I clearly remember the portable classrooms at my primary school, the brown carpet, the smell of chalk, the taste of Clag (yep!) and the teachers – some were inspiring, and others weren’t so much.
Our past teaching and learning experiences shape our approach to, and engagement with, further education, and personal characteristics such as social and cultural background, language/s spoken, gender/s, values and abilities do too.
I am writing this blog as part of a Graduate Certificate of Higher Education (Learning and Teaching) facilitated by my employer, Deakin University. The unit prompts us to reflect upon our teaching practice and describe how we develop and maintain effective and inclusive learning environments. The first (reflective) part is second nature to my introspective self. The second part makes me slightly uncomfortable because although I strive to continuously develop my teaching practice so it is as effective and inclusive as possible, there is always more to do. I can never meet 100% of learners exactly where they are, but I’ll never stop trying!
It was hard to find my way into this huge topic but at 2:30am one morning, lying awake in the dark, I realised that one common thread running through my lifelong learning and teaching journey, is storytelling. It’s hearing the experiences of others that enriches my own life and appreciation of diversity every single day. I have read widely about different forms of storytelling and one especially powerful book is Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta. He describes his method for examining global systems from an Indigenous Knowledge perspective by building each chapter:
…on oral culture exchanges: a series of yarns with diverse people who all make me feel uncomfortable. I yarn with those people because they extend my thinking more than those who simply know what I know (Yunkaporta 2019:15).
I’m wary of diluting the intended meaning in Yunkaporta’s words and applying them to other contexts but extending our thinking beyond what we know is essential in any domain. Hearing a rich diversity of stories and experiences from my students has been the single most powerful influence on my teaching so far. They prompt me to challenge my own biases and consider information from new perspectives. Most of these stories are shared during synchronous online or in-person classes, or during incidental conversations that happen immediately before or after a class, or on social media (more on that later). Student insights have inspired me to include more culturally and socially diverse case studies in my teaching material, provide multiple forms of feedback (formal, informal, written and audio), offer multi-platformed digital and non-digital options for engaging in seminars, and much more. Importantly, I have developed an acute appreciation of the highly diverse student groups I work with and know that an inclusive approach doesn’t involve only making adjustments for specific groups and individuals but ensuring learning experiences are as inclusive as possible for all. Hockings reinforces this approach and defines inclusive learning and teaching as…
…the ways in which pedagogy, curricula and assessment are designed and delivered to engage students in learning that is meaningful, relevant and accessible to all. It embraces a view of the individual and individual difference as the source of diversity that can enrich the lives and learning of others (Hockings 2010 cited in Hockings 2011:192).
Hockings goes on to describe the importance of not only focusing on what makes us different, but what makes us the same (Hockings 2011). For many students, fitting in is the goal and standing out for the wrong reasons is a great fear when it comes to engaging in learning activities. That is not to say that students want to be invisible, quite the opposite! It’s our role as teachers to get to know our students and hear their stories – more on this in the video below.
So, what are some of the stories that have shaped my teaching and learning experiences so far?
My Story
My own cultural and social experiences have influenced my identity as a teacher. I grew up in a small, rural town in Victoria (Australia) with my brother and parents. I spent a lot of time outdoors as a child and had my own garden plot. I’ve always been fascinated by nature and spent a lot of time being creative; drawing, taking photos, writing, creating imaginary businesses, and daydreaming. My dad told me repeatedly that I couldn’t make money being creative and that I should get a sensible job, so I went to university to study nursing. I only worked as a Registered Nurse for two-years before moving on to the ‘bright lights’ of pharmaceutical sales. From there, I co-owned a signwriting business with my ex-husband and did freelance photography and social media management work. After having children, I returned to university and studied a Graduate Diploma of Communications, which led me unexpectedly to teaching in higher education…
My Teaching Philosophy
My teaching philosophy is empathetic, student-centred, and heavily influenced by Media Studies 2.0 which emphasises student agency and a ‘learning by doing’ approach where students and teachers engage, experiment with, and collaborate using multiple media forms and platforms. My teaching and lifelong learning in digital spaces is also informed by my broad industry experience – telling stories about my former roles, communication strategies, work with clients and media making increases the relevance of learning materials and often inspires students to continue conversations and development of practical skills between and beyond formal units of study.
Working closely with students to develop industry relevant skills and draw parallels between theory and practice is my priority. That, and taking time to understand the unique motivations and challenges that students are facing.
Our Learning Environment and Pedagogies
Teaching primarily into digital media units means that I am very well situated to adapt to contemporary mediums and use them in my teaching! Our learning environment is shaped by multiple factors, including my characteristics as a teacher, learner characteristics, types of learning activities, institutional culture, assessment, digital and physical learning spaces, and learning supports. In a more traditional approach to learning and teaching in higher education, I might get to ‘know’ a student within the confines of an online Learning Management System (LMS), during seminars and/or by giving feedback on formal assessment tasks. The traditional approach can be limiting because simple things like discussion threads that can’t be viewed without clicking on individual comments can hinder and even discourage meaningful communication and collaboration.
Using a LMS necessarily forms part of my teaching toolkit, but I also engage with students across multiple platforms including Twitter, WordPress, Soundcloud and YouTube. We establish online learning communities using Twitter hashtags, which creates a rich and diverse conversation between teachers, peers, and industry professionals. It also provides multiple options for students to engage in the ways that suit them best. A student who asks a question on a discussion board within a private LMS will usually get one answer from a teacher but when a student asks a question on the unit hashtag on Twitter, they invariably get answer/s from their teachers, peers and sometimes, industry professionals too. Twitter is also flexible enough to allow private messages for those who prefer not to ask their question in a public forum. So, students experience platforms and create things using digital tools in a highly collaborative way with many opportunities for informal feedback to scaffold their learning toward formal assessment tasks. This speaks to David Gauntlett’s vision of Media Studies 2.0 and using media as triggers for experiences:
We need to make things with media in order to think more thoroughly about the opportunities and risks associated with different materials, tools and services, both within themselves, and when out in the world (Gauntlett 2015:3).
This approach also reflects Vygotsky-based sociocultural constructivism, which:
…focuses on the social and cultural environment, artifacts, tools, temporal elements, and engagement with both peers and – importantly – with more expert others to both explain how meaning making takes place and how learning occurs (Schrader 2015:24).
Of course, one essential element in any learning environment or pedagogy is students.
The Diversity of (my) Learners
Firstly, I have put ‘my’ in brackets above because learners do not belong to me; I am privileged to know them, teach them, and learn from them in the time we have together. I am also not an expert, and I seek to prompt, guide, give feedback and learn alongside students. One student who still inspires my approach today is Kate* (name has been changed). I have taught Kate in three units now and she is a dedicated and engaged student who is also Deaf. Using functions in Zoom such as ‘Allow multi-pin’ meant Kate could have an uninterrupted view of the Auslan interpreters, which eliminated problems with the on-screen view shuffling each time the active speaker changed. Working with Kate, and hearing feedback from students who speak English as a second language prompted me to consider other ways I could make seminars more accessible for all students. I now enable closed captions for every single Zoom session, including individual student meetings. This means if a student needs or wants extra visual support, it’s there without them having to ask. Of course, automated captions are never 100% accurate but they are improving.
My Digital Experience
My digital experiences are shared with students and interwoven so deeply with non-digital experiences that it’s impossible to view them as separate entities. We work with multiple platforms to develop our collective understanding of concepts and it continually amazes me to see what students produce.
Using readily available digital content creation tools (e.g., video production and editing, web and graphic tools), students are evolving into digital storytellers, weaving subject matter from their courses into narrative tapestries that illustrate a deeper understanding of what they are learning (Hall Giesinger et al 2017:2).
I thought the easiest way to share some stories about multi-platformed seminar experiences was in video form, so here goes…
There is so much more to explore around diversity and inclusion in teaching and learning and we all have inherent biases no matter how vehemently we seek to resist and challenge them. The key is to never stop hearing stories (and sharing our own) and challenging ourselves to think outside of what we know.
References
Alexander B, Adams Becker S, Cummins M, and Hall Giesinger C (2017), Digital Literacy in Higher Education, Part II: An NMC Horizon Project Strategic Brief. Volume 3.4, August 2017. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.
Gauntlett D (2015) Making Media Studies: The Creativity Turn in Media and Communications Studies, Peter Lang, New York.
Hockings C (2011) Hearing voices, creating spaces: the craft of the ‘artisan teacher’ in a mass higher education system, Critical Studies in Education, 52(2): 191-205, DOI: 10.1080/17508487.2011.572831
Schrader DE (2015) Constructivism and learning in the age of social media: Changing minds and learning communities. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2015(144), pp.23-35.
Yunkaporta T (2019) Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, The Text Publishing Company, Melbourne.
Header Image by javier trueba on Unsplash