21 May – Inclusive Teaching and Learning: Race
Task: Visit the Shades of Noir(SoN) consider how you could use this resource in your practice
How could you apply the resources to your own teaching practice?
Shades of Noir is an excellent resource on a whole variety of topics. In my lectures on 20th and 21st century design I often give students self-directed research tasks so they have a chance to draw on their own background and experience in an attempt to decolonise the history of art and design. In the next academic year I would like to base one of these research tasks on the technology section of the website. The article on The Powerful Minority and the video on inequalities of virtual experiences is very interesting.
How could you integrate the research/work your students do on this subject into your teaching/professional practice?
Following individual and group research tasks we often have a group discussion so that the whole group can be exposed to different lived experiences. Here, the conversations section of the website would be really beneficial to act as starting points for further discussion.
Can you cite examples? You will share your thoughts within your groups and comment and share further resources you use in your own context.
For the first year students I host a series of Book Club events. Next term I will be concentrating on a book called the Glass Room by Simon Mawer. A key theme throughout is Adolf Loos’ notion that ‘ornament is crime’ which students often understand quickly, helped by the narrative. Looking at the review of Lina Iris Viktor’s work (https://shadesofnoir.org.uk/some-are-born-to-endless-night-lina-iris-viktor-exhibition-review/) could work well to highlight the racist logic in Loos’ rejection of ornament, and go on to show that the rejection of ornament in the whole of modernism is racially biased. I’ve recently read LOTE by Shola von Reinhold where the writer observes in a key passage: ‘the received wisdom that deems “inessential ornament” inherently vulgar, is prejudiced and has its roots in colonialist contempt for African culture.’
In all of my lectures I make an effort to link historical design theory to current affairs and the Shades of Noir website is an excellent resource for this, and I’ll endeavour to signpost it to my students at every opportunity.
Task: Read Hahn Tapper (2013) ‘A pedagogy of social justice education: social identity, theory and intersectionality’, Pp. 411- 417 and refer to diagram on p.426
Social Justice Education
Freirean thought outlines a way in which education is not just about conveying knowledge but a way of empowering individuals and whole groups of people to engage in social justice activism and personal growth.
I enjoy how Freirean thought redefines the disciplinary enclosure of the academy. In order to confront and reshape the root causes of various types of conflict, educational models need to recognise the disparities in societal opportunities, and resources, and long-term outcomes among marginalised groups. This is particularly important to consider during the Covid lockdown as many students don’t have access to the university spaces and technology meaning an intensification of inequality. What are the methods for doing this without stigmatising disparities between different students? How do we make students open up about these issues? My artefact could work as a good tool to help with this.
Quoting Freire, Hahn Tapper suggests that a teacher needs to create experiences with, and not for, students, integrating their experiences and voices into the educational experience itself. This fits well with what I have been trying to do with my concentration on group discussions and less emphasis on delivered content. However, student expectation should be managed in this respect as it goes against usual models—maybe this theory should be for the students to learn about (a lecture perhaps) as well as teachers to further encourage the ‘interlocking relationship’ (Rozas 2007). The theory also fits with the group activity game artefact that I have been planning, one that encourages students to talk about more private thoughts and blurs the boundary between student/student and student/teacher. At the moment my artefact looks at the racial bias of language, but after reading the article I wonder if ‘social identities’ could be incorporated too, so that I have multiple ‘artefacts’ that are tailored to a particular group of students and counteract the ‘negative perceptions/stereotypes’ different students might have of each other, through a ‘common chore that necessitates their cooperation’ (Billig 1976; Maoz 2000a). I think the idea of a ‘common chore’ needs to be intensified in my artefact.
My reflections after watching the student film ‘Room of Silence’ from Rhode Island School of Design https://vimeo.com/161259012
Though I’m a white male I could certainly relate to the comments by students at the start of the film. When I started university, at an institution that largely attracted affluent people, I was often the only person in my classes with a ‘working class’ accent or a ‘poor’ sounding voice as one student referred to it. I’m aware that this is nothing compared to what a person of colour must experience daily, however it still makes me aware that such difference need to be broken down. I’m also from the midlands and if I tried to introduce ideas from my working class background there was always a lack of engagement from people, there was no effort given to understanding different lived experiences.
The Room of Silence is when you make artwork around the themes of race, sexual identity, etc., and everyone in the room looking at it falls silent and has nothing to say. This might be because they don’t know how to talk about it or they don’t want to talk about it. This is really interesting in relation to the nature of taboo subjects, and making people aware that if something is not discussed it only gains more power and becomes even more problematic. During the BLM protests there have been interesting examples of this on twitter. Due to the threat of ‘twitter pile-ons’ if you write something wrong about the subject, I think this militated discussion. And it is often only by getting things wrong and feeling comfortable with it that you learn something new. I don’t think twitter will ever be the place for this, but a university environment certainly can be.
Task: Review ‘Retention and attainment in the disciplines: Art and Design’ Finnigan and Richards 2016.
The article looks at how UAL has examined the retention and attainment of students from diverse backgrounds with the discipline of Art and Design. It highlights that Art and Design is one of the disciplines with the highest percentage of students leaving with no award with a disproportionate difference between White students and Black student groups. I’ve recently been thinking (as I mentioned above) about how architecture can be inherently racially biased and not come under any scrutiny. This could lead to Black student groups becoming disengaged from curriculum and leaving the course. From what I’ve researched so far, if modernism is fundamentally racist in its rejection of ornament, then it’s not a problem with how architecture is taught but its a massive problem for architecture itself. It doesn’t matter how one frames it in lectures, built architecture needs to change radically before it can be taught differently.
I wonder if the architecture of universities really has the flexibility to accommodate the integration of different types and groups of students. With its small rooms and limited spaces the Chelsea campus is certainly not ideal for this—a more open plan environment would be better.