BLOG POST 3

Posted on 2nd March 2025 by Eva Feld

Criticality and Biases

In Talking Art as the Spirit Moves Us, American theorist, feminist, educator and social critic bell hooks (1995) illustrates how ignorant members of one culture are to members of another, how negatively the dominant culture’s arrogance affects minority groups. Based on the example of Edward Lucie-Smith’s (1994) book Race, sex, and gender in contemporary art: The Rise of Minority Culture, hooks calls out the hypocrisy of his statements and blatant insults of art by “African-Americans, feminists, homosexuals and Latino-Hispanics” originated in his lack of criticality and a bias towards ‘official art’, as he calls it (Lucie-Smith, 2020), and ‘white-supremacist patriarchal bias’ as hooks calls it (hooks,1995). 

The book chapter incentivised me to have a closer look at both bell hooks and Edward Lucie-Smith, an influential Jamaican-born English art critic, to evaluate their work and statements and to get a better idea of the historical context. This included to find out who else has criticised Lucie-Smith, his person and book in question and who has criticised bell hooks’ works. My aim was to exercise criticality and explore my own standpoint, as it was tempting to take and agree with hook’s viewpoint, knowing my social beliefs. Was there another element of conforming with current dialogue? According to Jacobsen and Mustafa (2019), my views would be highly informed by the “social and political climate” at the time of reflection, thus shaping my thinking and ideals that in turn inform my conscious and unconscious bias.

On my course, one important skill my students are asked to acquire and showcase is criticality. I think that criticality is facilitated by taking different viewpoints and being aware of one’s own biases. 

Therefore, even though awareness and engagement with one’s biases is embedded in the Research Proposal unit for all Master courses during the second block, including activities, such as the Positionality map by Jacobsen and Mustafa (2019) which prompts to think about one’s biases might be suitable at the beginning of the studies, alongside or embedded in ice-breaker sessions. 

My personal next steps to further my learning for improving my awareness of my biases for teaching in the classroom are completing The UAL Breaking Bias e-learning module and then find a conversation amongst our course team on the basis of De-biasing strategies for teachers provided by the Academic Enhancement Model.  

References

Academic Enhancement, University of the Arts London (2025) Vikki Hill: De-biasing strategies. Available at: 

https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/190152/AEM-Debiasing-Strategies-PDF-294KB.pdf (Accessed: 17 March, 2025)

hooks, b. (1995) Talking art as the spirit moves us’, in Art on my mind: visual politics. New York: The New Press Available at: https://monoskop.org/images/7/7bHooks_Bell_Art_on_My_Mind_Visual_Politics_1995.pdf (Accessed 16 March 2025)  

Jacobson, D., & Mustafa, N. (2019). Social identity map: A reflexivity tool for practicing explicit positionality in critical qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 18, 1609406919870075. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406919870075.

Lucie-Smith, E. (1994) Race, sex, and gender in contemporary art: The Rise of Minority Culture New York: H.N. Abrams.

Lucie-Smith, E. (2020) Artlyst: What I Don’t Like About The Contemporary Art Scene. Available at: https://artlyst.com/features/i-dont-like-contemporary-art-scene-edward-lucie-smith/ (Accessed: 17 March 2025)

UAL (2025) Breaking Bias e-learning module Available at: https://learningspace.arts.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=34(Accessed 17 March 2025)   

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CASE STUDY 2

Posted on 2nd March 2025 by Eva Feld

Plan for and support student learning through appropriate approaches and environments.

The course I’m teaching on, MA Innovative Fashion Production, aims to prepare the students for changing design and production systems to help lessen the environmental impact of the fashion industry. They are challenged to question the status quo, identify new opportunities by using emerging technologies and sustainable approaches and test their ideas.

This year, when asking for feedback on the student’s first unit assignment, a few students said that they wished for the assignments to be “more realistic”, wishing for working on projects that directly fit within the processes currently used in the industry. 

This revealed a discrepancy between what teachers and some students thought the purpose of studying on this course is. Consequently, the aims of education are apparently not clear and with it expectations of taught content and assignment design differs. 

Fig.1

What a great opportunity for a classroom conversation, maybe a debate? However, I am unsure about how to approach this strategically and productively. 

As the teaching team is very clear about- and happy with the course aims (fig.1) at the moment, I want to excite the students about the opportunities it entails, namely that, as bell hooks (1994,p.12) puts it “The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.” Where bell hooks’ classroom space is opposed to demands and expectations of family, community and society,  my classroom’s space is opposed to economic compulsion to function within- and serve a capitalist, fast-fashion market. 


“The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.”


bell hooks, 1994, p.12

In other words, where and when else do we have the time and space to collectively rethink our actions with the aim to improve processes which are, in this case, detrimental to the environment and consequentially to human health?

Another good reason which I can raise awareness of, is the reality of rapid changes in the job market and industry knowledge requirements, as my tutor, Kwame Baah, pointed out to me, when I asked him for his thoughts. 

On the other hand, acknowledging that the student wasn’t aware of the content still to be taught which includes indeed much contemporary industry practice, I can inform the class I will emphasise that in preparation to disrupt current practices we are teaching them about the current system in more depth than they have been taught during their BA. I will follow this up with specific examples of unit content to be taught before they finally embark on their self-guided  Masters projects. 

To incite or nurture excitement amongst the teachers and students (fig.2), I turned to collaborative approaches, one of which is the Academic Enhancement’s Framework for Student Partnerships and Co-creation at UAL. 

Where the aims of our course are non-negotiable on short-term, sub-ordinate aims are well negotiable, such as which specific areas within fashion production is examined, case studies, etc., “can be decided together and can be “organic, evolving and changeable.”(UAL: – Academic Enhancement, p.2).

Pursuing this approach, I will share and talk about the framework with the students, as it introduces principles of a teacher-student relationship that my students are unlikely to be familiar with (I wasn’t), such as unknowing and relationality. Despite this hurdle, I think it will be worthwhile, if the result yields an enhanced level of motivation, meaning and excitement towards our work. 

Fig. 2

References

Academic Enhancement, University of the Arts London (2025) Dr Amita Nijhawan: Framework for Student Partnerships and Co-creation at UAL. Available at: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/453201/Framework-for-Student-Partnerships-and-Co-creation-at-UAL-2.pdf Accessed: 10 March, 2025

Freire, P. (2014). Pedagogy of hope. London: Bloomsbury.

hooks, bell (1994) Teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. (p. 12) Available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203700280.

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CASE STUDY 1

Posted on 9th February 2025 by Eva Feld

Knowing and responding to students’ diverse needs

Background

Not long ago, I was a student on the course I’m teaching on, MA Innovative Fashion Production. During my studies, I struggled with the weekly workload because I wasn’t able to work efficiently in the classroom setting. As a teacher, I am observing significant differences in how effectively students are working on tasks during seminars. 

Evaluation

I believe that there is diversity in student’s working preferences and learning needs. Exemplified by my own experience, some of the struggles that students experience might be feeling too self-conscious to think and write, particularly when seated directly next to peers. Personally, I experienced feelings of insecurity, fear of failure and self-doubt – all against my better rational judgment and beliefs. In other words, I could not free myself of my emotional response even though I was committed to improve and overcome my difficulties, knowing that at home, I would meet practical and personal challenges endangering efficient work practices. 

Moving forward

My aim is to facilitate a better work-life balance for my students; first, by identifying different learning preferences and then subsequently, by reducing stress factors that prevent students to work efficiently in the classroom and the communal university spaces. According to Hussey and Smith (2010), helping diverse students to become autonomous learners is best supported by choosing a flexible approach, such as acknowledging the dynamic system between the student, the teaching environment and the task (p.153).

Thus, as a starting point, I can converse with the students about their preferred working practices, share what I have observed and find out in a ‘reality check’ (Bamber & Jones, 2015, p.162, strategy 1) how they experience working in class. Bamber & Jones (2015) state that such a conversation “may uncover disparities or communalities, which can be negotiated.”

Then, opting for an area I can influence, opposed to one being out of my control, such as ‘lifeload’ factors (Kahu, 2013: 767), I can think about shaping the learning environment during my seminars whilst accommodating diverse needs, in the sense that “good teaching […] puts both the student and the intellectual experience at the centre, and is good teaching for all students.” (Bamber & Jones 2015, p.152) 

To mitigate learning-inhibiting feelings of self-consciousness, I could provide more privacy to each student for individual seminar tasks. For example, this might include to space out tables and/ or to make use of additional spaces the university provides, such as the private cubicles of the library or the heart spaces, spaces that are usually not fully populated. 

On the opposite side of the learning-preference spectrum, I observed students thriving in the classroom, specifically during collaborative work. It seems that only then they are performing at their best; their response is bold and spontaneous. These student characteristics align broadly with the ‘intentional learners’ described by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (2002:xi). 

I believe that collaboration helps all learners in various ways, one of which is to strengthen social bonds and belonging another is the increased ‘time on task’ leading to higher learning gains (Gibbs, 2015: 14). Both learning types might benefit from one another, the spontaneous and the critical cross-pollinate to increase productivity and achieve high quality work.

References

Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) (2002) Great Expectations: A New vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College Washington, DC: AAC&U.

Bamber, V. and Jones, A. (2015) A handbook for teaching and learning in higher education: enhancing academic practice. Fourth edition. Edited by H. Fry, S. Ketteridge, and S. Marshall. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York: Routledge.

Fry, H. and Gibbs, G. (2015) A handbook for teaching and learning in higher education: enhancing academic practice. Fourth edition. Edited by S. Ketteridge and S. Marshall. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Hussey, T and Smith, P (2010) The Trouble with Higher Education: A Critical Examination of our Universities. New York and London: Routledge.

Kahu, E.R. (2013) ‘Framing student engagement in higher education’, Studies in Higher Education, 38(5), pp. 758–773. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2011.598505.

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Microteaching

Posted on 9th February 2025 by Eva Feld

Ideation Accelerator

Fig. 1

The idea for my object-based learning activity stems from a recent classroom situation. I encouraged the students to always generate more ideas than needed, in this case, to generate more research topic ideas. To illustrate my point, I used the visual practice as an analogy to the verbal, in particular informed by Tom and David Kelly’s work Creative Confidence, in which the benefits of many ideas is highlighted. 

Judy Willcock’s remark „The fact that we process and recall and understand really quite little of what we read and hear but so much of what we make and do.“ deeply resonated with me. I wondered if “making and doing” could be used to fuel creative confidence in one’s ability to generate many ideas, both verbal and visual.

The learning aims encompass visual and verbal ideation, creative confidence, aesthetic judgment and drawing skills. The objects I decided to use are translucent 3-dimensional shapes. For all activities, the time constraint and the number of iterations to be created were the lever to increase ideation.

Following Judy Willcock’s framework, I opted for “holding information back about objects” to facilitate visual, intuitive or extra-rational responses. The focus should be on the engagement with the objects, not the objects themselves. (Willcocks,year). 

Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Timed session plan

Total time for activity: 20 minutes

  1. Explaining the exercise 2 min
  2. Activity 1 – pile up shapes 3-5 min
  3. Activity 2 – draw 5 min
  4. Activity 3 – write titles 5 min

„I came to understand the importance of experiential learning, particularly in an art and design context. The fact that we process and recall and understand really quite little of what we read and hear but so much of what we make and do.“

UAL Central Saint Martins, 2018
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7

Session description

During the activity, I observed that the engagement with activity 1 exceeded my expectations in terms of creative output. Participants found extraordinary ways to create new objects. One participant carried his object over to the window to photograph it including a specific background, thus giving their work another dimension and meaning. In the same vein, another participant, used their phone torch to cast light through the translucent shapes (Fig.6). I further observed collaboration (Fig.7). However, activity 2 did not yield the creative output I was looking for. The shapes were mostly replicated rather than used for silhouette finding. Finally, results from activity 3, Title creation, were highly creative and interesting (Fig. 9 to Fig. 12)

Participant feedback and reflection

Activity 1

Participant 1: “I loved playing with the shapes.” [everyone agreed]

Based on my observation and this unison positive feedback, I will use this activity in the future again in various iterations. 

Activity 2

Participant 2: “I am offended by the figurines.” [another one agreed]

I understand the participant’s objection to using an idealised figurine. Admittedly, in this instance, I was ignorant and didn’t give the figurine I used for this session much thought. I’m aware of and embrace the practice and discourse of body inclusivity. 

On another note, I realised that I omitted to think of the difference between generating many ideas or generating more iterations of one concept or idea. The resulting approach to take would be very different, of course. I’ll choose the latter. Therefore, I would change activity 2. I would ask the students to pick their favourite of the objects they created in activity 1 and produce 3 iterations of it by using the shapes, again, then taking pictures of the results. 

Activity 3

Participant 2: “I don’t want to label the creation, I don’t want to put a label on it.”

Due to time restraints I could not clarify this statement nor receive more feedback from other participants. For instance, is a headline as objectionable as a label? What about a written paragraph instead? Be that as it may, I would change this activity to a reflective one, during which the students can reflect in written form (or group discussion) on their intuitive decision making during the exercise. Did it help them to be looser and more productive in their ideation process?

Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12

References

Kelley, T. and Kelley, D. (2015) Creative confidence: unleashing the creative potential within us all. Paperback edition. London: William Collins.

UAL Central Saint Martins (2018) Museum & Study Collection: Judy Willcocks Copenhagen Presentation. 27th June. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3O7MM5WuFo

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BLOG POST 2: Social Justice

Posted on 8th February 2025 by Eva Feld

The Role of Universities

I left Workshop 1 wondering what the purpose of education is. What is the role of the teacher? What is the role of the university? What is their purpose?

The group task that prompted these questions was Derive a definition for social justice and list some components of a higher education system.

This immediately triggered a conversation around socio-economic injustices with a focus on hourly-paid lecturer contracts that don’t provide social security with the university as a suspected beneficiary. Of course, universities have to manage their spending costs carefully. In the UK, they are competing against each other, attracting students with their fame.The conversation highlighted the need of the university to be financially viable and self-sufficient. I shared my concern for universities being subject to economic competition in the education market, unlike the ones I went to. 

In contrast, German public universities are government-funded and supported by taxes, a luxury I took for granted when studying at a university in Hamburg in 2003. 

What are the current struggles in higher education institutions? Cronin and Czerniewicz (2023) identified neoliberalism as one of the systemic struggles of global education. The affects of neoliberalism being not only economical “through continuous state underfunding” but also political and cultural “through the transfer of free market thinking into educational practices and language.”

I found some more answers to my initial questions in the course literature: As for the purpose, universities could be “serving society as a change agent and empowering people across different sections of society” (Misra & Mishra, Ch. 25)

By understanding the challenges prevalent in the higher education sector much better now, the “pursuit of fairness, equity and inclusivity within the education system” (UAL, 2025) makes much more sense to me, particularly after having read about more specific examples. And by association, so does the term social justice.

References

Laura Czerniewicz and Catherine Cronin (eds), Higher Education for Good: Teaching and Learning Futures. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2023,

https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0363

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BLOG POST 1: The International Student

Posted on 19th January 2025 by Eva Feld

Learnings from my set reading

The International Student Experience

My assigned reading Savage’s ‘The New Life’,  prompted me to reflect on the Eurocentric socio-political landscape in Higher Education in Arts opposed to the Russian-centric one described in the study and its effect on the student experience.  

There are two stakeholders in the study: the benefactors and the beneficiaries. The benefactors are a group of socialist countries, interested in securing influence in Africa and in promoting “Leninist ideals of anti-imperial internationalism.”. They are offering bursaries to over 72,000 students of the global south. The second, the beneficiaries are the group of African students awarded the bursaries. They are seeking a better life away from their war-wrecked countries and the danger of becoming a victim of aggression and attacks (Savage, 2023, p.1079).

Savage (2023) explains that the curriculum imposed by the Russian government on Higher Education in Arts is Soviet-centric, explicitly and prescriptively in line with the aesthetic of Russian realist paintings. It needed to be realistic. Russian artists, such as abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), fell outside this requirement, thus were not only excluded from the taught content but outspokenly disregarded. Students who wanted to do well, needed to conform with the realist painting aesthetic (Savage, 2023, p. 1087). 

The overall student experience was mixed with a high awareness among the students of the demand for sociopolitical conformity on one hand, and positive experiences due to the close friendships formed with home students and teachers on the other. Solidarity and equality, as lived experiences, became values the students took on for life.

Although the motivations of the educational institution with their study offer and that of the students wanting to study is completely different in my teaching context, I can still find relatable aspects in the study. 

One connection I can draw to my teaching context lies in the similarities of the socio-geo-political differences between the Higher Education institution, its curriculum and the teaching team on one side and the students on the other. As of 2024/25, 100 per cent of the students attending the MA Innovative Fashion Production course, which I predominantly teach on, are international students from Asia. 

Analogous to the Africans students in Russia, my Asian students in the UK might similarly experience ignorance from peers and teachers in respect to their country’s geographical locations, politics or cultural particularities: 

In Savage’s study, Raimundo, an African student recalled:

“It was like the USSR was the entire world! They didn’t even know where Africa was […].”

Raimundo Macaringue

To mitigate such a negative experience, I can implement my knowledge of Chinese culture and geography in my seminars as appropriate. This might make the students feel acknowledged in their cultural identity. I believe, showing my interest in their country and culture, ultimately demonstrates my interest in them as individuals and could form a relationship between us. As a precedence, I recall that I was shown great affection by a study group of four students, upon finding out that we had a common interest in a book and TV series by a Chinese author. Their excitement about my interest went as far as offering to gift me a subscription to the Chinese TV channel to watch the program. 

Reference

Savage, P. (2022) ‘The New Life’: Mozambican Art Students in the USSR, and the Aesthetic Epistemologies of Anti-Colonial Solidarity. Art History, 45(5), pp.1078-1100.

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The Socio-Political Context

Posted on 16th January 2025 by Eva Feld

… of Higher Education

Reading the article a second time, I shifted my focus away from the student experience towards the socio-political context. 

The International context, the research is set in, consists of two stakeholders, a group of socialist countries, interested in securing influence in Africa and in promoting “Leninist ideals of anti-imperial internationalism.” and African students, seeking a better life, away from their war-wrecked countries and the often still looming danger of becoming a victim of aggression and attacks (Savage, 2023).

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Reading is not Neutral

Posted on 15th January 2025 by Eva Feld

Shifting Attention

“Reading is not a neutral activity” Victor said on Friday, “You always bring a bit of yourself into the reading.” On Monday the following week, I read through the article again. 

“Reading is not a neutral activity” Victor said on Friday, “You always bring a bit of yourself into the reading.”

Victor Guillen, 2025

When reading the article ‘The New Life’: Mozambican Art Students in the USSR, and the Aesthetic Epistemologies of Anti-Colonial Solidarity, for the first time, I couldn’t wait to share with my peers that the researcher concluded that art students, heavily influenced by Russian socialism, did not become spiritually converted. Instead, they identified their positive experiences of hospitality, camaraderie and forged friendships with locals as shaping events that formed their future political values of solidarity and equality. The article is set in an international context of Higher Education in Arts, in the former USSR looking at the experience Mozambican art students had.

I will read the article a second time, considering the wider educational context when thinking of what I took from the article and how this might be relevant to my own teaching. 

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About Me

Posted on 4th January 2025 by Eva Feld

I’m Eva. I teach on the MA Innovative Fashion Production course at London College of Fashion situated in East London, East Bank.

I’m curious about the PgCert Academic Practice course and excited about being a student again. I’m looking forwards to learning more about other lecturer’s approaches. I’m quite new to teaching at University and therefore eager to learn more about teaching in general. That said, I already have some ideas that I would like to explore further related to improving the student’s experience. These ideas are highly informed by my own recent experience of studying as a Master student on the same course, I’m now teaching on, back in 2021/22.

How might my teaching approach change? What will be my biggest take-aways? Will those be practical or theoretical?

I love looking at people, which is not the same as loving people, just to make that clear. The variety of faces, bodys and expressions enveloped in various textures and colours ceaselessly fascinate me.

I sketch to manifest my thoughts. I sketch to learn. I sketch because I don’t need to use words. Do people think in full sentences, I wonder? I don’t, which is liberating and frustrating at the same time.

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