WEBVTT 00:00:08.460 --> 00:00:11.199 Welcome to LITE Bites, an occasional podcast 00:00:11.199 --> 00:00:13.279 from Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence 00:00:13.279 --> 00:00:16.280 at the University of Leeds. Episodes will be 00:00:16.280 --> 00:00:18.559 hosted by members of the LITE team. And we'll 00:00:18.559 --> 00:00:20.379 be showcasing the scholarship of teaching and 00:00:20.379 --> 00:00:27.120 learning from across the university. Hello, welcome 00:00:27.120 --> 00:00:30.359 to the latest episode of LITE Bites. My name 00:00:30.359 --> 00:00:32.200 is Robert Averies from the Leeds Institute for 00:00:32.200 --> 00:00:34.340 Teaching Excellence. I'm joined today by Andy 00:00:34.340 --> 00:00:37.500 Curtin. Hello. Thanks for having me. No worries, 00:00:37.560 --> 00:00:39.920 you're welcome. And Andy Curtin has recently 00:00:39.920 --> 00:00:42.520 completed a light fellowship called Removing 00:00:42.520 --> 00:00:44.719 Dominance and Gatekeeping in Higher Education. 00:00:45.020 --> 00:00:47.079 And that's what Andy is here to talk to you about 00:00:47.079 --> 00:00:49.859 today. So perhaps to get things started, you 00:00:49.859 --> 00:00:51.600 could tell us a little bit about what you do 00:00:51.600 --> 00:00:55.359 at the University of Leeds. Sure, yeah. So my 00:00:55.359 --> 00:00:59.439 main job role is, the title is Lecturer in Applied 00:00:59.439 --> 00:01:02.899 Ethics. So I work at IDEA, the Ethics Centre. 00:01:03.200 --> 00:01:07.349 So we do... kind of interdisciplinary teaching 00:01:07.349 --> 00:01:12.109 research and consultancy in ethics and ethics 00:01:12.109 --> 00:01:16.290 in society type of issues so yeah most of my 00:01:16.290 --> 00:01:19.609 job role I'm teaching and scholarship lecturer 00:01:19.609 --> 00:01:24.609 so I'm predominantly teaching based and basically 00:01:24.609 --> 00:01:30.930 we teach ethics relevant to disciplines across 00:01:30.930 --> 00:01:34.810 the university so we might be in engineering 00:01:34.810 --> 00:01:40.269 or business or dentistry medicine any discipline 00:01:40.269 --> 00:01:42.989 that you know has a bit of ethics relevant to 00:01:42.989 --> 00:01:48.250 their course people like me come in and we talk 00:01:48.250 --> 00:01:50.329 to students about ethics and get them discussing 00:01:50.329 --> 00:01:53.709 it and seeing how their work and kind of professional 00:01:53.709 --> 00:01:57.290 practice and maybe their future careers raises 00:01:57.290 --> 00:01:59.010 ethical issues and what kinds of things they'll 00:01:59.010 --> 00:02:02.579 have to um navigate in the future for themselves 00:02:02.579 --> 00:02:06.480 and yeah what to think about um so that's that's 00:02:06.480 --> 00:02:08.699 my sort of main job is a lot of teaching but 00:02:08.699 --> 00:02:15.319 i also do uh research so my published work is 00:02:15.319 --> 00:02:18.319 on the nature of trust and what it means to trust 00:02:18.319 --> 00:02:21.740 people and why trust has got this kind of ethical 00:02:21.740 --> 00:02:24.819 or moral significance to it so when you trust 00:02:24.819 --> 00:02:27.270 someone Doesn't just matter to you that they 00:02:27.270 --> 00:02:30.349 do the thing. It sort of matters to you that 00:02:30.349 --> 00:02:32.250 they said they would do the thing. And it's, 00:02:32.250 --> 00:02:35.689 you know, if they let you down, then that's a 00:02:35.689 --> 00:02:38.490 kind of interpersonal kind of wronging. So my 00:02:38.490 --> 00:02:41.849 work explored all that. And so how people work 00:02:41.849 --> 00:02:45.030 together, why it matters to them that people 00:02:45.030 --> 00:02:47.090 do what they say they're going to do. And kind 00:02:47.090 --> 00:02:49.289 of looking at that in terms of interpersonal 00:02:49.289 --> 00:02:52.490 relationships, but also in social structures, 00:02:52.789 --> 00:02:56.340 societies, corporations. all that sort of stuff. 00:02:56.400 --> 00:02:58.800 I think about trust a lot and, yeah, how society 00:02:58.800 --> 00:03:00.840 works and how we fit together, basically. Not 00:03:00.840 --> 00:03:02.400 to dumb the conversation down at all, but I'm 00:03:02.400 --> 00:03:04.080 really glad that I held up my end of the bargain 00:03:04.080 --> 00:03:07.960 with this podcast. Right. I would do that several 00:03:07.960 --> 00:03:10.759 months ago. Yeah, yeah. If you'd have cancelled, 00:03:10.840 --> 00:03:14.500 I wouldn't have mind. So what motivated you to 00:03:14.500 --> 00:03:17.039 start your Light Fellowship? Yeah, so probably, 00:03:17.219 --> 00:03:20.780 like I said, the fact that I was doing a lot 00:03:20.780 --> 00:03:26.030 of teaching as my main job role. um so i've taught 00:03:26.030 --> 00:03:30.009 now for 10 years or a bit over 10 years um so 00:03:30.009 --> 00:03:33.250 i used to teach as part of my phd at university 00:03:33.250 --> 00:03:38.169 of manchester um now been at leeds for six seven 00:03:38.169 --> 00:03:42.349 years um teaching a lot and you get used to i 00:03:42.349 --> 00:03:45.169 guess thinking about you know what is it what 00:03:45.169 --> 00:03:47.849 is it that i'm doing what is it that i'm trying 00:03:47.849 --> 00:03:50.270 to get students to do and sort of reflecting 00:03:50.270 --> 00:03:54.719 on how to me the the practice of teaching in 00:03:54.719 --> 00:04:00.659 a university felt and I was sort of struck by 00:04:00.659 --> 00:04:04.000 this this feeling that oftentimes I felt like 00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:06.659 I was being kind of unfair to students or that 00:04:06.659 --> 00:04:10.139 what I was getting them to do was kind of mysterious 00:04:10.139 --> 00:04:15.199 and that's partly so like I said my teaching 00:04:15.199 --> 00:04:17.879 involves going into these other disciplines where 00:04:17.879 --> 00:04:22.120 students don't really know what philosophy or 00:04:22.120 --> 00:04:25.939 ethics amounts to they don't and they don't really 00:04:25.939 --> 00:04:29.439 care about it often or um yeah they're not immediately 00:04:29.439 --> 00:04:33.079 sort of on board with the point of what you're 00:04:33.079 --> 00:04:37.240 trying to get them to do um so you might only 00:04:37.240 --> 00:04:40.699 be teaching them uh for just that one hour session 00:04:40.699 --> 00:04:42.279 or something and then you don't see them again 00:04:42.279 --> 00:04:45.000 so when you're put in that kind of position like 00:04:45.000 --> 00:04:48.560 i was you're really forced to think about okay 00:04:48.560 --> 00:04:51.579 what is the kind of bare essential thing that 00:04:51.579 --> 00:04:54.060 I'm trying to get them to do and what's the value 00:04:54.060 --> 00:04:59.560 of it and how can I transmit to them that value 00:04:59.560 --> 00:05:03.019 and that function or you know the sort of practice 00:05:03.019 --> 00:05:06.279 of it in such a short space of time because I 00:05:06.279 --> 00:05:07.879 don't I don't have the whole session to just 00:05:07.879 --> 00:05:10.259 go on about you know why you should care about 00:05:10.259 --> 00:05:14.300 this it's often like 10 minutes or five minutes 00:05:14.300 --> 00:05:17.139 if that right at the start so just doing all 00:05:17.139 --> 00:05:20.389 this teaching and maybe that also involves Getting 00:05:20.389 --> 00:05:22.209 them to do some assessment as well on some of 00:05:22.209 --> 00:05:24.509 that teaching. So a lot of disciplines, they 00:05:24.509 --> 00:05:28.230 might have kind of a small ethics portion for 00:05:28.230 --> 00:05:31.529 the students to complete as part of the overall 00:05:31.529 --> 00:05:35.310 assessment in that module. And then so I was 00:05:35.310 --> 00:05:38.709 thinking a lot about how do I convey this to 00:05:38.709 --> 00:05:41.110 them, the value of this? And then the assessment 00:05:41.110 --> 00:05:44.209 that I'm doing, what is it actually doing for 00:05:44.209 --> 00:05:46.709 them? What is the point of this ethics assessment? 00:05:47.550 --> 00:05:49.449 I'm giving them this marking criteria and I'm 00:05:49.449 --> 00:05:50.930 explaining to them this is what we're after. 00:05:51.649 --> 00:05:55.230 It felt very sort of top -down and imposed, like 00:05:55.230 --> 00:05:57.430 you just have to do these things to tick this 00:05:57.430 --> 00:06:01.410 box and then, no, you can move on, you can forget 00:06:01.410 --> 00:06:04.790 you ever met me, that kind of thing. So do all 00:06:04.790 --> 00:06:07.550 this teaching, think about all that. What is 00:06:07.550 --> 00:06:12.990 the point in this? And then I had another experience. 00:06:13.920 --> 00:06:18.300 It was 2020, 2021 during the pandemic. I learned 00:06:18.300 --> 00:06:24.579 to drive. And so this like period where I was 00:06:24.579 --> 00:06:26.740 thinking about what is all this, what we're doing. 00:06:27.540 --> 00:06:29.540 I was learning to drive at the same time and 00:06:29.540 --> 00:06:31.939 something struck me about the way that doing 00:06:31.939 --> 00:06:36.139 driving lessons was very different to my experience 00:06:36.139 --> 00:06:39.259 of teaching students in university. And at this 00:06:39.259 --> 00:06:42.959 very sort of get go of doing driving lessons. 00:06:43.689 --> 00:06:46.750 you're aware right this thing that you're aiming 00:06:46.750 --> 00:06:48.529 towards this is going to come at the end and 00:06:48.529 --> 00:06:51.970 it's going to have all these um maneuvers that 00:06:51.970 --> 00:06:55.649 you're asked to complete and what we're going 00:06:55.649 --> 00:06:58.889 to do in these lessons we've maybe got 20 30 00:06:58.889 --> 00:07:01.610 lessons we're just going to do these maneuvers 00:07:01.610 --> 00:07:03.449 over and over again so it becomes part of your 00:07:03.449 --> 00:07:06.009 muscle memory i thought a lot of that is very 00:07:06.009 --> 00:07:08.509 different to this sort of in -person teaching 00:07:08.509 --> 00:07:10.110 that i'm doing where maybe i'm doing a lecture 00:07:10.110 --> 00:07:13.569 on a topic i'm doing a seminar And maybe seminars 00:07:13.569 --> 00:07:16.329 revolve around students discussing questions. 00:07:17.790 --> 00:07:20.529 And maybe I'm asking them, you know, air your 00:07:20.529 --> 00:07:24.449 views and think about others' views. Maybe in 00:07:24.449 --> 00:07:26.589 a lecture, I'm sort of giving them some theories 00:07:26.589 --> 00:07:29.129 and some background of this issue that we're 00:07:29.129 --> 00:07:32.110 discussing. But the sort of connection between 00:07:32.110 --> 00:07:35.670 that in -person teaching, the final thing I then 00:07:35.670 --> 00:07:39.250 hit them with, maybe weeks later, where, you 00:07:39.250 --> 00:07:41.879 know, I've got this essay for you to write. the 00:07:41.879 --> 00:07:44.240 things didn't seem very connected in my mind 00:07:44.240 --> 00:07:46.439 in a way which is very different to you know 00:07:46.439 --> 00:07:48.759 the driving lessons are kind of practice these 00:07:48.759 --> 00:07:50.959 maneuvers that you do over and over again do 00:07:50.959 --> 00:07:53.980 a test on them and so you see this sort of pathway 00:07:53.980 --> 00:07:56.660 in this trajectory and you experience your progress 00:07:56.660 --> 00:07:58.660 you experience yourself getting better at it 00:07:58.660 --> 00:08:01.740 so I was just like yeah what is the connection 00:08:01.740 --> 00:08:05.779 between these things and yeah it was like how 00:08:05.779 --> 00:08:07.939 how can we get teaching done in a way so it's 00:08:07.939 --> 00:08:10.879 more like the driving lessons basically um more 00:08:10.879 --> 00:08:13.720 transparent and more kind of giving the students 00:08:13.720 --> 00:08:17.000 the sort of power to take control of their learning 00:08:17.000 --> 00:08:19.959 so all these kinds of things yeah and you spoke 00:08:19.959 --> 00:08:23.819 to the um multidisciplinarity of your work but 00:08:23.819 --> 00:08:26.180 also i think this approach lends itself well 00:08:26.180 --> 00:08:29.079 to wide range of disciplines in terms of how 00:08:29.079 --> 00:08:30.839 we can shift those power dynamics. So if you're 00:08:30.839 --> 00:08:32.639 listening to this and you're teaching, you're 00:08:32.639 --> 00:08:35.320 designing a curriculum, keep listening because 00:08:35.320 --> 00:08:38.320 this work is really relevant. Obviously, you 00:08:38.320 --> 00:08:40.000 adapt it and you interpret it in your own way. 00:08:40.740 --> 00:08:44.139 Yeah, yeah. So that was the thing I was thinking 00:08:44.139 --> 00:08:46.279 about. So we all have our different disciplines. 00:08:47.039 --> 00:08:50.460 We're all getting students to do something that 00:08:50.460 --> 00:08:54.019 we want them to be able to do, which is a kind 00:08:54.019 --> 00:08:56.559 of essential part of this discipline. But how 00:08:56.559 --> 00:09:02.080 does teaching and assessment kind of, yeah, relate 00:09:02.080 --> 00:09:05.120 to that overall thing that we do as academics 00:09:05.120 --> 00:09:10.220 or, you know, what people do in society when, 00:09:10.299 --> 00:09:13.600 let's say, I'm a philosopher, but academic philosophy 00:09:13.600 --> 00:09:15.980 doesn't have a monopoly on being philosophical. 00:09:16.559 --> 00:09:18.759 Like, that's something anyone can do. So how 00:09:18.759 --> 00:09:21.379 does learning to do it in a university environment 00:09:21.379 --> 00:09:24.570 relate to... this kind of more general human 00:09:24.570 --> 00:09:26.830 practice and i guess the same is true of other 00:09:26.830 --> 00:09:30.129 of other disciplines you know you can you can 00:09:30.129 --> 00:09:32.570 study um all kinds of things at university and 00:09:32.570 --> 00:09:35.950 it's not just training you in doing this particular 00:09:35.950 --> 00:09:39.789 reified academic thing it's supposed to be sort 00:09:39.789 --> 00:09:44.350 of this widely applicable human thing so yeah 00:09:44.350 --> 00:09:46.710 how is it i guess the thing i was really wrestling 00:09:46.710 --> 00:09:50.110 with was how is it that i can convey to students 00:09:50.110 --> 00:09:55.299 get them hooked and get them seeing the value 00:09:55.299 --> 00:09:59.379 of doing this method or technique in this academic 00:09:59.379 --> 00:10:03.340 level that yeah it's not it's not just a load 00:10:03.340 --> 00:10:07.360 of um theories or expectations in a marking criteria 00:10:07.360 --> 00:10:12.200 it's it's this like essential human thing that 00:10:12.200 --> 00:10:15.559 um is supposed to enrich our lives in in some 00:10:15.559 --> 00:10:18.899 way it would be really good at this point i think 00:10:18.899 --> 00:10:21.120 for listeners to hear a little bit about how 00:10:21.120 --> 00:10:24.129 this was channeled into your light fellowship 00:10:24.129 --> 00:10:26.789 in particular. So what sorts of, I don't know, 00:10:26.830 --> 00:10:29.330 research questions or aims did you have? And 00:10:29.330 --> 00:10:32.470 then how did you go about investigating it? Yeah, 00:10:32.490 --> 00:10:37.830 so this was a thing that shifted over time a 00:10:37.830 --> 00:10:41.490 little bit. So because I started off the project 00:10:41.490 --> 00:10:44.070 and the proposal for the project was this quite 00:10:44.070 --> 00:10:48.710 sort of blue sky thing in a way, which was, you 00:10:48.710 --> 00:10:52.789 know, how do you address this? where you're keeping 00:10:52.789 --> 00:10:55.809 standards that you're asking students to meet 00:10:55.809 --> 00:10:59.370 mysterious or you're sort of not directly training 00:10:59.370 --> 00:11:03.029 them in it or you hit them with assessments that 00:11:03.029 --> 00:11:05.269 seem to bear some relation to what they do in 00:11:05.269 --> 00:11:07.250 in -person teaching, but it's not necessarily 00:11:07.250 --> 00:11:13.809 clear. That kind of broad idea, then making that 00:11:13.809 --> 00:11:16.470 into a tractable thing, which you can do some 00:11:16.470 --> 00:11:19.789 research on or do a project on exploring how 00:11:19.789 --> 00:11:22.700 to address that. I essentially really struggled 00:11:22.700 --> 00:11:28.919 to come up with a set of research aims or research 00:11:28.919 --> 00:11:34.480 plan in a way which I felt fit the kind of light 00:11:34.480 --> 00:11:38.500 formula or model. So I kind of went into this 00:11:38.500 --> 00:11:41.679 being like, I want to explore this and maybe 00:11:41.679 --> 00:11:44.480 do some experimental forms of teaching where 00:11:44.480 --> 00:11:47.740 I essentially leave it up to the students to 00:11:47.740 --> 00:11:52.419 do everything. And then I kind of hit institutional 00:11:52.419 --> 00:11:55.139 stumbling blocks. Well, there's limits to what 00:11:55.139 --> 00:11:57.580 you can reasonably mess around with in terms 00:11:57.580 --> 00:12:01.139 of how teaching or assessment works. So I had 00:12:01.139 --> 00:12:03.539 to think about what I was going to do in the 00:12:03.539 --> 00:12:07.659 restrictions of working in the student education 00:12:07.659 --> 00:12:10.840 machinery. But then I was also thinking, OK, 00:12:10.899 --> 00:12:13.980 what is it I'm actually trying to test or find 00:12:13.980 --> 00:12:17.759 out? So I kind of came up with various versions 00:12:17.759 --> 00:12:20.470 of. a bunch of survey questions to try and get 00:12:20.470 --> 00:12:24.950 views from students about how they felt. Yeah, 00:12:25.049 --> 00:12:27.649 their sort of sense of ownership over their subject 00:12:27.649 --> 00:12:30.429 was. So I remember coming up with survey questions 00:12:30.429 --> 00:12:33.049 about, do you feel like you're being trained 00:12:33.049 --> 00:12:37.870 as a practitioner of your discipline? Or to what 00:12:37.870 --> 00:12:42.730 extent do the lecturer's standards seem transparent 00:12:42.730 --> 00:12:45.250 to you? Or to what extent do you think those 00:12:45.250 --> 00:12:48.659 standards that they're asking you to meet? Are 00:12:48.659 --> 00:12:53.039 the result of just preferences of the lecturers 00:12:53.039 --> 00:12:56.620 themselves or do they relate to some kind of 00:12:56.620 --> 00:13:00.100 external thing that's like important in the world? 00:13:00.259 --> 00:13:02.480 So again, thinking back to the driving lesson 00:13:02.480 --> 00:13:05.279 stuff, I was like, it's a clear way in which 00:13:05.279 --> 00:13:08.980 you can drive successfully because that's a matter 00:13:08.980 --> 00:13:11.059 of the way the world is and the way that a car 00:13:11.059 --> 00:13:14.860 functions. You can either do it well or you can't. 00:13:15.439 --> 00:13:17.879 Whereas a lot of the time, and this was something 00:13:17.879 --> 00:13:20.860 I experienced as a student, when you get your 00:13:20.860 --> 00:13:23.759 feedback on a piece of work back on an assessment, 00:13:23.980 --> 00:13:25.860 you're kind of looking at this feedback going 00:13:25.860 --> 00:13:28.580 like, OK, OK, so I did that well. I didn't do 00:13:28.580 --> 00:13:33.019 that well. But you can't quite see why. It's 00:13:33.019 --> 00:13:35.659 like, you know, oh, you needed to do more critical 00:13:35.659 --> 00:13:37.879 analysis. OK, I can kind of vaguely understand 00:13:37.879 --> 00:13:41.379 what that means, but not exactly sure. So it's 00:13:41.379 --> 00:13:44.100 all, yeah, this way of trying to figure out. 00:13:44.509 --> 00:13:47.990 How do I extract from students their feelings 00:13:47.990 --> 00:13:52.210 about this stuff? Coming up with survey questions. 00:13:52.350 --> 00:13:54.710 I was also coming up with survey questions for 00:13:54.710 --> 00:13:57.610 teaching staff. Do they think about these kinds 00:13:57.610 --> 00:14:00.789 of issues? You know, what do you see? I was thinking 00:14:00.789 --> 00:14:02.509 of survey questions like, what do you see your 00:14:02.509 --> 00:14:07.149 role as a lecturer or teacher? Do you see yourself 00:14:07.149 --> 00:14:09.970 as kind of bringing students into the discipline 00:14:09.970 --> 00:14:13.129 or just seeing whether they should be allowed 00:14:13.129 --> 00:14:17.559 into it? Or to what extent do you see yourself 00:14:17.559 --> 00:14:20.200 as handing over the kind of methods or the tools 00:14:20.200 --> 00:14:23.299 that are relevant for your discipline? Or to 00:14:23.299 --> 00:14:26.120 what extent do you see yourself as ensuring the 00:14:26.120 --> 00:14:28.379 integrity of those tools or ensuring that they're 00:14:28.379 --> 00:14:31.120 not mishandled? So I was kind of interested in 00:14:31.120 --> 00:14:34.240 all these questions about what's going on inside 00:14:34.240 --> 00:14:39.200 students and teachers' heads. But I essentially 00:14:39.200 --> 00:14:43.379 got very little traction in getting that kind 00:14:43.379 --> 00:14:46.450 of approach. off the ground so found it a struggle 00:14:46.450 --> 00:14:50.669 to get kind of empirical route to thinking about 00:14:50.669 --> 00:14:54.950 my question and i hit many different stumbling 00:14:54.950 --> 00:14:58.409 blocks essentially kept stalling on it and kind 00:14:58.409 --> 00:15:02.850 of at the end ran out of time and what happened 00:15:02.850 --> 00:15:06.549 what happened then was um uh speaking to light 00:15:06.549 --> 00:15:09.830 about it uh saying oh well i could do this kind 00:15:09.830 --> 00:15:13.559 of last ditch thing where maybe i um do some 00:15:13.559 --> 00:15:17.080 observations of teaching and just write some 00:15:17.080 --> 00:15:20.259 reflections on that. And I can't remember exactly, 00:15:20.419 --> 00:15:23.419 but that didn't seem to get off the ground either. 00:15:23.500 --> 00:15:25.299 And then I said, OK, well, what I could do is 00:15:25.299 --> 00:15:28.340 just write a piece about how I'm thinking about 00:15:28.340 --> 00:15:31.100 all this, sort of write a philosophical, conceptual 00:15:31.100 --> 00:15:34.779 piece, maybe run a workshop because I know people 00:15:34.779 --> 00:15:36.580 who think about this stuff within philosophy. 00:15:37.159 --> 00:15:40.899 And that got the thumbs up. So I guess in the 00:15:40.899 --> 00:15:44.379 end. My approach sort of started off quite blue 00:15:44.379 --> 00:15:47.639 sky and then I spent a bunch of time trying to 00:15:47.639 --> 00:15:51.840 figure out and I was a bit in the weeds of I 00:15:51.840 --> 00:15:55.679 need to make this empirical or quantitative or 00:15:55.679 --> 00:15:58.980 qualitative in some way. And in the end, I looped 00:15:58.980 --> 00:16:02.360 back around to I could just do the thing that 00:16:02.360 --> 00:16:04.820 I'm trained to do as a philosopher and think 00:16:04.820 --> 00:16:07.460 about it conceptually and write something and 00:16:07.460 --> 00:16:10.559 maybe get a bunch of people together to. think 00:16:10.559 --> 00:16:12.919 in the same way to sort of reflect on what we're 00:16:12.919 --> 00:16:15.039 doing and come up with some new ways of thinking 00:16:15.039 --> 00:16:19.779 and yeah expanding on everything can i ask you 00:16:19.779 --> 00:16:21.779 about the workshop in a bit more detail because 00:16:21.779 --> 00:16:24.000 as far as i know it was really successful for 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:26.620 you and has led to some potential ongoing work 00:16:26.620 --> 00:16:29.659 in this area yeah uh people said they had a really 00:16:29.659 --> 00:16:31.960 nice time and that it was a good workshop um 00:16:31.960 --> 00:16:36.580 i tried to make sure that everyone uh feels like 00:16:37.210 --> 00:16:39.230 Basically, it's worthwhile them dragging themselves 00:16:39.230 --> 00:16:42.309 out of bed and spending an entire day in a room 00:16:42.309 --> 00:16:44.070 full of people they might not know. And some 00:16:44.070 --> 00:16:46.649 external participants as well. Yeah, sure, yeah. 00:16:46.769 --> 00:16:52.029 So I had someone called Leonie Smith, who's at 00:16:52.029 --> 00:16:55.370 Lancaster. So I used to, when I was at Manchester, 00:16:55.409 --> 00:16:58.250 she was doing a PhD in philosophy. She started 00:16:58.250 --> 00:17:00.470 just as I was sort of finishing it, but we've 00:17:00.470 --> 00:17:03.590 kept in touch and remained friends. So she works 00:17:03.590 --> 00:17:06.930 on issues around... working class representation 00:17:06.930 --> 00:17:10.250 in philosophy. And so a bunch of the stuff that 00:17:10.250 --> 00:17:12.930 I was thinking about, lots of people who are 00:17:12.930 --> 00:17:17.049 concerned about issues around class, these ideas 00:17:17.049 --> 00:17:19.809 really resonated with them because working class 00:17:19.809 --> 00:17:24.230 students come to university lacking this kind 00:17:24.230 --> 00:17:26.609 of, I guess, cultural capital or tacit knowledge 00:17:26.609 --> 00:17:30.690 about what's expected in a kind of university 00:17:30.690 --> 00:17:33.529 environment or what doing an academic discipline. 00:17:34.190 --> 00:17:37.309 is kind of about in a way which more middle or 00:17:37.309 --> 00:17:40.529 upper class students, they don't like that knowledge. 00:17:40.690 --> 00:17:44.250 So yeah, Leonie came to talk about that. And 00:17:44.250 --> 00:17:48.650 I had some people that then Leonie put me in 00:17:48.650 --> 00:17:52.930 touch with. So her collaborator, Anne -Marie 00:17:52.930 --> 00:17:54.829 McCallion, who's at Manchester Metropolitan. 00:17:55.190 --> 00:17:58.009 So they did some collaborative talks together 00:17:58.009 --> 00:18:00.970 and a PhD student from Manchester called Lucia 00:18:00.970 --> 00:18:04.230 Duda. And she was looking at the sort of styles 00:18:04.230 --> 00:18:09.089 of analytic philosophy and what kinds of approaches 00:18:09.089 --> 00:18:13.309 it prescribes. And yeah, and then I had my friend 00:18:13.309 --> 00:18:16.750 Ashlyn Crean, who I co -authored some work on 00:18:16.750 --> 00:18:20.450 Trust with a bunch of years ago. Yeah, she came 00:18:20.450 --> 00:18:24.289 and spoke on the same stuff. And yeah, it was 00:18:24.289 --> 00:18:29.109 a successful workshop. And what it's led to is... 00:18:29.390 --> 00:18:32.869 A set of ongoing conversations and I'm putting 00:18:32.869 --> 00:18:35.849 together right now a proposal for an edited collection 00:18:35.849 --> 00:18:39.609 that I've got a publisher interested in. And 00:18:39.609 --> 00:18:42.329 it's just going to be on the same stuff that 00:18:42.329 --> 00:18:46.970 the workshop was on, you know, styles, standards 00:18:46.970 --> 00:18:51.190 in philosophy, but also other disciplines. And 00:18:51.190 --> 00:18:54.450 essentially the question was, and this was the 00:18:54.450 --> 00:18:56.789 question of the workshop, who gets to decide 00:18:56.789 --> 00:18:59.480 on what the standards are? in an academic discipline 00:18:59.480 --> 00:19:05.759 because you know as teachers we all enforce and 00:19:05.759 --> 00:19:09.680 enact these kinds of mechanisms for imposing 00:19:09.680 --> 00:19:12.880 standards on students but we kind of we kind 00:19:12.880 --> 00:19:14.500 of do that because well that's our job you know 00:19:14.500 --> 00:19:16.859 i've got the i've got the essays to set i've 00:19:16.859 --> 00:19:19.400 got the marking criteria i need to assign we 00:19:19.400 --> 00:19:22.299 just kind of do it and it's um it's something 00:19:22.299 --> 00:19:25.779 that yeah reinforces and perpetuates the same 00:19:25.779 --> 00:19:28.670 standards it It moulds students in that image 00:19:28.670 --> 00:19:30.450 and they come up through that same system. So 00:19:30.450 --> 00:19:33.609 it selects for certain sets of standards. So 00:19:33.609 --> 00:19:37.450 I guess the workshop question and what I'm getting 00:19:37.450 --> 00:19:40.849 people to collaborate in this edited collection 00:19:40.849 --> 00:19:43.829 to write about is, well, who decides on those 00:19:43.829 --> 00:19:46.950 standards? Why are they how they are for this 00:19:46.950 --> 00:19:49.650 particular discipline? What do those standards 00:19:49.650 --> 00:19:54.049 mean? And are those standards ones that serve? 00:19:54.960 --> 00:19:58.859 or resonate with or that are valuable to all 00:19:58.859 --> 00:20:01.940 different kinds of people who can study a discipline 00:20:01.940 --> 00:20:05.400 um yeah because it those are sort of questions 00:20:05.400 --> 00:20:08.319 that aren't particularly reflected on and the 00:20:08.319 --> 00:20:11.819 mechanisms of teaching and assessment don't allow 00:20:11.819 --> 00:20:14.980 any kind of give in those standards because it's 00:20:14.980 --> 00:20:16.539 just well that's just what you have to do yeah 00:20:16.539 --> 00:20:20.180 i if you don't mind i'd love to just Read something 00:20:20.180 --> 00:20:25.460 from your light snapshot. Yeah, sure. So I think 00:20:25.460 --> 00:20:27.160 it's great. So you describe your worry that as 00:20:27.160 --> 00:20:29.359 a marker, you're at some level acting as a gatekeeper 00:20:29.359 --> 00:20:31.819 for disciplinary standards that are not open 00:20:31.819 --> 00:20:34.059 to question or challenge. So the process by which 00:20:34.059 --> 00:20:36.839 the discipline selects new recruits, in fact, 00:20:36.839 --> 00:20:39.079 feeds the power of a dominant gatekeeping demographic 00:20:39.079 --> 00:20:42.039 who can set the rules how they like. Through 00:20:42.039 --> 00:20:46.400 your fellowship, the workshop you did and the 00:20:46.400 --> 00:20:48.710 conceptual work you've done, What's your sense 00:20:48.710 --> 00:20:50.950 of this now in terms of some of the tensions 00:20:50.950 --> 00:20:53.809 around this and potential routes out of this 00:20:53.809 --> 00:20:59.450 sort of dichotomy? Yeah, one thing that's become 00:20:59.450 --> 00:21:01.430 clear to me is that, oh, actually, these questions 00:21:01.430 --> 00:21:04.009 do resonate with lots of people in lots of other 00:21:04.009 --> 00:21:07.490 disciplines. So I've spoken to people working 00:21:07.490 --> 00:21:11.450 in languages here at Leeds, and they were saying, 00:21:11.569 --> 00:21:14.250 you know, this is stuff that we really wrestle 00:21:14.250 --> 00:21:17.349 with because in teaching languages. What we're 00:21:17.349 --> 00:21:19.869 doing is we're saying there's a prescribed way 00:21:19.869 --> 00:21:23.549 of using a language, but that's not how languages 00:21:23.549 --> 00:21:25.509 work. They're things in the world, in the wild. 00:21:25.910 --> 00:21:30.549 So what we're doing is there a way in which we're 00:21:30.549 --> 00:21:32.789 enforcing a certain kind of way of using a language 00:21:32.789 --> 00:21:36.309 and that's imposing a kind of dominant group's 00:21:36.309 --> 00:21:41.369 interests in how that language works on students. 00:21:42.930 --> 00:21:45.609 Yeah, there's been people I've spoken to who 00:21:45.609 --> 00:21:48.539 work in... English literature and English language 00:21:48.539 --> 00:21:53.079 who talk about the ways in which you should or 00:21:53.079 --> 00:21:56.559 shouldn't analyze texts and how those standards 00:21:56.559 --> 00:22:00.000 get conveyed to students. So, yeah, that's what 00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.000 surprised me is and what I've learned is, oh, 00:22:04.099 --> 00:22:07.279 it's not just me in my head thinking about this. 00:22:07.420 --> 00:22:10.759 And it was revealed to me as well. There's a 00:22:10.759 --> 00:22:14.220 bunch of areas of philosophy where people in 00:22:14.220 --> 00:22:17.619 my discipline. ostensibly had been thinking about 00:22:17.619 --> 00:22:20.799 this but because of the sort of academic route 00:22:20.799 --> 00:22:23.759 I guess I came up through as an undergraduate 00:22:23.759 --> 00:22:26.059 and then as a graduate student I just wasn't 00:22:26.059 --> 00:22:29.059 exposed to that work so a lot of work in black 00:22:29.059 --> 00:22:33.640 American philosophy they've written about this 00:22:33.640 --> 00:22:37.839 for for decades and it's been an ongoing thing 00:22:37.839 --> 00:22:40.359 and I sort of like oh okay yeah all right so 00:22:40.359 --> 00:22:44.490 it's not just me is like it's it's got resonance 00:22:44.490 --> 00:22:48.569 with loads of different um groups in terms of 00:22:48.569 --> 00:22:51.930 ways out of it or ways to address it i guess 00:22:51.930 --> 00:22:55.170 the kind of quick answer to that is well at least 00:22:55.170 --> 00:22:58.609 we need to be aware of this as a thing that we're 00:22:58.609 --> 00:23:01.849 doing and to then you know it's a bit of a cliche 00:23:01.849 --> 00:23:03.789 thing to say but at least we're starting conversations 00:23:03.789 --> 00:23:09.069 about it i suppose and then through that my hope 00:23:09.069 --> 00:23:13.630 is that We can kind of look at, and I suspect 00:23:13.630 --> 00:23:15.430 it might be quite simple, the kinds of things 00:23:15.430 --> 00:23:20.390 we can do. So if we look at how we teach and 00:23:20.390 --> 00:23:23.869 how we set assessments, so long as we build in 00:23:23.869 --> 00:23:28.450 some ways for students to think about and reflect 00:23:28.450 --> 00:23:31.529 on what the value of those standards are, maybe 00:23:31.529 --> 00:23:35.769 get them to, so something I want to do in future, 00:23:35.950 --> 00:23:38.910 is to get students to a position where they... 00:23:39.069 --> 00:23:43.569 feel like they can make mistakes more so by that 00:23:43.569 --> 00:23:47.930 i mean they can mess around with the standards 00:23:47.930 --> 00:23:51.630 so it's through essentially how i learn is through 00:23:51.630 --> 00:23:56.210 trying to break something and trying to see how 00:23:56.210 --> 00:23:58.650 it goes wrong and then i go okay so it has to 00:23:58.650 --> 00:24:03.609 do that because otherwise it's like this whereas 00:24:03.609 --> 00:24:08.279 a university kind of path and assessment path 00:24:08.279 --> 00:24:11.220 because it's it's very much like okay you you 00:24:11.220 --> 00:24:14.660 do the actual bits of work they tend to count 00:24:14.660 --> 00:24:19.339 for marks so there's not much way in which they 00:24:19.339 --> 00:24:23.099 can forgivably mess up it all sort of counts 00:24:23.099 --> 00:24:27.119 so in that sense there's no uh there's a lot 00:24:27.119 --> 00:24:31.380 of incentives against failure and against sort 00:24:31.380 --> 00:24:35.000 of seeing the value of the way things should 00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:37.700 be done by seeing how to break them or seeing 00:24:37.700 --> 00:24:40.380 how they go wrong. So, yeah, I'd like to see 00:24:40.380 --> 00:24:43.400 if the scope to allow students to be more playful 00:24:43.400 --> 00:24:47.140 with standards and to get a sense of what they 00:24:47.140 --> 00:24:51.539 mean and whether that's certain kinds of teaching 00:24:51.539 --> 00:24:54.519 techniques I used over the years in thinking 00:24:54.519 --> 00:24:57.619 about all this stuff was to just in in -person 00:24:57.619 --> 00:25:00.700 teaching sessions, get them doing little exercises, 00:25:00.759 --> 00:25:04.680 little bits of work that. Maybe it's just like 00:25:04.680 --> 00:25:08.319 a mini bit of an essay or a mini presentation. 00:25:08.700 --> 00:25:11.980 It's not, you know, I guess it's classed as formative, 00:25:12.019 --> 00:25:14.059 but it might just be one shot and it might just 00:25:14.059 --> 00:25:17.740 be within that session. And they write it, we 00:25:17.740 --> 00:25:20.359 talk about it, we forget about it in the next 00:25:20.359 --> 00:25:24.859 session. And to do that over and over again and 00:25:24.859 --> 00:25:30.099 to get them not being scared to kind of be wasteful 00:25:30.099 --> 00:25:33.309 with their work and to just do little bits. see 00:25:33.309 --> 00:25:35.970 what works, see what doesn't work, and then through 00:25:35.970 --> 00:25:38.289 that they get more familiar with the standards 00:25:38.289 --> 00:25:40.589 and maybe appreciate the value of, okay, this 00:25:40.589 --> 00:25:45.349 is both what critical analysis means and this 00:25:45.349 --> 00:25:48.049 is maybe why critical analysis is done in this 00:25:48.049 --> 00:25:51.690 particular format that the lecturer is asking 00:25:51.690 --> 00:25:54.470 me to follow. Fantastic. I can think of several 00:25:54.470 --> 00:25:56.750 light fellowships, both ongoing and completed, 00:25:56.970 --> 00:25:59.789 like yours, that draw upon critical pedagogy 00:25:59.789 --> 00:26:02.349 as a very common one, actually, growing at light. 00:26:02.430 --> 00:26:05.349 And I can see how that fits within these wider 00:26:05.349 --> 00:26:07.450 pieces of work that people are doing across a 00:26:07.450 --> 00:26:10.029 range of different disciplines. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:26:10.089 --> 00:26:13.150 I've spoken to a bunch of other people who are 00:26:13.150 --> 00:26:17.069 doing light fellowships and, yeah, often there's 00:26:17.069 --> 00:26:19.549 some kind of sense of there needs to be more 00:26:19.549 --> 00:26:24.519 scope for this, this kind of... playfulness formative 00:26:24.519 --> 00:26:27.799 uh formative assessment if if you want to call 00:26:27.799 --> 00:26:32.039 it but it to me it's just about getting them 00:26:32.039 --> 00:26:35.539 doing it getting the because it's not all just 00:26:35.539 --> 00:26:39.000 this transmission of all right you need to learn 00:26:39.000 --> 00:26:40.500 these things and then repeat them back to me 00:26:40.500 --> 00:26:43.839 at this time it's about it's like any kind of 00:26:43.839 --> 00:26:47.160 learning um i just think about you know how even 00:26:47.160 --> 00:26:50.680 sort of primitive monkeys copying one another 00:26:50.680 --> 00:26:53.799 you know a monkey with a stick jams it into the 00:26:53.799 --> 00:26:56.339 termite hole pulls out termites the other one 00:26:56.339 --> 00:26:58.420 observes okay so that's the way to do it and 00:26:58.420 --> 00:27:01.500 it's all very sort of clear whereas yeah a lot 00:27:01.500 --> 00:27:05.579 of university setup seems to not have that kind 00:27:05.579 --> 00:27:09.259 of core structure to it built in yeah i think 00:27:09.259 --> 00:27:10.759 there are certain contemporary challenges as 00:27:10.759 --> 00:27:13.019 well that make this particularly important absolutely 00:27:13.019 --> 00:27:16.519 yeah so the way that the university system works 00:27:16.519 --> 00:27:20.559 and the sort of A lot of this fellowship got 00:27:20.559 --> 00:27:23.799 me just thinking about what is the function and 00:27:23.799 --> 00:27:27.759 what is the role of a university now. And it 00:27:27.759 --> 00:27:31.900 seemed to me that a big looming thing that I 00:27:31.900 --> 00:27:34.779 need to grapple with is essentially it's a ranking 00:27:34.779 --> 00:27:38.359 or sorting mechanism. So society has this big 00:27:38.359 --> 00:27:42.819 interest in basically people coming out of university 00:27:42.819 --> 00:27:45.859 education pathway being rubber stamped with something 00:27:45.859 --> 00:27:49.589 that then can inform. employers or other you 00:27:49.589 --> 00:27:54.170 know other bodies what do i make of this person 00:27:54.170 --> 00:27:58.809 and um yeah where should they go and what what's 00:27:58.809 --> 00:28:01.430 their sort of significance or their their sort 00:28:01.430 --> 00:28:04.930 of value or role in society so university isn't 00:28:04.930 --> 00:28:08.369 necessarily so it's incidentally about education 00:28:08.369 --> 00:28:11.230 but it seems to me well the primary function 00:28:11.230 --> 00:28:13.569 actually because you can learn yourself and you 00:28:13.569 --> 00:28:16.700 can go off and learn from youtube and whatever 00:28:16.700 --> 00:28:18.259 it seems like the primary function is this kind 00:28:18.259 --> 00:28:21.140 of approval mechanism or rubber stamping thing 00:28:21.140 --> 00:28:23.220 yeah it's almost as if the university doesn't 00:28:23.220 --> 00:28:25.700 exist in its own vacuum it's part of society 00:28:25.700 --> 00:28:28.000 and it's yeah intricately connected and plays 00:28:28.000 --> 00:28:30.099 a constitutive role in what happens outside of 00:28:30.099 --> 00:28:32.039 the university right absolutely i mean someone 00:28:32.039 --> 00:28:35.299 more clued up on the history of the university 00:28:35.299 --> 00:28:38.279 as an institution and sort of how they started 00:28:38.279 --> 00:28:41.470 would probably be able to interject at this point 00:28:41.470 --> 00:28:43.630 and say something like yeah that's because please 00:28:43.630 --> 00:28:46.569 write to us at light yeah yeah at least exactly 00:28:46.569 --> 00:28:49.230 yeah yeah of course the university was the thing 00:28:49.230 --> 00:28:53.369 that fed the whatever the higher levels of politics 00:28:53.369 --> 00:28:55.609 and i mean it's still to some extent like that 00:28:55.609 --> 00:28:58.549 not not every university but i think and i don't 00:28:58.549 --> 00:29:01.609 want to sound like i'm just sort of um here to 00:29:01.609 --> 00:29:04.049 promote light fellowships although i guess that's 00:29:04.049 --> 00:29:08.589 part of the purpose to have um But one of the 00:29:08.589 --> 00:29:10.329 things that I know is working with Light Fellows 00:29:10.329 --> 00:29:15.130 is often many of the outcomes, if you like, are 00:29:15.130 --> 00:29:16.750 ways of thinking and ways of thinking differently, 00:29:16.869 --> 00:29:21.349 not always restricted to the particular aims 00:29:21.349 --> 00:29:24.890 of the fellowship itself. So sometimes it's teleological 00:29:24.890 --> 00:29:28.269 like this, but it also spans off in loads of 00:29:28.269 --> 00:29:30.109 different areas and that's really exciting and 00:29:30.109 --> 00:29:36.220 good to hear. Yeah, yeah. I've mentioned... andy's 00:29:36.220 --> 00:29:38.259 light snapshot which you can find on his his 00:29:38.259 --> 00:29:41.940 light profile are there any other outputs stemming 00:29:41.940 --> 00:29:43.960 from your fellowship that listeners can expect 00:29:43.960 --> 00:29:46.940 to engage with in the future yeah so i've got 00:29:46.940 --> 00:29:50.759 plans um to put together so during the fellowship 00:29:50.759 --> 00:29:54.359 i kind of did little conference talks where i 00:29:54.359 --> 00:29:57.819 broke down some they're not like revolutionary 00:29:57.819 --> 00:30:01.079 but some teaching techniques i was using in my 00:30:01.079 --> 00:30:04.660 own teaching those resonated with particular 00:30:04.660 --> 00:30:08.380 people and I think I shared them with various 00:30:08.380 --> 00:30:12.240 kind of school academic leads for inclusive practice 00:30:12.240 --> 00:30:16.039 in other schools. So those resources did take 00:30:16.039 --> 00:30:19.599 on a bit of a life beyond just my own hard drive. 00:30:19.940 --> 00:30:23.880 So I'm going to compile those as a little resource 00:30:23.880 --> 00:30:28.220 and I did try and find time to write a toolkit 00:30:28.220 --> 00:30:30.900 or some kind of, you know, implications for practice 00:30:30.900 --> 00:30:34.970 thing. which I was going to share. I've not had 00:30:34.970 --> 00:30:38.869 time to do that yet. What my main focus has been 00:30:38.869 --> 00:30:41.490 in going forwards and what the main sort of output 00:30:41.490 --> 00:30:44.569 I'm hoping for this to be is that editor collection. 00:30:44.890 --> 00:30:47.670 So I'm currently putting that together and compiling 00:30:47.670 --> 00:30:51.450 abstracts from people I've spoken to who are 00:30:51.450 --> 00:30:55.690 on board with it. And yeah, very soon I'm hoping 00:30:55.690 --> 00:30:58.730 to approach the publisher with that. So they're 00:30:58.730 --> 00:31:00.829 already on board and they're very keen on it, 00:31:00.869 --> 00:31:04.220 but I need to... get the next stage sort of sorted, 00:31:04.299 --> 00:31:06.460 which is they go, yep, all right, now go ahead 00:31:06.460 --> 00:31:09.339 and write it based on all these abstracts. So 00:31:09.339 --> 00:31:12.059 that's the main thing I'm going to be working 00:31:12.059 --> 00:31:16.220 on. And yeah, I have to write, so I have to turn 00:31:16.220 --> 00:31:18.480 the talk I did at the workshop into a written 00:31:18.480 --> 00:31:21.400 piece, which is proving challenging because that 00:31:21.400 --> 00:31:25.359 talk was all about what happens if I do a talk 00:31:25.359 --> 00:31:28.000 and I don't follow the conventions of my discipline. 00:31:28.279 --> 00:31:33.809 Does it still count? as a talk in that discipline? 00:31:33.930 --> 00:31:37.750 And do I still say something? So I'm trying to 00:31:37.750 --> 00:31:41.089 sort of translate that form into a written piece 00:31:41.089 --> 00:31:43.950 and it not just be a complete sort of misfire 00:31:43.950 --> 00:31:46.390 or failure. Yeah. Yeah. I still want them to 00:31:46.390 --> 00:31:49.009 publish it. That's the thing. So, yeah. These 00:31:49.009 --> 00:31:51.630 are the judgments that we often have to consider. 00:31:53.190 --> 00:31:56.109 A couple more questions before we finish from 00:31:56.109 --> 00:31:58.660 my perspective. One is... Do you have any advice 00:31:58.660 --> 00:32:01.240 for anyone considering conducting pedagogical 00:32:01.240 --> 00:32:05.940 research or a light fellowship? Yeah. So advice 00:32:05.940 --> 00:32:10.440 based on my experience, I guess, is reckon seriously 00:32:10.440 --> 00:32:14.599 with work loading from your main job role. One 00:32:14.599 --> 00:32:17.559 of the main struggles I had was protecting time 00:32:17.559 --> 00:32:21.599 for the light fellowship. The main job role kind 00:32:21.599 --> 00:32:25.299 of contracts and expands in terms of its obligations 00:32:25.299 --> 00:32:29.339 in. over the course of a year and a semester 00:32:29.339 --> 00:32:33.500 in this really kind of non -linear way. And the 00:32:33.500 --> 00:32:36.539 crumples I own in my workload time that took 00:32:36.539 --> 00:32:39.579 the impact was my own research time and this 00:32:39.579 --> 00:32:43.000 light buyout time. So that was a real struggle. 00:32:43.059 --> 00:32:46.240 So I'd think seriously about getting commitments 00:32:46.240 --> 00:32:49.160 maybe from your line manager in your substantive 00:32:49.160 --> 00:32:53.259 role. Can I take this morning and block it out 00:32:53.259 --> 00:32:58.789 for me to work on? my fellowship um do maybe 00:32:58.789 --> 00:33:01.849 more belligerent things like put on an out of 00:33:01.849 --> 00:33:05.529 office do like go into another room or something 00:33:05.529 --> 00:33:09.450 to sort of switch yeah switch your mental framework 00:33:09.450 --> 00:33:13.609 and then the the other thing um so i described 00:33:13.609 --> 00:33:16.509 the kind of roundabout route i went through in 00:33:16.509 --> 00:33:20.009 planning the project and figuring out what it 00:33:20.009 --> 00:33:24.039 was um I mean, in my case, maybe that was a sort 00:33:24.039 --> 00:33:27.000 of inevitable thing that just had to play out. 00:33:27.099 --> 00:33:31.740 But if you can go into your project with a kind 00:33:31.740 --> 00:33:34.279 of clear sense of what's the technique, what's 00:33:34.279 --> 00:33:37.000 the method, what's the thing that you're excited 00:33:37.000 --> 00:33:39.839 to do? So I think one of the problems with the 00:33:39.839 --> 00:33:43.500 way I was sort of approaching this in. the sort 00:33:43.500 --> 00:33:44.980 of middle bits where I was trying to make it 00:33:44.980 --> 00:33:46.819 into an empirical thing it's just well that didn't 00:33:46.819 --> 00:33:48.819 that wasn't the thing that excited me in the 00:33:48.819 --> 00:33:51.259 first place necessarily the main thing that excited 00:33:51.259 --> 00:33:54.940 me as a philosopher was to just think about these 00:33:54.940 --> 00:33:58.059 bigger questions and to try and square them in 00:33:58.059 --> 00:33:59.559 my own mind in a way that I could then write 00:33:59.559 --> 00:34:02.559 about and in a way which wouldn't be kind of 00:34:02.559 --> 00:34:05.779 completely divorced from practice but in a way 00:34:05.779 --> 00:34:08.059 which wasn't necessarily about kind of empirically 00:34:08.059 --> 00:34:12.409 verifying anything or getting any data I think 00:34:12.409 --> 00:34:15.550 the way I've worked in my teaching practice is 00:34:15.550 --> 00:34:20.230 to kind of follow my intuition and then reflect 00:34:20.230 --> 00:34:24.449 on it and write some reflections and then do 00:34:24.449 --> 00:34:26.769 different things. But I didn't necessarily need 00:34:26.769 --> 00:34:29.449 to get any data, I think, in my case. So, yeah, 00:34:29.510 --> 00:34:31.389 just think about what's the thing that you're 00:34:31.389 --> 00:34:33.050 good at and what you're excited to do, I guess. 00:34:33.230 --> 00:34:35.090 And I say, if you're listening and considering 00:34:35.090 --> 00:34:37.570 this, talk to us as well. Yeah, so I got loads 00:34:37.570 --> 00:34:42.429 of help. in the end from from Robert, Lucy and 00:34:42.429 --> 00:34:46.610 Sinead. Yeah, it was all very much appreciated 00:34:46.610 --> 00:34:49.429 in the end. Yeah. This is a nice segue to my 00:34:49.429 --> 00:34:51.030 final question, which is a bit of an off the 00:34:51.030 --> 00:34:53.889 cuff kind of meta ped res question, which is 00:34:53.889 --> 00:34:57.070 and I'm only partly asking this because I'd love 00:34:57.070 --> 00:34:59.570 to work with and to see more pedagogical research 00:34:59.570 --> 00:35:02.429 from your disciplinary area. What's your sense 00:35:02.429 --> 00:35:05.809 on the role that philosophical thinking and your 00:35:05.809 --> 00:35:09.239 disciplinary methodologies can play in taking 00:35:09.239 --> 00:35:10.940 forward and asking different questions about 00:35:10.940 --> 00:35:13.659 the nature of pedagogical research or scholarship 00:35:13.659 --> 00:35:17.300 yeah nice question um and very relevant to what 00:35:17.300 --> 00:35:19.460 i was talking about i guess so the thing that 00:35:19.460 --> 00:35:25.019 i've clocked usually uh when i've said my bit 00:35:25.019 --> 00:35:27.980 or um kind of talk to people from other disciplines 00:35:27.980 --> 00:35:32.320 um the thing that i get a kind of positive reaction 00:35:32.320 --> 00:35:38.039 from is my ability to challenge or point out 00:35:38.570 --> 00:35:40.510 Things that are just kind of taken as given or 00:35:40.510 --> 00:35:43.130 assumptions made or that, you know, seem to be 00:35:43.130 --> 00:35:45.530 tacit assumptions or ways of doing things. And 00:35:45.530 --> 00:35:49.230 to go, why is it like that? And, you know, cliche 00:35:49.230 --> 00:35:52.630 philosopher just going, well, why? But there 00:35:52.630 --> 00:35:55.969 is a sort of power to that. To ask these kinds 00:35:55.969 --> 00:36:02.610 of basic questions gets people out of the kind 00:36:02.610 --> 00:36:06.190 of guide rails of their thinking and the guide 00:36:06.190 --> 00:36:09.579 rails of practice. just like do just repeating 00:36:09.579 --> 00:36:11.980 the same stuff and same ways of doing things 00:36:11.980 --> 00:36:17.159 um so the value of i guess coming from a discipline 00:36:17.159 --> 00:36:21.619 like philosophy or similar ones which is all 00:36:21.619 --> 00:36:25.659 about kind of critiquing questioning and just 00:36:25.659 --> 00:36:28.039 pulling back and trying to take in a bigger picture 00:36:28.039 --> 00:36:31.059 and go okay what's the sort of underlying thing 00:36:31.059 --> 00:36:34.300 here that people are missing i guess that's got 00:36:34.300 --> 00:36:37.050 loads of value for how to think about teaching 00:36:37.050 --> 00:36:39.530 better or how to think about assessment better 00:36:39.530 --> 00:36:44.030 because it you're able to sort of extract think 00:36:44.030 --> 00:36:47.349 about and extract um yeah what's the point of 00:36:47.349 --> 00:36:49.429 all this and is there something about how we're 00:36:49.429 --> 00:36:52.969 doing it currently which has kind of lost its 00:36:52.969 --> 00:36:56.449 way or is kind of obscuring or distorting the 00:36:56.449 --> 00:36:58.510 the thing that's really precious about it in 00:36:58.510 --> 00:37:02.110 some way um so yeah and that's just based on 00:37:02.110 --> 00:37:05.219 my experience of I'll have these times when I'll 00:37:05.219 --> 00:37:06.699 talk to people in other disciplines and I'll 00:37:06.699 --> 00:37:08.260 go oh that's interesting I've not thought about 00:37:08.260 --> 00:37:10.480 it like that I'm going oh okay yeah okay maybe 00:37:10.480 --> 00:37:11.960 that all that time doing philosophy hasn't been 00:37:11.960 --> 00:37:15.880 wasted thanks Andy all right cheers Robert yeah 00:37:15.880 --> 00:37:18.460 really enjoyed our conversation I hope it was 00:37:18.460 --> 00:37:20.760 a useful experience to kind of reflect on your 00:37:20.760 --> 00:37:23.860 your like fellowship and consider definitely 00:37:23.860 --> 00:37:26.960 yeah it's nice to um piece together things good 00:37:26.960 --> 00:37:30.260 yeah as I'm talking good almost forgot This is 00:37:30.260 --> 00:37:32.519 for an audience. I hope you enjoyed listening 00:37:32.519 --> 00:37:35.480 to the conversation and we'll include links to 00:37:35.480 --> 00:37:39.019 any resources in the show notes. Thanks for listening 00:37:39.019 --> 00:37:40.900 to this episode of LITE Bites and we'll see 00:37:40.900 --> 00:37:41.360 you next time.