Teaching Beyond the Curriculum

Abstract

There have been critiques that have attempted to challenge the context where education happens. In the 70s at my own institution Roy Ascott took a radical approach and was quickly removed. When tarot cards replaced the academic calendar and departments, grades, exams, and more were done away with, the institution deemed it was too much. Universities now are a far from the radical spaces of Roy Ascott’s short tenure. Instead of embracing learning paths (pl), we’re doubling down on uniform learning outcomes. Instead of considering the impact of the design of the course, the classroom, or the materials on teaching and learning, we’re focusing on the syllabus covering all the bases. This conundrum has left us with innumerable checklists: for teaching, for learning, for making things accessible, for being inclusive, for pedagogical practices. But the checklists all fall short. Human beings are social creatures and teaching and learning is fundamentally a relational act, so approaching education with a checklist process for accessibility and inclusion leaves us feeling better while still falling short. Any learner or teacher whose needs are not covered by the process is deemed the problem, not the process or the context. These are the outcomes of poor design of education. I would like to be in conversation about what it looks like to build equity into education using an Inclusively designed, applied pedagogical approach.