Dear critters, 

for those of you who are based in London, please find details below of an upcoming workshop on critical pedagogies. The event is open to everyone and free to attend but you must register by tomorrow, 2nd Sept  (please contact Vilma Dzewu [log in to unmask] to register interest). Please do pass this on to colleagues in your respective schools who you think might be interested in coming. 

Many thanks,

Elena Vacchelli on behalf of Erin Sanders 



Exploring Transformative Modes of Learning:
A Learning and Teaching Workshop

9 September 2011
14.00-17.00
The Barn, Hendon
London, NW4 4BT
Middlesex University

Following a recently funded HEA project on visual pedagogies in tourism studies, Middlesex University will host a workshop on teaching and learning practices.  One of the main aims of the event will be to explore the use of multimedia teaching modes in higher education in relation to critical pedagogy practice, but the workshop session also aims to bring together those involved in learning and teaching within higher education to discuss ideas around critical pedagogy and dialogic learning.

The event is open to everyone and free to attend, although there are a limited number of places available. Please register your interest with Vilma Dzewu ([log in to unmask]) by the 2nd of September. Places will be allocated on a first come, first serve basis.

Programme of Speakers

13.45-14.00
Registration and refreshments

14.00-14.10
Dr Tamara Sivanandan Head of Social Sciences, Middlesex University
Opening Remarks

14.10-15.00
Dr Maureen Ayikoru and Dr Hyung Yu Park, Social Sciences, Middlesex University
The Pedagogic Challenges of Using Film to Enhance Students Learning in Undergraduate Tourism Programmes

15.00-15.30
Dr Kate Maguire, Institute for Work Based Learning, Middlesex University
The Academic Advising Relationship: challenging the power dynamic to co-generate knowledge

15.30-16.00
Dierdre Duffy and Dr Sara Motta, Politics, University of Nottingham
Knowing and radicality in the classroom: Thoughts on subjectivity

16.00-16.30
PG Macioti, PhD Candidate, Open University
Language teaching to migrants - towards social change through an anti-hierarchical political approach

16.30-17.00
Roundtable Discussion


Abstracts for Papers

Dr Maureen Ayikoru and Dr Hyung Yu Park
The Pedagogic Challenges of Using Film to Enhance Students Learning in Undergraduate Tourism Programmes

A continuous reflection on student-centred and critical approaches to learning and teaching underpinned the recently concluded, HEA-funded research into the pedagogic benefits and challenges of using films in tourism undergraduate classrooms at Middlesex University. Films in general and documentaries in particular, seem to play an important role in delivering subject specific pedagogies in tourism, particularly the impacts of tourism to students. Students enrolling onto undergraduate tourism programmes mainly perceive the tourism industry through the lenses of the glamour that pervades media advertisements of popular destinations, with minimum, if any, knowledge of the broader impacts of tourism on society. Films combine the advantage of visual imagery and aural/audio narration to convey structured, sometimes stereotypical, fictitious and ideologically embedded meanings that can serve as a basis for not only motivating learners to actively and collaboratively participate in their learning, but also to introduce and enhance critical engagement with the subject matter. The current study findings have yielded some new insights while clearly corroborating previous research that foregrounds the pedagogic benefits of using films in learning and teaching. These new insights focus on the role of films in stimulating and enhancing: emotionality in learning development; and, context-specific critical engagement with the topical content. The study findings also point to the role of films in reducing the power gradient between learners and tutors in a way that may be described as dialectic and reciprocal. We hope to discuss these new insights from our research findings during the workshop and crucially, to propose some best practices and caveats in using films for learning purposes.


Dr Kate Maguire
The Academic Advising Relationship: challenging the power dynamic to co-generate knowledge

As adviser to many professional doctorate candidates over the years I often ask myself what it is I do and how I do it beyond the contracting for time and contact. These are important questions when I am also in the position of selecting and developing advisers in this particular area of professional studies. I find myself saying to candidates: your consultant is your specialist supervisor and I am, as your adviser, someone who works with you to take care of the architecture of the piece which you want to create through having conversations about what you want to achieve and why before we ever get round to how. I also ask my candidates what it is I do that is useful to them and they tell me various things like: you listen, you challenge, you get interested, you motivate, you map your way through our world which helps us map, you don’t take over, you are there, you encourage us to be congruent with ourselves. It is very challenging to explain what you do and how you do it when it is a way of being and thinking about the world, when it is who you are now and who you are coming to be through your interconnectedness with others and the world. So I will attempt this through my own congruence using languages I have picked up and integrated on the way, those of social anthropologist, psychotherapist, third sector worker and researcher.

Deirdre Duffy and Dr Sara C Motta
Knowing and radicality in the classroom: Thoughts on subjectivity

These reflections stem from a series of interviews with students and facilitators who participated in a module organised around the principles of critical pedagogy, particularly student-led learning. The module had the objectives of opening the learning space to multiple perspectives, creating a mutually respectful environment and forging dialogue. These it was believed would facilitate a questioning and rupture with dominant forms of knowing and knowledge.

However, conversations with participants revealed that the process of creating this type of space involves not merely good intentions but engaging with the learnt subjectivities around knowing and radicality of participants. This couldn’t have been known beforehand as the experience itself drew out these tensions.

In this piece we explore the barriers and closures that learnt subjectivities of knowing and radicality can put up to the creation of such a space of dialogue and mutuality. Such subjectivities mirror the dominant conceptualisations of knowledge, learning and radical politics which can push towards a hierarchical and monological space.

We end with some reflections on how we might engage with these tensions for future practice.


PG Macioti
Language teaching to migrants - towards social change through an anti-hierarchical political approach

This paper is based on both my migrant rights activism and on my current PhD on Language, Migration and Political Mobilisation. It will explore how, within a context where language is used as instrument of migration control, domination and reproduction of social order, in a number of EU countries activist and grassroots projects have started organising for migrant rights through teaching the national language critically. The paper will refer mainly to one UK based project which I have been part of since 2006: x:talk (www.xtalkproject.net). X:talk teaches English to migrant sex workers in London and organises for migrant and sex workers rights. Moreover, similarly to other project in Germany and Spain, x:talk approaches language teaching as knowledge sharing amongst equals, and language as a politically and socially charged instrument of power. It thus follows a specific pedagogy and teaches a specific language: a language of rights and a language defined by the students experiences, needs and desires. Through the classes x:talk aims to expand and strengthen migrant sex workers’ networks, to provide a safe space and to develop the communication skills needed to struggle together for migrant and for sex workers rights. Referring to other similar, yet different projects in Spain and Germany, the paper seeks to open up questions on the importance and role of language learning and teaching for political mobilisation and subjectivity.