I am afraid I missed our first session this week, due to my overlapping working days. I still want to complete the task, which is the research on an article about pedagogy, and sharing my thoughts.
For the first week, I read It’s all about ‘me’, with you: Exploring auto-ethnographic methodology, by Neil Drabble. The link is listed below.
https://sparkjournal.arts.ac.uk/index.php/spark/article/view/94/162
I am quite fascinated by the idea of auto-ethnography as a research method. The idea of auto-ethnography is very close to my own artistic practice, which is about personal oral narrative and collective documentation. Neil came up with five key characteristics of auto-ethnography as a research method. These are 1) complete member researcher (CMR) status, 2) analytic reflexivity, 3) narrative visibility of the researcher’s self, 4) dialogue with informants beyond the self, 5) commitment to theoretical analysis. It makes sense to me because I often find, in my own research, that the presence of me (a self) is of importance because interviewees told me something only because they were talking to ME as a person (not just as a researcher).
In my own teaching, I believe it’s very important that my students understand my thinking and see what perspective I’m viewing the subject matter from and why I think in a certain way. They don’t have to agree with my view (in fact I encourage them to disagree with me), but I want them to be able to precisely present why they don’t agree with me (after seeing how I analyse and present in a precise manner). These valuable conversations are often done after-class with them seeing me as a person and feeling more comfortable discussing and debating.
I remember when I was undertaking my bachelor’s degree, some of the best teaching actually happened when I talked to my teachers after-class. I think building an interpersonal relationship with students is very important.
Yesterday a student of mine showed me some work and asked for my feedback after the class ended. She mentioned that she doesn’t want to make her work commercial. We ended up having an hour-long conversation about what it means to be commercial (and whether it’s a good thing). I shared my own experience (what I thought when I was studying and what I think now) with her. (Echoing to the idea of personal narrative in the article.)
Yesterday my class finished at 4:30, and I started heading back at 5:30.
I told her I believe people should go to college because they want to FIND something. ‘Just make what you want to make; being commercial or not is mostly irrelevant,’ I said. I believe everything is commercial as long as people commercialised it and pay for it. However, even the most ‘uncommercial’ arts or fashion is sellable; and people still buy them.
These moments of teaching actually are some of happiest moments and make me think that I could touch my students’ hearts as a teacher (and as a person). These moments are rare (as usually initiated by students) and meaningful.
Well, I think this is a good way to start this blog.