RESEARCH NARRATIVE

This research links experiential learning and Performance Art with public pedagogy on sight/visual negation. 

“You don’t need eyes to see, you need vision”, as a teacher I use this lyric to suggest that having vision impairment should not prohibit creativity, learning development, and personal goals and ambitions. Broadening access is inherent to my pedagogical approach and is a fundamental issue of inclusion in vision impairment (VI) communities. Never has there been a time in which the meanings of access are so broadened via technological mediation—that draw on all senses. As teachers, we are encouraged to make our teaching visual to engage students without realising that we may be alienating some students – teaching needs to use all the senses and provide possibilities for kinaesthetic learning. Relying all senses, then, becomes an aspect of public pedagogy that is more inclusive.

RESEARCH AIMS 

This research aims to improve the breadth and depth of knowledge about human culture in relation to increasing understanding of Vision Impairment by engaging both sighted and non-sighted persons in a series of practical experiments that promote experiential learning through a deployment of performative pedagogies. Using performance practice-as-research, I aim to explore the question: How can acts exploring visual negation be used to generate public pedagogy and what may it bring to the experience of removal of sight? I have carried out a full literature review on this topic finding very little across the disciplines (Performance Art and VI) and have found a gap to explore. The link between experiential learning and the visually–impaired student has been recognised and promoted; ‘The concepts of ‘learning by doing’ and ‘teaching by unifying experiences’ are certainly not new concepts to regular classroom teachers. The concepts, however, are particularly important to the student with impaired vision because he may not have the same experiential background as other students of the same age. Whenever possible allow the visually impaired child to experience ‘doing it’ rather than just verbally explaining the process’ (Gearhart, 1976:63). This is profound in terms of my own subject discipline and specific interest in Performance Art (a form of art that prioritises process over end-product i.e. the production of a concrete object’). 



Artists Jackson Pollock (left) and Yves Klein (right) set precedents for art making in terms of the importance of process. Important links can be made with those with vision impairment.  I am also currently looking at ways in which to use technology to support students with little/no vision by offering feedback through auditory forms i.e. providing these students with sound recordings of me reading individual feedback.  

BACKGROUND 

As part of the research that informed my teaching practice in 2015, I became interested in the subject of visual negation as the result of a student with visual impairment attending one of my teaching sessions.

Prior to me designing and delivering one first-year undergraduate Fine Art workshop at Loughborough University in 2015, I was informed a student with vision impairment would be present. This would be the first time a student with VI would be participating in one of my teaching sessions (or at least that I had known). I started reading literature written by teachers who have taught students with VI so that I could learn from their experience.  Jolting my unconscious conscious, I soon realised how visual my teaching materials had been up to that point. I also came upon important realisations related to my visual presence as a teacher and how I communicate. These related to how blind/partially students may not see how I punctuate what I am saying in class with my body e.g.  emphasising aspects of what I am saying with hand gestures. I have had to rethink how I use facial expressions to hopefully connect with my student audience. Blind/partially sighted students may not be able to understand what is happening in the classroom in terms of bodily nuance e.g.  people’s frowns or smiles, or nodding with what I (as the lecturer) am saying. I wanted to make sure the student with VI I was about to teach did not feel disadvantaged or made to feel different amongst the other (fully-sighted) students. 

This led me to not only explore the literature field of pedagogy relating to visual impairment but to consider how artists/performance makers deploy acts of blindness in order to generate public pedagogy. In 2016, I began practice as research investigating performative art practice and curating a series of events in which I invited artists to respond to themes in an essay I had written in support of my then application for recognition for Fellowship of The Higher Education Academy (of which I was subsequently awarded). 

PRACTICE AS RESEARCH PROJECTS 

 

These events, shared on this blog, include Sight (Un)Specific, Metal Chalkwell, Southend-on-Sea, You Don’t Need Eyes to See, You Need Vision, The Queen’s Head, Holborn, London, both taking place in 2016 and most recently an Open Lab residency at The Brady Arts Centre developed as part of the Barbican Open Lab Creative Learning initiative. Dissemination of these events include giving solo and joint research papers at the 2016/17 conferences Developing Theory into Practice in Higher Education and Future of the Document both held at City University, London. This research has been shared in peer-reviewed academic journals and online forms. These include the Journal of Pedagogic Development, Body Space Technology and RNIB's InSight online magazine. 

To expand, I have worked closely with the Royal National Institute of Blind People since November 2016 to publish an article entitled Teaching Art to Students with Vision Impairment for the RNIB’s In Sight online magazine where I share useful adaptations (as suggested in the above section) that can be made to teaching materials to enable learning amongst students with VI that I have discovered myself in my quest to help make art classes more accessible for persons with VI https://www.rnib.org.uk/insight-online/fine-art-adaptations-student-vision-impairment 

Demonstrating impact in response to the article, in personal communication with the director for the charity RP Fighting Blindness, I was told ‘it’s good to know that teaching is being differentiated in this way. I have sat in lectures where no support was offered so it’s great to see the lengths that you went to to include the student so well’. Through the contents of a forthcoming article to be published in the Novemver 2017 edition of the Journal for Pedagogic Development that extends discussion in my In Sight article, I demonstrate my experience of being able to develop effective learning environments and prove that I can critically discuss how the norms of a subject discipline (visual arts, in the context of this discussion) may impact on student learning. Interwoven with comments made by peers, the article explains how my emergent practice of combining performative pedagogy and technology (both analogue and traditional) to widen access for those with VI has positively impacted upon my colleagues’ own practice.