The title translated literally means ‘That’s not an art piece’ however, the actually meaning is ‘That’s not difficult’.

Read this short case study from Bruce Macfarlane’s 2004 book Teaching

with Integrity: The ethics of higher education practice (Routledge), in which

a fictional lecturer, ‘Stephanie’, receives feedback on her teaching in the form of

student evaluation forms and a peer observation. Consider:

Which aspects of Stephanie’s teaching practice appear to be the most

ripe for development? 

• Understanding the importance of ‘inclusive teaching’ and that it does not mean ‘spoon feeding’
• Understanding that repetition is vital in teaching – having explained the assessment process in the handbook is not enough + some students do not understand the language of assessment terminology
• Continuously re-assessing her way of explaining and asking herself whether this is clear enough to the students
• Understanding that students’ feedback is an integral part of her teaching job and that she should ask for verbal feedback regularly then she would not need to fear the written feedback as there would not be as many surprises especially as she would have already acted in response to the oral feedback
• She seems quite bias or prejudge mental and needs training
• Learning to create more student-led opportunities but explaining clearly why this is an integral part of the students learning at university
• If something has a controversial tendency – this can be ok as long as the teacher explains clearly to the students, why they utilise it as a teaching-learning method

What could Stephanie do to move past her defensive reaction?

• Learn not to take students’ feedback personally but to understand that they have a real reason why they do not understand something or have other personal issues why they are so negative towards her
• Actually, have a different approach/starting point: believing that students want to learn, that they are genuine and not lazy or arrogant etc.
• Understanding that implementing a more beneficial and enhanced teaching methods according to the feedback will actual often reduce her workload on both short and long term

What, for you, are the most interesting questions this case study raises?

• Why does the fictional lecturer teach?
• How do we learn to be a teacher in HE?
• What is a good and what is a bad teacher?
• How do we become a teacher and why in the first place?

In a creative discipline a lot of people try to do their creative practice initially, like I did but realise sooner or later that they do not earn any or enough money and therefore, ‘stumble’ into teaching at art colleges.

I have been teaching for more than 19 years in different institutions, I learned a lot from my colleague who used to be my teacher when I was an undergraduate student and I also learned a lot by simply doing it.

• Is sole teaching considered as lower than teaching and researching at UAL or in general?

At the beginning of the teaching career the own practice is still more important than the teaching job however, the more time passes the more the teaching job takes over. This means that the fictional lecturer in the case study does not necessarily see the teaching as something less respected than her research just that her research is her prime passion.

• Is it even possible to teach without researching?

Having been in a research fellow position which required a certain amount of teaching and having also been in a sole teaching position and trying to do research at the same time both at UAL made me wonder if this is an impossible task to combine.

Being a mother of two, a teacher and an artist I had to let one thing go and I let my practice go because it didn’t make any money. But not a single day passes without thinking about my art practice. In addition, I constantly feel that I am unable to feed any useful knowledge to my students because I have no time to research or do my practice.