Love and care are crucial for establishing a sense of belonging. For this week’s discussion, I read/watched three resources – Bell Hook’s introduction to her book, All about Love, Laura D’Olimpio’s Ethics of Care and Lindsay Jordan’s Love & Belonging in the Educational realm (lecture and notes).
It was interesting to read both Hook’s observation about the gender imbalance when it comes to theorising love (it seems to have been the domain of men for many years) and D’Olimpio’s explanation about the Ethics of Care, a feminist approach to ethics challenging traditional theories as male centric, that focus on universal, rational and logical rules whilst dismissing care and emotions that are stereotypically associated as ‘feminine’ and unimportant.
I fully endorse the Ethics of Care, as one cannot apply a moral blanket when interacting with a diverse group of students. Students have different circumstances and needs and the care we take to address this has to come from a place of understanding and individual response. Lindsay Jordan also advocates for this in her notes about Love and Belonging in the educational realm, where she says that ‘It makes little sense to speak of the student experience as something singular. Experience is something that an individual goes through.’
I attended the discussion for this session with a different tutor group and it was really lovely to meet and interact with a new tutor and group of peers. Whilst we were discussing Hooks and D’Olimpio, it was observed by one of my peers how many of the new ADF (Academic Development Fund) roles that UAL recruited for in 2019 were filled by women. This is particularly interesting for me as I was one of the new ADF recruits and there is a huge emphasis on pastoral care embedded in my role. I think it’s important to note that there is an overwhelming feeling amongst staff that a lot of decision making that happens by senior management (who are by and large white and male) bears little relation to the reality on ground, where we have to navigate the rules to provide care and create a sense of belonging for each individually, albeit not always successfully.
In smaller breakout groups, we were asked to think about this question – ‘How do we include care within our teaching?’ Seems like such an obvious thing that one would automatically do, but really sometimes is overlooked. There were a range of answers and specific themes emerged – some focused on the virtual learning environment – I’ll summarise below as I think it’s a great list to look at when planning a session or indeed the larger curriculum –
- Integrating pastoral and taught sessions
- Buddy scheme
- Sign-posting – academic support
- Drop in sessions/Open door policy
- Personal Tutor System
- Establishing mutual responsibility between students, suggesting they are responsible for each other’s learning too
- Community social building event/activities
- Making academia accessible
This last point was picked up upon and we discussed Intellectualisation v anti-intellectualisation. I am of the opinion that you have to cater to different learning needs. That doesn’t imply anti-intellectualisation but employing different methodologies and resources to aid your students’ understanding and learning. Surely it shows that you care and are trying to make your teaching more inclusive and accessible.
Another important point is the use of language. In the Inclusive T&L unit, one of my colleagues shared an article that I feel is relevant here – How compassionate language can enrich your life by G. Lains. Lains concludes that ‘words that come from a place of true love and kindness can be transformative in the most positive ways in a person’s life‘. By creating a safe space where students can interact without judgement, we are creating a space where they feel they belong and feel supported.
As part of my ADF role, I made a few initiatives to address pastoral care and community building.
Bridge time
Once or twice a term, I offer one to one sign up sessions on the bridge at CSM, which moved online during pandemic. The idea was to be more visible (hence the location) where students could informally drop in and talk about anything they wanted to, whether they needed extra pastoral support, a tutorial or just a chat. It was felt that if tutors are sat in the office, students often feel intimidated to approach them, whereas the bridge is a more approachable shared space that belongs to us all. As online teaching eliminated any visibility tutors had outside of scheduled teaching time, the online bridge time sessions proved very popular.
Culture Club/CSM Textiles Club
‘Culture Club’ started as a community building exercise for year 1 students, where as a group we would visit galleries and museums to see exhibitions that would enhance their learning experience for particular projects. It was seen as a chance to interact with students outside of campus and enjoy ‘London as a resource’ together, especially as this is often the first time a majority of students will visit or live in the city. Students were also invited to contribute to a shared Moodle page that listed relevant resources in terms of exhibitions, suppliers, museum listings etc.
As the year progressed, we realised that the field trips were harder to organise within the demands of an already full time table, and students couldn’t spare the time for it. The Moodle page was rarely accessed as Moodle can often be clunky and uninspiring and it was hard for students to contribute to it without admin access.
With the introduction of new platforms during the pandemic, we moved this resource list to Padlet as ‘Things seen and heard‘ where it is much easier for students and other staff members to contribute. We also started the CSM Textiles Club on Instagram that made sharing and communication a lot easier.
During the pandemic as we moved to remote teaching, the importance of ‘love and care’ and ‘online communities’ really came to the forefront. As students suffered from isolation and low morale, tutors and universities came up with various ways to support them. I attended a great talk by Vicki Fong, MA Textiles tutor at the RCA called ‘Designing for online communities‘. Amongst other initiatives, Vicki started strength training with her students to promote well being through exercise.
As part of SIP, I want to explore community building initiatives further with the aim to foster belonging to the course and interaction between all the year cohorts, where although some ideas may be tutor initiated, they eventually become more student led where students support each other.
Self care for staff
Something to consider is also self care for staff involved, the pandemic has really blurred the boundaries between our personal and professional time. Being a fractional staff member myself, I have struggled to ‘log off’ on days on which I don’t work for the university and focus on my professional practice. There is a culture of ‘always being available’ that really needs to be addresses within course teams without feelings of guilt creeping in.
Bibliography:
Hooks, B. 2000. All About Love. HarperCollins, New York
D’Olimpio, L. 2019. Ethics of Care [Online]
https://ethics.org.au/ethics-explainer-ethics-of-care/
J, Lindsay. 2020. Love & Belonging in the Educational Realm
G. Lains. 2020. How compassionate language can enrich your life [Online]
https://thriveglobal.com/stories/how-compassionate-language-can-enrich-your-life/
Fong, V. 2020 Designing for Online communities [Online]
https://the-dots.com/events/new-designers-designing-for-online-communities-2505