the class structure.

I can see some parallels between the lesson plan and the creative process. Like you would when designing, there was an introduction of the brief. Then the lightning talks by colleagues which presented some ideas and the discussions that followed, were similar to the research and development stage. There was an assessment of ideas and narrowing down of subjects, which compares to the stage of refining and experimentation. Finally in the class, we did produce a padlet of ideas which could compare to the conclusion of the design process which culminates in creating an object.

Our smaller tutor group is a varied and vastly impressive group of artists and scientists with interesting educational, professional and personal experience. But the thread that seems to run through them all, which I found most inspiring, is the social engagement that drives their involvement in education. In just a lightning 5 min presentation, I found inspiration and insight into so many different areas of pedagogy that I cannot wait to delve deeper into. Now if only I had enough time to follow all those paths to their destinations.

I had chosen a journal article Wood, N., Rust, C., & Horne, G. (2009). A tacit understanding: The designer’s role in capturing and passing on the skilled knowledge of master craftsmen. International Journal of Design, 3(3), 65-78 to read and present to my tutor group. The article explored some research into creating digital resources for teaching traditional crafts. I found some relevant parallels between this research and the development of my own teaching materials in my work at LCF.

The researcher, Nicola Wood, undertook some case studies, working with skilled knife makers. Her main conclusion was that there tended to be a high degree of tacit knowledge in the craftsmans working practice. Tacit means implicit or internalized knowledge learned through personal experience.

The craftsmen were not necessarily aware of how they were going about their tasks, and sometimes found it difficult to articulate what it was they were doing. It was a useful reminder to me that I need to continually examine and elaborate on my working practices because some things which may seem obvious to me, may not be clear to others (students) and I will need to find a way to explain it to them.

It did spark some discussion into the value of tacit knowledge as compared to academic learning. Towards the end of the class, when we broke into smaller groups to enable us to exchange ideas on this topic, there were some perceptive points raised about how to give legitimacy to tacit knowledge, as something which is not easily tangible or quantifiable.

Ideas raised in some of the other presentations that excited my interest included pedagogy around giving space for silence in the classroom, how to teach creativity, the awareness of cultural backgrounds in learning styles and education as a means for promoting social change.

I made a note of some literature that my classmates mentioned that I would like to read: Paulo Freire’s Education of the Oppressed and Reimagining Conversations by Victoria Odeniyi.

A lot of these topics related to areas in the readings about creative education that ‘sparked’ my interest, when looking through articles to present in my own mini-talk. I was fascinated by the article Cowdroy,R. & Williams, A. (2006). Assessing creativity in the creative arts. Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education Volume 5 Number 2. It concerns how to define and quantify creativity in able to objectively assess creativity in an academic setting. It also identifies difficulties in the creative education sector regarding commodification of arts qualifications in a world of education as a consumer good, something that is bought and paid for. This was also examined in Danvers, J. (2003), Towards a Radical Pedagogy: Provisional Notes on Learning and Teaching in Art & Design. Danvers looks at some of the tensions between academic structures and ways of giving space for critical interrogation, diversity of expression, improvisation and dynamic innovation. Another area that concerns me, is intercultural understanding and inclusivity within the western arts curriculum and as something that affects well being and attainment for overseas and BAME students. I had time to scan a few case studies in the Sixth issue of Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal, published April 2018, which introduced me to some of the research going on in this subject and which I will be able to incorporate into my interactions with students in my teaching practice.

I look forward to following the trail of information and discussions down the rabbit hole to new worlds of knowledge and understanding.

• ARP
• Artefact
• Inclusive Practice
• TPP
• tpp non-submission

So this is blogging!

Hi, I’m E-Sinn (she/her). I am a Garment Technician at London College of Fashion, based at Curtain Road. I’ve been with the college 4 years now and as I have come from an industry background, I am looking forward to learning about teaching from a more academic perspective.