VIRTUAL: Applying Education
Abstract
This presentation is a collaborative and transformative autoethnography (Chang et al, 2013; Hernandez et al, 2022) on the topic of assessment and feedback and under the conference theme ‘Emerging Trends’. As Higher Education colleagues who, between us, work at four different UK Higher Education institutions, we have come together to challenge ourselves to think differently, see differently. Who is assessment for? How do we do it (students and teachers)? And what is its purpose? To borrow from Foucault (2011: 91), ‘here I return to my squirrel’s hoard’. As writers and storytellers, we returned to our professional and personal experiences to reveal and interrogate. Through an honest, vital collaboration, we reveal things to ourselves as well as to each other that perhaps at times, and out of choice, we have kept hidden. Some of our work considers our own need for approval and validation. Some of our work explores our context of being ‘a widening participation’ student. We return to discussions about the language of assessment and feedback, how the vocabulary, the processes and the systems exclude and include presenting reductionist views of learning and of education. We are educators, this is what we do. How does a pedagogy of care and compassion translate from more inclusive experiences in our classrooms to the measured compliance of an assessment product? While we hold on to hopeful and enacted aspirations such as bell hooks’ (1994) desire to ensure that the classroom was always ‘an exciting place, never boring,’ still we are ourselves confined and confining.
Dr. Victoria Wright has worked in further and higher education settings. In further education, she worked as an English teacher, with some teaching in French and English for Speakers of Other Languages, before moving into teacher education and quality roles. She was a Senior Lecturer and Principal Lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton teaching from Levels 4 to 8 inclusive. She joined Loughborough University in October 2022 as an Academic Projects and Development Adviser. Her research interests include professional learning, teacher education, autoethnography.
Pete Bennett has worked in further education before joining the University of Wolverhampton where he has worked for over twenty years. Pete is the module leader for the Dissertation module on the MA Education and has been involved in leading and teaching on undergraduate and postgraduate provision in education. He has also taught on the Foundation Learning programme for a number of years. Pete is the Chief Examiner for AQA Media and his research interests include autoethnography, narrative and creative methodologies, media and education.
Dr. Tina Byrom has over 31 years’ teaching experience in the compulsory and post-compulsory sectors. Having completed her PhD titled ‘The Dream of Social Flying’: social class, higher education choice and the paradox of widening participation at Nottingham University in 2008, she has subsequently worked both as an academic and in professional development in higher education. She currently heads up the Enhanced Academic Practice team at Loughborough University and her research interests include creative pedagogy, widening participation, dialogical observation practices and staff development.
Louise Curry has worked in further education settings before joining the University of Wolverhampton as a Senior Lecturer. In her higher education work, Louise has taught across undergraduate and postgraduate provision and in the context of teacher education and associated professional courses and modules. Her teaching currently includes the Postgraduate Certificate Academic Practice in Higher Education. Her research interests include teacher education, further education, reflective practices and autoethnography.
Dr. Fay Glendenning taught in primary and secondary schools prior to becoming a teacher educator at the University of Wolverhampton. Her management roles in higher education have included Head of Department and Head of Quality Standards and Enhancement. She is joining Coventry University as Director of Academic Enhancement an