The session studied an example of a lecturer responding in a defensive way to feedback from students, as written up in Bruce Macfarlane’s Teaching with Integrity: The ethics of higher education practice (2004). It was a great reminder of the need to incorporate students’ input into course design, and to seek their feedback throughout their learning journey, not just at the end, which effectively becomes a form of academic capitalism as described in Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades’ Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: Markets, State, and Higher Education (2009). As we approach making observations on each other, it was equally a reminder to frame these in such a way as to be constructive for our paired peer.

I was excited to undertake this microteaching session with my group! It was a really engaged and supportive morning. As much as I encourage my own students in group tutorials to consider feeding back to others as being as important (or perhaps more important!) as receiving feedback on their own work, this session gave me as much to reflect on from observing the strategies of others as in discovering how mine played out.

I had recently been thinking about how we read images in terms of subjectivity, and chose as my object a billboard image I had encountered in Denmark Hill, not far from Camberwell College of Arts where I teach. This Nike advertising image is of a Black, female, dancer wearing a black tutu and doing the splits up high on pointe shoes. The slogan reads “Own the Floor”. At first struck by the image as being empowering, I started to unravel it through research and reflection on its wider context and I wanted to test it in a group learning activity.

Incorporating feedback from my peer observation, I began my session by introducing the interactive platform of the Collaborate Whiteboard and asked participants to draw an image of a dancer ahead of me showing them the image. Participants responded well to this with a range of styles, formats and annotations.

As I brought the image on screen. I described the image as object, what it consisted of, what the text on it said, and how to zoom in to see it more closely. I kicked off the discussion by asking participants what they made of the image, and what they made of it as an image-as-object in an urban environmental context (as pictured). One of my peers said she felt that the taking up of space by the dancer was important, another said that “it always feels corporate when I see that tick”; I sought to bring those comments together as seeing both things at once. I then invited a third voice in, who commented on it being an unusual image of a dancer being full-frontal, but that he felt similarly uncomfortable about the corporate agenda. I responded to these points by quoting text from an article by Anupriya Dhonchak (2019) that outlined similar concerns and explained the strategy of Nike:

As the Nike ad shows, athletics for women are often about taking up space as opposed to shrinking, cultivating self-sufficiency, purpose, direction and a means to channel the power and potential of the wealth of our emotions. It is a tremendous relief to see that advertisements like these are commended in an overlapping space where Gillette was scathingly condemned for being ‘radical’ enough to denounce toxic masculinity through its ad: ‘https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koPmuEyP3a0’. However, in a paradigm of capitalist marketing and its monetization of tokenistic feminism, ads like ‘Dream Crazier’ only deceptively purport to ‘empower’ women by selling them a particular self-concept as a freebie along with the advertising brand’s marketed products.

I asked another participant who had not yet spoken for his thoughts. I also revealed the location to give further context to respond to. He found the image powerful and empowering. I asked what he thought of the Dhonchak article – he thought it was stereotypical, but that at least the image might give women courage to take up dancing.

Another participant then responded to the location by saying “JD and Nike are extremely important in Peckham. The shop is revered and it is the site of a postcode war where kids are stabbed out front as Queens road fight its ownership as does south peckham. A bit dark but its campaign is very visible there”

I then brought in a related comment from bell hooks who says:

It is within the commercial realm of advertising that the drama of Otherness finds expression. Encounters with Otherness are clearly marked as more exciting,more intense, and more threatening. The lure is the combination of pleasure and danger.

and

One area where the politics of diversity and its concomitant insistence on inclusive representation have had serious impact is advertising. Now that sophisticated market surveys reveal the extent to which poor and materially under-privileged people of all races/ethnicities consume products, sometimes in a quantity disproportionate to income, it has become more evident that these markets can be appealed to with advertising.

I returned to the participant who had commented on the location and the usefulness of their comments. She added, “i raised 2 boys in peckham. Nike is a nightmare for a mum” which I said I related to growing up in West London too.

I then introduced a flip side of the story in terms of Nike’s own strategy for diversity:

Nike corporate website:

45% representation of women globally at VP level and above

50% representation of women in our global corporate workforce*

30 % representation of racial and ethnic minorities** at Director level and above in the U.S.

35% representation of racial and ethnic minorities** in our U.S. corporate workforce*

However, I pointed out that these related to corporate aspirations, and cited Julia Bryan-Wilson’s Fray, in which she describes the number of non-white, female hands that work on any pair of trainers.

Another participant pointed out the immediate visual response of “Black excellence” and a good effort from the dressing of the model to match the shoes with her skin tone. However, she then realised the tokenism invoked by the image and related how she had refused such a position in her own work.

I then flagged the position of the subject in terms of gender and doing the splits, and the sexualisation of the subject, and a traditional US jump rope song I found that highlighted this:

“Mailman, mailman, do your duty,
Here comes Miss American Beauty
(alternate version: a lady with an African booty),
She can do the pom-poms,
She can do the splits,
but most of all she can kiss, kiss, kiss!”

Another participant pointed out how Black women can be masculinised, with Michelle Obama being theorised by elements of the Far Right in the US as being a man.

I both read and shared my references in the chat so that participants could follow up if they wanted to.

Feedback included:

-Set a tone at the beginning and consider an ethics of care that there may be uncomfortable, complex issues that are brought up which people find triggering, and that they may or may not want to contribute – they might want to sit back and think – they might need to take time out – and to think about how to respect that in the space.

– “Amazing topic”.
·  “surprised how triggering the image was, lived realities of Denmark Hill where I live. Great to see uncovering of detail… just to emphasis Lana, those topics are so important and it makes me happy to know you are tackling them in your classroom and giving your students stuff to think about”

·  “I think this image was an extremely successful provocation that opened up a very deep, thorough and meaningful conversation. It would have been maybe great to hear you sum up the conversation again at the end. Did you take notes of the conversation? The group steered the conversation really well after your prompts. In such instances I try to reduce my function to “scribe” from “lecturer”.

– you are a natural communicator.

– Maybe make two slides or a padlet that people can return to and add to. Maybe have an open conversation

Course Designer 5: Designing Inclusive Assessment

• You did well to gently acknowledge all the voices in the room, both through voice and through text to create an inclusive environment. Notice how people also shared emoji’s, which you can encourage others to do.

Moving forward/Evaluation:

I was pleased to have delivered a thought-provoking session, and to have kept delivery simple in terms of the image and format, and that it communicated clearly. However, in future sessions I will think about how I begin and end a session both to show an ethics of care for participants and to round out the messages at the end so there is a space for participants to reflect. Look at Shades of Noir’s resources on safe spaces.

References:

Dhonchak, A. 2019. Nike’s “Dream Crazier”- A new brand of Self Objectification. Engenderings. URL https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/gender/2019/05/28/nikes-dream-crazier-a-new-brand-of-self-objectification/ (accessed 1.3.22).

​hooks, B., 1992. Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance. Genius. URL https://genius.com/Bell-hooks-eating-the-other-desire-and-resistance-annotated (accessed 1.3.22).

Bryan-Wilson, J., 2017. Fray: art + textile politics. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago; London.

A really thought-provoking session to kick off our January series! I am not actively undertaking ‘research’ within UAL… or am I? The workshop was a good reminder of the degree to which our mindfulness of e.g. staff colleagues and our relationships may influence or hinder how we respond to difficult information that may come up in terms of how best to deliver our courses to students, and the need to keep an ‘independent’ outlook to navigate the course.

Inspiring introduction to the group! Rachel Marsden, our tutor was very generous in making us feel welcome and encouraging a safe and respectful space for exchange. The student group is so inspiring! I am really happy to be together, and already feel like I am learning from the different disciplines, backgrounds and approaches. A number of us are interested in decolonisation and object-based learning and it seems set to be a very rich journey together. It brought me back to my desire to adopt radical approaches to teaching, embedded in my research interests.

Lyndsay said that in studying there is more than one way to skin a cat (then, on reflection, said that there may only be two). As a cat lover I find the analogy slightly gruesome, but also intriguing in thinking about approaches to learning.

I am an Associate Lecturer in Fine Art at Camberwell. I am undertaking the PgCert at UAL to deepen and update my knowledge, understanding and approaches to teaching. I will share my responses to the coursework here!