Location EB: 8.21 (Technical office)
“Breaking Windows”: What and where is technical pedagogy?
(updated working title from the ARP workshop 3 session).
The focus group was quite fun to be a part of, I have realised that the world needs more social gatherings, especially around work-life balance and careers.
The focus group was extremely interesting to organise, I think with the new building and the majority of the systems not fully operational, booking a room was challenging and delayed the focus group by a week, although quite thankful for the dedicated technical offices, that allow technical staff to host meetings and discuss ideas around their work.
Building the focus group presentation, I broke it down into two sections, the first is a small glimpse into technical pedagogy and my thoughts and feelings around my struggles but also the beauty of how my mind brings this vision into my personal practice and if this something worth investigating in it’s own world of research.
I had a few extracts to prompt conversations from Tim Savage’s paper in 2018, allowing space to dissect certain quotes pulled from the article and as well as discussing the ever-growing third space where teaching and learning technicians sit. I wanted to exchange my struggles with how I was personally treated within the “whole” team and the structure of how my personal technical teaching and experience are controlled by that of the academics. The failed system that is in place where I thought I was teaching industry practice has been halted on multiple occasions due to “technical” knowledge being shared over “creative” measures which I have realised is basically academics escaping the importance of teaching, innovation and understanding when it comes to practical subjects and processes.
Reflecting on this, I feel if I can visually build upon this ‘experience’ to allow others to understand the importance of process and practice the shift of how we teach could generally be a lot more engaging and pushing boundaries that would fall in line with a balance of academic and technical practices as well as pushing students to understand develop and innovate the practice.
Tim Savage’s papers really pushed me to question where I am working and why and I working in this manner compared to working towards getting students jobs, to think creatively through technical understanding and engage with the subject matter at a university level of expected teaching.
I ended this part of my focus group, by asking the question, of whether my participants would classify what they do as their own pedagogic movement, in a similar way of teaching, a moment to reflect and think. From this focus group, I can see this is the area I really need to push and build research in, what is this third space and how do I take it out of theory and put it into the whole technical program at UAL/LCF.
The responses I will reflect on and analyse in a different thread, the purpose of this being separately, to engage with my personal reflections, make adjustments and re-visit my core question of what and where is technical pedagogy and If after the Focus group, am I still questioning this.
Technical Career Paths
The other portion of my focus group was to build on technical longevity and retention of technical staff as well as building a plan around staff development, career progression and skill advancements.
This came joined to the pedagogy movement, as at UAL, technical staff are limited to LEVEL 4 or GRADE 4 positions which reach all the way down to GRADE 2 positions. This world of Service in higher education needs to reconsider its ideas and positions around technical staff if they want to keep and advance the practice of their departments.
I then deconstructed portions of the Grade 4 job role and responsibilities contract and assert them into particular areas of interest that would lead to further career paths. This method seemed to be most effective in seeing who has read their contract, as well as how holistic the contract is at engaging with technical staff members and their practice.
Prompting the Focus group with a series of questions, the plan is to build a future together democratically in the sense that there is no stone unturned in the process of challenging our career futures. The overall opinion was similar to that of my own, we are stuck in the fork road considering the two/three possibilities.
1. Wait and see if an academic job becomes available, even though the majority have experienced rejection at the earliest stage of application.
2. Wait and move into management when a job becomes available or within UAL.
3. Leave and find a better-paying job/ change career.
My empathy was shared amongst the group, and a moment of reflection or depression was acknowledged. It was positively reinforced by a manager though, who invoked the passion that if there was an alternative option, they would not have gone into management.
The 3 areas of interest, which are similar to my thoughts are:
1. Management
2. Teaching and Learning
3. Staff Development
I have illustrated below an image of a working idea of what job roles could be a part of this;
Concluding this session, I have realised this is the tip of the iceberg and I have a huge deal to consider with presenting these findings. A few more technical focus groups would be a good start to really research and prompt what each individual could potentially look like in the future for technical staff members at UAL.