Seeking freedoms

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Last week one of our students quietly asked if she could teach a session at the start of my next class. “Just a little idea” she said, typically minimising her contribution and occupation of space – like so many young women have been conditioned to do – “of course”, I said.

During her session, she held the room beautifully with her humility and thoughtfulness. And we spoke afterwards about the importance of role-modelling humility, hesitation and pause in leadership positions – if we have any chance at all of bringing about degrees of environmental or social justice.

The next week we joined by local activist Loïs Acton in our class, and it got me thinking about how we more confidently build student-led pedagogy[1] into our studio culture.  

Loïs established the Bermondsey Lamp Post Free School[2]. She spoke about accessibility in education, about anti-institutionalised and responsive curriculum. I was lit up like a fire-fly.

Here is Lois talking about her work at the Bermondsey Lamp Post Free School

The Free School Movement of the 1960s emerged through a collective desire to break from conventional education[3]. Influenced by progressive student-led philosophies and countercultural ideologies, the founders believed that traditional schools were stifling creativity and personal-growth. They wanted Freedom.

Loïs encouraged us to think about ourselves as learners[4], she also encouraged us to understand ourselves as knowledge creators and facilitators of other people’s learning[5]. When a student walked in late, she said without shame or judgement “Life is complicated, we are all late sometimes, take a seat”. Loïs understood the differences in the room. She ignited ideas in me about freedom, respect and transformation in education.

“Knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry beings pursue with the world and with others.” Paulo Freire [6]

how we feel about the world

Inspired by Loïs, my brave student, Paulo Freire’s work, and my own PGCert “hopeful inquiry”, I decided to change the plan for the following week, and ask the students to own the space and time, in their own way. I asked them to reflect on any pedological ideas that had excited them, and facilitate some shared learning, if they wanted to.

Image from Course Moodle Page for this session

It was not ground-breaking, it didn’t “navigate the dissonance involved in performing an inclusive agenda within an apparatus determined by a competitive, neoliberal ‘market fundamentalism’”[6]. But it was something. It signalled an exploration into the nesting potential inside openness, uncertainty and generosity. While it did not successfully bring every voice into the room (this is something I am working on), I felt it was the beginnings of a sort-of “solution to the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.”[1].

We sat on the floor, someone cried, we listened to a story of brain injury and fear, we designed a new learning space together. These 2 hours confirmed that the students enter this MA with a wealth of knowledges, experiences and emotions which we so shallowly understand.

Thank you Chris Rowell for observing this session as my PGCert tutor. Your reflections have helped me chisel away at the questions I am now returning to in my teaching practice:

  • In the pursuit of parity and risk-reduction, where is the space for this “restless emergence” of more plural knowledges?
  • Are we “trapping students in a web of consistency”[7], in higher education?
  • Who decides?
  • Who is missing?
  • What is freedom, and for whom?
Ode to Collective Learning. Collaboration with Ella Britton and Ravensbourne University Film Students

References:

[1] Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Herder and Herder,

[2] https://geo.coop/archives/freeschool.htm

[3] Miller, R. (2002). Free Schools, Free People: Education and Democracy after the 1960s. Albany: State University of New York Press.

[4] Coffield, F. Moseley, D. Hall, E. and Ecclestone, K. (2004). Learning Styles and Pedagogy in Post-16 Learning: A Systematic and Critical Review. Learning and Skills Research Centre. 

[5] Illich, I. (1971) Deschooling Society. Harper Colophon, New York.

[6] Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Herder and Herder.

[7] Addison, N. (2014). Doubting Learning : Outcomes in Higher Education Contexts. NSEAD.