Case Study #2 > An Autonomous Syllabus

This Case Study is responding to: Knowing and meeting the needs of diverse learners (V1, V3).

During my job interview I acknowledged the dichotomy we face, teaching eco-social justice to students who’ve paid £10,000-£28,000 to sit in the room. These tools and knowledges should belong to everyone. How can we explore possibilities for more pluriversal futures without welcoming everyone’s imaginations[1]?

When I talk about the needs of diverse learners, I am referring to people who might not have been afforded the chance to enrol inside Higher Education. Prevented perhaps by:

• Cost
• Age
• Race
• Location
• Caring responsibilities
• Insecurities about self or future
• Neurodiversity or disability
• Other intractable eco-social injustices

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Corridor classes
After reading ‘Studio Pedagogy’ [4] I questioned where and what a studio could be. During this project, students organised a Work-In-Progress Show. Instead of traditionally exhibiting work, they created a generative workspace in a corridor where they invited collaborations and creative exchange.

• To reach more diverse learners, our course should be a more visible, permeable and generative space within our community. For example, a shop window, a library or public park. Creating more serendipitous connection for people not afforded a place at university.

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Who teaches who
We frequently use “paralleling and dovetailing” techniques in our Pedagogy[5]. Merging teacher and learner, levelling hierarchies, and learning through experiences. During this work our students met local people that became their mentors, their students and friends. The lines between power and knowledges blurred:

• To keep open a critical enquiry into the relevance of our work, and the presence of the excluded, we must build a more diverse course team that includes people local to Elephant and Castle. This might also include people working at LCC on none-teaching contracts.

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Brave futures
From safety to bravery [6] – I am now asking myself, who decides who deserves a place here?

• How might we shrink down the University into a parking space, or post-box. A street university for continual connection.
• How might we develop scholarships directly benefitting local people affected by eco-social injustices.
• How might this course become a distributed ecosystem, alive in more accessible places (homes, corner-shops) at weekends or evenings. Welcoming to all those interested to creating paths towards a diverse and equitable future.

I recognise an assumption here that the challenge is merely one of access. We must never assume that what we do is static, valid, or void of continual critique. Layers of complex inequalities create barriers for people accessing further education, and also people should always have choice. In this work we are making small steps in a much larger enquiry into our complicity within eco-social injustices. The quest continues.

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^{Image Credit : Screenshot from the Autonomous Syllabus online}

^{[1] Escobar, A. (2008). Design for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Durham: Duke University Press.}

^{[2] M.V. Blackburn and C.T. Clark. (2007). Chapter One: Bridging the Local/Global Divide: Theorizing Connections Between Global Issues and Local Action. Published By: Peter Lang AG}

^{[3] EDI is an abbreviation of Equality Diversity and Inclusion, a fund offered at UAL.}

^{[4] J K. McDonald, E Michela. The design critique and the moral goods of studio pedagogy. Design Studies. Volume 62, May 2019, Pages 1-35}

^{[5] Orr, S, & Shreeve. (2017). Art and Design Pedagogy in Higher Education: Knowledge, Values and Ambiguity in the Creative Curriculum. Routledge}

^{[6] Palfrey. J. (2018). Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces. Diversity and Free Expression in Education. The MIT Press}