Community pedagogies in action

Written by Laura Loyola-Hernández (School of Geography & LITE Fellow)

The ways in which we approach student-facing activities within universities arecomplex, multifaceted and diverse. We encounter mounting pressure to engage learners in accessible and inclusive ways which are both personal and tailored to students regardless of class size and staff workload. Given this context, it is often difficult for staff to find the time to reflect on their own pedagogical practices and engage with new/different scholarships related to Teaching and Learning.

The new spotLITE workshops seek to bridge this gap by providing a space for staff involved in student-facing activities and/or teaching to share cross-disciplinary approaches. My inaugural workshop explored why the concept of community is so important to Teaching and Learning and how we can consider arts-based methods for fostering belonging in diverse learning spaces. The activities in this workshop and some of the material produced are shared below. Instructions on how to employ these creative pedagogical practices and adapt them to your own activity are also given. Permission was given by attendees to have their photo taken for this blog. They were asked beforehand if they felt comfortable having their picture taken and we respected people’s choices if they declined. Photos on this blog also show the diversity of posters created by staff. I would like to thank LITE for providing me with this opportunity to share my teaching practices as well as my ongoing research, and in particular Robert Averies for his time, dedication and support to make this workshop happen.

Community-led pedagogies

This workshop was based on my LITE fellowship ‘Community-led pedagogies to diversify the curriculum’. During the project, I learned that creative research methods, such as ‘alphabet attack’ and poster creation, could be used as pedagogical tools within the classroom and beyond to improve group work and communication, and explore different opinions and answers without the fear of ‘getting it wrong’. Community-led pedagogies are co-created between students, staff and community collectives outside the university. They foster non-hierarchical relations between teacher and students by creating spaces where metrics are subverted. These types of pedagogical practices create a learning environment that goes beyond formal educational settings where both students and staff leave the shared space with reflections and action points to enact change. Simple and practical methods such as the ones used in this workshop also contribute to enabling wider conversations around sense of belonging and nurturing community within and beyond the university with pedagogical tools such as the Whose Uni? Poster available here.

Creative pedagogical approaches

 This workshop focused on two of the research methods I employed during my LITE project: alphabet attack and poster creation. I’ve adopted these techniques from the Voices that Shake! Guidebook. It was important that participants experienced how these pedagogical techniques work from a learner's perspective and how little to no prior preparation is needed to implement such techniques in seminars, tutorials and other student-facing activities/workshops. For both activities you will need paper and pen/markers, but you may also adopt a hybrid format by using a shared document/PPT that participants can fill out live.

For the workshop, I invited participants to sit in different groups, but this activity can also be done by individuals. This last point is especially important when we have participants who for accessibility reasons need to work separately. Specific instructions on how to carry out the alphabet attack can be seen below. This is a good activity to do at the beginning to serve as an ice-breaker and start conversations on the topic to be covered on that day. Instructors must think of one or more prompts related to the topic before the activity. These will be shared with participants, who will then have time to go through the alphabet as a group.

This activity encourages team building and communication as participants need to communicate with each other, listen, reflect and agree what word(s) to put next to each letter. These are important skills for students to develop throughout university. Instructors often don’t appreciate practical ways in which students can learn such important team-building tools prior to being put in a group as part of an assessment. Activities such as the alphabet attack encourage participation and open discussion without the fear of judgement. Alphabet attacks also highlight the importance of recognising that we live in a complex and often contradictory world. Giving groups the same prompt but seeing the diversity of answers allows flexibility and demonstrates there are no right or wrong answers. Such activities allow us to move from the binaries of Yes/No and correct/incorrect. This type of activity also creates accessible pathways for participants to get to know each other.

We followed this activity by creating posters. Based on the words written during the alphabet attack, groups were asked to imagine an activity/event they would like to see the university run if finances were not an issue. They needed to create the poster for such an event. This activity led participants to reflect on their own pedagogical practice and consider how they could apply such techniques in their own working context. Attendees created posters for a variety of events, such as those encouraging a sense of belonging amongst the Leeds community, activities to welcome new staff and morning workouts to start the day.

Community in action

I’ve used both techniques with diverse groups ranging from outreach workshops with Year 12 and 13s, undergraduate students, postgraduate researchers and university staff. I’ve learned that using these pedagogical and research techniques demonstrates their adaptability to be implemented to any discipline and student-related activity. By using arts-based approaches and asking participants to dream/think beyond traditional parameters, we allow for more radical and innovative answers to the task at hand. Beyond that, I’ve seen how such activities change learning and teaching dynamics for practitioners and participants alike. Nurturing open communication, listening and reflection among those present fosters a sense of belonging and inclusivity that traditional learning techniques might restrict. They establish and/or contribute to building a base mutual understanding which seeks possible paths of imagining alternative joyful futures.

 

If you'd like to know more about the approaches in this blog, please send me an email at l.t.loyolahernandez@leeds.ac.uk.

Interested in participating in the next session on Thursday 18th July? Register for spotLITE 2 here.