Talking About Art

Charles University, Prague https://sites2.ff.cuni.cz/esrea2019/ Haptic Criticality: Can Risk be Deflected Through Development of Critical Thinking with Adult Learners? paper by Frances Norton.   Abstract The objective is to develop adult student critical thinking (CT) skills to equip participants to be flexible in a world risk society. The first aim of this paper is to create channels of communication and connection. The second aim examines the meta-narrative of pedagogic policy in relation to adult learners in the petite-narrative (Lyotard 2004) of my classroom, creating a piece of action research (McNiff 2014) . The significance to the field of policy studies in adult education is that, haptic criticality, thinking through doing is essential to equip vocational students for problem solving in industry or self-employment. Relevant policies are:- the Foresight Review into the Future of Skills and Lifelong Learning (2016) and the Department of Education (DfE...

Taking the research on the road This has been an enlightening, sometimes humiliating and humbling experience. What with the tec, the flow and getting the preparation right. It has been a busy summer since teaching duties finished. Wheelie suitcase at the ready, USB stick in hand I marched forth to meet the tide of conference season. Weeks and weeks of finely honing my abstract and sending it out willy-nilly to all kinds of conferences and ‘call for abstracts’ call outs I was in a whirlwind of expectation and excitement. As the time grew closer the nerves built up. I stand in front of a class every day, standing up is what I do, and I really love teaching, formal lectures and passing on what I know. In addition to this standing up I also play in an Irish band and of course we are on stage front and centre standing up in front of crowds – entertaining. And one more I dance in an amateur dance troupe, Indian and Persian dancing. So I do a lot of being at the front, speaki...

Education and Training Foundation (ETF) annual conference Mary Ward House London monday 2 July 2018 We were welcomed by Proff Maggie Gregson who opened the conference talking about expanding the horizons of FE research, added to by Dr Lawrence Nixon and the Education and Training Foundation who fund FE research at SUNCETT, ETF was introduced by Paul Kessell Holland and a talk from Dr Samantha Broadhead on her newly published book co authored with Proffessor Maggie Gregson, on teaching Access, Practical Wisdom and Democratic Education. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Practical-Wisdom-Democratic-Education-Non-traditional/dp/3319733109/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1530626474&sr=1-1&keywords=broadhead+and+gregson Later in the day was an address by the CEO of ETF, David Russell. Here is what he said. Our role as FE practitioners and researchers was to critique and extend current research and data in the sector often done by HE or ‘Big Data’ collectors. What w...

The Tale of Laertes: Double Whammy. Laertes is in his late twenties when he enrols on the Access course. He had been allowed to leave school at fourteen for several reasons, he doesn’t read well, he did not enjoy the patriarchal system at school, got into trouble and became a school refuser. Finally the school let him leave, and he went to help in his Dad’s plastering business. Endeavouring to acclimatise and enculturate him into the college milieu is a difficult task as he is not used to how to behave in an educational setting, this may be down to the bad experience and memories of school. He is good naturedly disruptive and constantly coming across our administrators for not conforming to ‘normal’ student protocols like arriving on time, staying the whole day and handing work in on time. The tale of Laertes is that of a non-traditional route into FE, and is one we are familiar with on the Access course. The collaborative work we do with students talking through thei...

Andy’s Story. Embodied Practice in the Pottery Workshop Bobs Village Gallery in Wisdom, North Carolingan   is a production pottery. It is a small factory making craft pottery by hand. A craft industry, in this case it is run by Bob and his wife Molly. Ellen Dean and a few other employees take care of the duties in the gallery and the pottery workshop. Bob and Ellen work together six days a week, eight hours a day. That is the kind of dedication a craft practice takes. He had a pottery wheel, a Shimpo and sits in the workshop window throwing pots. It is a practice, a labour and it is really hard, dirty, cramp-inducing work. Ellen puts handles on, fires up the bisque kiln, loads the glaze kiln, tends the gas kiln, glazes pots for orders and helps in the gallery packing pots to ship out to galleries. See post https://talkingaboutartmphil.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/the-story-of-handle-man-why-practice.html for other stories about embodied practice. This summer they have an appre...

From Fishtown to Gimmerton, Education as a Social Mobility or The Tale of Boreas, a case study. Boreas is a young man, sensitive, quietly spoken and shy. One of our Non-Traditional students from a white working class broken home in coastal Fishtown, a depressed post-industrial area of the Northern coast line. There is high unemployment and few opportunities in Fishtown and so after an uneventful and unheroic schooling with few aspirations Boreas moved to Gimmerton. He is a softly spoken gentle soul that life ‘happens to’ rather than having any agency of his own, or that was the case at the beginning of the Access course. Boreas’ issues run deep, abandoned by his Dad, left in the care of a step parent, he drifted and turned to drink and recreational drugs. The cat’s eye glimmer in the road to change was community education and night classes in Gimmerton. Being in a new town away from detrimental influences he was able to switch paths. Without inspiration and encourageme...

Telling tales part 2.  Narrative Lives and Banned Stories Themes in this post are, Narrative, stories, banned stories, the Magnificat, Rebel Irish songs, the Arab spring, so called ‘degenerate’ artists, Etty Hillesum diarist in hiding and Marshall Gregory’s ethical critique of narrative. Stories are an integral part of our lives, from fairy tales to ancient Greek mythology and more localised folk tales, (Norton 1998, The Beast Within, comparing Celtic and Papua new Guinea mythologies.) In addition to stories we are told as children there are the stories we see on TV such as soap operas, also gaining popularity Netflix, the internet, social media and even adverts are mini stories, miniature narratives. Gregory (2009) relates that in opposition to the story makers there are the story-deniers like the Puritans of the 16 th and 17 th centuries. Some narratives were banned because they were deemed too subversive. For instance the Magnificat (Lk 1:46-55), Rich Lusk (...