Politicising the ‘personal’: the resistant potential of creative pedagogies in teaching and learning ‘sensitive’ issues

Abstract

Drawing upon student narratives gleaned through qualitative interviews, this paper argues that teaching and learning 'sensitive' issues surrounding gender and sexualities through 'creative' pedagogies can be a mode of resistance against the reproduction of problematic social discourses, and to the negative impacts of neoliberalism on student's learning within higher education. The findings point to the importance of speaking about sensitive issues; the value of creative approaches for enhancing learning; and that together these can enable students to articulate an agenda for social change. Students saw the 'personal as political' -of sharing personal journeys around sensitive issues as important. They further spoke of 'apathy' in an neoliberal era of student 'consumers' and how this could curtail 'creative' teaching and jeopardise learning. Overall, it is argued that creative approaches to teaching and learning sensitive issues can invoke a resistant potentiality which exposes the 'hidden injuries' (Gill, 2010) of the neoliberal university.ARTICLE HISTORY

Creative Pedagogical Development of Students Based on the Implementation of Didactic Games

“…The study confirms studies proving that the orientation of the educational process of preparing a future teacher for creative activity is the basis of modern education (Bereczki & Karpati, 2018;Cheung, 2012). Experimental studies on the formation of a system of creative skills and the development of students' creative potential with the help of didactic games only fragmentary or occasionally cover the implementation of this process outside of school hours (Byrge & Tang, 2015;Pilcher, 2017). Scientific research is most often focused on the experimental confirmation of external systemically forming factors through the dominant activity of the teacher in this process (Daly et al, 2019;Sushchenko et al, 2020).…”

“…The results of professional creativity can be in the form of new ideas, patterns, laws, concepts, principles, rules, theories, models and technologies (Hernandez-Torrano & Ibrayeva, 2020). The same abilities function in different combinations and manifest themselves in various types of creativity (Pilcher, 2017). In pedagogical activity, a special structure of interacting abilities that acquire a pedagogical orientation is formed (Cheung, 2012).…”

När lärandet blir svårt: En forskningsöversikt om studenters upplevelser av känslomässiga utmaningar i undervisningssituationer

“…Frågor som rör kropp, genus och sexualitet kan också vara känsligt att diskutera. I en studie med sociologistudenter framkom att studenterna ansåg att det är viktigt att under utbildningen få lära sig om och diskutera känsliga ämnen som relaterar till genus och sexualitet även om det väcker känslor av obehag (Pilcher, 2017). Genom att ta del av andra studenters erfarenheter kan de få större förståelse för andras perspektiv.…”

Dealing with and teaching controversial issues – Teachers’ pedagogical approaches to controversial issues in Religious Education and Social Studies

“…Some approaches (e.g., Fiehn, 2005;Huddleston & Kerr, 2017;Kerr & Huddleston, 2015;Kirschner, 2012;Oxfam, 2018) are more practice-oriented, offering advice to teachers based on 'best practices' methods. Other studies focus on specific methods to be used in teaching controversial issues, for example, discussion (Hand & Levinson, 2012;Hess, 2009), personal narratives (Barnett, 2011;Levinson, 2008;Rivers, 2015), and role play (Koukounaras-Liagis, 2011; Pilcher, 2017;Shollenberger, 2007). Still other studies (Hess, 2005;Ljunggren & Unemar Öst, 2010 have concerned themselves with teacher attitudes and formulation of pedagogical approaches based on the same.…”