Marking gender studies:the (Radical) value of creative-critical assessment

Feminist pedagogies have established the need to query power structures in terms of curriculum content and teaching praxis. However, the topic of student assessment poses difficulties: it is a means through which students’ performance is evaluated and quantified according to set institutionalised criteria that values particular forms of hegemonic knowledge. The following article presents a self-reflexive exploration of assessment within a Gender Studies module taught in the Autumn semesters of the 2017/18 and 2018/19 academic years at a UK university. The module was a core component of the institution’s MA in Gender Studies. This was an exciting opportunity to experiment with assessment styles corresponding to feminist pedagogies to help develop students’ and instructors’ disciplinary scope and explore the radical potential for creative-critical approaches to assessment. This article outlines some the challenges of employing alternative modes of learning and teaching from a feminist perspective and suggests some strategies to address these

Evaluation of the current status and knowledge contributions of professional doctorates

The article examines the status and knowledge contributions of professional doctorates (PDs) undertaken by practising professionals who in most cases are not intending to join the academic community. The purpose of these doctorates is usually to research and develop an original contribution to practice through practitioner-research. Giving greater primacy to practice knowledge has caused new developments in doctoral education. The discussion is based upon a research project and an extensive literature review. Internationally, quality assurance agencies have generally embraced more work-related and practice-oriented criteria in doctoral learning. Doctoral learning that seeks to enhance practice and develop benefit to communities and organisations in professional contexts leads to different pedagogic protocols for higher education, for example a differently ordered approach to ethical issues of research, assessment and peer review. More curriculum development and understanding of the wider knowledge contributions of doctorates is needed across higher education and professional communities

Assembling activity/setting participation with disabled young people

Rehabilitation research investigating activity participation has been largely conducted in a realist tradition that under-theorises the relationship between persons, technologies, and socio-material places. In this Canadian study we used a post-critical approach to explore activity/setting participation with 19 young people aged 14 to 23 years with complex communication and/or mobility impairments. Methods included integrated photo-elicitation, interviews, and participant observations of community-based activities. We present our results using the conceptual lens of assemblages to surface how different combinations of bodies, social meanings, and technologies enabled or constrained particular activities. Assemblages were analysed in terms of how they organised what was possible and practical for participants and their families in different contexts. The results illuminate how young people negotiated activity needs and desires in particular ‘spacings’ each with its own material, temporal, and social constraints and affordances. The focus on assemblages provides a dynamic analysis of how dis/abilities are enacted in and across geotemporal spaces, and avoids a reductive focus on evaluating the accessibility of static environmental features. In doing so the study reveals possible ‘lines of flight’ for healthcare, rehabilitation, and social care practices

Educating for anti-racism: producing and reproducing race and power in a university classroom

In this paper I explore some of the issues associated with teaching about race, culture and ethnicity in a psychology program. These curriculum initiatives are part of a broader agenda of raising awareness about racialised oppression and exclusion and contributing to the development of ways of researching and practising psychology that are transformative and culturally sensitive. I overview the broader context and describe our subject and the guiding principles. This is followed by a description and analysis of two events in the classroom that illustrate the ways in which students differentially respond to the challenges posed by writings that challenge taken for granted understandings of race. Part of the analysis shows that students can often engage in the reproduction of oppressive practices and invest in whiteness. It is suggested that more than single semester subjects are required to promote and support the development of critical capacities for anti-racism practice