Conference Agenda

Playful teaching and learning approaches in higher education are an emerging phenomenon in South Africa. Over the years, research studies have focused on playful teaching and learning approaches for children and teachers in early years and primary schools. However, an emerging trend of research indicates a growing interest in the integration of playful approaches in higher education. This research explored the use of playful pedagogy in a teacher education course, examining both its potential and complexities. Drawing on the becoming theory, which viewed teacher-educators and preservice teachers as constantly evolving through experience and reflection, I proposed playful pedagogy as a tool to enhance this process. I identified preparation, guidance, reflection, and emotional intelligence as crucial aspects for successful implementation of playful pedagogy. This includes clear demonstrations, brief and simple activities, and opportunities for reflection to maximize student success and mitigating discomfort with playful learning. When used thoughtfully, playful pedagogy can promote deeper learning, build rapport among students and teacher-educators, and create a more positive and collaborative learning experience. While playful approaches foster enjoyment and engagement, I also discovered that it can foster a more engaging and humanizing learning environment. Ultimately, I have learnt that, when playful pedagogy is used thoughtfully, it can promote deeper learning, build rapport among students and teachers-educators, and create a more positive and collaborative learning experience. As I continue to integrate playful pedagogy into my teaching practice, I am encouraged in knowing this phenomenon is embedded in humanistic values and allows for flourishing of teacher-educators and students alike.

Research aim:

Poetry has been featured at the Castle Conference since 1996. Current research shows that poetry is the most popular form of creative inquiry in self-study, and its popularity is expanding. This study asks, “How does poetic self-study at the Castle envision quality teaching for a more equitable world?”

Theoretical framework:

Poetry offers multidimensional ways to engage with educational experiences and phenomena. A poetic epistemology integrates emotion, senses, body, language, rhythm, imagery, imagination, and audience response.

Methods:

We identified all the Castle Conference papers with poems. We then selected those papers where original poetry was used to analyse, develop, portray, or create knowledge. These studies were tabulated for focus, purpose, context, and impact. Using a close reading interpretative method, we sought meanings, connotations, and linkages across the poetic self-studies. A pantoum was composed as a creative analytical tool to crystallise complex imagery and ideas. (Pantoums are poems with four-line stanzas and a repeated line pattern accentuating themes and heightening emotional and sensory impact.)

Findings:

The pantoum illuminated a vision of quality teaching in which imaginative ways of knowing enable us to see differently and to distil new knowledge in multiple ways, affecting hearts and minds. Fun and spontaneity add to the dynamic and engaging nature of the pedagogy. Along with fostering an environment of mutual care, trust, and respect, there is a dedication to tackling tensions and complexity. Quality teaching brings diverse perspectives together in creative interaction, fostering empathy and relationships across differences and provoking manifold possibilities for a more equitable world.

Relevance:

This study integrates the conference theme and S-STEP scholarship. By crystallising a poetic vision of quality teaching for a more just society, we can better imagine what this kind of pedagogy could look and feel like and how we can put it into practice.

“As a professor, he does not care about his students at all. . .. Never once did he reflect on his presentation and attitude toward the class.” This comment, from a student’s end of course evaluation, made me question whether I was still effective as a professor. I was covering the content competencies assigned to the course, but I was not modeling what being a reflective practitioner looked like. This comment became the critical incident (Hole and McEntree, 1999) that motivated me to rethink my practice as a teacher educator, confronting this issue in my practice (Ritter and Quinones, 2020).

“Ungrading,” is a competency-based approach to assessment associated with critical pedagogy in which students choose a “bundle” of assignments connected with a specific level of mastery and revise assignments until they reach a standard that they are willing to accept. I changed the structure of the course to include assignments that would engage the students with the course content at a mastery level. I wondered whether changing the assessment strategy would ultimately sculpt my presentation approach. I kept notes about what I was doing differently and how I felt about that throughout. I enlisted two critical friends to help me make sense of my observations about my teaching and student response to the course changes. They reviewed my course evaluations to triangulate my interpretations.

Course evaluations were mixed. Some students liked the changes to the course schema while others didn’t. The evidence suggests that changing my assessment strategy did sculpt my instructional style. As I strove to equip my students to engage with the content in ways that supported their successful completion of their chosen grade bundle, I began to move away from lecture and to embrace once again the characteristics of quality teaching.

In this paper we report on a collaborative self-study designed to capture the complex and multi-layered ways we have interacted with and influenced policy development to support building racial literacy in teacher education in Scotland. A self-study approach enabled us to examine our experiences and practices from inside a policy space where process, programmes and politics collide (McConnell, 2010; Lambert and O’Connor, 2018). Reflecting La Boskey’s (2004) features of self-study, the research for this paper was self-initiated, focused, interactive, and qualitative. The first four authors each came to the research with individual identities and experiences within the anti-racism policy space but to understand the space more deeply and analytically required interaction. Therefore, we came together, with a critical friend, to engage in a collaborative self-study. A qualitative approach was adopted writing a series of three vignettes and engaging in recorded conversations using the vignettes as stimulus:

1. Positioning ourselves within the policy space – who am I

2. Mapping the policy space

3. Sharing our experiences and practice from within the policy space

Findings illuminate an often unseen, but important part of the policy process: individual histories, aspirations, vulnerabilities and hopes of those playing active roles in the development and enactment of policy. This provides a counter-narrative to the more common rational explanations of policy processes: as Mueller (2020) argues, ‘a key characteristic of complex systems is that they cannot be closely controlled or predicted. Yet the traditional approach to public policy is fundamentally based on both control and prediction’ (p. 311). While McConnell (2010) advocates assessing the success of policy in three distinct realms – processes, programs and politics – the personal dimension in each is neglected. Thus, adopting a self-study approach can contribute to a more human-centred and nuanced understanding of the ways in which policy is taken up.