Going back to the first lecture 16/1…

I wanted to note down my thoughts and what I deduced from this session.

My small team were given the statement

While risk taking is central to the critical thinking process, this behaviour is unlikely to occur unless those involved have no sense of fear. (Macfarlane 2004, p.59)

We decided that you have to let inhibitions/ fear go to allow the ideas to flow – but can you let everything go? Just like a child, if you have no inhibitions you are also not aware to critically question/ think about the decisions you make. You need to have some fear but it’s about overcoming the fear and opening the mind to other potential ideas and concepts that maybe are out of your depth. Our team questioned – Is risk taking central to critical thinking? Maybe it’s also about self confidence that allows one to feel assured and critically think. The statement also brought up many other questions such as, How do we change our relationship to fear? What are the fears that inhibit one from taking risks? How do we reduce fear to take the risk?

Looking back at Padlet, which Linsday told us to upload a statement regarding our statement on to, unfortunately, there seemed to be no other teams looking at the same statement. I would have liked to see what they interpreted from it. For us, we thought ‘How do we change our relationship with fear to think critically?’ was an important question to ask as it’s easy to be told do this and do that,  but it’s the HOW, the journey to get there that is what students need to learn and as teachers, what we need to teach them. Especially in a creative university, no longer are the days of students living in fear of their tutors and just listening to what they say. Students now question tutors judgements and constantly ask us for guidance and help through their journey.

I also had a quick look at the first statement:

Techniques is what teachers use until the real teacher arrives (Palmer 1998, p.5)

I took this as we come from industry and have no formal training as teachers and we believe we are not real teachers and are waiting for the real teacher to educate us/ tell us what to do. This really resonated with me and Iestyn also told us that this is a common thought amongst tutors. To hear other people feel exactly the same as you is great. My colleague and I really felt like it was just us, but now there are more of us in this boat!

Some educational knowledge Lindsay wanted us to be aware of:

ROBBINS – all the ppl who wanted to go to uni – were the capable? Before robbins 4 x men than women going

1992 – Further and higher education act – bringing everything under central control rather than locally. Made polytechnics into unis

1990s – labour intro tuition fees – stripping back of funded places

Dearing report – 90s – intro by new labour but had cross party support – initiated by conservative gov. In 97 Oberton window (sits within the realm of acceptability). Asking people to make a contribution to fees as costs going up.

NSS – 2005 – students are now consumers

2008 – crash

2010- browne report – opened the flood gates for fees. Uni’s are competing – some do two yr degrees so cheaper and do the best in NSS

Teaching excellence framework – ranking unis – incorporates some of the results of NSS, employment and highly skilled

Growth of online learning – 2000s

Graeme and I were in a pair discussing education, and I brought up that even despite having free education you are still indirectly paying for an education as it’s all about catchment areas and the areas with the best schools attract residents, which in turn raise house prices and only a SEC can afford to live in these areas.