What Is My Teaching Practice ???

During the first lecture we had to present a 5min presentation, look at 1-2 teaching practices, as well introduce ourselves to the group and respectively speak about our academic as well as professional experience. In comparison to my peers, when it comes teaching as well professional experience I’m not as experienced. I did at first feel out of place as I felt like there wasn’t much that I could offer when we spoke about our own teaching practices but with an accumulation of diverse backgrounds and a wealth of knowledge I think that listening to my peers speak about their teaching practises and their backgrounds, what has,  or hasn’t worked well, different opinions on teaching methods it  has been quite informative and has made me think  that when I do eventually start teaching how I could use their experience to inform my teaching practice.

What I looked at was Benjamin’s Blooms Cognitive Taxonomy and jean Piagets Theory on cognitive constructivism and viewed both models and measured it against how their theories are conceptualised within an academic setting and the strengths and weaknesses. I thought that although both theories offer the elementary aspect of learning within a higher education setting; with the application of knowledge when applied it leads to exclusion because knowledge and intelligence cannot only be measured by only looking at a very westernised framework which subjugates and frames other forms of knowledge from different cultures as inferior; despite these civilisations pre-existing before western civilisation became more prominent.  This led to me researching Ferdinand de Saussure Theory on Semiotics within the context of education, language, as a powerful tool can be used to further alienate, students when it comes to internationalisation; BAME students from the UK.  My main issue with Jean Piaget’s theory and the ideas surrounding intelligence is that its deeply problematic as it is rooted in Eugenics and craniology.

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I knew that there were lots of different methodologies within teaching practice, but I wasn’t quite sure how its pragmatically implemented into teaching.  From the group discussion we discussed teaching methods such as the Anthropological method to teaching with an ethnographical lensed focus on multiculturalism that looks at the social as well as the cultural scope of the environment and how it impacts the pedagogical environment.  I thought it was interesting to learn that Bell hooks, who’s book Art on my mind since been recommended at university has been a staple point of reference that I go back to, I did not recognise that she does not use a capital for her surname as capitals = an act of dominance the colonization of language.  

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I found this beautiful painting, illustration by Margo Humphries, print maker, illustrator and art teacher whilst looking for art books I came across Invisibility blues by Michelle Wallace’s,

“Our capacity to value art is severely corrupted and perverted by a politics of the visual that suggest we [black artists] must limit our responses… Clearly it is only as we move away from the tendency to define ourselves in reaction to white racism that we are able to move toward that practice of freedom which requires us first to decolonize our minds. We can liberate ourselves and others only by forging in resistance identities that transcend narrowly defined limits.”

I fundamentally believe that challenging our experience through art is liberating but this must also be reflected in the language, and what must be looked at is how and what type of knowledge disseminated which is an important discursive tool.  The need to having social solidarity through other groups thus an interdependent coalition to monopolise on opportunities for social change. In Audre Lorde’s book themaster’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house she promotes a counterhegemonic essentialist politics of representation although Lorde speaks about (Constructions of black identity) the need and effort to reclaim the past equates a critical resistance of remembrance ……   

Difference been merely tolerated but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which we can creatively speak like a dialect – Audre Lorde

Bibliography

1. B. Bryan, S. Ddadzie, S. Scafe, Heart Of The Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain, Verso Books (14 Aug. 2018)
2. M. Wallace, Invisibility Blues: From Pop to Theory (Radical Thinkers), Verso; Reprint edition (15 Nov. 2016)
3. A. Lorde, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House, (Penguin Classics) 1st edition (22 Feb. 2018)