Battle of the Blockbusters: Joss Whedon as Public Pedagogue

This article discusses the concept of public pedagogy and the reasons for considering it relevant to the work of the writer/ director/ producer Joss Whedon, creator of numberous TV programmes, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly, and Films Serenity, Marvel's The Avengers and The Age of Ultron. It analyzes Marvel’s The Avengers (Whedon, 2012) and Christopher Nolan’s (2012b) The Dark Knight Rises as competing public pedagogies.It suggests that popular films can be seen as important educational projects; filmmakers have tremendous resources at their disposal and their creations have a global reach that cannot be matched by individual teachers or national education systems. Whedon can be seen as a radical educator; he enables his audiences to experience ways of looking at the world that challenge aspects of neo-liberal hegemony, and also encourages them to become critical thinkers who have to reflect on their own feelings and perspectives and resist simplistic perspectives on morality and the difficult political choices facing global society

Book Review: Celia Hunt. Transformative Learning through Creative Life Writing: Exploring the Self in the Learning Process. London: Routledge, 2013. 197 pp. ISBN 9798-

People change, often in profound ways, when they engage in creative practices, but understanding the nature of these changes and the reasons why they take place continues to challenge adult educators. This book takes a close look at the effects of participating in postgraduate programs in what the author terms “creative life writing,” and makes the case for considering the students’ experiences as a form of transformative learning. The author seeks to extend our understanding of the nature of transformative learning as a result of these analyses. In the introduction and in the opening chapter Hunt details the Creative Writing and Personal Development Programmes that took place at Sussex University between 1996 and 2010. The remainder of the book is divided into four section

How to be a woman. Models of masochism and sacrifice in young adult fiction

Buffy, Bella, Veronica, Katniss, Clary, Tris and Saba : For two decades post-feminist heroines have faced life-threatening trials as part of their progress to womanhood. In this chapter I consider how young adult popular fictions operate as forms of pedagogy for young women by offering them particular models of maturity and womanhood. I explore the recurrence and reformulation of a persistent pattern of behaviour in which heroines engage in risky and/or masochistic behaviours for which they are emotionally rewarded.. These recurrences function as a form of vicarious experiential learning in which readers and viewers learn that emotional gratification and adult status are conferred through self-harm and self-sacrifice. Popular culture is not a monolithic form and young adult fictions are no exception. An analysis of fictional examples of this behaviour pattern challenges the idea that heroines today are empowered agents as a result of the legacy of feminism. At the same time, the analysis belies any notion that fictions are universally hegemonic and oppressive – fictions can and do disrupt and interrogate this pattern of emotional masochism. Scholars of public pedagogy have explored the complexities, contradictions and subtleties of the pedagogical process. Sandlin O’Malley and Burdick (2011) in their review of public pedagogy literature acknowledge that some scholarship has demonstrated how “the teaching and learning inherent within daily life can be both oppressive and resistant” (p. 144). Jubas and Knutson (2012) also see public pedagogy as an arena where contradictions and tensions are in play. They argue that we can see “New examples of dialectic or tensions … between the authority of the producer and the consumer; between traditional structures which ground identities and help people make sense of cultural texts, and personal agency which frees people to choose and invent identities and meanings” (p. 86). This analysis aims to contribute to understandings of the complexities of public pedagogy by showing how fictions aimed primarily at young women both resist and accommodate patriarchy

Experimenting with inspiration: In-service education for HE teachers.

Experienced teachers at the University of Huddersfield participated in an experimental module, the Inspire Module, during 2013/14. The module was influenced by theories of transformative learning and arts-based education and aimed to offer participants freedom to experiment combined with intellectual support and challenge. Initial evaluations suggest that is has been partially successful, but that increased interventions, stimulus and opportunities for dialogue would improve the experience

The Role of the Arts in Professional Education: Surveying the Field

Many educators of professionals use arts-based approaches, but often explore this within the confines of their own professional disciplines. This paper consists of a thematic review of the literature on arts and professional education, which cuts across professional disciplines in an attempt to identify the specific contribution the arts can make to professional education. The review identified five broad approaches to the use of the arts in professional education: exploring their role in professional practice, illustrating professional issues and dilemmas, developing empathy and insight, exploring professional identities and developing self-awareness and interpersonal expression. Woven through these approaches we found that the development of a more sophisticated epistemology and a critical social perspective were common outcomes of art-based work in professional education. Arts-based approaches may help learners to make a critical assessment of their own roles and identities within professions, and to consider the impact of professions in shaping the broader society

The role of the arts in professional education; making the invisible, visible.

'The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls' (Pablo Picasso). This paper will explore the value of using the arts in professional education. We use the term arts to include all the creative arts, such as poetry, drama, music, fiction, film, television and all the visual arts. The general argument in our paper could be applied to education for a wide range of professionals, although we draw on examples from health, teaching, business, and law. Professional education, and particularly professional education which confers a licence to practice, is often tightly regulated and controlled by professional bodies, and curricula are generally employer-led. Students invest heavily in their education in most countries in the world, with a few enlightened and beleaguered countries constituting exceptions. In England, fees in most universities have risen almost threefold for entry in 2012. Globally, students expect a financial return on their investment in the form of a graduate job. Policy spanning decades and cutting across political parties has emphasised the production of employable graduates as the primary role of higher education. Our contention is that this has led to a significant narrowing of the focus of professional education. There is a difference, however, between creating a 'job-ready' graduate, who is able to fulfil a narrow set of immediate vocational requirements, and developing a creative critical thinker, who is able not merely to implement current best practice, but to challenge it, develop it and even overturn it if necessary and who will be able to function at the highest level if circumstances change and new challenges present themselves. Sheridan-Rabideau (2010, p. 56) argues that “there is both room and need for preparing more creative individuals in every discipline”. The paper offers a rationale for widening the curriculum so that it includes opportunities for imaginative and open ended work, via engagement with the arts. It draws on research projects that each of us has conducted and some under development. We will also draw on both theoretical literature and on literature offering examples of good practice in this area. We aim to show how the arts enable people to expand their thinking and feeling so that they can get to those things that are often invisible because they are difficult to express in conventional academic language. We will explore, for example, how the arts may stimulate playful approaches that can bypass inhibition and produce surprising and exceptional ideas, how they encourage the envisioning of alternatives , helping us to overturn thinking trammelled by routine, how they may promote empathy and a deeper understanding of those whom professionals try to help and support and how they might help professionals develop a resistance to hegemonic perspectives. Our argument is that professionals have to be able to get 'beyond the dust of daily life', rise above routines and protocols and think imaginatively and creatively

Researching Adult Learners’ Reading Histories and Practices.

This paper presents the results of an empirical study which explored the reading histories and practices of mature women students on a UK Access to Higher Education course. Such courses provide an alternative route to Higher Education for adults who left school without achieving University entry qualifications. The paper considers a relatively neglected aspect of research in adult education – research into students’ reading practices. It argues that such research can enable us to support more effectively adult returners whose approaches to texts may be dramatically different from those of individuals who have experienced a conventional education

2017 Teaching and Learning Conference “Building an Academic community: engaging our students”

The 2017 Teaching and Learning Conference “Building an Academic community: engaging our students” at the University of Huddersfield brought together over 200 delegates from across the seven schools and services, to consider approaches that would support the development of an inclusive, high achieving academic community. The morning started with an overview of the University’s achievements and successes in Teaching and Learning since the 2016 conference “Bridging the Gaps: redefining excellence in Teaching and Learning”. The reflective summary noted the prestigious Gold Award in the recent Teaching Excellence Framework, our unbroken succession of National Teaching Fellowships, which spans ten years; the strong relationships between research and teaching and the University’s excellent employability record, which demonstrates the relevance of our teaching to industry, commerce, the public sector and the community. Colleagues, students and the wider network of partners and collaborators were thanked for their contribution, enthusiasm, and commitment to excellence and innovation in Learning and Teaching. The most recent acknowledgement from the sector in testimony to Huddersfield’s Excellence in Teaching and Learning (T&L) was received the week prior to the conference, when the University won the Higher Education Academy’s inaugural Global Teaching Excellence Award, beating 26 finalists from across the world

Feminist Teaching, Feminist Research, Feminist Supervision: Feminist Praxis In Adult Education

Feminist teaching and research have both been the subject of analytical discussions within adult education. Feminist research supervision has received rather less attention. We focus on two main issues, the role of experience and the feminist analysis of power/knowledge dynamics, in order to highlight the similarities and differences between the three areas