“When these basic principles of love form the basis of teacher-pupil interaction the mutual pursuit of knowledge creates the conditions for optimal learning. Teachers, then, are learning while teaching, and students are learning and sharing knowledge.”
bell hooks, Teaching Community, Heart to Heart: Teaching with Love
The subject I teach, illustration, is not the most important thing in the world but it is lovely. Love is at the centre of my illustration practice, in my work I engage with empathy. The core theme is: ‘I want to understand you, do you want to understand me?’
The principles I practice in illustration are also evident in my teaching practice. They are:
Lifelong learning
Engaging in an on-going reflective practice, maintaining curiosity and desiring learning.
Interconnectedness
Engaging in dialogues. Being aware of your position and influence on others, the subject area, and the world.
Planned and safe anxiety
Creation of environments where ‘unsafe’ ideas can be practiced ‘safely’. Building the confidence and bravery of students.
Celebration
Emphasising the value of student ideas. Celebrating successes. Being generous with time, empathy and love. A focus on nourishing on education. Teaching as gift-giving.
“…the university has to become, in the broadest sense of the idea, an ecological university. The university has to become more connected, externally and internally, with the ecosystems with which it is entangled.”
Ron Barnett, ‘Towards the Ecological University’
I use studio based pedagogy. In ‘The Design Critique and the Moral Goods of Studio Pedagogy’ (Mcdonald and Michela, 2019), the authors identify three positive outcomes from studio practice based learning: student development, instructor self-cultivation, stakeholder investment.
I would like to frame these goods differently, to challenge the hierarchical approach of student-teacher-industry, apply a Marxist critical lens, and also to combine these ideas with the concept of the ‘ecological university’. This is what makes sense to me: the near, the here, and the far.
The Near
The ‘baggage’ we bring into the classroom or studio. Our intentions and preconceptions. Includes tacit knowledge, lived experience, instructor expertise.
The Here
The act of engaging in education, the relationship between student and educator. Dialogue, mutual knowledge exchange, haptic activity.
The Far
Where the student goes after class. To industry, to other educational institutions and beyond.
Each of these things pulls on and pushes the other, like the ecology described by Mcdonald and Michela. When we bring too much of the ‘near’ to the ‘here’, the learning can be in a direction that makes the ‘far’ further away.
This is where I am so far, and what is important to me. Some concepts I would like to explore further: synaesthetic learning, imaginary spaces, and play.