Observations

Peer Observation by Dalia Dawood

Gabriel, this is a fascinating and comprehensive lesson on the importance of design ethics and research justice. You have taken complex, philosophical ideas and presented them in a clear and engaging manner. The slides did not feel too cluttered or burdened with information, and I’m sure you complimented this with your own explanations.

One of the strengths of your lecture is how you managed to take abstract and theoretical concepts and make them concrete through tangible examples to help students understand design complicity and the ethical considerations with relevant contextual information.

I understood clearly what affordances and dissaffordances are and how they work because of the excellent examples you showed. Using the classroom as a design setting for discussion is clever, too, as it brings students’ awareness to the environment and how their own learning is being shaped unconsciously through the design decisions in the room – I’m sure this must have generated engagement and fascinating discussions. Similar question to you regarding participation, as I noted you have included direct and open-ended questions: did you find a lot of people responded to you or did you have alternative platforms for gathering wider feedback and discussion from quieter members, such as Padlet etc?

In terms of what you wanted to get feedback on, I think you’re right that there is a lot of information – it’s all important and relevant, but perhaps a lot for students to take in during two hours. You effectively peppered in short breaks, which is crucial to ensure students remain focused, but I did find that there were a lot of complex definitions and theories that can be a lot for students to absorb through a one-sided framework of a lecture. In the key terms section, could you consider perhaps splitting the class into smaller groups who each take a key term and attempt to define it visually, using your slides and their own research and discussion on their ethical design implications, then feedback to the room? This could deepen their learning if students explain the terms to each other, and it shows engagement with the ideas by talking and doing rather than listening.

The workshop section was well-structured with clear instructions and a good variety of platforms and options for mapping environments. Kudos for bringing a former student to show and explain their work, I find that this gives students (especially BA) clarity and reassurance.

While I think it can be helpful to have slides showing examples and explaining the purpose of the task, I would echo your advice that less is more in this case – perhaps condense these down to allow students more time and space to be creative and generate ideas. They could even reflect on and share what they felt were the learning aims of the task at the end when presenting their maps, rather than having this told to them. The results slide looks great and shows evidence of learning and understanding in what was clearly a fun and very informative session.   

Response by Gabriel Wulff:

Dalia,

I’m delighted to hear that the presentation resonated with you! The aim was to demystify design ethics and research justice, making these topics accessible. It’s great to know that the balance of content and space was effective and that the examples used were apt in clarifying concepts such as affordances and disaffordances.

The classroom’s use as a case study is intended to trigger reflective thinking about the spaces we often take for granted. As for participation, , while the lecture format was primarily unidirectional, I incorporated questions to invite interaction, I forgot to mention there was a Miro board attached in which students could participate.

Regarding the information density, your suggestion to have students work in groups to visually explore key terms is excellent. It encourages active learning and can help them internalize these concepts more deeply. Plus, peer-to-peer teaching is a powerful tool for understanding, thanks so much for the great suggestion.

For the workshop section, I agree with your point on the slides. Minimizing content to maximize creativity is a fine balance, and I’ll look to streamline this further. Inviting former students to share their experiences is a practice I find invaluable, and I’m glad it resonates with current students too.

Your feedback is incredibly constructive, especially the idea of students reflecting on their learning aims post-task. It promotes critical thinking and self-assessment, which are key skills in any learning journey. Thanks for the thoughtful reflection on the session. I’m looking forwar to implement these ideas

My Observation of Dalia Darwood’s Session

Dalia what an amazing session you crafted! The session successfully immersed MA Journalism students in the nuances of food journalism, highlighting its role as a cultural, identity, and political medium.

You have provided a comprehensive analysis of food journalism with a critical angle looking at the political and cultural agency of food jounralism. If I was a journalism student I would have felt inspired to go out and do it!

The topics covered, including the examination of how current events, authenticity versus appropriation, gentrification and the analysis of food-related articles provided a critical and nuanced account of food journalism. In my opinion this is the most important take-away of your lesson: how journalism is always already a political implication and thus focusing on the power of food, how it connects to culture, identity, place, gentrification, colonialism, and the list goes on. In other words, to relate it to my topic, something like the ethics of writing food journalism 🙂 

The structure of the session is clear, starting with introductory questions to engage the students, peppered by a variety of activities at different moments, including the analysis of existing pieces and the generation of new article ideas.

The use of case studies was particularly effective in demonstrating the real-world application of theoretical concepts. The focus on Palestinian food amongst others gives the students a tangible, current and important example.

Your approach to using both your work and other writers’ pieces provided a rich tapestry of examples and made me very hungry – Dolmas are one of my favourite parcel foods ever. In all seriousness though, the students must have felt great a food journalist showing them the ropes.

The dynamic learning environment was achieved with a conversational style of direct questions to the students but this also illustrated the diverse angles from which food journalism can be approached.

Eliciting student participation through direct questioning and discussion is something I often want to do but feel like there are always students that don’t participate. Did you find they all participated? If not, finding ways and other angles of participation, using technology and other mediums integrated into the lesson plant might engage more students in different ways maybe allowing shy ones to speak. 

In relation to your questions about Cohesiveness: While the session covered an extensive array of articles and indeed it could be an overwhelming amount of information for the students, there was a clear red thread going through the totality of the examples showcased.

At moments when reading the lecture, I felt like a few points of synthesis and transition onto the next part would help guide the student. In other words, some signposting – this is what we just analysed, next up we will look at this… kind of vibe. I’m sure when delivering the lecture these were automatically uttered but it might be helpful to add these onto the slides.

I also thought maybe you don’t need all the examples for a 1.5hr session : rather looking at less examples with more depth? And then allowing students to imagine in groups and discuss ideas, I can see an article about our canteen at LCC emerging 🙂 

I am aware the fire got in the way of your very detailed plan but allowing more “space” for unexpected eventualities and emergence of student ideas might be something you can integrate into your lesson plans sometimes less is more. And am only saying this as you requested how to refine it.

Overall, this lesson plan made me want to be at your class and made me hungry for more 

Tutor Observation by John O’Reilly

Record of Observation or Review of Teaching Practice

Session/artefact to be observed/reviewed:
Size of student group: 8
Observer: John
Observee: Gab

Part One

Observee to complete in brief and send to observer prior to the observation or review: 
I am meeting a tutorial group who are handing in their collaborative project next week. We have been mapping elephant and CAstle to provide new students with more background to the area when they first arrive 

What is the context of this session/artefact within the curriculum? Unit 3 collaborative unit 

How long have you been working with this group and in what capacity? about 7 weeks as tutor 

What are the intended or expected learning outcomes? the students are expected to collaborate and then reflect on how that collaboration went 

What are the anticipated outputs (anything students will make/do)? They will output a series of postcards and maps but tomorrow we are making sure they are ready for the final push to submission 

Are there potential difficulties or specific areas of concern? YEs Minnie one of the students has many special needs and will have an aider with him. He suffers from seizures.

How will students be informed of the observation/review? I let them know through teams 

What would you particularly like feedback on? I always worry I dominate too much

How will feedback be exchanged? Not sure

Part Two
Observer to note down observations, suggestions and questions:

The Pedagogy of Values

Gab introduces the lesson by asking how everyone is, setting the tone for listening, the sensory experience of an ethics of learning through which the session is created. He begins with housekeeping, reminding the class that though he is away at a conference over the next week he is accessible via Discord – it is an underrated practice to note for the class our own ongoing research, that we are also researchers and learners.

He focuses the students on setting the agenda for their class, for itemizing questions and tasks, inviting them to organise themselves. It is palpable throughout that while Gab asks questions, augments and extends student observations, the pedagogy is a continuing invitation for students to reflect and lead activities.

There is one topical issue of mutual respect (and disrespect) that Gab brings into focus for the group. It is handled sensitively, on the surface it is presented as a failure of ‘process’, an episode that undermines the values of the project and the group: “There were some things placed on the Miro board and that are no longer there.” He highlights the importance of documentation not only of group process but each person’s process. “This is a safe space. All I want to say is that there are things that were there on Miro, but work has been taken off. This is important because it may be something you want to use in future.” This lesson update is not just about project archiving, it’s about each student being heard and being seen, being recognised through their contribution, their work.

The different elements of the agenda are gradually assembled with Gab – project outcomes, documentation, roles, and the structure of the final project document. Agenda-setting becomes a dynamic, collaborative, design artefact and there is a degree of vulnerability for the teacher in the collective assembling in real-time, of not-knowing in advance. But it makes the student group tangible and visible in the various open documents on the screen, as Gab arranges and making sense of their top-of-mind concerns and questions.

While one of the student team navigates the Miro board, Gab reviews the project decisions made by the students, and probes the students’ understanding of their decision-making. Each student gets space to fill out their own part of the research story that is appearing on the screen.

Gab plays back their suggestions about the ‘membership’ component of their project, suggesting an alternative ‘less capitalistic’, more community-based version of the traditional retail practice where consumers earn points through purchasing drinks in cafes. The issue of ethics and values with which Gab began the class re-emerges as a central thread through the session.

This issue of values as a key epistemology of the project becomes very tangible when he makes visible the university as an actor in this research process: firstly by reminding students how UAL is seen in different ways by the community within which the student project is happening; and secondly how their project which incorporates the observations of the community can be useful for the university, “we are not shy of being critical and helpful, the document could be presented as a proposal as part of the design justice project.” (Perhaps there is an opportunity to introduce the idea of ‘the critical friend’, useful to describe this relation to the university, and perhaps also ways in which students can bring an ethic of care to each other’s feedback).

Gab is also really effective on the detail of the work presentation, noting how headlines matter when it comes to helping others understand project steps, stages and what is at stake in each part of the process.

What is also critical when working with students on client-briefs is attending to processing the affective dimension of practice in the encounter with a client. In this case he draws attention to how the students might address in a process document how they felt sadness when the intended collaboration didn’t work out. In art school, and elsewhere, the topic of failure has had currency and been celebrated (sometimes reified) through the outcome of learning from mistakes. Failure as part of a pedagogy isn’t an instrumental benchmark, it is ontological and affective.

Gab’s values-driven teaching approach complicates the instrumental idea that the world is an object of study, ‘out there’. A great example of this is how he brings into student-focus, “the complex relations the university has in the area,” linking this to the concept of ‘solidarity’. He asks them why they mapped solidarity as part of the project. One of the students, Minnie, replies that it was about looking, “how you are and where you are.” That was such a sophisticated expression of criticality and understanding that articulates the value of university as an education for life-long learning.

Gab also organises with the students how they are going to work together on representing the secondary research, highlighting that delegation and ownership is part of a collaborative practice.

He checks that they are clear on the learning outcomes, and on the deadline and most importantly for a group of young students, checks-in and highlights the affective element of this project. “Trust yourselves. Do the best you can do. Create specific moments of feedback. Give space for things not-to-be-perfect.” There is so much complex pedagogy happening in the session, not least how Gab integrates the client-based part of the project with teaching and learning requirements, and with the wider ethics and values embedded in the course curriculum.

Lambert, C. (2012) ‘Redistributing the sensory: the critical pedagogy of Jacques Rancière’, Critical Studies in Education, 7:2.

Wenger, E. (2000) ‘Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems’, Organization, 7.

Part 3: My response to John

Facilitating this session was challenging due to the complex dynamics, including instances of bullying and disrespect within the group. I often find that I respond better to critical feedback than to positive reinforcement, so it was interesting and encouraging to hear that I managed the situation well. Reflecting on this, I realize I should apply the advice I give my students: be confident, do your best, and allow space for mistakes. Thank you, John.

I have always seen teaching as learning and learning, and have lived by the moto if Im not learning something from my students then I aint teaching them right! Effective teaching involves creating an environment where students feel valued and respected, 

As discussed by Wenger (2000), learning is a social process that thrives in communities of practice, where students actively engage with and support each other. By emphasizing values and ethics, I aim to nurture a space where students can express themselves openly and develop a sense of belonging and care for eachother.

Incorporating the politics of care into my teaching involves developing small but significant mechanisms (“tiny mechanisms of care”) that demonstrate care and attentiveness to students’ needs. These mechanisms include actively listening to students, encouraging collaborative agenda-setting, and addressing issues of respect and inclusivity.This was a sensitive group because there were cultural differences that were taking the shape of harassment. This issue was dealth with a disciplinary procedure which contrastingly took so long and was carelessly put in place. Made me think of Abolitionism and Care.

The notion of ‘care’ (Dikova, McMahon and Savage, 2022) in education extends beyond addressing immediate classroom dynamics. It also involves helping students navigate the their learning experiences, as seen in how we discussed handling the disappointment of a collaboration not working out. This approach aligns with the critical pedagogy of Jacques Rancière, which emphasizes redistributing the sensory and enabling students to experience education as a transformative process (Lambert, 2012). By encouraging students to trust themselves and embrace imperfections, I hope to instill confidence and resilience.

Lambert, C. (2012) ‘Redistributing the sensory: the critical pedagogy of Jacques Rancière’, Critical Studies in Education, 7:2.

Wenger, E. (2000) ‘Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems’, Organization, 7.
Dikova, MacMahon and Savage (2022) Love and the Politics of Care: Methods, Pedagogies and Institutions, Bloomsbury