RACE

Shades of Noir (SoN)

There is soo much juicy information and resources here! I had a chat with my colleague a few weeks ago and we discussed to contact SoN to see how we can work with them for our course specifically. Yet again, a brutal reminder… our everyday tasks and deadlines take over and it’s hard to find the time to reach out and networking… even within resources available at UAL so haven’t got around to it yet. It also reminded me we had a wonderful girl from TW (teaching within) taking part in our assessments a few years back. I will investigate if our course/programme can work with teaching within again.

As there is so much to explore here, the one thing I’d like to explore on top of teaching within, is the reading recommendation which can be useful to decolonising the curriculum as we often work from texts to create narratives for our students work which creating hair and makeup for characters within performance.

Hahn Tapper (2013) ‘A pedagogy of social justice education: social identity, theory and intersectionality’

One thing that caught my attention was the mentioning of power dynamics between students and staff and the first thing that came to my mind was confidence. I’m not sure why, but I feel that a teacher that is confident in themselves and in their role, don’t have the same need to be the superior.
The below quote is a great example of how I feel the dynamic in a classroom should be.
‘A teacher needs to create experiences with, and not for, students, integrating their experiences and voices into the educational experience itself’ (Freire 2006). ‘Teachers’ and students’ identities are thus tied to one another in an interlocked relationship’ (Rozas 2007).
I believe this is a great way of building community and for students to feel valued but most important to thrive and build confidence in creative thinking and practice.

‘Each team was then given a task and instructed to defeat the other team in the assignment. Once they began this pursuit, relations between the two subgroups exacerbated. When the two subgroups were instead given a common chore that necessitated their cooperation, their relations improved dramatically’ (Tapper 2013).

The discussion around the change of dynamics if the teams were either to defeat each other in an assignment or, given a common chore was interesting and could easily be used psychologically when thinking around assessments. Are we asking our students to compete against each other? Or, are we asking them to create collectively?

Ted talk video “Witness Unconscious Bias”

Here, Josephine Kwhal talks briefly about conscious and unconscious bias, and how, conscious bias needs to be recognised to make a difference.
My question is, do we do enough to recognise biases and breaking it? (I believe we don’t). I think one of the reasons are that we consciously withdraw from difficult conversations. I have experienced this myself as well as having had these conversations with other staff members who have expressed their worries bringing up discussions around race and other biases (related to staff and students) with the worry of saying the wrong thing, so instead remaining silent.

On our course, we have quite a small number of BAME students (in comparison to other courses), and therefore, our teaching staff has highlighted the worries having conversations around racial biases with students for fear of making the minority student group feel uncomfortable and perhaps targeted around the discussion.

So, my brief conclusion here, is to highlight a need for further training for all staff around difficult conversations in the classroom. The UAL breaking bias mandatory training is a start and attempt to make the biases conscious. However, I think there is a stronger need to build confidence around difficult conversations for staff. With confidence to talk, the unconscious will become conscious.

‘Retention and attainment in the disciplines: Art and Design’ Finnigan and Richards 2016.

As a Course Leader I have experience with the attainment data and have been through the processes of improving and closing attainment gaps.
One thing I learnt before reading this document is to fully understand the retention and attainment gaps the need to unpack and investigate deep into a specific course, year group or unit or is fundamental.

A brief introduction to my own case studies:
1. A few years ago, our attainment for BAME students was low and way under the benchmark and we were (as a course) flagged and needed to evidence what are we doing to improve the attainment gap? We were working closely with Terry Finnigan who was a great support to help unpack and understand the reasons. So, when unpacking the data, it showed that this specific year we only had 2x BAME students graduating. Meaning, one student had attained a first or upper second, the other student below. So, based on only one students achievement, the courses overall attainment was low. I found this very interesting.

2. Another hands-on experience I had with attainment gap was last year where there was a specific unit in the 2^nd year that was flagged as it scored low in comparison to all other units on the course. So again, trying to unpack the reasons what it was in this unit that increased the attainment gap.
This was a highly practical unit delivered during the worst time of the pandemic where we were in isolation and most students have travelled back home. All delivery had moved online, and students and staff struggled getting their heads around delivering a practical unit online.
The assessment was modified to suit online hand-in so we believed there was a fair delivery wherever the students were in the world.
However, we learnt that students abroad, mainly in China struggled to get hold of specialist materials during Covid (needed for our course, mainly prosthetics materials) and therefore couldn’t practice the skills we were delivering online. There were also network challenges where some students couldn’t participate in the online delivery, tutorials or formative feedback sessions. All possible reasons to why those international students attained lower in the assessment.
Specific for this year as well, we had a higher number of international and Chinese students so again, the numbers of international students played a big role here.
Of course this specific case can be linked directly to Covid but I find it interesting how important the unpacking of the data is.

My question / provocation linking my own experiences and the ‘gaps and area for future research’ which is mentioned on page 18;
‘There are a number of gaps within this research which warrant further development. Going forward there needs to be:

a further review of the raw data of students by ethnicity in Art and Design subjects to understand more about the differentials’

How much in-depth unpacking is really done in courses and units and how many factors are we considering outside the obvious inclusive practices?

Read the terms of reference from SoN around Race and choose an article to reflect on.

I chose the article on Teaching Within as I have mentioned it earlier in my blog. It was great to get further insight of the programme.
I was quite shocked to read there’s over 18,000 professors in British Universities. Less than a quarter are women, 1.7% BME women and only 0.6% are black.

As mentioned earlier I would like to work with TW on our course to offer placement and support.
I learnt that there are four communities that are eligible to access the programme:
1. Shades of Noir Graduates

2. Tell Us About It – a programme that embraces, affirms and present high achieving UAL students of colour voices through the creation of artifacts, where they reflect on their learning across their degrees.

3. Group for the Equality of Minority Staff

4. BAME talent day

I’m especially interested in learning more about Tell Us About It, as this is something we can encourage our own students to participate in.