Just some thoughts for those looking for teaching work

With this great year coming I thought it was time to start asking some new questions.

1) Should new design teachers be put through some sort of short induction course to familiarise them with some important aspects of pedagogy which I have discussed earlier? If so how would this be regulated? In Australia teachers who work in the private sector need to go through a course call TAA Certificate IV. In my opinion, it is completely useless for the design teacher or any post-secondary teacher. It’s basically a ‘paper work’ course. You learn how to document everything but not how to teach.

2) Who would fund this? Should design organisations become more involved?

3) I mentioned before in a previous post concerning developing some sort of flexible pedagogical success factors for private and public institutions:

a) How much of an investment are institutions willing to make in the maintaining and developing of good teaching and learning environments? Any ideas?

Well more on this later.

I know I have written about this in the past but I feel I need to talk about it again. What to do…when there is almost no possible way to align your teaching (constructive alignment). Institutional forces sometimes seem to be so great that there is no way around attempting to provide a deep learning environment. If you are able to achieve well focused student-centred learning that aligns with your assessments etc. through the modification of your teaching and learning activities, the larger problem becomes “are you the only one doing it”? Are students jumping from one environment of learning to another? I mean, we don’t all have to teach the same but some sort of congruency of basic pedagogical principles and theories needs to be taken into account. Or is all hope lost for these institutions?

I think the design community with the help of design organisations, should think of something quick. There are many private design colleges and the number seems to keep on growing. Many of these students end up working in DTP environments with quite construed view of what design is.

What is our message to these institutions?

(my political post)

Through this blog you may view my exegesis via the “Graphic Design Teacher Magazine” page. If you would like to download it completely, please email me a kind request at: info@designteaching.com

Thank you,
Roberto

I was however somewhat shocked at some of the presenters understanding of pedagogy and how they are running/changing curricula. This seemed to be more prominent with educators who deal with smaller institutions rather than the universities here in Melbourne. This made me think even more that my research is well grounded and could be pushed even further. I don’t want to ’save design education’ but I do feel that it is important for all educators to at least reflect on their teaching practice.

Hemispheric Shifts Across Learning, Teaching and Research

As the author suggested in his case, that ‘…rare that situation really is… and that even with great presentations and advocates that have this knowledge to give, it takes ‘the right place and the right time…’ as well as a list of success factors to be followed. This is quite surprisingly the same in what I have been dealing with in education. What this article made me realise is that I need to chill out a bit with my ‘evangelistic preaching’ and perhaps to find other ways to engage those ‘factors of success’ in order to achieve what I am looking to do in some private institutes. Just as the author stated that if any of these success factors were not in place, the overall effort would be damaged. I think this is again similar to effectively introducing the aligned curricula in private design institutions. If some factors are not in place, for example, management perceptions of the learning environment, then being able to create a deep teaching and learning environment becomes very, very difficult if not impossible. I spoke about this briefly in my exegesis but I guess I never really understood its implications to degree of experiencing it right now. Amazing.

I think what I should do is take a closer look at this aligned curricula and perhaps pin-point and develop new success factors for private design institutions. Perhaps I will need to think of these key factors where the structure can be integrated into different teaching contexts and goals in order to keep flexibility and translation. It would be good continuation in any case of my research.

So how come I am in this situation? Just as other teachers, I find myself in a place where economic circumstances have brought me to teaching 28 hours a week of technology related courses. They are not even courses I am interested in but management has forced a situation where I had no choice to accept or lose much work. I have spoken to management and coordinators but I feel I have exhausted my voice. I don’t feel I need to mention here why 28 hours of face-to-face teaching is impossible, done well. Or how what effects on learning can an unaligned curriculum have on the students because I have already spoke all about this before. The only thing I can think about now is what am I learning from this situation.

I am starting to understand now, actually how powerful are those ‘forces’ within a learning environment. Primarily, I now feel that a teacher can study all the pedagogical literature they can, finish a degree in graphic design teaching, try to insert aspects of an aligned curriculum into their teaching and learning activities but its pretty much inconsequential if there is no institutional support. I have realised that the departmental perceptions and institutional agendas and pressure can really make or break a learning environment. This is really unfortunate because I am sure there are many other teachers in a similar position that are quite capable of developing deep teaching and learning experiences in graphic design. Are you one of them?

So what is one to do next in this situation? Give up and carry on? I think not! When I got into design education, I knew the road was not going to be easy. I also understood at some point I would have to make some important decisions and have the ability to negotiate with the ‘higher powers’ within a design department. I think it is part of my duty as a researcher and design teacher, especially in respect for what I have done over these years. So, I think it is about time I see if I can organise a meeting with these ‘institutional forces’ and see if I can present my findings. Who knows, maybe something will change or maybe not, but at least I can say I have tried. This is really important to me as a design educator because now I think I have the ability and knowledge to confront such an issue, which is not an easy one to tackle as a new teacher.

Maybe we can start some sort of online group. Are you a new/sessional teacher who is teaching in a private institution with similar circumstances? Please contact me through my blog. Let us see if we can start some sort of global conversation on the topic.

Wish me luck.

“…I took Roberto’s Masters to be a demonstration of the hypothesis visual communication, or in particular, the graphic novel format, is an important way of negotiating the complexities of communication design education reform given the cultural politics of contemporary universities.”

Dr. Cameron Tonkinwise
Parsons The New School for Design