This text was incredibly useful as I found it almost like a compendium of many of the pedagogical concepts I have been focussing on so far in the PGCERT: most poignant in my journey have Freire’s principles of education as a route to freedom through the dialogic approach to teaching as a way to help students develop their own voice vs the ‘banking’ approach and Orr’s ambiguity of the Art and Design Curriculum among others.

I find very interesting and very much what is happening on our courses Orr’s idea of the ambiguous pedagogy and the sticky curriculum: if project centred work and encouraging risk taking resonates well with creativity it can also generate stress and insecurity, especially at the beginning of a student’s HE journey and I have encountered many students who experience this sort of stress. Nonetheless, the same students seem to get used to it and eventually thrive on this sense of openness and freedom. How can we find a balance between the two to avoid the initial stress altogether whilst still not imposing on students creativity?

The text also put into perspective how behind we still are in securing diversity in persistence and attainment and how important the above principles are to try and promote positive change.

The lack of understanding that one’s socio-economical-racial background affects how one learns and determines the tools one has at their disposal to start with when interpreting Art and Design in this case surprised me. I believed that part of being an educator was to try to understand students, their background, their learning styles and as such offering diverse tools to support their learning. Evidently this is not generally the case. How can we make it so? Some of the suggested methods, such as giving students a sense of ownership over their environment, a safe environment where sharing work become a comfortable and exciting perspective seem a very positive suggestion, but how can we ensure that?