‘Provocative Pedagogies’ – call for participation

We’ve just seen the call for participation in this great event at Lincoln – have a look!

PROVOCATIVE PEDAGOGIES: PERFORMATIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING IN THE ARTS

School of Fine & Performing Arts, University of Lincoln, UK
14 October 2017

Provocative peds

 

 

 

 

Organisers:

Dr Lee Campbell, Lecturer in Fine Art, University of Lincoln, UK
Lisa Gaughan, Director of Teaching & Learning and Senior Lecturer, University of Lincoln

Keynote: Fred Meller, Senior Lecturer, Performance:  Design & Practice, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London

PROVOCATIVE PEDAGOGIES: PERFORMATIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING IN THE ARTS is an international conference exploring the possibilities of the emerging field of ‘performative pedagogy’ and its potential as useful and applicable to enabling learning across a range of artistic and possibly other disciplines.

We welcome submissions from individuals and groups across all creative disciplines who deploy pedagogic approaches with an emphasis on performativity to drive learning. We invite papers, provocations and practical demonstrations that showcase good practice of making positive usage of performative teaching and learning.

Submitting a proposal:
We welcome proposals for 15-20 minute papers and practical workshops (to last up to 1 hour).

Please use the following format for proposals:
•            Name, institutional affiliation, contact details
•            Title of paper or workshop
•            250-word paper summary (max 1 page A4)
•            50-word contributor biography

Send proposals as a Word doc by email to Dr Lee Campbell, lcampbell@lincoln.ac.uk  and Lisa Gaughan, lgaughan@lincoln.ac.uk

Deadline: Friday 30th June 5pm. Notification of successful applicants: 2nd week of  July 2017

All abstracts will undergo a peer review process to ensure quality and relevance to conference theme and ambition.

Notes on organisers and keynote speaker:

Dr Lee Campbell is an artist, curator and academic. His practice plays with the parameters of contemporary art that draw attention to the performative and the participative within an art historical vernacular and seeks to theorise, articulate and demonstrate how we may construct meaning between politics of space and the politics of artist articulated through visual and verbal languages. He is very interested in pedagogical approaches which prioritise performative tactics.

Fred Meller’s research interests lie in the process of making performance as a dialogical design practice. Specifically, how the principles and characteristics of Performance can be used to interrogate, explore and expand the nature of teaching and learning in the subject area.  In particular, she has been researching disruptive pedagogy and relationships of power in teaching and learning and design practice.

Lisa Gaughan is the Director of Teaching and Learning for the School of Fine & Performing Arts University of Lincoln. She has worked at the University of Lincoln for 12 years and taught across a number of Degree Programmes. She has a background in Community Theatre and Student Engagement Initiatives. She recently led a project on Students’ Engagement in Curriculum Design which she will be presenting on at the National HEA Conference in Manchester in July 2017.

Invitation to Workshop on Co-operative Leadership

All academic and professional services staff and students are invited to a workshop on co-operative leadership in higher education on Thursday 25th May, 10-12pm, UL111 (University Library, 1st floor).

Researchers in the RiCES group are exploring the extent to which co-operative leadership and other co-operative practices are present in higher education institutions. The purpose of the research is to develop a qualitative self-evaluation tool that university staff and students can use to enhance and develop co-operative leadership and other co-operative practices in their workplaces and in other aspects of student life.

Over the past year, we have been developing our work through group discussions and interviews with people involved with the co-operative movement. This work has been substantiated with case study research in a co-operative school, an employee-owned high street retailer, a large grocery worker co-operative and a co-operative university in Spain

We have identified a number of core principles which appear to underpin co-operative leadership and other co-operative practices:

  • Knowledge – the production of knowledge and meaning by the organisation as a whole
  • Democracy – the levels of influence on decision making
  • Bureaucracy – not only administration but a set of ethical and moral principles on which administration is based
  • Livelihood – working practices that support the capacity to lead a good life
  • Solidarity – sharing a commitment to a common purpose inside and outside of the institution

The research from which these principles have been identified will be presented at the workshop.

You will have the chance to discuss the extent to which these core principles are present within your own working and learning and teaching environments. We will all then spend time designing a self evaluation tool by which these core principles might be recognised within our own and other higher education institutions.

This self evaluation tool can be seen as an alternative to the metrics and measures approach based on  positive methodologies and methods that are currently imposed on universities by the government.  The self evaluation tool that we are designing implies a more qualitative, humanist, critical-practical reflexive approach to evaluating and valuing the work that we do.

Conference paper on Co-operative Leadership and Higher Education

On 5th April, Mike Neary, Katia Valenzuela Fuentes (Nottingham) and Joss Winn presented a paper at The Co-operative Education and Research Conference, 5-6 April 2017, Manchester.  It is the first report from their Co-operative Leadership for Higher Education project.

This paper reports on recent research into co-operative leadership which aims to support co-operative higher education; where co-operative education is understood as the connection between the co-operative movement and co-operative learning (Breeze 2011). The research was carried out in three co-operatives: a co-operative school, a co-operative university, a workers’ co-operative, and an employee owned retail business. The research is framed within a set of catalytic principles established in previous research (Neary and Winn 2016): knowledge, democracy, bureaucracy, livelihood and solidarity. The results have been developed as a diagnostic tool for academics, other staff and students in higher education institutions to assess the extent to which they are already operating in co-operative manner and how these co-operative practices might be further developed. The ultimate aim of these activities is to establish a cooperative university. The research is funded by the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education.

Download the paper.

Upcoming critical education conferences and talks

News has crossed our desks about a few conferences to check out…

Universities, neoliberalism and inequality
28 April 2017
Goldsmiths, University of London

Radicalism and the University
13 and 14 June 2017
University of Essex, Colchester Campus

The 4th International Conference on Critical Pedagogies and Philosophies of Education
27 and 28 July 2017
University of Winchester

Critical Theories of Education Today
3-4 November 2017
Philadelphia, PA

And a talk nearby:

‘School and Principal Autonomy: resisting, not manufacturing the neoliberal subject’
10 May 2017
University of Nottingham, 1-2:30pm

Social Co-operatives and the Democratisation of Higher Education

On 5 April, Joss Winn (University of Lincoln) and Richard Hall (De Montfort University) presented a version of the introduction to their new book, Mass Intellectuality and Democratic Leadership in Higher Education at the Co-operative Education and Research Conference in Manchester.

The paper, ‘Social co-operatives and the democratisation of higher education’, explores how taking the idea of ‘mass intellectuality’ seriously opens up radical new ways of thinking about what higher education is and can be. It ‘develops a critical analysis of ‘intellectual leadership’ in the University, and identifies on-going efforts from around the world to create alternative models for organising HE and the production of knowledge’. Arguing that real democracy is possible in learning, knowledge production and the relationship between the university and society, it concludes with a ‘critical-practical response grounded in the form of “co-operative higher education”. This rests on the assertion that ‘social co-operatives’ offer an organizational form that values democratic participation and decision-making and would constitute the university as a social form of mass intellectuality re-appropriated by the producers of knowledge.’

For more information and to read the paper, click here.

To learn more about current research into co-operative higher education and leadership, see Joss Winn here, Richard Hall here and a the Co-op Leadership project site here.