Pedagogical approach

Contents

1. Land acknowledgement: explained
2. Pedagogical philosophy
3. Learning outcomes: explained
4. UDL
5. Open
6. Assessment procedures: explained
7. Why synchronous classes?
8. Intended participants and participation

1. Land acknowledgement: explained

In addition to the required and recommended resources on Day 1 of the curriculum, the Canadian Association of University Teachers’ “Guide to Acknowledging First Peoples & Traditional Territory” may be helpful to instructors who are unfamiliar or would like a thorough refresher on the concept and pitfalls of Land acknowledgements. Similarly, Selena Mills’s (2019) essay, “What are land acknowledgements and why do they matter?,” and Chelsea Vowel’s (2016) “Beyond territorial acknowledgements,” illuminate important perspectives.

2. Pedagogical philosophy

A research relationship is pedagogical; for what are researchers doing if not being instructed by and learning from their research assemblage, the environments/communities into which they have decided to inquire? Those environments can be delineated in myriad and/or multiple ways: geographically, textually, chemically, taxonomically, demographically, geopolitically, historically, etc. From what and who we choose to learn, what is learned, and how that learning happens are questions asked and answered in the articulation of research paradigms (Wilson, 2008). “The concept of “searching,”’ Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2006) has written, “is embedded in our world-views. … it begins with human curiosity and a desire to solve problems. It is, at its core, an activity of hope” (152).

Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness is also, at its core, an activity of hope. It is a course in presearch methodology: the what, why, and how of preparing to do respectful, relational, and relevant research. This is the work of learning to make and hold time and space to come to know the Land that could facilitate the research we (researchers current and emerging) hope to do. This applies whether that Land is the neighborhood where we live, or far away, delivered by courier to the door of the lab. It applies to the technologies we choose to use and the water we drink while typing. And it applies to where we have come from, where we are now, how we got here, and what responsibilities those stories create. Presearch is the pause-and-look-around before formulating a research question. It is making and holding time and space in which to observe, listen, learn, and develop informed research curiosity that can lead to respectful, relational, and relevant research.

The course is designed to develop participants’ attentional praxes with their quotidian environments: the first step of presearch. It is about learning to be with and take time in the multi-being, multi-storied environments in which each of us live. In so doing participants attention is educated through their interactions with Land, the first pedagogue (Styres, 2011). Cultivating arts of attentiveness is always already relational: “[b]oth a practice of getting to know another in their intimate particularity… and, at the same time, a practice of learning how one might better respond to another” (van Dooren et al., 2016, 17). As we notice and attend, we come to learn our part in and reliance upon the kin with whom we share spaces, often intimately. To diversify attentiveness means to pause and look/listen/feel/sniff/taste around, take in more than you did yesterday, and more still tomorrow. You do not have to hold on to everything you take in, letting go is okay.

3. Learning outcomes: explained

The course objectives are primarily about the education of attention and perception. While the acquisition of knowledge with and about the Land where students reside is important, the course’s aim is to facilitate students’ learning about their own processes for coming into those knowledges such that they will be able to extend these processes into their future endeavors. Following from that aim, course activities are focused on practicing these pedagogies with physical environments.

These learning outcomes are formulated as goals to work towards because they are of a fractal nature; with committed practice in the arts of attentiveness one could be achieving, and re-achieve, this learning outcome their entire life. This course will equip participants with some tools to get started and feel welcome on that journey, should they wish to continue.

Over the course of the semester participants will build capacities to:

• Build a nourishing class environment, both virtually and in person.

The work that participants will do in this class may feel uncomfortable, nonsensical, and at times boring, just like going to the gym, or learning to play a song. That is okay. It will be important to work “alone together” (Jean Brin, personal communication, 2013) to support each other in the individual work and come together with intention during class time, where students can find a supportive network of people who are practicing in parallel. As an instructor, doing the Attentive Repetition exercise alongside your students will help keep them on track and motivated to continue (McConnel, 2019; Quist, 2021). Also, it’s fun (once you get into the swing of it)! See “Intended participants and participation” for more details.

This work will begin before class starts. Participants are asked to come to the first class having reflected on their relationship to the pathways in the Land with which they will be learning for the duration of the semester. Entering on that plane is intended as a starting place where we can all be together, even if we don’t know what the other’s place feels like to be in.

• Produce, and recognize the value of, flexible and accessible media using the principles of universal design.

See UDL on this page for details.

• Employ repetition as a pedagogical tool for learning with every-day environments.

Repetition, the namesake of the core assignment Attentive Repetition, is a tactic and a skill. This course is rooted in anti-colonial sentiment that suggests research and researchers need to remain committed to moving off pathways of extraction and damage and onto the possibility of a “third university” (paperson, 2017). Pathways, or lines, as Sarah Ahmed (2006) explains, “are both created by being followed and are followed by being created. The lines that direct us, as lines of thought as well as lines of motion, are in this way performative: they depend on the repetition of norms and conventions, of routes and paths taken, but they are also created as an effect of this repetition” (16). Repetition has been built into this course through the aforementioned assignment, circling back to specific readings and themes, and, overtly, on Day 9: Repetition.

Story(ing), another important theme in the course, also relies profoundly on repetition as pedagogical tool. For her book “Indigenous Storywork” (2008), Jo-ann Archibald worked closely with Elder Ellen White. White, reflecting on the importance of repetition for emerging storytellers, states, “[i]f they just read it, they’re just going to read it from page one to page two … without any input from them … They [should] start to read it, read a page at a time and [come to know] the story and [visualize] it, look between the lines, and go into the story themselves” (134).

I interpret the soft infrastructure of curricula and assignments to be lines. Lines that can be performed such that a story can be entered. “To say that lines are performative is to say that we find our way and we know which direction we face only as an effect of work, which is often hidden from view. So in following the directions, I arrive, as if by magic” (Ahmed, 2006, 16).

• Reflect on sensory engagement with every-day environments.

• Identify and describe patterns of attentiveness through embodied reflection on experiences.

• Effectively communicate pathways through which patterns of attention are created.

The three learning outcomes listed above constitute a tiered and cyclical process of recognition and reflection. We will be working toward all of these outcomes with each class Day and activity, if not always overtly. Engagement, patterns of engagement, and communication of those patterns, each of these things will strengthen the other as participants cultivate their own arts of attentiveness.

• Explore walking, encountering, recording encounters, and intentional duration in a consistent, committed practice.

This is a pedestrian research pedagogy: observation, experience, and reflection, at a pedestrian speed. Exploring new intentional attention patterning methods is supported by the awareness of these patterns and how they originate. The Attentive Repetition assignment specifies the steps participants are asked to take in order to explore this method of attention patterning. Having the assignment structure in place is intended to solicit creativity, exploration, and whimsy within a safe scaffold of achievable and tangible outcomes.

• Query the different roles that language plays in patterns of attentiveness.

This learning outcome refers directly to Unit 4: Language. The use of photographs, Walker (1993) tells us (and, I would add, other non-linguistic media), “touches on the limitations of language, especially language used for descriptive purposes” (72). In Unit 4, and by distancing Attentive Repetition walks from Logging, we explore both the limitations of language as touched by other representational media, and some ways in which “language stretches to accommodate experience” (Neimanis, 2017, 41).

• Draw on diverse textual, audio, and video sources to support reflection on embodied practice.

Corrugation is what happens when experience folds into ideas folding into experience. It happens as a dance between attention, memory, and the passage of time. Weaving class materials with attentive repetition practice is a process of corrugational enskilment (Unit 5); participants are learning to make connections by drawing diverse sources and experiences together in their assignments throughout the course.

• Use advanced reflective learning skills to curate an archive that will showcase how practice can lead to praxis.

Having something to take away from this one-semester experience, the (Multi)media Essay they create, will allow students to revisit and extend the practices they will acquire here into praxis in their futures, whether or not those futures include (p)research.

4. UDL (universal design for learning)

Mad, sick, and disabled folks, disability studies scholars, and beyond have developed, theorized, written, and spoken extensively about, and invented tools and tricks for, universal design (Jones et al., 2021; Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018). Universal design is the practice, sensibility, and importance of designing our built environments such that they are as accessible as possible to as many people as possible, from the outset. Curricula are soft environmental infrastructure, built by pedagogues, and can be developed, compiled, and practiced with universal design at the decision-making helm (Seok et al., 2018). In learning and teaching spaces, universal design is generally specified as “universal design for learning” or UDL. “By integrating multiple means of engagement, methods of presentation, and ways for students to demonstrate their knowledge, instructors can promote accessibility and reduce barriers to learning”(Langran & DeWitt, 2020, 48). As I have interpreted it, introducing universal design practices in a teaching and learning setting aloso applies to the work students are asked to produce. Though gaps remain, I have done my best to do that here. Universal design principles are incorporated into the Attentive Repetition, Mid-term Presentation, (Multi)media Essay, and (Mulit)media Showcase assignments.

Conversations about universal design have extended their reach, especially since COVID-19 put many people in dis-abling positions for the first time (Chen, 2020). Podcasting has been a particularly prominent medium for this expansion. Podcasts about or grounded in universal design and UDL most often provide transcripts for those who would choose to read the spoken text. My hope is that universal design and UDL increasingly permeate scholarly and pedagogical production.

If you are interested in learning more about universal design and universal design for learning, I recommend:

• the OER Making Accessible Media: Accessible Design in Digital Media,
• the podcast Think UDL,
• and the podcast Podagogies.

5. Open

Scholarship has always been about sharing knowledge. Open educational resources, mentioned both early on in UBC’s 10 year strategic plan (Ono et al., 2018, 21) and in the “Guide to Reappointment, Promotion and Tenure Procedures at UBC” (Sxeri & Mukherjee-Reed, 2020), are increasingly recognized as valuable contributions in institutional academic space. While copyright laws prohibit attachment of specific documents that are neither open access nor available online, the “fair dealing” principle, which allows students to share resources with instructors and vice versa, may be seen to exist in OER as well, as an educational exception. The rational for this extension being, if someone is reading and learning from something, that’s a relationship. The legal frameworks for this in Canada are currently in flux (Will Engle, personal communication, 4 August 2021).

If you publish a course, you are publishing your teaching, making pedagogical processes transparent, and accelerating learning. Far from decreasing the quality of research and teaching, Open “is a purposeful path towards connection and community … a blend of strategies, technologies, and networked communities that make the process and products of education more transparent, understandable, and available to all the people involved.” (Woodward, in Grush, 2014). See UBC’s Program for Open Scholarship and Education (accessible to all internet users) for a deep dive into the practices, promises, and practicalities of Open in today’s academic landscape.

6. Assessment procedures: explained

Four different types of assessment are suggested for use in this course: self assessment (Attentive Repetition), assessment by math (Log and attendance, see Assignments page for details), assessment by instructor (Mid-term Presentation and (Mulit)media Essay), and peer assessment (Peer responses). Assessment rubrics have been provided on each individual assignment page. Motivations and expectations are detailed below for self-assessment procedures and how instructors are to engage with students’ work beyond explicit assessment procedures.

Self-assessment: Attentive Repetition

Grading functions as a mechanism to point students at the things we think are important. In this case, what is important is student’s ability to reflect on their own experience. A reproduction of that reflection for submission as an assignment can never be at rich as the reflection understood by the person reflecting. This is why the Attentive Repetition assignment, accounting for 30% of the total course graded, will be assessed by the students themselves.

Jesse Stommel (2016), an influential scholar in anglophone critical pedagogy discourse and champion of “ungrading,” asked twitter to share their #4wordpedagogies, beginning with his: “start by trusting students.” Let us take this proposition and roll with it. Yes, a student could assign themself the highest possible mark for every week of the semester. That is something you, as the instructor, might want to look out for. As they will be self-assessing weekly you will be able to see patterns that emerge. You may want to schedule an hour or two in your schedule around Day 10 to check in specifically with each student’s self-assments. What sorts of grades are they assigning themselves? Are the supporting self-reflection statements reflective of those grades? If any cases stand out, schedule 10 minutes to speak with any students who’s self-assigned grades seem unlikely, either because they are very high or very low across the board. It will be important to be aware of privileged and structural inequities in your particular context, as these patterns may play a role in the way students asses themselves (Ustundag, in Maloley & Jones, 2021). This is not about policing students, it is about showing care and interest. Should a check in of this sort feel like something you want to do, it is advisable to tell the students in advance.

As the instructor you will be grading the (Multi)media Essays that students compose for the end of term. Comparing these two assignments, if a case should arise in which there is an acute discrepancy between your assessment of their essay and the student’s assessment of their attentive repetition work (greater than 20% difference), schedule a meeting with that student to discuss their work and well-being. This structure has been built in to ensure that the instructor is aware of possible grade inflation through self-assessment and is present to support students who, despite producing high quality work for submission at the end of semester, may not have had the confidence to assign themselves high marks in their self-assessments.

By asking students to self-assess we are saying, ‘I trust you’ (Stommel, 2016). We are asking them to think critically about their own learning. By practicing that critical thinking they will improve, and ultimately be able to better navigate their learning journeys both in and out of a university setting. Finally, we are making space for ourselves, as instructors, to reflect on and perhaps revise our relationships to students’ learning, so as to guide further groups of students with increased awareness, compassion, and context-appropriate pedagogy.

Engagement beyond assessment

This class has been designed for 20 t0 25 students. You will keep up an Attentive Repetition practice, as discussed above, participate in the class logosphere, and commenting and providing feedback and encouragement to students. How much of this you do will depend on circumstances I cannot feign to predict. My inclination would be to set aside one to two hours a week to engage in the logosphere, in addition to 1.5 hours (3 x 30 minutes) for your Attentive Repetition walks. The student’s self-assessments will not depend on the feedback you give them, that would be next level ungrading (Maloley & Jones, 2021). It’s possible however, that students’ confidence to participate enthusiastically will be encouraged by your interaction with their Logs through the logosphere, which is why I suggest making this a weekly practice.

7. Why synchronous classes?

In-class time will be used to convene course participants, both you and the students, and think together through the concepts that underlie and organize your, out of class, attentive repetition work. It will benefit everyone to have as much diversity of experience as possible in the classroom, and to be able to learn from those experiences together as a cohort. It is for this reason that synchronous classes (and attendance) are written into the curriculum and encouraged for anyone interested in teaching a similar course.

8. Intended participants and participation

This curriculum is presented to/for a 2nd year undergraduate student in a Canadian university context. The class is assumed to have between 20 and 25 students enrolled.

Anecdotally, I remember a handful of educational experiences from the 2nd year of my own undergraduate program that I now think of as formative and having significant influence on my character and values as a human being and researcher. Does this make the 2nd year special? Maybe. Maybe it makes 19 a special age, which, of course, not all 2nd year undergraduate students will be. Whatever the reason, my intuition is that introducing the concept of presearch and guiding students through a process of attentional enskilment can be most effective and influential on trajectory through academic spaces and discourses if introduced early. Early enough, that is, to have time to percolate, and not too early as to overwhelm those students who are just emerging into a context, which for most will be new and unfamiliar.

In the above section, “Learning outcomes: explained,” I suggested doing the Attentive Repetition exercise alongside your students. This, I believe, is important to consider. Yes, you are busy. So are your students. What would it mean for you to participate in this class not only as a guide or instructor but as a participant, a word used extensively throughout this course material? Could you make walking attentively for half an hour tree times a week part of your work schedule? Perhaps you do something similar already. Keeping an attentive repetition practice in parallel with your students will be important if this course is to be taught with empathy, resonance, and conviction.

Empathy

Where I live the weather is not always agreeable. Sometimes it is very cold, sometimes very hot. This is a fire landscape, where smoke can permeate your pores and throw a blanket over any optimism you were holding dear. If making the decision to ask students to go outside attentively, then teaching with empathy mans you go outside too. If you are walking as well, you will be tuned in to when it is time to say, “Hey, it’s 45 degrees today. Let’s all do our attentive repetition work inside the school gym, where there is air conditioning and everyone is welcome.” Or, “Did anyone else notice the sunflowers blooming!?”

Resonance & conviction

There is power in this practice: walking attentively, again and again, in similar places. Commitment to practice is an “insistence on the creative force of repetition to produce something different – something yet to come and never fully knowable in advance” (Neimanis, 2017, 89). I only know this because I did it myself. If teaching this course or your adaptation of the curricular materials provide here is of interest to you, I suspect you believe me. Don’t take my word for it though.