Erasmus Mundus Masters
Crossways in Cultural Narratives
Final Dissertation
2014-2016
Discourse, Subjectivity and Practices of
Looking in Higher Education
Alejandro Santaflorentina
Supervisors:
Dr. Clive Thomson. University of Guelph
Dr. Isabelle Cases. Université de Perpignan Via Domitia
I, Alejandro Santaflorentina, hereby certify that this dissertation, which is 22.822 words in
length, has been written by me, that it is a record of work carried out by me, and that it has
not been submitted in any previous application for a higher degree. All sentences or
passages quoted in this dissertation from other people's work (with or without trivial
changes) have been placed within quotation marks, and specifically acknowledged by
reference to author, work and page. I understand that plagiarism – the unacknowledged
use of such passages – will be considered grounds for failure in this dissertation and, if
serious, in the degree programme as a whole. I also affirm that, with the exception of the
specific acknowledgements, these answers are entirely my own work.
Signature of candidate
A. S.
Perpignan, June 2016
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CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................................................... 4
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................... 5
THEORETICAL APPROACH ............................................................................................................................... 8
1. The concept of the “hidden curriculum”............................................................................................ 8
2. The perspective of visual studies ......................................................................................................... 9
3. A Foucauldian lens .................................................................................................................................... 12
a. The technical capacities ..................................................................................................................... 15
b. The systems of communication ...................................................................................................... 20
c. The relationships of power ............................................................................................................... 26
CASE STUDY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH .................................................................................... 32
1. Rethinking the technical capacities through invisible pedagogies ....................................... 32
a. Who does this classroom think we are? ...................................................................................... 33
b. Appropriation as a critical tool ....................................................................................................... 36
c. It is not as simple as that! Beyond the classroom setting .................................................... 39
2. Rethinking the systems of communication through pedagogies of touch ......................... 43
a. The interview process ........................................................................................................................ 44
b. Social status, grades and affect ....................................................................................................... 48
3. Rethinking the relationships of power through performative pedagogies....................... 59
a. Teaching as a performative act ....................................................................................................... 59
b. How much do I open the door? ....................................................................................................... 61
CONCLUSIONS ...................................................................................................................................................... 67
BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................................................................................................................................... 70
APPENDIX .............................................................................................................................................................. 74
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I thank Ingue Dengler and my siblings (Mery, Alberto, Laura and Guillermo) for helping
to make the two years of my Masters experience possible. I also thank my parents and the
rest of my family for all their enthusiasm and support. My heartfelt appreciation also goes
to Clive Thomson, for his strong commitment to my research project and for his
encouragement to work creatively and with enjoyment. I would also like to thank Aida
Sanchez de Serdio Martín for helping me with the selection of the bibliography and for her
ongoing support as an ‘academic mother’. My research wouldn’t have been possible
without the people who participated in the interviews; I thank them for backing my
project and sharing their personal experiences without expecting anything in exchange.
Finally, I want to thank the staff, faculty members and students from the School of
Languages and Literatures at the University of Guelph. I always felt at home studying and
working in the department and will look back on my experience there as one of the most
formative of my academic career to date.
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INTRODUCTION
Social inequalities are reproduced in educational institutions such as universities
through taken-for-granted assumptions and practices that become invisible because they
are enmeshed with what is considered common sense or normality. This is why
educational research has addressed the interference of dominant interests within the
curriculum as the “hidden curriculum”. Social exclusions and relationships of power are,
however, not necessarily hidden. They are more often simply socially accepted or
neglected. The question is, then, how do we negotiate socially what is seen or not seen in
an institution. The theoretical frameworks that are used to study the visual can be
particularly insightful in answering this question. The discursive effects of the institutional
technologies of observation and the non-verbal aspects of socialization are characteristics
of subjectivity-formation that are generally overlooked in educational research.
The starting point for my research project is the idea that schooling produces
subjectivity and generates social exclusions and inequalities, and, following from this, that
these differences are not only produced through verbal exchanges but also through nonverbal processes. I hope to find ways to identify the role of the visual in producing these
social exclusions and to contribute to the development of a visually-critical curriculum. To
do so, I draw on the concept of the hidden curriculum theorized by different scholars in
the field of the sociology of education over the past 40 years. I acknowledge the
contributions from the field of visual culture to the study of the visual and I highlight the
applicability of its findings to educational research. I take up Michel Foucault’s
understanding of disciplinary power and I use an approach based in discourse analysis, in
order to study the technical capacities, the systems of communication and the
relationships of power in educational institutions. I borrow Elisabeth Ellsworth’s concept
of “mode of address” and thus I add the perspective of the visual studies to the analysis of
the technical capacities. I bring discourse analysis together with Stephanie Springgay’s
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understanding of “inter-embodiment” and propose ways to take into account bodyknowledge in the analysis of systems of communication. Finally, I develop an analysis of
power relations focused on resistance and draw both from performance theory and from
Ellsworth’s idea of “manipulating students into taking responsibility”.
In the second part of this dissertation, I present a case study at the University of Guelph
based on the above described theoretical approach. The case study draws on my personal
experience as a student/teacher/researcher. My particular status as a graduate student in
the Erasmus Mundus Masters Crossways in Cultural Narratives and as a teaching assistant
in an introductory Italian positions me as a student who takes his teaching practice as an
object of study and as a teacher who implements and experiments with his research
findings. This double position enables me to combine autoethnography (Ellis) with visual
methodologies (Rose) and qualitative research interviews.1 The data from the case study
are examined according to three different axes2 – the first of them being focused on
technical capacities, the second on systems of communication, and the third and last on
relationships of power. For each axis of analysis I offer a pedagogical approach. For the
analysis of technical capacities I explore some of the technologies and activities that were
part of my teaching experience and I offer “invisible pedagogies” as an approach to
address the discursive aspects of our pedagogical settings. For the analysis of systems of
communication, I analyze the institutional propaganda of the University of Guelph and
connect it to the personal narratives of students and faculty members from the
department in which I worked and studied. Together with this process of discourse
analysis, I offer “pedagogies of touch” as an approach to address the role of affect and the
The autoethnographic methods within this dissertation include different strategies of selfreflection – including personal narratives and fragments from the notes that I took during my
teaching experience – that are used to connect my experience to the wider social processes under
examination. Visual methodologies include content analysis of institutional propaganda, discourse
analysis and direct observation.
2 I use the terms ‘axes’, following Michel Foucault, to refer to dynamic and intersecting structures
that provide a relational framework for the analysis of power. See below, p. 14, for a fuller
explanation of my use of this term.
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body in the reproduction of discourse. Finally, for the analysis of relationships of power, I
come back to some of my personal experiences as a teacher to offer “performative
pedagogies” as an approach to address power relations and to allow for multiple subjectpositions in our teaching. All of these approaches draw on different concepts currently
being used in curriculum studies within the arts, my main aim being to contribute to the
development of critical perspectives in relation to the role of the visual in educational
research.
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THEORETICAL APPROACH
1. The concept of the “hidden curriculum”
Educational research on the hidden curriculum has been developing since the early
1970s with the primary purpose of revealing covert political interference in the
curriculum. It is generally accepted that the expression “hidden curriculum” was coined
for the first time by Philip Jackson in his book Life in Classrooms (1968). As Alan Skelton
notes, “initial works in hidden curriculum focused on the problematic of how schools
played their part in maintaining social order and stability” (178). Authors like Philip
Jackson, Talcott Parsons and Robert Dreeben inaugurated research on hidden curriculum
by adopting a functionalist perspective. These authors realized that there are elements of
socialization that are not part of the formal curricular content and through which students
learn social norms and values. In other words, they realized that children not only go to
school to learn mathematics or history, but also to learn how to behave and how to be
obedient to the teacher in order to be obedient, later on, to the boss or the nation.
However, these authors regarded the hidden curriculum as relatively benign and have
been criticised for having a conservative position in which “the transmission and
reproduction of dominant values and beliefs via the hidden curriculum is both
acknowledged and accepted as a positive function of the schooling process” (Giroux 48).
Further research on the hidden curriculum added more critical perspectives influenced
by Marxism, feminism, critical theory, or postmodernism. These perspectives also
developed the role of the hidden curriculum in reproducing class, racial, and gender
inequalities. An influential examination of the process by which schools reproduce
dominant interests was Schooling in Capitalist America (1976) by Samuel Bowles and
Herbert Gintis. For these authors, the hidden curriculum is the process of inculcating class
behaviours through the natural and everyday features of school life. In contrast, other
researchers such as Pierre Bourdieu and Basil Bernstein emphasized the mediation
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between family/class origins and the school, and thereby gave more agency to the
students, while recognizing at the same time that education is “a more or less autonomous
sphere rather than simply an epiphenomenon of the relations of production” (Margolis 7).
Depending on the theoretical approach, research on the hidden curriculum either
emphasizes the students’ resistance and agency or gives more weight to the power of the
institutions to reproduce hierarchy and to resist change.
Early works within the sociology of education focused initially on primary and
secondary schools and ultimately applied the concept of the hidden curriculum to the
context of higher education. A more recent publication that took this approach was The
Hidden Curriculum in Higher Education, edited by Eric Margolis in 2001. Apart from
bringing together contributions by several scholars from different North-American
institutions, a distinctive feature of this book is that rather than focusing on “curriculum”,
it plays a particular attention to the concept of the “hidden”. Although some of the authors
in this book have highlighted that the hidden curriculum hides “in plain sight”, thereby
addressing its visual aspects, the every-day practices of looking that take place in the
educational context remain overlooked in educational research. Whereas the role of
language in reproducing social inequality in education has been thoroughly explored by
sociolinguists, non-verbal processes have rarely been seen as determining factors in the
educational experience. The aim of my research is to fill this gap in the field and to explore
the possibilities of developing a visually-critical curriculum that acknowledges the fact
that vision is interconnected with social norms.
2. The perspective of visual studies
In order to develop research on the hidden curriculum that deals with the construction
of subjectivity in higher education with a particular focus on the agency of the gaze, I feel a
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need to examine cultural and theoretical texts related not only to curriculum studies but
also to the study of the visual. In this regard, I will use theories from different disciplines
to deal particularly with the visual aspects of the educational experience. More specifically,
I intend to approach the study of the visual through the perspective of visual culture, or
visual studies.
Visual culture is a field of study that emerged in the 1980s, predominantly in NorthAmerica and that focuses on the study of visual practices. The first dissertation on the rise
of visual culture was written by Margaret Dikovitskaya in 2001. In her words, visual
culture, also known as visual studies, is considered a research area that “regards the visual
image as the focal point in the processes through which meaning is made in a cultural
context” (1). There is no generally accepted name for the field and individual courses in
visual studies can be offered in a wide range of existing departments. As James Elkins
remarks, “the normal pattern is that Film Studies is the first to host studies on visual
culture. The new field can also find a home in the departments of Art History, Literature,
or Philosophy” (8).
Authors like Dikovitskaya have tried to define the field of study and to develop “a
common ground for working in the field of the visual” (2). In her book Visual Culture: The
Study of the Visual after the Cultural Turn, she develops both “the theoretical
underpinnings of visual studies and the institutional implications of establishing a new
area of inquiry” (ibid.). In doing so, she encounters some difficulties, since “there is no
consensus among its adepts with regard to its scope and objectives, definitions and
methods” (ibid.). The distinctions and definitions used in the field of study differ from one
scholar to another and also among institutions. The same thing happens with regard to its
objects of study and other concerns, which have been summed up by Dikovitskaya, as
follows:
[S]ome researchers use the term visual culture or visual studies to denote new theoretical
approaches in art history (Holly); some want to expand the professional territory of art
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studies to include artifacts from all historic periods and cultures (Herbert); others emphasize
the process of seeing (Mitchell) across epochs (Rodowick); while still others think of the
category of visual as encompassing non-traditional media – the visual cultures not only of
television and digital media (Mirzoeff) but also of science, medicine, and law (Cartwright).
(64)
This clarifying synthesis has been also quoted by James Elkins in Visual Studies: A
Skeptical Introduction (2003). In his book, Elkins traces the evolution of this new field of
study and notes that it is referred to with three different terminologies: cultural studies,
visual culture and visual studies. These expressions are sometimes distinguished from
each other, while at other times they are used interchangeably. However, as Elkins notes,
cultural studies started in England in the late 1950s in association with a small number of
texts published by authors like Stuart Hall, whereas visual culture is “pre-eminently an
American movement and it is younger than cultural studies by several decades” (2). In
fact, for Dikovitskaya, “visual studies came together in the late 1980s after the disciplines
of art history, anthropology, film studies, linguistics, and comparative literature
encountered poststructuralist theory and cultural studies” (1). According to her, the field
of visual culture “makes use of the same social theories as cultural studies, social theories
that hold that meaning is embedded not in objects but in human relations –
poststructuralism, Marxist theory, semiotics, and psychoanalysis” (68). It is generally
accepted that visual culture – or visual studies – is a field of study separated from cultural
studies. For Elkins, indeed, the field of visual studies has to become more ambitious and,
above all, more difficult; he thinks that visual culture might grow to be “the study of visual
practices across all boundaries” (7).
In my opinion, it is less important to define the field of study or to consolidate it as a
discipline than to find successful methodologies that would account for how meanings are
created through the visual. The study of the visual springs from art history, semiotics, film
studies, poststructuralist theory and cultural studies, among other disciplines. I share
Elkins’ opinion that it is less urgent to put together methods, subjects, and texts from
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various disciplines as a way of establishing the field of visual culture than to encourage
this new field of study to be “interdisciplinary in an ‘interesting’ sense” – in the sense that
it “does not know its subjects in advance but finds them through its preoccupations” (30).
It is in this sense that I aim to develop interdisciplinary research by taking advantage of
different theories that serve me to address the role of the visual in education. I believe that
specific concepts from the arts and the humanities provide an interesting approach to
develop theory on curriculum. Notions like representation, mode of address, out-of-frame,
authenticity, appropriation, intertextuality, multimodality, or performance, among others,
can underline processes of socialization that usually remain invisible or unaddressed in
educational research. I understand vision as interconnected with social norms and I refer
to the study of the visual in a broad sense. I am not interested in the production and
reception of images in particular – the pictures in textbooks or the use of PowerPoint, for
instance – but rather in how meanings, practices, and subjects are created through
practices of looking and not exclusively through verbal language. Undertaking visual
research in education thus means to study the operations of social norms and I aim to do
so using Michel Foucault’s theories as a basis.
3. A Foucauldian lens
A Foucauldian perspective on the hidden curriculum would reject the possibility of
finding any hidden truth. In the 1970s, Foucault develops ‘genealogy’ as a complex
analysis of power that avoids the search for depth.3 “For the genealogist philosophy is
over. Interpretation is not the uncovering of a hidden meaning” (Dreyfus and Rabinow,
Foucault’s theories change considerably during the 1970s when he starts teaching at Collège de
France. In Discipline and Punish (1975), ‘genealogy’, opposed to traditional historical method, takes
precedence over ‘archaeology’, a strict analysis of discourse developed in his firsts works. He takes
this first step with his essay “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” published in 1971. The theories that I
am borrowing from Michel Foucault can be situated in this period, which includes the publication of
the three volumes of The History of Sexuality (1976-84).
3
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107). Since power, for Foucault, is not located in any conspiratorial group interests, there
is no point in uncovering the final and meaningful political purposes of educational
institutions. Instead, a Foucauldian perspective on the hidden curriculum would consider
schools as disciplinary institutions that produce “power-knowledge”. Foucault’s
conception of power invites us to focus on an analysis of the techniques and tactics that
transform individuals into docile objects or meaningful subjects rather than to uncover
violent or oppressive political forces masquerading under educational curricula. Without
undermining the importance of all the research done on the hidden curriculum, we can see
that the concept of the hidden curriculum itself can be misleading for this conception of
disciplinary power because it presupposes that there is something hidden. There is
nothing hidden at all, or else, everything is hidden, which is the same thing as saying that
nothing is hidden. Power in the university does not reside in a group of oppressors –
whether they be the teachers, the families, the markets or the economic system – who
oppress the students for their own interests. Rather, power is embedded in discourse and
the discourse of an educational institution rests on the production of power-knowledge. If
there is a hidden curriculum at all, it is located in discourse. Discourses are hidden because
they are too visible, too familiar and too close to our sight; they are hidden because all
individuals participate in them. Within this conception of the hidden curriculum one
should give as an object of study the ensemble of techniques and tactics that produce
subjectivity.
The university, as a disciplinary institution that generates representations of the world,
serves political interests, classifies individuals, and assigns them different social roles, is
not very different from other institutions like the state, the family or the workplace.
Educational institutions exert power upon the actions of individuals and generate
resistances that are, at the same time, fundamental conditions for its operation. To study
disciplinary power in the university means to focus on those disciplinary practices that
reduce individuals to docility. These practices are especially located in discourse. Through
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discourse, disciplinary institutions generate power-knowledge and the individuals in these
institutions come to perceive their knowledge as true and independent of social norms.
This is not because the individuals have become more and more obedient, but because “an
increasingly better invigilated process of adjustment has been sought after [...] between
productive activities, resources of communication and the play of power relations” (219).
By adjusting to one another, these three axes – i.e. the technical capacities, the systems
of communication, and the relationships of power4 – constitute disciplinary power.
Power relations, relationships of communication, and objective capacities should
not therefore be confused. This is not to say that there is a question of three separate
domains [...] It is a question of three types of relationships which in fact always
overlap one another, support one another reciprocally, and use each other mutually
as means to an end. (217-218)
That means that disciplinary power – which produces power-knowledge and
transforms individuals into subjects – is produced through the sophisticated operations
and interrelations between technical capacities, systems of communication, and
relationships of power. This conception of disciplinary power adds complexity to the study
of the hidden curriculum. In order to study the operations of disciplinary power in higher
education, I propose a methodology based on these three distinctive axes defined by
Foucault, to which I add the perspective of the visual studies. To deal with the technical
capacities, I suggest focusing on specific activities and technologies that can be analyzed
through Elisabeth Ellsworth’s understanding of mode of address. To explore the systems
of communications, I propose an analysis of the continuities and discontinuities between
the institutional discourse and the personal narratives of the individuals participating in
These three terms are used in the essay “The Subject and Power” written by Michel Foucault as an
afterword to Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul
Rabinow. In the essay, Foucault considers these three axes to be constitutive of disciplinary power
and he uses “relationships of power” and “power relations” interchangeably. He also refers to
“systems of communication” as “relationships of communication”, “resources of communication”,
and “games of communication”. Finally, “technical capacities” is also labeled as “objective
capacities”, “objective abilities”, “adjustment of abilities”, “productive activities” and “finalized
activities”. He also considers that all these together constitute a block of capacity-communicationpower.
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the educational experience. This process of discourse analysis can be taken further by
adding Stephanie Springgay’s understandings of inter-embodiment. To study the
relationships of power, I suggest focusing on resistance and using performance as a tool to
disrupt the social positioning that constructs individuals as subjects. Overall, my aim is to
add the perspective of the visual to the study of disciplinary power in higher education
with the final purpose of developing visually-critical curricula that promote an awareness
of the complexity of discourse and subjectivity. In Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow’s
words, “we have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of
individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries” (216).
a. The technical capacities
Foucault’s understanding of disciplinary power is relevant for the analysis at hand
because it connects power with vision and observation. The technologies that surround us
also participate in discourse and generate or mediate relations of power. To illustrate
disciplinary power Foucault offers the figure of the panopticon – an ideal structure for a
prison designed by Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century that consists in a central
observation tower from which it is possible to observe and control the surrounding cells.
These cells are placed around the tower and from them it is not possible to determine if
someone is watching from the central tower. According to Foucault, this architectural form
produces self-government. The possibility of being observed makes the prisoners behave
regardless of whether or not there is a person observing. This power structure is
conceived in a period of time that coincides with a paradigm change in the operations of
power. In traditional forms of power the rulers had to make their power visible to the
public while the multitudes were kept in the shadows, but “[d]isciplinary power reverses
these relations. Now, it is power itself which seeks invisibility and the objects of power –
those on whom operates – are made the most visible” (159). As we can see, power for
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Foucault rests on a relationship and this relationship is determined by visibility. Coercion
is thus achieved through invisible observation, through “eyes that must see without being
seen” (Discipline & Punish 171).
To explore how these visual relationships operate in educational contexts we can take
as an example the auditorium, the university classroom par excellence. The structure of
the auditorium is oriented towards a central point, where the teacher is usually located.
From that point, the teacher is able to see all the students, but from the students’
perspective the range of vision is more limited, as it is not always possible to have a view
of all the people in the classroom. In this setting, all the attention focuses on the central
position that is supposed to be occupied by the teacher. Of course, a teacher can change
this dynamic – and so can the students – by engaging in discussions or changing positions
– students are sometimes asked to occupy the central position and to give oral
presentations. There is always room for alteration and subversion, as the students and the
teachers negotiate the class dynamics and the use of the technologies, but the setting
nonetheless conditions the educational experience. For example, a student can cheat
during an exam, but the structure of the auditorium would prevent them from doing it
overtly. At least, they would have to find the proper angle or to sit at the back of the
classroom in order to remain unnoticed. The main difference between the structure of the
panopticon and the university auditorium is that in the latter the teacher is also visible
and the students know when they are being watched. Still, students are always visible and
this ensures that self-regulation takes place in the classroom.
The biggest drawback of the structure of the auditorium is that it doesn’t allow for the
possibility that knowledge circulates from the students to the students. There can be
exchanges among students in the auditorium, but the students are not positioned as
bearers of knowledge. Very often the chairs are attached to the desks, thereby hindering
the possibility of turning the gaze to the person beside whom one is sitting. This setting
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which is exclusively oriented towards one, unique vanishing point is reinforced by other
technologies such as the projectors, the stage, the steps, or the lighting. This arrangement
of the architecture – similar to that of a classic theatre – not only draws all the attention on
the figure of the teacher on the stage, but also produces a particular unidirectional
communication between the teacher and the students, thereby reinforcing a relationship
of power between them.
Of course, the auditorium is not the only classroom setting that we can find in the
university, but it is a clear example of the role played by the technical capacities in
producing disciplinary power in higher education. In her book School Trouble, Dobrah
Youdell summarizes some of the instruments of disciplinary power described by Foucault
in Discipline and Punish: The birth of the prison and provides the following examples of
how these instruments can be found in schools:
’Spatial distributions’ are concerned with functional sites, enclosures and partitions,
rankings and classifications, and the distribution of the bodies in and across these.
We can see this in the assembly hall, the classroom and the row of desks. ‘The
control of activity’ is concerned with timetabling and the filling of time as well as the
definition of the proper body, gesture and action. We can see this in the school
timetable and the student sitting neatly at her/his desk. ‘Normalizing judgement’
compares, differentiates, categorizes and homogenizes; it corrects the correctable
and excludes the irredeemable. We can see this in the ‘good’ student, the ‘gifted’
student, the student ‘suitable for treatment’, the ‘hopeless’ student and the ‘special’
student. The ‘examination’ documents individuals into cases. We can see this in
school and government databases of student-by-student performance. ‘Hierarchical
observation’ or ‘surveillance’ underpins these technologies – the student, teacher
and school are each subject to the gaze of the next, and all are subject to the gaze of
the state. (37)
These and other examples can be regarded as the technical capacities that organize life
in the university and produce subjectivity – we could add, for example, the formal
arrangement of faculties and of departments within faculties, the control of students’
attendance, the use of student cards, the programs of study, the course outlines, and a
wide variety of other technologies including digital ones such as online courses and
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platforms. How are these technologies and activities classifying individuals and
constructing them as subjects? What effects do they have on the bodies?
When we explore the effects of these technical capacities, we risk falling into the trap of
thinking that there is no escape from the dynamics that they produce or that, on the
contrary, they depend exclusively on the use that individuals make of them. From my
perspective, the creative uses of the technical capacities are more the exception than the
rule; resistance is not always spontaneous. What is important for the analysis, however, is
not how much control and observation the structure of the auditorium, for example,
produces or how much individuals are able to resist it, but what forms of powerknowledge are being privileged. In this regard, visual studies can provide useful
methodological tools, since scholars in this field have explored in depth the processes of
reading and reception through which individuals make sense of visual and cultural objects.
In their book Practices of looking, Martina Sturken and Lisa Cartwright explain that film
theorists like Jean-Louis Baudry and Christian Metz “drew an analogy between the early
process of a child’s ego construction and the experience of film viewing, using Lacan’s
concept of the mirror phase of child development” (74). According to Baudry, the setting of
the cinema invites the viewer to undergo a temporary loss of ego by identifying with the
cinematic apparatus. However, the idea that the viewer regresses to a childlike state is an
aspect of psychoanalytic-based film theory that has been strongly criticized and
contrasted with other theories of film and media spectatorship that emphasize engaged
viewer practices. These theories considered, for instance, that the psychoanalytic model
did not account for the specificity of racial experience or of gay, lesbian, and
transgendered identities. The further proliferation of alternative film theories has
developed a wide set of models that account for “the multiplicity of gazes and looks that
mediate power between viewers and objects of the gaze” (93).
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We can see how this is connected with educational practices. It is possible to draw
analogies between the experience of attending a lecture and the experience of watching a
film. The students’ role as ‘spectators’ can be analyzed through theories of subject
formation that have been applied to cinema. It is very difficult, however, to account for the
specificity of experiences and identities of all the students. I find it impossible to develop a
model or set of models that could take into consideration the multiplicity of gazes and
looks of a large group of students. This is why I consider it more productive, instead, to use
a model that accounts for the impossibility of perfect fits between the technical capacities
and the responses of individuals.
A concept from film studies that has already been used in educational research is mode
of address. Elisabeth Ellsworth is a film scholar who realized that many concepts from the
humanities can be used to develop research in education. In her book Teaching positions
(1997), she proposes to use mode of address as a methodological tool to study how our
curricula position students and teachers. In her words, “we can use it to make visible and
problematic the ways that all curricula and pedagogies invite their users to take up
particular positions within relations of knowledge, power, and desire” (2). Mode of
address is used in film theory to refer to the ways in which films construct meanings
according to an ideal spectator. It points to the dynamics of social positioning that are
characteristic of film viewing. What is particularly helpful from this concept is that it
acknowledges the multiplicity of readings and avoids the search for perfect fits.
The point is that all modes of address misfire one way or another. I never ‘am’ the
‘who’ that a pedagogical address thinks I am. But then again, I never am the ‘who’
that I think I am either [...] the pedagogical relation between a student and a teacher
is a paradox. (11)
By considering the pedagogical relation between students and teachers a paradox we
can avoid the opposition of giving greater importance to the technical capacities or to the
individuals’ resistance and creativity. The point is not to find technologies that are neutral,
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but to acknowledge that we as educators desire to position the students in certain ways
and that the students identify with or resist our gaze in multiple ways. Using the concept
of mode of address we can ask ourselves when developing our curricula: How does the
outline for my course position the students? Who do I think the students are when I make
the decision to open or close the classroom’s door, to use or not use PowerPoint or the
textbook, to change the arrangement of the chairs and tables, to decide to sit down or
stand up during the class, or to allow students to leave the room during class? In asking
these questions we may find new challenges. For example, when do I stop considering
physical elements and activities as technical capacities that participate in discourse? Can I
control students’ attendance without enacting surveillance? Is the way I dress, for
instance, part of the message I transmit to the students? It seems obvious to me that
anything can be analyzed because everything conveys a message. Again, we must restrain
ourselves from finding any hidden truth or any easy solution. The most important is not to
think that the techniques and tactics that we are using are neutral and that we do not
desire to position the students socially, which is actually what educational texts tend to
imply. In Elisabeth Ellsworth’s words, “By presenting themselves as desiring only
understanding, educational texts address students as if the texts were from no one, with
no desire to place their readers in any position except that of neutral [...] understanding”
(47). The point is to give importance to the technologies that mediate our educational
experience and to analyze them critically, considering the way they address the
individuals but also the multiple readings that the individuals make for them, without
thinking at any moment that there is a position of neutrality.
b. The systems of communication
As a student, I can identify that there is an institutional discourse in the university in
which I study; I can adhere to it or be against it and complain about it with my friends,
20
classmates or even my teachers. I may have the feeling of learning or the feeling of not
learning at all and just being obliged to jump over hoops. I may have a good reason for
studying at the university, such as finding a suitable job afterwards or, on the contrary, I
may say that I am studying because my parents want me to go to university or because I
don’t know what else I could do. I might even be able to perceive that, as a university
student, the society in which I live and the very institution in which I study assign me a
social status. But I might not be able to see that I am also participating in the
dissemination of an institutional discourse. As a teacher, I may want to maintain a safe
professional distance from my students and ask them to address me as doctor or
professor, or, conversely, I may want to make students feel at ease by making myself more
approachable. I may be more or less critical of the institution in which I work; I may be
more or less conscientious in acknowledging the students’ personal efforts, social
backgrounds or special needs, but I might not be able to see that I am benefiting certain
students more than others and that my teaching and my assessment are not objective. It
would be unusual for a teacher to declare that they assign grades according to their
political position, or for a student to understand that they are not studying to access
knowledge but to contribute to the production of power-knowledge. It looks as though the
institutional discourse has always been there and always will be, but the opposite is also
true. Even if students and teachers perceive themselves as external to discourse, they are
participating in the game of communications.
The ways in which universities assess students’ work is probably an even more
significant example of how we come to see our knowledge as true and independent from
social norms. In the process of assessment we can easily see how the technical capacities,
the systems of communication, and the relationships of power are intimately
interconnected. The organization of the curriculum in terms of academic years, semesters,
courses, midterms, and final exams, the division of the course evaluation into modules and
percentages, the grading criteria, and the invigilation of examinations, among many
21
others, are activities and technologies that form a series of axes of technical capacities.
These, of course, produce relationships of power – for example, teachers exercise power
over the students because they determine if a student passes or fails. At the same time,
these technical capacities rest on systems of communication – a numerical one for grades
and a verbal one for justifying them – that categorize students’ works and classifies
students as ‘good’, ‘gifted’, ‘with special needs’, ‘hopeless’ or ‘outstanding’. The functioning
of the technical capacities that constitute assessment also depends on the relationships of
communication between students and teachers. Through verbal language – either written
or oral – the students learn to adapt to the academic language and, simultaneously, their
success or failure in this process changes the relationships of power between them and
their teachers, their parents, their employers, and the other students. In this section, it will
be shown – following the example of assessment – that the students’ and teachers’ success
depends not only on their ability to adapt to a certain language but also to a certain gaze.
The criteria for grading both written assignments and examinations are supposed to be
objective; they aim to identify specific characteristics that document students’ knowledge
of a certain subject. However, every instructor who has graded essays knows that it is very
difficult to establish the precise parameters between numerical grades and ideas
expressed in an essay. No grading criteria can be objective, for obvious reasons.5 On the
one hand, students who understand clearly the grading criteria have an advantage over
those students who do not. On the other hand, there are always a number of factors that
depend on the very personal choice of the instructor who is doing the grading. Of course,
there are always useful guidelines in this regard that take into consideration aspects like
the student’s understanding of the subject, critical analysis, or presentation and style.
These guidelines are formulated as questions like – Is the written style clear and
appropriate? Are the arguments logical and coherent? Is there clear evidence of critical
I am referring to the grading criteria for student work in arts and humanities, but the same can be
said for student work in Sciences, where the appearance of objectivity is even higher.
5
22
thinking and analytical insight? These questions can be useful, but the ‘good quality’ of a
critical discussion or a written style cannot be measured with objective precision. I would
like to question the ‘objectivity’ of the grading criteria that are common in the context of
higher education by highlighting two aspects.
First, as the contributions to genre studies and discourse studies have demonstrated,
the quality of discursive forms is determined by the agreement among the members of
disciplinary communities. As Vijay K. Bhatia notes, “genres [or discourses] are also socially
constructed and are more intimately controlled by social practices. Genres are the media
through which members of professional or academic communities communicate with each
other” (360). Bhatia has explored how the language learners who aspire to be members of
an academic community need to learn and to acquire generic conventions. The ‘good
quality’ or the ‘scholarly presentation’ that are expected to be found in the written style,
the analytical insight, or the coherence of a student’s essay are nothing else but the
adaptation of the student’s text to specific generic conventions. As a teacher, I do not
hesitate to recognize that I give higher grades – as I am expected to do – to the students
who write using the proper conventions of the academic community to which I belong.
There are very specific sets of rules like the MLA or Chicago style conventions that we all
use and reproduce. Furthermore, generic conventions are also acquired by reading the
work of other members of the community, through the continuous process of getting
higher or lower grades or through being accepted or rejected from academic publications,
applications for scholarships, and research funding, among other social practices. Hence,
the grading criteria cannot be objective because they are a reflection of specific
agreements that are socially constructed between the members of an academic
community.
Second, I maintain that affect also interferes in evaluation practices. The decision to
give a numeric value to a set of ideas can very well go up or down a few points, depending
23
on the teacher’s knowledge of the student’s effort during the development of the course.
But the teacher’s knowledge of the students’ backgrounds is determined by visual
encounters. I honestly recognize that, during the assessment process, I am inclined to be a
little bit more generous with the students whom I know better. This is not, in any case,
because of favouritism, but because I more or less unconsciously feel the need to pay
specific attention to the work of those who made the effort to show up during classes or
office hours. Of course, there are techniques to avoid being affected by this aspect of the
teaching situation. One can ignore the name of the student while grading essays, but it is
also easy to guess the name of the author of a text when one knows the students – not only
because it is sometimes possible to identify handwriting, but also because students often
have a particular way of expressing their ideas or because they mention specific topics
that interest them.
In any case, even if the producer of a text is not recognizable, the teacher is going to
grade assignments according to generic conventions and the transmission of these
conventions is also influenced by the student-teacher relationship. A student who has
spent significant time with the teacher during tutoring is more likely to acquire generic
conventions. In my experience of grading, I realize that not only the students’ language
code and their knowledge of generic conventions determine their evaluation, but also
their visibility and attendance. This is why I consider that methodologies of discourse
analysis in educational research should also take into consideration the perspective of
visual studies.
Within the different currents focused on the study of discourse, researchers in Critical
Discourse Analysis (CDA) have provided a useful lens through which to look at the
relationships between individuals and discourse in educational institutions. An increasing
number of educational researchers are turning to CDA as a useful set of approaches with
which to undertake research in education. Most of the studies, however, tend to focus
24
exclusively on the verbal aspects of discourse. As Rebecca Rogers et al. state, “CDA has
been seriously critiqued for failing to address interactional or dialogic texts and focusing
instead primarily on written texts” (376). Conversely, visual studies provide
methodological tools that take into account the non-verbal processes of subject-formation.
However, Stephanie Springgay has pointed out that most researchers in the field of visual
culture also fail to address the role of the body in socialization.
The pervasiveness of visual culture in education has continued to privilege the
visual over other sensory experiences and has not included any inquiry into how
visual culture impacts, mediates, and creates body knowledge. Moreover, it fails to
account for bodied encounters in the production of meaning making. (4)
Her theories and her use of Merleau Ponty’s concept of intercorporeality or inter-
embodiment allow us to study the connections between disciplinary power and systems of
communication in the context of “bodied encounters”. Generic conventions are shared
between students and teachers through visual encounters and social practices that depend
on the body. Even in online teaching students need to spend hours in front of a computer
and the time that they spend exchanging with the teacher or with other students – who
also sit in front of the screen and are often able to “listen” and to “see” each other through
audiovisual technologies – determines their experience and acquisition of generic
conventions.
To maintain an appearance of objectivity, however, the university tends to ignore the
social processes of production and transmission of generic conventions through bodied
encounters. As will be shown in the interviews in the second part of this dissertation,
students know that their success depends on their capacity to adapt to the teachers’ gaze –
i.e. to know what the teachers are “looking” for. That is a social process that is usually
neglected in educational discourse and in which the body has a fundamental role.
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c. The relationships of power
The analysis of power relations is perhaps the most complex of the three axes that we
have delimited as objects of analysis. An aspect that needs to be clarified is that by
studying the technical capacities and the systems of communication we are also studying
relationships of power. These three axes are not to be understood as separate elements
but as interconnected processes that are inextricably-linked; what changes from one to the
other is our focus. In the first section we focused on the role of technical capacities like the
auditorium in reproducing certain forms of power-knowledge and favouring specific
relationships of power. In the second section we focused on both the verbal and the nonverbal communications that take place between individuals during assessment.
Assessment is actually a technique, a carefully designed form of control and classification
that produces power relations, but we focused on the exchanges between individuals,
which include bodied encounters and the transmission of codes and linguistic
conventions. In this third section our focus is on resistance.
Definitions of power and resistance
Power is, for Foucault, the ability of individuals to act upon the actions of others: “what
defines a relationship of power is that it is a mode of action which does not act directly and
immediately on others. Instead, it acts upon their actions: an action upon an action, on
existing actions or on those which may arise in the present or the future” (Dreyfus and
Rabinow 220). According to Kevin Jon Heller, “power and resistance are, for Foucault,
ontologically correlative terms” (99), in the sense that “power can be designated as
‘resistance’ depending upon the perspective from which the power-relation is judged”
(ibid.). Resistance refers, for Foucault, to the forms of power of those who have less power
within the structure of a given disciplinary institution – i.e. the prisoners, the patients or
26
the students. According to him, all struggles against power relations “attack not so much
‘such or such’ institution of power, or group, or elite, or class, but rather a technique, a
form of power. [...] It is a form of power which makes individuals subjects” (Dreyfus and
Rabinow 212). Hence, in order to understand what power relations are about in an
institution like the university it is necessary to investigate the forms of resistance and the
attempts made to dissociate them. The desire to remain passive during classes or, on the
contrary, the desire to participate more actively than expected and to express opinions
that contradict those of the teacher are examples of students’ resistance. From the
teachers’ perspective, we can also find multiple forms of resistance to the ways in which
teachers are positioned by the mechanisms of the institution – allowing students to assign
their own grades or to submit their work after deadlines; addressing aspects of the social
and political life that are not part of the course content; engaging in strikes against
educational laws that affect the labor conditions and the rights of the people working and
studying at the university.
The university, as a disciplinary institution, can be understood as an ensemble of
techniques that transforms the individuals into subjects, but the effect of these techniques
also depends on the capacity of the individuals to exercise power and to resist it. In
Foucault’s words, “power relations are both intentional and non-subjective” (The History
of Sexuality 94). This means that individuals exercise power with the intention of
modifying other people’s actions and that, at the same time, their subjectivity is not
external and separated from the already-existing power relations. According to Heller, this
has been misunderstood by most Foucault scholars, who have focused more on the idea
that power relations, for Foucault, are non-subjective, thereby overlooking his insistence
on the intentionality. Foucault considers that individuals are both the subjects and the
objects of power, which doesn’t mean that they are powerless or not able to resist.
“Although all subject-positions are ‘subjected’ to discourses that temporally and
ontologically precede them, the inevitable multiplicity of those discourses ensures that
27
subjectification invariably produces structurally incompatible (i.e., hegemonic and
counter-hegemonic) subject positions” (Heller 94). Foucault’s understanding of power
thus allows for subject-positions that are counter-hegemonic, but doesn’t consider these
to be in a position of exteriority in relation to power. Consequently, to investigate power
relations in the university through this perspective would mean being skeptical with
regard to the possibility of a liberating pedagogy. Foucault invites us to focus on resistance
and on the attempts to change our subject-positions, but he does not imply that we can get
to a point at which we are free from reproducing power relations.
The repressive hypothesis
One of my favourite songs by Pink Floyd is Another Brick in the Wall, from their famous
concept album released in 1979 and adapted for a musical film of the same title, The Wall,
directed by Alan Parker in 1982. Both the song and its film version represent students
protesting against their abusive teachers and the song seems to me to be a strong
statement against schooling. Ironically, I know a lot of teachers who – like me – really love
that song, probably because they see themselves as being alternative teachers who don’t
exert power upon the students in the way that is represented in the song. In my opinion,
Pink Floyd’s song epitomizes what Foucault conceptualizes in Volume 1 of History of
Sexuality as the “repressive hypothesis” – that is, to think that power is repressive and that
it is exerted from above and upon the oppressed. Considering power as an oppressive
force may lead to the search for liberation. But the promise of liberation is always
threatened by the construction of new power relationships. Many pedagogues have
criticised traditional schooling. The anti-schooling movement – Ivan Illych being a major
reference – is probably the main example of this, but it is far from being the only one. In
fact, the most cited and acclaimed pedagogues are usually critical of traditional schooling.
According to Foucault, however, the incitement to talk about repression and liberation
28
only reproduces power by means of displacement. He has defined this tendency as the
“enunciator’s payoffs”, which he defines as follows. “[T]he ‘enunciator’s payoffs’ [sic]
assure to whoever speaks by means of ‘anti-repressive’ theory, which he himself is helping
to develop. These conditions explain the fact that ‘anti-repressive’ discourse should be a
genre that circulates with such obstinacy between university auditorium and analytic
couch.” (“On Infantile Sexuality” 12-13)
This is one of the paradoxes of power in education. Educational institutions reproduce
power relations and, at the same time, they also trigger the desire of some individuals to
resist power and to change the very same institutions to which they belong and in which
they participate. Some people concerned with pedagogy seek for and work for the
development of anti-repressive educational practices. For Foucault, however, “[a] society
without power relations can only be an abstraction” (Dreyfus and Rabinow 223). In
Foucault’s understanding of power, the threat of any anti-repressive theory is that it may
help to spread power itself, since “power needs resistance as one of its fundamental
conditions of operation. It is through the articulation of points of resistance that power
spreads through the social field. But it is also, of course, through resistance that power is
disrupted” (147). Taking into account this understanding of power makes me sceptical of
the possibility of an anti-repressive pedagogy and encourages me to seek an analysis of
power relations that focuses less on the meaning and on the intentions of the individuals
and more on specific practices and techniques. It also invites me to reflect on my own
proximity and personal relationship with discourse.
However, the hypothesis that the liberating pedagogies emerging from repressive
pedagogies are nonetheless condemned to fail can be disempowering. Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick notes that, “[r]ather than working outside of it, however, Volume 1, like much of
Foucault’s earlier work, might be better described as propagating the repressive
hypothesis even more broadly by means of displacement, multiplication and
29
hypostatization” (11). James Penney is also very critical of Foucault’s conception of power
and argues that “Foucault’s idea of power tries to persuade us that our oppression stems
not from forces we can trace to specific socioeconomic, legislative and juridical structures,
but from power as such” (10). In my opinion, the scholars who find Foucault’s theories
disempowering do so precisely because they believe that Foucault doesn’t provide specific
solutions; Foucault’s aim, rather, is to add complexity to the study of power, which doesn’t
mean that there is no room for political action. Heller considers that “an extremely
pessimistic interpretation of Foucault’s work has become increasingly common” (105) and
offers a different interpretation of Foucault’s understanding of power and resistance – one
which is not dystopian and allows for counter-hegemonic subject-positions and for the
possibility of freedom. Following on Heller’s interpretation, I consider that, rather than
being cynical and nihilistic, Foucault’s conception of power can be deployed for the
purposes of an engaged and critical analysis of educational institutions. This is clear in the
following quotation in which he talks explicitly about pedagogic institutions:
Let us take something that has been the object of criticism, often justified: the
pedagogic institution. I don’t see where evil is in the practice of someone who, in a
given game of truth, knowing more than another, tells him what he must do, teaches
him, transmits knowledge to him, communicates skills to him. The problem is rather
to know how you are to avoid in these practices [...] the effects of domination which
will make a child subject to the arbitrary and useless authority of a teacher. (qtd. in
Heller 103)
What is thus important for Foucault is “how power is used: is it used to increase the
freedom of others, or to capture them in relations of domination?” (Heller 103-104). I
consider that, as affirmed by Foucault, “resistance is never in a position of exteriority in
relation to power” (95). Such a view encourages us to resist power relations while, at the
same time, remaining critical of our position. In other words, it stimulates us to use power
to increase the freedom of others and to consider this as a continuous process of
30
negotiation rather than as an end. In the last section of the following case study, by
focusing on how power is used, I develop the idea of teaching as a “performative” act.
31
CASE STUDY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH
1. Rethinking the technical capacities through invisible pedagogies
Next Tuesday I will start the seminars that I am teaching. I have taught in the past
(private lessons, workshops, lectures) but this is the first time I will be teaching my
own seminars in the University during a whole semester. I have imagined many
times how my very first class was going to be. I have always done this, even though I
would never have guessed that it was going to be an Italian class. When I was in high
school, or during the first years of my bachelor’s degree, I used to imagine myself
giving an engaging lecture, talking with the students about all the things we usually
don’t learn and all the mistakes that teachers usually make. I basically imagined
myself as the perfect teacher. Now that the time to teach my first class has come I am
excited and motivated, but I see everything differently. What is important to me now
is to see what mistakes I make and why, because I know that I am going to make
some. I actually don’t really care about making mistakes, but rather about being able
to trace how conscious I am of the mistakes I make and the effect that they have on
the students. I am not interested in not reproducing power but rather in being able
to notice exactly how I am reproducing it. I am sceptical of an ideal pedagogy or a
horizontal pedagogy, but I am committed to experimenting with an aware pedagogy.
Tomorrow I will introduce myself to the students and explain to them why teaching
is important to me and what I want to learn from this experience that we are going
to share. I will also encourage the students to introduce themselves and to feel
responsible for their own learning process and for the class dynamic. We will start
learning basic words in Italian, starting from their already acquired knowledge. We
will also practice these words and phrases by sharing dynamics. I will try to
memorize all the names and faces by writing them down on a sheet of paper. Today I
will also search the internet some tips to memorize names. I will also take care of
the arrangement of the chairs and the tables, the lights, the projector, the sound
equipment and all the invisible pedagogies. Maybe I will play some relaxing music.
This is what I wrote in my notebook the day before starting my teaching experience at
the University of Guelph. From September to December, 2015, I taught weekly seminars in
an introductory Italian course for two groups of twenty to twenty-five undergraduate
students. Throughout this experience, I took weekly notes in my notebook and
continuously reflected on my teaching performance. In the above transcription of my
notes, we can see that when I started teaching my seminars I was aware of the
impossibility of undertaking a pedagogy that could address all the students equally. I had
already started my research project and had in mind some of the critical tools that I
explore in this dissertation. Now that I am looking back on my pedagogical experience I
would like to identify some aspects that I overlooked. In this section, I focus on the
32
activities and technologies that were part of our pedagogical experience and analyze how I
dealt with them and which of them I consider to be neutral. Since I cannot account for the
multiple readings that my students made of all the technical capacities that were part of
the course experience, I build on my direct observation during the semester and a
retrospective critical analysis (six months later) and I also consider carefully all the
feedback that the students gave me in their written evaluations at the middle and at the
end of the semester. First, I analyze the classroom setting where our seminars took place
and I offer “appropriation” as a tool for altering our relations with the technical capacities.
Second, I focus on the online platform (CourseLink, University of Guelph) that mediated
our educational experience.
a. Who does this classroom think we are?
According to Ellsworth’s understanding of teaching as a structure of address,
“educational discourses and practices are filled with conscious and unconscious
assumptions and desires about the who that a curriculum or pedagogy is addressed to”
(58). Following on this idea, Maria Acaso, a professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, offered the question “Who does this chair think you
are?” as a tool to reflect on the multiple ways in which the pedagogical spaces and their
physical elements position us as subjects. She used this question as the title for a series of
seminars on the work of Elisabeth Ellsworth and the artist Jaime Kruse that took place in
Madrid and Barcelona in April, 2010. These seminars constituted Ellsworth’s first visit to
Spain and were mainly focused on her work Teaching Positions (1997), translated into
Spanish in 2005 (Akal). Two years after the seminars, Maria Acaso published Pedagogías
invisibles: El espacio del aula como discurso (2012), which draws on semiotics to analyze
some of the microdiscourses conveyed in educational spaces and her book is particularly
inspired by Ellsworth’s theories. A research group also named Pedagogías invisibles was
33
created by Maria Acaso together with a group of students and researchers after the
experience of the seminars with Ellsworth. Acaso and her research group’s understanding
of “invisible pedagogies” is connected with what has been theorized in the field of
sociology as the hidden curriculum, but with some differences. Whereas the hidden
curriculum focuses on the macropolitical intentions of educational institutions, the
invisible pedagogies point towards the micropolitical practices of educators. What both
concepts have in common is that they reflect on the discursive aspects of the educational
practice, including its physical elements, and on how meaning is created beyond what is
visible or what is made explicit in the curriculum. The invisible pedagogies, however, are
oriented towards the praxis; they are an invitation to address the invisible in our teaching.
Acaso’s question (Who does this chair think you are?) helps us to reflect on the mode of
address of the technical capacities that characterizes our teaching experience. It is
formulated in a way that is particularly useful to understand that there are no neutral
objects. It is obvious that a chair doesn’t think, but it has been designed according to a
preconceived idea of what its uses and its users should be. In other words, the question
assumes that all objects have a mode of address and since modes of address always
misconstrue the subjects in one way or another – what the chair thinks I am is not exactly
what I am – we can take advantage of this realization in order to position ourselves
differently. By asking “Who does this classroom think we are?” I explain, in this section, my
relation with the classroom setting in which our seminars took place and I focus on some
of the invisible pedagogies that were part of the teaching experience.
Before I started my seminars I went to see the classroom in which classes were going to
take place. I did this with my colleague, Helga, a teaching assistant like me, who was going
to teach the same seminars for two different groups of students. I remember that we were
disappointed at how small and unwelcoming the classrooms that had been assigned to us
were. They didn’t have any windows and they looked gray and claustrophobic because
34
they had no natural light. We both went to see the secretary in our department
immediately and kindly asked her to provide us with other rooms, but this wasn’t possible.
Once I accepted that classroom 112 in the MacNaughton building was the classroom were
my seminars were going to take place, I started to try to find ways to make it more
welcoming.
The classroom’s architect didn’t consider that a window to the exterior world was
necessary and assumed that the focus of the students’ attention should be the projection
screen and the long blackboard (which covered the full-length of the front wall of the
classroom) toward which all the chairs were oriented. All the chairs in the classroom were
facing the same direction (i.e., the blackboard), except for the teacher’s, which was slightly
different from the others and was placed so that it faced the students’ chairs and was
behind the only table at the front of the classroom. I decided not to sit on that chair and to
put the table aside, so that I would always be standing in front of the students. This was a
way to remove a physical barrier between the students and me in order to facilitate
interaction, but I find it important to note that by standing up while they were sitting
down I was making a difference between my position and theirs. In any case, removing the
table that was supposed to be occupied by the teacher helped to establish a face-to-face
relationship with the students and encouraged discussion and participation.
I also came up with the idea of playing music. Although it could be a bit distracting for
the students, I thought that it would help to create a cozier environment. I guessed that for
a generation born during the digital era it wouldn’t be a problem for the students to pay
attention to different stimuli at the same time and, in fact, it wasn’t. In the middle of the
semester, I gave the students a sheet of paper in which they were asked to write down
what activities they wanted to keep or discontinue or what new activities they could
suggest during the seminars. It was an idea that was mentioned during the training
session for teaching assistants which had taken place before the start of the semester and I
35
decided to try this because I felt the need to have some feedback from the students. The
students weren’t asked to identify themselves, so all the comments were anonymous,
which allowed for honest critiques without any conflict of interest. In their feedback most
of the students pointed out that playing background music was one of the things that they
wanted to keep. Only one student complained about it because they thought it was too
loud. What I did in order to satisfy everyone was to keep playing music at class but to turn
the volume down a bit. Apart from keeping the morning group awake and creating a
relaxing work atmosphere, the music also became a medium for communication. In every
seminar I played an album by a different Italian band. This was a way of exposing the
students to Italian culture and sometimes I related the music to my personal experience in
Italy and even to the historical context of the chosen album. I also invited students to
participate in this daily ritual and to suggest other Italian music selections that we could
play in class. Some of them asked me to play music from Italian pop bands that I didn’t
know. They engaged in an interaction that was beyond the requirements of the course and
that transformed the classroom into a communal space. I think that both my personal
enthusiasm for the Italian music and my willingness to share a common experience
explain why some students indicated, in the course evaluation, that they looked forward
each week to their seminars with me.6
b. Appropriation as a critical tool
My taking into consideration the invisible pedagogies of the classroom helped create a
relaxed atmosphere for our work. By changing and manipulating the classroom setting we
became familiar with it and we generated a successful group dynamic. What I can see now,
nonetheless, in retrospect, is that many aspects of the classroom setting remained
See the students’ evaluation of my teaching in Appendix, in which a student points out that the
seminars “were the thing I looked forward to during the week” and some of them refer explicitly to
the “classroom environment” and the music.
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36
unaddressed. I became used to my personal way of arranging the classroom to the extent
that I didn’t explore or experiment with any other uses of its physical elements. Moreover,
I didn’t encourage the students to participate fully in this process. In the afternoon group,
the students would place the chairs in a semicircle around the blackboard in order to face
each other during the class discussions. I allowed this and other uses of the space, but I
never asked the students to think critically about the discursive elements of the classroom.
Once I arranged a use of the space of the classroom that felt comfortable for all of us, I
stopped allowing for other possibilities.
This is why I think that when exploring the discursive aspects of the technical
capacities in our pedagogies, it is important to maintain a tension between making familiar
the unfamiliar and making unfamiliar the familiar in our relation to objects. The first
process helps us to feel at ease and to adapt the technical capacities to our needs. At some
point, however, we become too familiar with the technical capacities and the uses that we
make of them and we risk failing to see the discourses that we are reproducing. This is the
moment in which we need to step back and create some distance in order to open creative
processes of resignification. These relations of familiarity and unfamiliarity with objects
can be understood through Heidegger’s distinction between two different attitudes
towards the objects of the world – “present-at-hand” as opposed to “ready-to-hand”. In
Curriculum and the Cultural Body, Yvonne Gaudelius and Charles Garoian explain these
two terms as follows.
Present-to-hand is the tool that is broken, different, or new. It is the foregrounded
object laid bare for critical examination and creative re-presentation. In marked
contrast to this, ready-to-hand is the tool that becomes part of our being, a familiar
object that is known, assumed, and taken for granted by us through our routine use
of it. (9)
Objects and their uses that are part of our routine thus become assumed and are taken
for granted, but this naturalized relation to objects can be disrupted by interference.
“Interference disrupts and transforms the dualism that distinguishes the body from
37
technological, pedagogical, curricular systems into a dialectical play or performance” (10).
Instead of reiterating pedagogical practices and relations with objects that reproduce the
social norms, a performative use of the technical capacities opens up a wide variety of
creative possibilities by rendering the objects ready-to-hand present-to-hand and the
invisible in the classroom visible. In this regard, we can find in the arts multiple examples
of resignification of objects and cultural texts – such as parody, appropriation or the
ready-made – that can be a source of inspiration for exploring performative uses of the
space of the classroom.
In chapter 2, “Viewers Make Meaning”, of Practices of Looking: An introduction to visual
culture, Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright explain that “appropriation” can be
understood in a broad sense as a form of oppositional reading. Artists have used different
forms of appropriation by borrowing images and by changing their original meaning or by
recreating, in their artworks, some of the icons of art history. Moreover, “forms of
appropriation for political empowering can also be found at the level of language. Social
movements often take terms that are considered to be derogatory and re-use them in
empowering ways. This process is called trans-coding” (63). Sturken and Cartwright also
consider as other forms of appropriation the concept of “bricolage” theorized by
anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and the strategy of “textual poaching” defined by
cultural theorist Michel de Certeau. By understanding appropriation as a form of
oppositional reading we can use it to change our relation to objects, including the technical
capacities that are part of our teaching experience. Even the most familiar object, such as
the chair, can easily become unfamiliar through appropriation. Appropriation can also be a
way to engage students in thinking critically about the classroom space and physical
elements. I suggest using appropriation as an artistic and critical tool to instantiate a
tension between familiarity and unfamiliarity in relation to the discursive aspects of the
space of the classroom. Once we have identified the technologies that mediate our
teaching experience and have asked ourselves how they are positioning us (Who do they
38
think we are?) we can experiment, through appropriation, with the multiple oppositional
readings that we can make of them.
c. It is not as simple as that! Beyond the classroom setting
Sometimes, however, the manipulation and appropriation of the technical capacities
don’t have the effect that we desire. We can place all the chairs in a circle and still not be
able to engage in discussions. We can ask the students to give themselves a grade and not
be able to empower them. We can incorporate social networks in our teaching and not be
able to innovate at all. This is, in part, because there are deeply rooted dynamics and
practices that go beyond the use that we make of the technical capacities. When we change
our pedagogical practices and yet don’t achieve the effect that we desire, we tend to think
that our students are not ready for more democratic, active, or creative ways of doing
things. From my experience as a student/teacher I can say that this is not true – it sounds
to me like an easy excuse to keep doing the same things and to refrain from
experimenting. What is more likely is that, although we have adopted new practices, our
focus remains the same. It would be too easy if we could generate completely different
dynamics simply by incorporating new elements into our pedagogies. The truth is that the
technical capacities that transform individuals into subjects do not end outside the space
of the classroom. The whole educational institution is positioning the students and
conveying ideas of who they are and what is expected from them. One can change the
classroom setting by putting all the chairs into a circle in the hope of creating less
hierarchical exchanges among the students, but one is condemned to fail, if there is still an
unconscious discrimination between the “brilliant” and “not so brilliant” students.
Evaluation of students is also a technical capacity and it has a big impact on all subjects
involved in the educational experience, given that evaluation is generally perceived as the
educational institution’s most important goal. If our curricula are focused on grades, our
39
pedagogies are going to address the students as if the only thing that matters is that they
get high grades.
I can relate this to my teaching experience. The above page from my course website (on
the CourseLink platform) gives the list of the names of my students. This representation is
exactly what I saw the very first time that I came to know them, before I met them in
person in the classroom. These lines of text on a screen are not my students, but they form
a classification system that can be confused with reality if we see it as mirroring the
students. CourseLink, in this case, as with any other online platform, functions as one of
the technical capacities – in this case a clear technology of observation – through which
the teachers and the students look and are looked at. We are so used to these technologies
that we don’t even think about their pedagogical and political implications. It may seem
obvious to say that these technologies determine our educational experience, but we don’t
spend much time thinking about why we decide to represent or to observe the students
and the teachers in certain ways and not in others. This technology of observation in
40
particular favours a general look at the students as a homogenised group. The features of
the students that are considered relevant to visualize are first and last name, student id,
email and grade.
What is probably more interesting, however, is what is missing – not only their stories,
their faces, their feelings, their interests and their lives, but also other aspects that are
crucial for the learning experience. For example, the students’ previous knowledge about
the course content, their cultural capital or their class background, their goals in relation
to the course – a student who wants to learn Italian to become a translator needs a
different approach from that of the student who is studying accounting, for instance – their
personal satisfaction with the course, their interaction with other students and with the
teacher, or the distance between what they knew at the beginning of the course and what
they know at the end. This kind of information would represent the students very
differently. Of course, it can be argued that it would be complicated to visualize or collect
all this information. As a researcher and not an online platform developer my job is to
analyze these tools, not to create them, but, as far as I know, technology is not that limited.
Social networks like twitter already offer the possibility of visualizing user interactions, so
perhaps we need to extend discoveries in the broader field of social media to the area of
pedagogical technologies. In my opinion, if the technologies that we use in the university
focus mainly on grades, it is because grades are in fact the main focus of our curricula. I
regularly checked the CourseLink platform during the course to make sure that my
students were doing well. I compared the grades of the students in the morning group
with those of the ones in the afternoon group and both of them with the ones of Helga’s
groups because the platform allowed me to do that. The only way to measure – through
CourseLink – if they were learning was to check if they were getting high grades. I really
cared about my students’ grades even though I didn’t want that to be my main focus, but I
probably wasn’t as aware of this concern as I thought I was.
41
The course outline, the textbook and the course content were particularly focused on
grammar. A language, needless to say, is much more than grammar and grammar
shouldn’t be taken as a neutral set of rules. As part of our analysis of the systems of
communication, it would be interesting to explore the forms of power-knowledge that the
textbook privileged. Using discourse analysis, it would be possible to identify the multiple
ways in which a national idea of Italy is constructed in the textbook – and even a national
idea of Canada, given that the textbook is designed specifically for Canadian students. It
would be possible to identify what discourses in relation to gender, race and class are
reproduced. But because of the length-restrictions of this MA dissertation, I leave this
topic for other researchers. What is interesting to me, as part of this section, is to trace
how I addressed the course content – delimited by the textbook and the course outline – as
well as how I positioned myself in relation to it and how I positioned the students by my
way of mediating the course materials. The truth is that I never used the textbook during
the seminars. I always prepared activities that were related to the content that the
students were exploring in the lectures, but I never used or referred to the textbook.
Basically, I helped the students to understand the concepts that they were dealing with
and not to understand the textbook. The seminars, however, were still focused mainly on
grammar, as the textbook was. Most of the students complained, on the evaluation in the
middle of the semester (the anonymous Keep-Stop-Start exercise), that the seminars were
too focussed on grammar exercises.7 They asked me for more sentence composition, more
talking and more cultural review. In other words, they were asking for something that
they could relate to and use in the world outside the classroom. They probably wanted to
speak to their “nonni”, to write emails to their Italian friends, or to know more about the
culture that they were embracing – perhaps with the desire to travel to Italy in the near
future. I acknowledged what they were asking me and I started speaking more and more
Italian in class and I replaced some of the weekly written quizzes with short oral tests. I
Note that in the students’ evaluation of my teaching in Appendix, the only unsigned comment
complains precisely about this.
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basically did what they asked me to do and with my best intentions, but I realize now that
the way in which I did this was perhaps counterproductive.
The point is that I encouraged them to speak but I was assigning them a mark for that,
which, ultimately, was in one way or another based on grammar. I was focused on their
grades – as I was when I checked CourseLink every week – and not on the actual speaking.
By giving them higher and lower marks I was classifying them into talented or not so
talented speakers, thereby losing the focus on expressivity and on the act of
communicating freely. Of course, I took into consideration in my grading criteria oral
comprehension, the personal effort to communicate and the creativity, but I didn’t manage
to avoid the dynamic of competition and the focus on grammar. We know that we can
communicate without perfect grammar. But by evaluating their speaking I was indirectly
evaluating their grammar, which depended on their already acquired abilities. By not
using the textbook and by encouraging the students to speak, as we have seen in our
example, we can negotiate the way in which we are positioned by institutional
mechanisms. But if the focus remains the same – grading grammar – the attempt to change
the dynamic is condemned to fail.
2. Rethinking the systems of communication through pedagogies of touch
In this section I focus on the systems of communication that operated in the
educational context in which I was teaching and studying. I explore the continuities and
discontinuities between the institutional discourse of the University of Guelph (UoG) and
the personal narratives of the students and faculty members in the School of Languages
and Literatures (SOLAL) from the same institution. I draw on discourse analysis of the
institutional propaganda, the codes of conduct and the rules of academic integrity of the
University of Guelph and connect them to the narratives and experiences provided by the
43
participants in the qualitative research interviews that I undertook at the end of the 2015
fall semester.
a. The interview process
After completing the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research
Involving Humans Course on Research Ethics (TCPS 2: CORE) and after submitting a 33page application, I received, on November 23, 2015, approval from the Research Ethics
Board at the University of Guelph to undertake research involving human participants.
Preparing and submitting this application, as well as responding to a request for
additional information, were very time-consuming activities during a period of two
months, through the fall of 2015. I did benefit greatly, however, from this experience, in so
far as it gave me insight into another aspect of the university's administrative machinery
and discourses.
My research consisted of semi-structured qualitative interviews with students and
faculty members in SOLAL, for the primary purpose of eliciting narratives and personal
experiences regarding their social status, their experience in grading and their
relationships with other students and faculty members. The size of the pool from which I
drew participants was not very big considering that SOLAL included, at that time, 20
faculty members, 8 sessionals, 26 graduate students (including me) and 6 international
interns, as well as 22 undergraduate students enrolled in the European Studies program.8
From a total of 82 possible participants I managed to recruit 20 for my study. The 20
participants include 3 undergraduate students, 9 graduate students, 2 international
interns, and 6 faculty members (including sessional instructors). The number of
Undergraduate students from very different areas of study and departments take courses in
SOLAL, but for my research I decided to contact only the students officially enrolled in the program
of European Studies. Other undergraduate programs offered by SOLAL include Classical Studies,
German Studies, Italian Studies, Hispanic Studies and Études Françaises.
8
44
participants interviewed is sufficient for the purpose of my study for two reasons: first, the
number represents almost a quarter of the population under study; second, because the
aim of my research is not to quantify data but to identify common narratives and
experiences and to relate them to the institutional discourses.
Underlining the omissions
Since one of the goals of my research is to address the reproduction of social exclusions,
I find it crucial to underline an obvious omission. I didn’t include in this study any member
of the office staff. I realized this after I had already submitted my application to the
Research Ethics Board and I didn’t have time to correct the omission. Even though I had a
very close relationship with the office staff, I excluded them from participating in the
interviews, as if they were not part of the processes of socialization that I am studying. It is
important to underline this because, although my project has an ethical dimension, it still
reproduces certain social exclusions. By acknowledging this omission, I maintain that any
similar or further study should also include the staff members, as they obviously
participate in the reproduction of discourse and power relations that take place in the
department.
Population under study and social risks
I limited my research to the SOLAL department community for two main reasons: first,
because my research also uses autoethnographic research methods, it made sense to
investigate the department with which I was directly involved; second, the results of my
research may be beneficial for the members of SOLAL since this dissertation will be
publicly accessible once it is completed and a copy of it will be provided to the
department. This decision, however, also implied some social risks for the participants
45
since they might say things that are unsupported or unpopular with colleagues or with
people to whom they report. To mitigate this risk we adopted different strategies.9 First,
the participants were recruited privately and individually by email and were asked for
voluntary participation with no direct benefit to them. Second, the interviews took place in
a separate building from the one where the SOLAL offices are located, in order to assure
that participants didn’t encounter each other during the interview process. Finally, the
participants’ names were replaced with fake names and any directly or indirectly
identifying information was erased or anonymized during the transcription process – all
the information given by the participants was initially recorded by audio and then deleted
after being transcribed.
Methodology
My purpose is to elicit common narratives from the participants during the interviews
and to connect their stories with other narratives that are present in the institutional
propaganda and norms. Needless to say, this is a strategy among many other possible ones
for an analysis of the systems of communication that operate in the university, which
include a wide variety of oral and written texts produced by its members. Although Critical
Discourse Analysis (CDA) in general and Wodak’s Discourse Historical Approach (DHA)
have deeply inspired my research project, I wish to note that my methodology doesn’t fit
entirely with either of these approaches. In order to carry out research using the DHA
method, I would need to define a clear problematic and focus on particular topics,
utterances and “nominations” (Reisigl and Wodak). Rather, I am interested in the social
relationships between students and faculty members and in how these relationships are
mediated by discourse. I use a questionnaire that is divided into three sections and that
The research group responsible of these decisions includes my supervisor, Clive Thomson, as the
principal investigator and me, Alejandro Santaflorentina, as the student investigator.
9
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contains open-ended questions. The questions in the first section seek to illicit information
about the informant’s perception of their social status and their expectations in regards to
their academic career. The ways in which the participants present themselves while
answering these questions are compared to the ways in which the institution represents
them. The questions in the second section are oriented towards the informant’s
experience of assessing and being assessed and towards their opinions of the limitations
of the grading system. These experiences are contrasted to the ways in which the
university presents academic integrity. Finally, the questions in the third section relate to
the codes of sociability and the relationships between the members of the community
under study, which are then compared to the university rules of conduct. I considered the
option of showing the visual and textual materials that I analyze in this section to the
participants during the interview process, but I ultimately discarded this option because I
thought that this approach would constrain the conversation and would not allow for
more spontaneous and open exchanges. This means that all the connections that I
establish between the oral data and the visual and textual materials of analysis are
posterior to the interview process.
Materials of analysis
The institutional discourse is disseminated in multiple ways. The university produces
official texts directed towards people both inside the campus – as is the case with internal
communications to members of the community – and outside – in the form of propaganda
or external reports. I have chosen the University of Guelph 2016 handbook (henceforth “the
handbook”) as material to be analyzed because it is one of the main items used by UoG for
external propaganda purposes. It is an expensively designed, full-colour, glossy
publication of almost 90 pages and it is used primarily as a recruiting tool at events like
the Ontario University Fair. The Ontario University Fair is a three-day event that takes
47
place every year, in October, at the Toronto Convention Centre, where representatives of
UoG – generally one professor for each area of study as well as students – promote the
programs offered by the institution in order to attract both potential students and their
parents. I think that the handbook provides a clear idea of how the University of Guelph
presents itself to the public. The handbook is complemented, of course, by materials like
the official website and other forms of propaganda. Other materials that I take into
consideration are the 2016-2017 Undergraduate Calendar and the 2016-2017 Graduate
Calendar – which include documents outlining students’ rights and responsibilities – and
the Academic Integrity page from the UoG website.
b. Social status, grades and affect
The University of Guelph 2016 handbook has been carefully designed to be inclusive.
Diversity and multiculturalism seem to be used as selling points or commercial hooks. The
very first page includes a letter by the president, Franco J. Vaccarino, in which he
underlines that “our community is one of religious breadth and racial and ethnic
diversity.” This idea is certainly reinforced by the calculated display of photographs of
students and of other members of the community, all of whom represent a wide range of
ethnic and religious backgrounds. From all the member profiles in the handbook that
include a picture and the name of the person, I have counted exactly 11 men and 11
women. These profiles include surnames with Canadian, American, British, Irish, SouthAfrican, Arab, Asian, Greek, Indian, Italian, Jamaican and Ukrainian origins – showing the
diversity of the Canadian population in general and of the UoG’s community in particular.10
With the exception of the two representatives from the Aboriginal Resource Centre and
the Office of Diversity and Human Rights, all the profiles are those of students. These very
diverse and gender-equal profiles contrast, nevertheless, with the fact that the current
10
The origins of the 22 surnames within the handbook have been researched using ©Forebears.
48
president and all the former presidents of UoG are white men. In any case, there is no
doubt that these profiles show the institution’s intention to present itself as committed to
being inclusive. I observe, however, that there is no representative of a student with
disabilities. I could, of course, ask if the diversity represented in the handbook
corresponds to the real experience of the community. This is a question that is beyond the
scope of my dissertation and one I am not in a position to answer. Unfortunately, I didn’t
include a specific question about diversity in my questionnaire, but most of the
participants – including internationals – expressed indirectly that they felt welcome on
campus and that they did not experience discrimination. Most of the participants
mentioned, however, without being directly asked by me, that they felt in an inferior
status compared to students and faculty members from other departments. When asked
about her social status, Sarah gave the following reply.
I guess that as a professor of the arts I am finding lately that there is a lot of
discourse about the lack of usefulness of the arts and that is a shame. […] So, first
question: ‘what do you do?’ Ok, so usually that gets kind of respect and then: ‘what
do you teach?’ And when I start saying what I teach sometimes there is a little less
respect for that.
Some undergraduate students, like Cynthia, also expressed that “people who are in
computer sciences or engineering kind of have a little bit of better status because they are
considered to get better jobs and get more money.” If we look at the statistics on the
second page in the handbook we can see that almost a third of the students in the
university are enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts program. On the comprehensive list of
programs of study that are described on pages 26 to 67, the BA program appears in first
position and there is certainly, no indication that it is of less relevance than the others. In
the president’s ‘welcome’ text on the first page of the handbook, he acknowledges the
contribution of all areas of research in the university and his first reference is to research
in the arts. He provides examples of research in the arts and humanities (“publishing
poetry that helps us understand what it means to live in poverty”), in agriculture
49
(“introducing a new crop variety that will help feed the world”), in the sciences
(“discovering the gene responsible for a debilitating disease”) and in education (“finding
ways to reduce schoolyard bullying”). His good intentions would seem, in my view, to
reflect a lack of familiarity with some of the disciplines, since the example provided for the
arts is not particularly representative of the research being done in this area.
There is a similar aspect when we look at the five successful research stories that are
highlighted on the third page of the handbook. We can see that most of them relate to
research in sciences, even though it is not specified from which department the stories
come. An examination of rocks from Mars, an invention to prevent iron deficiency in rural
Cambodia, the digitization of DNA samples, and the discovery of natural pain control for
pets are research stories that could be located within the disciplines of science, nutrition
and agriculture. The only story mentioned that could come from research done in the arts
relates to “addressing the ‘daughter deficit’”, which seems nonetheless more connected to
the social sciences. The only clear reference to research done in the arts and humanities is
thus “publishing poetry”, which suggests a lack of awareness on the president’s part. The
result is a lack of promotion of research in the arts.
On the third page of the handbook, the amount of money invested in annual research
funding is highlighted in bold letters as one of the university’s most important
achievements. Together with the percentages of first-year students who return for their
second year and of students employed after graduation, the annual research funding is
clearly one of the central claims that are designed to attract prospective students. There is
no pie chart, however, that would indicate the amount of funding assigned to particular
areas of research; this information is only accessible on the university website. From the
total amount of $139 million in research funds listed for the year, 1 May, 2015 to 30 April,
2016, the figure for the College of Arts was $950,440.00 (almost a million). Among the
different departments within the College of Arts, SOLAL shows the lowest amount
50
($900.00) within departments in the College of Arts and within the whole university. We
can speculate that this figure contributes to the perception that the Arts have an inferior
social status among the university community members.
Of course, the inferior status of the arts and humanities is connected to a hierarchy that
is generalized in the academic world beyond the University of Guelph. As Monica, a faculty
member, explains, the humanities are suffering across the country. “None of the Ph.D.
students coming out of the faculties of humanities are getting jobs and the ones who are
getting sessionals jobs are the ones who are lucky.” This situation has a direct effect on the
students’ perception of their future. Although, according to the handbook, 91.3% of
students are employed six months after graduation, Megan confesses that she doesn’t
know if her undergraduate program will help her to find a job.
I don’t know if it will to be honest. I mean, it would be nice to say I am an alumni
from the University of Guelph, I graduated and stuff... I like to brag about it I guess ‘I
go to this University, I have the best professors and stuff’ but whether that is going
to help me in the future I am not sure.
Megan acknowledges the prestige that comes with having a diploma, but she is not sure
whether this will increase her possibilities of finding a job. This is a common concern
among the students that I interviewed. The uncertainty in regards to their future
employment pushes some students to further their education with a Masters degree as a
way to increase the chances of finding a job. Natalia, graduate student, puts it as follows.
“In my field it is kind of hard to get a job if you just have an undergraduate degree. Now I
think that mostly all over the world, and in Canada too, an undergraduate degree is the
new high school.” Improving the chance to get a better job is also the reason why Carla
decided to enrol in her Masters program. “If the Masters had been successful for me I
would expect to have a higher paid job than the job I did before I had my Masters.” When
the interviewees are asked about the perception of their social status most of them relate
it to economic factors. Vivian explains that some people think that studying for a Masters
51
degree, as she is doing, is actually useless. “Some people would say why would you spend
probably $40,000.00 on ‘what?’ when you could have been working here as a receptionist
doing this and already pay your own house or something, you know?” For Lucia, becoming
an international intern teaching at the university is only considered an upgrade in her
career by people inside the university. “My mother, for example, she surely thinks that is
an upgrade, but when we talk about it financially it is surely not an upgrade, it is a
downgrade.”
The concern for finding a well paid job after graduation also pushes the students to
compete for high grades, as they consider that employers may be looking at their academic
results. Some students declare that they don’t compare their grades with the ones that
other students get and that they try to be competitive only with themselves. This is the
case of Megan, who considers asking other students about their grades to be a bit rude. “I
kind of compare it to talking about money, you are not going to go to your friend like ‘how
much are you making?’” I find this connection of grades with money to be very revealing
because it shows that grades distinguish students at a symbolic level. According to Carla,
all students compares their grades with the ones that their classmates get and “it would be
a complete lie if anyone said they didn’t.” She also thinks that students somehow see
grades as defining themselves. “If you say ‘Is this person more intelligent than me?’ there
is no proof, whereas a grade in our mind is proof of our intelligence, whether this is
correct or not. So we believe that this defines us.” This should come as no surprise since
grades actually define students’ admission to university programs. As stated in the
“Admission Requirements” in the 2016-2017 Graduate Calendar, for admission to a
Master’s program “the applicant must have achieved a grade average of at least 70% (B-)
in the last four semesters of study.”
The importance that both the students and the institution assign to grades, however,
seems to be disconnected from what the teachers define as the features of excellence in a
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student. Amanda, for instance, doesn’t connect excellence with grades. “I wouldn’t say that
excellence is defined by grades, but I would say that excellence, especially in the
classroom, is defined by how you interact with others.” In their answers to my
questionnaire, the teachers agree and consider excellence to be connected with attention
and interaction. For Sarah, the features of excellence in a student are “curiosity, rigour and
attention to detail.” Monica considers to be excellent “a student who wants to be
challenged, a student who is watching you, listening to you.” And Laura says that an
excellent student is “a student who is visibly engaged, who does the preparation but goes
beyond that and takes the material given and becomes creative with that material.” Most
of the teachers claim they don’t consider that grades define students, but they refer to
students’ engagement and attention, which are features that determine the grades that the
students get.
The second resolution of the “Grading Procedures” in the 2016-2017 Undergraduate
Calendar states that “instructors must use evaluation criteria which measure quality of
performance and not merely activity.” What it is not specified, however, is how it is
possible, for instructors, to measure the “quality” of students’ performance. For Monica,
this quality is manifested when the students “show that what has been ignited is there to
stay”, which still sounds to me as a very difficult thing to trace. “When I see that kind of
sparkle in the eyes of the student who is interested in developing further knowledge [...]
then I know that I have an excellent student.” I find it interesting that Monica and some
professors refer to students’ engagement as something that can be seen. When they can
see it, teachers generally take students’ effort into consideration in their assessment.
Monica explains, however, that she makes a big effort to be as objective as possible in her
grading criteria. When it comes to essays, she doesn’t look at the names and doesn’t grade
them before she has read them all.
I do take effort into consideration. I do that, but separately from. When I am marking
essays it is only on the merit of that particular essay. If I have to reward effort there
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is a specific percentage for class attendance, participation and overall effort in
general and of course that goes in that particular assessment, not in the essay. I
won’t penalize a student who of course comes to my course and already has a good
level of the subject I teach. I can’t penalize them and reward another one who has a
lower level but is putting more effort; I can’t, so when it comes to the essay I assess
the essay.
Carla, who grades essays as a teaching assistant, also tries to be as objective as possible
in her grading, but confesses being affected by the fact that sometimes she knows that the
students put in a lot of effort.
If I know they tried, they come to office hours, they sit at the front of the lecture hall,
they put their hands up during the lectures, even stupid things like that they smile at
me when I am in the classroom, obviously that makes me more sympathetic towards
that person because they are showing that they are pleased to see me, pleased to be
in the lecture or pleased to be studying, rather than a person that sits at the back,
plays with their phone during the whole lecture. In that sense I have judged their
submission also based on that, but luckily I don’t know all my students names [...]
That keeps me more objective.
Conversely, Sarah knows all the names of her students, but also acknowledges that the
fact that a student comes to office hours and puts in a lot of effort affects her grading.
Yeah, I think that definitely affects your grading. I mean, I would try to sort of be
aware of that as an instructor and not allow it too much, but I think it does affect
especially when you see effort and when you see students coming. That is a good
thing so in some cases I would give the benefit of the doubt or give a slightly higher
grade that reflects that too.
On the contrary, not showing interest can affect students’ grades negatively. Laura
explains it as follows. “I feel guilty if I perceive that I am not being objective, but I don’t
have a hard time being a bit harsh with people who show lack of interest.” Sarah used to
be worried about the grades that her students get when she started teaching, but now
considers that sometimes students deserve lower grades. “When I see that students get
lower grades often they deserve it because they are not often in class and at this point I
don’t get upset about that anymore.” Students are also aware of the fact that showing
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effort affects their grades. Megan recognizes that she is very happy with her academic
results and adds the following comments.
I enjoy the professor knowing my name [...] With even a hundred students classes
your professor is not going to know your name unless you go up and introduce
yourself and even ask for a problem or just say ‘hi, hello, I am in class and I look
forward to this’ is better than just sitting back and not saying a word.
Making themselves visible to the teachers is actually reported by some of the students
as being the key to getting high grades. Of course, it is not the only one. Cynthia considers
that “there is no, like, consistent grading criteria for all the professors; it is kind of what
they feel you should do.” She describes her strategy to getting high grades as follows.
“Knowing what your professors expect, because I had different professors who have
widely different expectations and so knowing what they expect is really important to
tailoring your work and tailoring how you study and all that.” Caroline is even more
specific. For her, the key is “regurgitating what the professors want you to say. I mean,
finding out what they want to hear and saying that.” These descriptions match with Carla’s
perspective as a graduate student. “Understanding the system, knowing the rules, knowing
what is wanted of you” is what she sees as the key for getting higher grades and this is
probably why, as a teaching assistant, she considers that the students’ knowledge of a
specific style system is more important than the content of their works.
I think it is more important. Specially as someone who is grading essays in a field
that I don’t know, because I cannot tell you if the content is correct or not, so I am
not really even reading the content. [...] We can’t verify all the information; it would
take us an hour to mark one essay. [...] So, in that case, if we got to evaluate the work
we have to look at the referencing system, the structure, and how well they fit into
this framework of expectation.
We can see from all these personal experiences that making one’s effort visible for the
teacher and knowing what the teachers expect from students are crucial, for the students,
to be academically successful. At the same time, these relationships between students and
teachers also depend on the number of students per class and on the social abilities of the
55
teacher. Some teachers are confident that they know all their students’ names while
others, like Laura, admit that they are not very good at matching names and faces. “Faces I
remember, but the names I really get mixed up. I just don’t retain them very well and I
apologize with my students because I have a hard time remembering their names.” When
asked about how they remember the students’ names, some teachers explain that they
have developed their own techniques – for example, to apply a little bit of narrative to a
name. Without being directly asked, some of them also confess using social networks like
Facebook when they cannot picture the face of a student. Carmen cannot contain a laugh
when she explains the following. “I have done Facebook. I think we have all done that. At
least if there is a person who sent us an email we would check Facebook. I am not even
sure if that is fine, but that helped a lot.” Sarah also recognizes having used Facebook.
“There is sometimes that moment of ‘who is that student on my list?’ Well, I will look them
up on Facebook and I won’t add them but then if there is a photo I am like ‘hurray, now I
know who it is.’”
Student-teacher relationships also develop gradually as the students move through the
academic years. Most of the teachers recognize that they have a closer relationship with
graduate students and final-year undergraduate students. For Sarah, “4th year
undergraduate it is not all that different than graduate students, but definitely you have a
different relationship with a graduate student. They are entering the profession so we see
them more as colleagues.” Laura expresses the same idea as follows. “From 3rd and 4th year
undergraduates if I have a student often and they engage the relationship builds up, but
with graduate students there is more of a peer relationship really.” These experiences
correspond to the ones of graduate students, like Carla, who expresses that professors
have a more direct and friendly relationship with graduates than with undergraduates.
We are on first name terms, I suppose that is the same for some undergraduates but
I don’t know, I mean we work with them; we are their colleagues, we are correcting
essays. I suppose that in the hierarchy of the University as a grad student you are
sort of bridging the gap between the professors and the undergrads.
56
These relationships are fundamental for the students’ academic success because they
help them not only to understand the system and acquire an academic language, but also
to feel morally supported. During the interviews, many professors reported stories of
students in need of support.
I have had students coming to my office and being upset about personal issues and
breakups and things like that. I just again try to be a little bit motherly and you know
‘this is something that happens’ and reassuring. When it goes beyond that I think I
am really lucky that we have different services on campus so I would refer people to
student counseling services and things like that.
This personal experience of Sarah is very similar to that of the other teachers. Monica
has noticed that she attracts especially young women students who come to her office to
talk to her. “Perhaps because after all there is a certain kindness from me, there is the fact
that I want them to do well and that I care about their overall well being.” Some students
expressed an appreciation towards the teachers who are supportive of them. It is not just
younger students who seek their teachers for support; Caroline is a mature student and
explains as follows how important the support of her teacher is for her.
She has been very supportive and very helpful, and she believes that I can do this
and often I don´t believe that I can do this. Like, I will be dragging myself around for
weeks and ‘Why am I putting myself through this? I don´t belong here.’ and then I go
talk to her for an hour and I come out thinking ‘Oh, there is so much opportunity
here, I can do this!’ So she really helps me just by believing that I am a good student.
Overall, the personal stories that the participants shared with me show aspects of
socialization inside the campus that are absent in the institutional discourse. Students see
themselves defined by their grades and by their chances to succeed in their professional
career, as the institutional discourse actually defines them. What really counts in getting
higher grades, however, is their capacity to interact with teachers and other students.
Making oneself visible to the teacher and understanding what the teacher is looking for is
generally the key for a student to achieving higher grades. I am aware that making such an
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observation may be problematic because it can be seen as undermining the objectivity that
the institutional discourse promotes. Furthermore, making this point from research
undertaken in arts can be seen as reinforcing the idea that the arts and humanities are less
rigorous than the “pure” sciences. My purpose is precisely the opposite. The same lack of
objectivity can be found in any other research area because the situation that I am
describing, as explored by Bhatia, is characteristic of disciplinary communities in general.
As a system that is socially legitimated to evaluate students’ knowledge of specific subjects
and to upgrade their social status, the university has to maintain an appearance of
neutrality and to hide the fact that progress is defined primarily by social interaction.
I see this as an invitation to understand that knowledge is produced through bodied
encounters, as posited in Stephanie Springgay’s conception of inter-embodiment.
Springgay draws on the approach of feminist scholar Gail Weiss who emphasizes “that
experience of being embodied is never a private affair, but is always already mediated by
our continual interactions with other human and non-human bodies” (qtd. in Springgay
22). Instead of ignoring these bodied encounters we can claim them as producers of
knowledge. The institutional discourse, however, generally overlooks social interaction
because it is perceived as challenging generic integrity. The Golden Rules of Academic
Integrity from the University of Guelph include rules like the following.
Know where the boundaries are set in group-work projects. Do not collaborate on
the writing of a paper when each member of the group is required to submit her/his
own individual paper unless otherwise instructed.
What all these rules have in common is that they understand knowledge as a private
resource that belongs to autonomous subjects. Academic integrity considers that words,
ideas and data belong to the members of disciplinary communities and that the power to
innovate is accessible only for insiders, who – knowing what is conventionally available to
the community – further their own ideas by building on what is already familiar. Interembodiment challenges this understanding because it “poses that the construction of the
58
body and the production of body knowledge is not created within a single, autonomous
subject (body), but rather that body knowledge and bodies are created in the
intermingling and encounters between bodies” (Springgay 22). Engaging in a conversation
triggered by open-ended questions allowed students and faculty members to share with
me their embodied experiences. These experiences of social interaction emphasize an
access to knowledge that goes beyond the verbal. Instead of neglecting these interactions,
we can reaffirm them in our pedagogical practice through the practice of pedagogies of
touch. Feminist theories of touch promote alternative ways to understand relations with
others in teaching and learning. “While vision is premised on the separation of the subject
and object, creating a rational autonomous subject, as a contact sense touch offers
contiguous access to an object” (21). The pedagogies of touch are thus an invitation to
understand access to knowledge as a social interaction that depends on bodied
encounters. The appearance of objectivity of the grading system and the academic
integrity hide social differences that are reproduced through social interaction. By
acknowledging the bodied encounters, pedagogies of touch promote an ethics based on
interaction. Through this perspective teachers are challenged to understand the relational
aspects of their pedagogical practice as a political ground.
3. Rethinking the relationships of power through performative pedagogies
a. Teaching as a performative act
In Teaching positions, Elisabeth Ellsworth borrows from Brenda Marshall the idea of
“manipulating students into taking responsibility” (150). She conceives this paradox as
opening up possibilities of understanding teaching as a performance that go beyond the
idea of the teacher as empowering the students by using her/his own power, by giving up
her/his authority or “by practicing reciprocal dialogical relations that equalize power
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relations among teachers and students” (151). Instead, the paradox of manipulating
students into taking responsibility invites us to situate our pedagogies in order to
understand what can be ethically meaningful and for whom in a given context. In
Ellsworth’s words:
For pedagogy to be performative, that is, for teachers to paradoxically manipulate
the students into a position of taking responsibility for the meanings and knowledge
they construct, it must be situated within its specifics of time and place. It must be
related to the network of relations and ‘ethical obligations’ (Readings, 1996, p.57)
that make meaningful what will count in the context as the taking on of
responsibility. Performative pedagogies only life, therefore, is in relation to its
context and moment. (160)
Performative pedagogies should therefore always be situated and focused on the
process. For whom is this particular pedagogical practice empowering in this context? For
whom is it not empowering? How much are the subjects who are participating in this
particular teaching experience aware of the relationships of power that surround them
and in which they participate? The emphasis on the “performative” and not on the
“liberating” or the “anti-repressive” aspects of our pedagogies prevents us from thinking
that we can step outside of power relations. The term “performative” is borrowed by
Judith Butler from J.L. Austin’s speech act theory and it is described as follows. “Within
speech act theory, a performative is that discursive practice that enacts or produces that
which it names” (Bodies That Matter, xxi). Butler uses this term to describe how notions
like gender are constructed through the repetition of social norms. Butler’s theory of
“performativity” thus allows for the subversion of these categories that are constructed as
real by means of being performed while acknowledging that subversion is not easy and
does not lead to freedom – “Performativity has to do with repetition, very often with the
repetition of oppressive and painful gender norms to force them to resignify. This is not
freedom, but a question of how to work the trap that one is inevitably in” (Kotz and
Butler).
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What positions the subjects in the teaching experience is a structure of relationships in
which each individual performs one’s role. Feminist pedagogue bell hooks sees the
classroom as both a source of constraint and a potential source of liberation and considers
that “teaching is a performative act. And it is that aspect of our work that offers the space
for change, invention, spontaneous shifts, that can serve as a catalyst drawing out the
unique elements in each classroom” (11). In her book Teaching for freedom (1994), she
encourages teachers to create a “community of learners together” by positioning
themselves as learners. While she positions herself as a learner in her pedagogical
practice, she is aware that this doesn’t make her step outside of power relations.
I am also not suggesting that I don’t have more power. And I am not trying to say
we’re all equal here. I am trying to say that we are all equal here to the extent that
we are equally committed to creating a learning context. (153)
Considering teaching as performative situates our pedagogies within a context of
power relations that can be subverted and transgressed, but this prevents us from
thinking that we are able to avoid such relations. In shifting from anti-repressive pedagogy
to performative pedagogy, educators should address and be aware of the position of
power that they have. We should focus on how we use power to subvert the norms that we
perform by means of repetition. In Foucault’s words:
[T]he problem is not one of trying to dissolve [power relations] in the utopia of
perfectly transparent communication, but to give one’s self the rules of law, the
techniques of management, and also the ethics, the ethos, the practice of the self,
which would allow these games of power to be played with a minimum of
domination. (qtd. in Heller 104-105)
b. How much do I open the door?
There is an element that I didn’t consider before starting my teaching experience and
that turned out to be very relevant. It is the simple act of leaving the classroom door open
or closed. In my very first class I felt the need to close the door. I realized later that I was
61
afraid of the possibility that someone could hear me or see me conducting the class. It was
one of my first times teaching in English and my very first time teaching Italian, so I was
afraid of being judged. As Maria Acaso describes in Pedagogías invisibles, the act of closing
the door or leaving it open is part of the invisible pedagogies that we negotiate in our
teaching. Closing the door may convey the message that the classroom is a closed space in
which everything that happens inside stays inside. On the contrary, leaving the door open
may suggest that the classroom is a space in dialogue with the exterior world, where the
inside is connected to the outside and vice versa. I would like to use the element of the
door as a metaphor of the educator’s position in relation to the exterior world of the class.
To let the exterior world come into the classroom means to position oneself politically.
The fact that one can be being watched, as we have seen through Foucault’s theory of
panopticism, transforms power relations and produces self-government. Picture a class in
a public space, or being registered on video. To be observed means to some extent to be
exposed and to lose power and control. This power relation, however, can be disrupted if
the one observed is actually looking forward to performing the role of the observed – as a
performer or an exhibitionist does. After reflecting on these aspects, I was able, at some
point, to leave the door wide open during my classes without the fear of being observed by
others. The more confident I felt teaching, the more I allowed the exterior world to come
into the classroom.
The first time that Marco offered to come to my seminars I rejected his offer. I have to
confess that I was a little bit scared. It was at the beginning of the semester, probably in
the first or second week and I was still building confidence in myself. Marco is not only
born in Italy, but also a very knowledgeable man and his Italian skills are extraordinary;
he has published a few poetry books and he is a person whom I really admire. I think that I
was afraid of feeling inferior to him if he came to my class. He is very charming and I
thought that maybe the students would prefer him as a teacher. Basically, I was afraid of
losing my authority and my position of power over the students. Italian is not my first
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language and even though I have an advanced level of competence and I feel very
comfortable speaking it, I still make mistakes when I speak or write. I thought that being
corrected by Marco in front of the students could undermine my teaching performance. I
thought this even if during my very first seminar I told the students that I wasn’t a native
speaker, but that that was an advantage rather than a disadvantage because I knew what it
means to struggle while learning the Italian language. This was my thinking, even though I
considered that a teacher doesn’t have to know everything to be committed to learning.
My fears and insecurities were contradicting my political position and my personal beliefs
as an educator. I decided to give myself a few weeks to adapt and feel secure until, at some
point, I would open the door to external people, including Marco.
The first person who observed me in the classroom was Marika. She is an Italian friend
who was visiting Helga, my colleague, for a few weeks. Marika had a lot of free time so one
day I spontaneously asked her to come to my seminars in order to encourage the students
to speak in Italian. The result was very positive. The students were not expecting her to
come because it was a last-minute decision, so her presence was a complete surprise for
the group. They were naturally curious to know who she was and what was she doing at
Guelph. Moreover, Marika’s English skills at that time were very limited, so the students
were forced to speak in Italian. Confronting the students not with a hypothetical situation
but with a real one in which they actually needed to communicate made them experience
first-hand how useful speaking Italian could be. For an introductory level course, not being
able to switch to English when one didn’t know how to say something in Italian was such a
challenge. This changed the dynamic of the class completely. I didn’t position myself as the
bearer of knowledge, who knows more than the students and transmits to them the
information that they are lacking. Rather, we were all sharing a common knowledge and a
position in which we are exchanging ideas and learning from each other. We even ended
up singing together a traditional Italian song that, during the open discussion in class,
63
Marika and I discovered that we both liked. Some of the students knew the song too and all
of them sang it following the lyrics and thus participated in a common culture.
After that experience I decided to follow up on Marco’s offer and I asked him to come to
one of our seminars. The seminar that he attended was dedicated to the different regions
of Italy. I had previously asked the students to do some research about a city in Italy that
they knew or wanted to know and to provide information about the culture of both the
city and its region. All of them prepared short texts that they read in front of the class.
Then Marco completed the discussion by providing information about the cultures of the
regions of Italy that weren’t chosen by the students. This seminar was the first one that
was completely in Italian. I asked some students to translate Marco’s words into English
for the others. When they didn’t know how to translate something, classmates helped each
other. This was a way to confront them with some of the difficulties of translation and to
make sure that everyone was following the conversation. Marco and I, however, spoke
exclusively in Italian. This experience proved to be very useful. The students connected
our collective discussion to personal stories about their visits to Italy or to their Italian
family members, thereby linking the learning experience to the exterior world. If I think
about it, I didn’t have to do much during this class. Marco and the students engaged in a
fruitful conversation while I was only facilitating the class dynamic. Marco corrected me
once because I misspelled a word that I wrote on the blackboard, but that didn’t
undermine my position. I didn’t position myself as knowing more or having a more
important role than Marco and the students, yet I wasn’t in an equal position to them. I
was positioning myself in the pedagogical relation as manipulating students into taking
responsibility. Ellsworth describes the difference between teacher and student as follows.
There is a difference between teacher and student after all, according to Felman’s
reading of Lacan. But it’s not the difference of the teacher having more knowledge,
authority, or experience that the student. Rather, the difference between teacher
and student is a difference of location within the pedagogical structure of address
that takes place between student and teacher. (62)
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By inviting other people to come to class and by not controlling the meanings that the
students produce, I was performing a role that allowed for multiple subject-positions. I
asked the students to bring a short description of an Italian city, to read it to Marco, to
interact with him and to translate his words into English. I was responsible for all this, but
my positioning allowed for meanings and subject-positions that were not under my
control, nor were they part of the course content. The teaching experience became
performative in the sense that we were reiterating subject-positions that didn’t fit
perfectly with the roles of the student and the teacher. We all became
learning/teaching/translating/sharing subjects with no fully delimited or fixed positions,
which connects with Ellsworth’s idea of teaching as a suspended performance.
Teaching is a suspended performance in the sense that it is never completed or
finished. And it is suspended in the sense that we, as teachers, must stop ourselves if
students are to take responsibilities for the meanings they make. (158)
Of course, the idea that teaching is a suspended performance is not exclusive of
pedagogical practices where guests are included; I can connect it with other moments of
my teaching experience. When at some moments during the class, I stopped expecting
certain responses from students – i.e. expecting that they understand the very specific
thing that they were supposed to learn at that time in order to pass a quiz or an exam and
to show me that I am a good teacher – the dynamics changed completely. When I managed
to stop trying to control the meanings that they were making, I allowed them to position
themselves differently from the position whereby they were fulfilling my expectations in
one way or another. In my notebook, I describe a moment in which the communication
with the students wasn’t working. I explain that I was trying to be enthusiastic but they
didn’t give me any feedback and they didn’t even laugh at my jokes. Then, I provide an
explanation for this lack of communication:
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It took me a while to understand that I was not really there. I was not really looking
them in the eyes or allowing them to be tired or uninterested. I was trying to force a
situation. This is something that didn’t happen in the afternoon seminar. On the one
hand, I had lower expectations and I didn’t care too much about doing all the
exercises. I gave them time to enjoy them. On the other hand, I established a close
contact with them from the very beginning, but more importantly, it was a real
contact. I was relaxed and I really wanted to communicate with them. This is
something that is really hard. On the previous times I was pretending that I cared
but I was more focused on myself. I was worried about my being a good teacher and
about them confirming that I was. During the last seminar, instead, I really wanted
to have a nice time with them. I somehow forgot about being efficient.
This is for me a lived example of how our focus and our positioning change the learning
dynamic. Instead of caring about the grades, the grammar, the contents or the specific
goals of that seminar, I cared about the moment that I was living and that allowed
everyone to feel part of a shared experience. This, for me, is proof of how getting rid of the
idea of learning in the traditional sense – as a neutral exchange of information – allows for
meaningful and embodied learning. Or, to use Ellsworth’s words, considering that
“teaching is impossible [...] opens up unprecedented teaching possibilities” (18).
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CONCLUSIONS
I don’t see this project as concluding, but rather as pointing towards new horizons to be
explored and new questions to be asked. Any appearance of linearity and progression in
this dissertation doesn’t correspond to the reality. This research has been chaotic,
dispersed, complex and based on a continuous experimentation and praxis. It stems from
real concerns and lived experiences. Living this research as a creative process is precisely
what has been stimulating for me and has lead me to this point. Rather than using a
concrete research question that anticipates foreseeable results, I have been asking myself
a very personal question: “What am I doing here?” This question made me rethink my
research and my pedagogical practice constantly and has triggered moments of anxiety,
relief and satisfaction. Most of the ideas in the dissertation have had to be condensed
during the writing process. Before that, they took the form of intuitions and bodily
hunches that couldn’t be put into words. The final format which is divided into three axes
is an attempt to organize a very complex process of lived inquiry; it is inevitably a
simplification, but one that has proved to be useful to me.
The reproduction of discourse and subjectivity depends both on the intentions of the
members of a disciplinary community and on a constant negotiation of their relations to
objects, spaces and practices, their relations to knowledge and their relations to others. It
is a negotiation in which, in one way or another, we reiterate what it is already familiar.
From this perspective, counter-hegemonic pedagogical strategies are more likely to have
an impact on disciplinary communities like the university when they engage in a displaced
or distorted repetition of what is already familiar. This appreciation applies to pedagogical
practices inside the institutions and doesn’t imply that alternative and oppositional
practices outside the institutional framework are not politically necessary, interesting and
effective. By working with critical tools that make familiar the unfamiliar and the invisible
visible, counter-hegemonic positions have the capacity to point out what has disappeared
67
or been hidden from sight in an institution. It is from this perspective that – reading
through the concepts of Ellsworth, Springgay and Butler – I proposed my experimentation
with invisible pedagogies, pedagogies of touch and performative pedagogies. Needless to
say, these are not solutions to problems, but critical approaches that actually intermingle
with each other and that, taken together, contribute to the development of a visuallycritical curriculum.
The invisible pedagogies are an invitation to understand pedagogical practice as
discourse and to address the invisible in our teaching. By asking the question “Who does
this classroom think we are?” we can reflect on how the objects, spaces and practices that
mediate the pedagogical experience position us as subjects. By acknowledging that none of
these elements is neutral, we can trace the focus of our attention. Artistic forms of
appropriation or oppositional readings can be used to distance ourselves from what is
familiar to us and to open up creative possibilities. Above all, the invisible pedagogies are
an invitation not to take our pedagogical settings for granted and to address our
expectations as teachers.
The pedagogies of touch are an invitation to rethink our relation to knowledge and not
to consider our bodies as entities that are separated from each other or from discourse
and social norms. Instead of belonging to autonomous subjects that share neutral
information,
knowledge
is
generated
through
embodied
encounters.
Feminist
theorizations of touch focus on our relation to others and reaffirm the importance of body
knowledge. Learning doesn’t depend exclusively on the teachers’ and students’ capacity to
code and to decode information; it also depends on their capacity to engage in social
interaction; it depends on our capacity as educators to affect students and to be affected
by them. Our responsibility as educators is to be aware of these issues and to acknowledge
the inequalities and resistances that we may encounter in our interaction with students. In
a general way, pedagogies of touch are an invitation to see embodiment and the
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redistribution of attention and affect as the core of pedagogical practices, which include
those used in online education programs.
Finally, performative pedagogies are an invitation to address not only our mediation of
the technical capacities and the role of the body in the relationships of communication, but
also our position within the structures of power relations. If we consider ourselves as not
being in a position of exteriority in relation to power, as well as focusing on the
performative rather than on the liberating aspects of our pedagogies, we encourage
ourselves as educators to give up trying to control the meaning that students make and to
allow for the creation of multiple subject-positions. I suggest that we use the question
“How much do I open the door?” as a step toward experimenting with the possibility of
losing control of what we allow into the classroom and toward acknowledging that our
position as educators is always political.
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APPENDIX
This Appendix includes:
-
A representative selection of the transcriptions from the interviews that I
undertook from November to December 2015.
-
The students’ evaluation of my seminars in ITA*1060 Introductory Italian I.
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FACULTY MEMBER – “Sarah”
What do you consider the features of excellence in a student?
Curiosity, rigour, attention to detail I think is important. Those are the things I find quite
important.
Do you perceive yourself having a different social status than other professionals?
Not really. I guess that as a professor of the arts I am finding lately that there is a lot of
discourse about the lack of usefulness of the arts and that is a shame. […] So, first question
“what do you do?” Ok, so usually that gets kind of respect and then “what do you teach?”
and when I start saying what I teach sometimes there is a little less respect for that.
What would be a good example of success in your career?
Things that I am most proud of in my career are research related actually. Is interesting, I
am really proud of my students’ success as well, but the greatest successes that I had are
research related – publication of books, chapters and articles and things like that when
they come out in places where it is difficult to be published, that is a real mark of success.
For students, definitely I feel a lot of pride when my students go on, they apply to a Ph.D.
and they do well in those programs, and I shouldn’t just say Ph.D. because there are so
many other things that students can go on to do as well. So, in general looking back and
seeing alumni who are successful and that they are using the skills that they have gotten
here that is a real success.
How do the grades that your students get affect you?
I am personally not that bothered by my students’ grades. Maybe it is because I have been
here for a while now, but when I see that students get lower grades often they deserve it
because they are not often in class and at this point I don’t get upset about that anymore. I
think there is a lot of choice, there are a lot of opportunities for students to do well [...] and
I am often not bothered by the bad results anymore. Maybe I used to be more bothered by
it and sometimes I am still a little bit frustrated I suppose, but I see it as being the
students’ choice.
Which do you think is the key for a student for getting good grades in your classes?
I think it is important that they come to class. There is a big correlation between not
attending and doing poorly. Then, also, that they follow the instructions that they are given
for the assignments and the essays and stuff like that. Generally they do quite well.
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Perseverance, asking questions as well, in preparing for the essays students who come and
see me and really think about things ahead of time usually do quite well.
How does being assessed by the students at the end of the semester affect you?
Again in different points of my career that affected me more. A couple years ago I won
some teaching awards at Guelph and I must say that I was very proud to have won and
very proud to get to that point in my career and kind of know I feel like “bah, I won those
awards, I am just going to concentrate on being a good teacher and whatever the
assessments are”, you know? It doesn’t matter too much to me.
In which ways does the institution to which you belong assess your work?
[...] I think that a lot of these professors are used to getting A as students and used to be
high achievers, so if the result comes back and they are not all in that top category
sometimes it is a bit difficult to take it.
Is it similar then to the experience of being a student?
Oh yes, it really is.
To what extent is the students’ knowledge of a specific style system more important than the
content of their works?
The use of the academic language is quite important I think. I guess it becomes more
important throughout levels. It becomes more important in graduate school because there
you are really entering into this professionalization process, which means that you should
be able to be writing in a certain style and follow a certain criteria that the profession has
established.
To what extent do you think that control limits your pedagogy?
This works differently in different courses. [...] In the course that I will be teaching next
semester though we do have surprise assignments that you have to be in class to write and
there is a lot more control there and honestly I don’t like that all that much as a teacher, I
don’t like having all these stumbling small assessments, to me that is very high-schoolish,
and at the university I’d rather not have to do that sort of thing, but we decided that the
course will be in that way. [...] So I don’t enjoy imposing this kind of thing but we decided
that it is going to be like this.
Do you think this kind of control is increasing or decreasing?
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In my experience it is in certain kinds of classes. In the language classes, yes, it is
increasing. It didn’t used to be the case. I taught the same course 10 years ago and we
didn’t do this. I think it is because of a frustration with students not coming to class and it
is a way of trying to make students attend more.
What techniques do you use to be as objective as possible in your grading?
For grading presentations and things like that I usually provide a rubric and just use the
rubric and make sure that different elements are covered and assign grades to the
different categories in the rubric too.
To what extent do the grades you assign vary, in situations where you have met the student
as opposed to situations where you have never met the student whose work you are grading?
I do always see them and I get to know all their names, so it is rare for me not to put a face
to their names.
So let’s say how does the grading change if a student has come to office hours and has put in
a lot of effort?
Yeah, I think that definitely affects your grading. I mean, I would try to sort of be aware of
that as an instructor and not allow it too much, but I think it does affect especially when
you see effort and when you see students coming. That is a good thing so in some cases I
would give the benefit of the doubt or give a slightly higher grade that reflects that too.
What do you do to remember the names and faces of your students?
That is a good question. Well, in the first class I ask everybody their names and usually ask
them to say something about themselves too because that helps me. If there is a little bit of
a narrative that you can apply to that name, that kind of helps. Then, during the first few
weeks, whenever they contribute I will ask them to repeat their names, which does mean
that the students who don’t contribute are a in a little bit of a disadvantage for getting
their names. Also when I am handing back work or picking up work I will look at the name
and look at the student if I am not sure about the name and try to remember. In classes
where there are frequent assessments that is actually quite good because you are giving
back work frequently.
How do you hold the gaze of the students when you are at class?
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I don’t know about that. I guess I try to vary eye contact through the room and definitely
when we are having discussions I will make eye contact with the person who is
contributing. When I am lecturing it is a little bit harder to do that.
How different is your relationship with undergraduate and graduate students?
It is fairly different. But I am not sure it is stuck to graduate and undergraduate. I think
that students that I had more than once in undergraduate as well when I have them the
second time it is a little bit more like the graduate relationship. [...] 4th year undergraduate
it is not all that different than graduate students, but definitely you have a different
relationship with a graduate student. They are entering the profession so we see them
more as colleagues.
What codes of sociability do you find the most complex and how do you navigate them?
I feel it is time to talk about social media because we haven’t talked about that yet and
actually that is a way that sometimes I... it helps to get to know the students names. There
is sometimes that moment of “who is that student on my list?” Well, I will look them up on
Facebook and I won’t add them but then if there is a photo I am like “hurray, now I know
who it is”. So adding students on Facebook is something that I would do with graduate
students without hesitation, with undergrads I try to do it after I don’t think I will ever
have them again as students. I am not always perfect with that [...] but that’s ok. So that is
something that I find a bit difficult to navigate.
If you detect distress among your students, how do you deal with it?
I mean there are different levels there because part of the undergraduate experience is
stressful so there I try to be reassuring and as long as they are well prepared and they
know what to expect you can alleviate some of the stress there. So I try to be accessible
and available in that way. I have had students coming to my office and being upset about
personal issues and breakups and things like that. I just again try to be a little bit motherly
and you know “this is something that happens” and reassuring. When it goes beyond that I
think I am really lucky that we have different services on campus so I would refer people
to student counseling services and things like that.
To which extent does the setting of the classroom limit your teaching performance?
Again I have taught in a variety of rooms and I definitely have my favourites. [...]
Sometimes it is the sitting arrangement too, there are rooms with long tables that don’t
have movable chairs [...] I don’t like those rooms very much.
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How do you dress and how do you prepare yourself physically before teaching?
I mean, I guess that the clothes I wear when I go to the office are different than the clothes
I wear at home, just slightly better. I think that we are kind of lucky in academia that there
is a lot of latitude to, like I don’t feel I have to, I have never worn a skirt in years and never
high heels. I don’t feel that there is a pressure. [...] I might dress up a little bit more for
certain kinds of meetings because across university there are different cultures about that.
I noticed that in the classroom I don’t feel that I dress.
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FACULTY MEMBER – “Laura”
What do you consider the features of excellence in a student?
A student who is clearly committed to the course and to the materials, who is engaged,
who is visibly engaged, who does the preparation but goes beyond that and takes the
material given and becomes creative with that material. [...] That is a feature that is visible
at many stages almost on a regular basis. It can be a question about grammar which is one
step ahead, or “how do you do this or why do you do that with language which is different
from what you told us last week?” and then you have a chance to explain, to work in that
content and that is very beneficial for everybody, so that to me is a mark of excellence. [...]
Do you perceive yourself having a different social status than other professionals?
Not necessarily social status. No, I don’t think so. But the type of job brings with it a
different position in society. I think there is a big gap between how are we perceived and
what we really do. It has been mysterious what professors do. I mean everybody thinks
that we only teach, but teaching is only the 40% of what we really do, so the other 60%...
Our social status is misrepresented because people have this idea that we teach 5 or 6
hours and then sit in our office and have coffee and think big thoughts. This is what people
think but it is not the case.
What would be a good example of success in your career?
I would love to publish a certain amount of books. [...] More publishing, more research and
that is a real challenge these days because there is not much time for your research.
What do you think a professor has to do to maintain them position?
It is mandatory in my opinion in order to grow, to explore new areas all the time. [...]
How do the grades that your students get affect you?
At times I am really worried about giving very low marks. Usually I give very low marks
and if the students deserve it I give other marks. I mean, I think I am fairly fair in my
evaluation. Especially with students who show engagement but still get low marks I invite
them to put in extra work or to come and see me to discuss their work to discuss what
they really know what they don’t know, why things went the way they went . [...] I give
them the opportunity and if they don’t take it they keep the mark they had but if they
come and talk to me and we discuss the work (even the midterm) then if I see that in fact
they knew more than what appears there I am ready to give them a few points more.
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How does being assessed by the students at the end of the semester affect you?
I tend not to open the students evaluations for a while. [...] I tell them it is important to
shape the future offerings of the course but I do not anymore say anything about the fact
that these evaluations have an impact on our salary or promotion [...] I don’t find it ethical
to ask them because that has nothing to do with their learning process. I think the
university should make assessment mandatory. [...] They shouldn’t be compelled to
evaluate me because I make more money. I find this so ridiculous.
To what extent is the students’ knowledge of a specific style system more important than the
content of their works?
That is a tricky question because it is hard to have a really refined and academic style of
presenting the material with poor content. I think that if you have that you have learned it
through engaging with scholarly material and therefore you know how to do it. If still their
writing maybe it is not as good, it is poor, I would reward that effort. That would be
something I would look at positively.
What about mediocre content but very well presented?
If it is well done and well constructed they get a reward for that because they are on the
path of a more sophisticated way of packaging, of presenting and articulating to
themselves that content so I can see that there is potential. But if it is poorly written and
poorly presented then...
To what extent do you think that control limits your pedagogy?
Not much. I don’t really feel that. I don’t worry too much about these things, I trust the
students. I am glad that this year we introduced the Turn-it-in, a plagiarism tool. [...] I think
that is a type of control that I don’t think limits but actually enhances our freedom. [...]
What techniques do you use to be as objective as possible in your grading?
It is part of a mindset. I try to look at each student without any prejudice or preconception
and if anything I tend to be maybe a bit more forgiving or to have more sympathy for
people who have a disability or who come and talk to me and explain they are struggling. I
value extracurricular work if they tell me you know “I was organizing holocaust week” [...]
I give options and all the extensions they need because really I value that very much. So, I
try to be objective. I feel guilty if I perceive that I am not being objective, but I don’t have a
hard time being a bit harsh with people who show lack of interest.
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To what extent do the grades you assign vary, in situations where you have met the student
as opposed to situations where you have never met the student whose work you are grading?
I think that to me if the student has shown interest that is very important. Not because it is
an act of reverence towards me, I don’t care about that, but because they have shown
interest in the material and that to me shows an engagement and that is what we want
from them. [...]
What do you do to remember the names and faces of your students?
That I lack terribly because I am not good at remembering faces and names. I get really
mixed up. Faces I remember, but the names I really get mixed up. I just don’t retain them
very well and I apologize with my students because I have a hard time remembering their
names. Sometimes I do, but even in smaller classes. I mean, if I have a hundred students
there I can’t. But for courses with 25 students, I remember a few, others they don’t come
much or they don’t talk and I don’t remember their names. There I think I could do a much
better job.
How different is your relationship with undergraduate and graduate students?
It is very different. Although from 3rd and 4th year undergraduates if I have a student often
and they engage the relationship builds up, but with graduate students there is more of a
peer relationship really. [...]
What codes of sociability do you find the most complex and how do you navigate them?
The students’ evaluation that we are supposed to ask them to do. [...]
If you detect distress among your students, how do you deal with it?
I try to address that but not in front of everybody. I ask the student at the end of the class
to come and see me and then we have a talk, if it is really visible. [...]
To which extend does the setting of the classroom limit your teaching performance?
A lot. Especially in language courses, I wish we had more classrooms with chairs and
tables that we could reassemble and work in small groups. We are giving the largest first
year classes in the province. [...] One day I wanted them to work in groups, so they had to
sit on the floor, climb on desks. It can be fun for a while but in the end... I am sorry we are
spending so much in other things... I don’t think it is a priority for the University frankly
but it really is limiting. [...]
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How do you dress and how do you prepare yourself physically before teaching?
I try to go in front of the class always in good shape in the sense that if I am very tired I
might tell to the class “look, today I am so tired, please excuse me” and also present
yourself in a professional way. [...] Even if I am tired, teaching is 80% of the time
energizing. [...] I never show impatience.
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GRADUATE STUDENT – “Carla”
Why did you decide to continue studying?
I wanted to have a qualification and I wanted to do things I find interesting; I wanted new
challenges. [...] I had an undergraduate but I suppose that in terms of jobs applications I
felt that I needed something else to stand out.
Who influenced your decision?
It was mainly a very personal decision but it is true that my parents were extremely
pleased when I told them my decision. So they didn’t influence my decision at first but they
made me feel comfortable that I was doing something that they were pleased with.
What other options did you have?
I could have kept doing the work I was doing. [...] I had lots and lots of different options
and becoming a Master student was just one among many. [...] I wanted to go more into
the role of the student and not the teacher again.
Do you perceive yourself having a different social status?
I suppose I might feel in that way once I have finished the master. At the moment I am in a
sort of limbo. I haven’t got the qualification, so I would just say to someone that I am a
student and in a way it feels like I have gone down in status because before people said
“What do you do?” and I replied “I am a teacher” and now it’s “What do you do?” “Oh, I am
a student.” It’s almost like it’s going back down, but I feel that as I soon as I have the
Masters I would feel that I had a higher social status than I had before when I had my
undergraduate.
Would that distinguish you from the friends that you have at home?
Not many of my friends have Masters so in that sort of purely academic sense it would
distinguish me, but then obviously they do have skills that I don’t, which are not related to
academia.
Do you perceive yourself having a different social status than undergraduates?
Yeah, definitely. I think that even by the professors within the University there is a big
difference in the way they look at you. I think that maybe is just that there is a more direct
relationship, we are more friendly. We are on first name terms, I suppose that is the same
for some undergraduates but I don’t know, I mean we work with them; we are their
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colleagues, we are correcting essays. I suppose that in the hierarchy of the University as a
grad student you are sort of bridging the gap between the professors and the undergrads.
What would be an example of success in your career?
The thing is that I don’t have a clear plan but I imagine – I am sure – that I will do more
teaching in at some point in the future. [...] If the Masters had been successful for me I
would expect to have a higher paid job than the job I did before I had my Masters, which is
not very difficult because the job that I had before I had my Masters was very badly paid.
What do you consider the features of excellence in a graduate student?
I think it is being so involved in you studies that they almost become a part of your life. [...]
I think we all laugh about it, but I think that we are all actually quite like that. [...]
Do you care about your grades differently than when you where an undergraduate?
That’s a difficult question. No, I don’t think so. I think it has the same importance. I think it
is equally important. I aim at getting an A, because in my head getting an A that’s a
successful grade. So I would stop working when I know that I got to the A. I am well aware
that in most of the work I do I could put a lot more time into it, but I don’t see that I need
to get more than the A. [...]
What do you think is the key to getting good grades?
Understanding the system, knowing the rules, knowing what is wanted of you. From being
on the other side of the table, from correcting essays, I have become very aware that what
I value when I am correcting is the structure, almost more than what is actually written.
Because if the structure is not clear from the beginning, if it is not following the rules that
we have been told to respect here – like having a thesis statement, or having two or three
main parts and the references and all of this stuff – if it doesn’t follow this structure I am
likely to think that the essay is not good, which is not necessarily true. It’s just that it is not
within the framework that the University is giving us and a first year student obviously
can’t know what that framework is.
Do you compare your grades with the ones that your classmates get?
Definitely. I think everyone does. I think that it would be a complete lie if anyone said they
didn’t. I try not to, again. [...] And I think we need to think of that when we are grading.
Well, we can’t think of it really, but we must be aware that the students will compare and
they will come to office hours and say “Why did this person get more than me?” I think it’s
85
human nature. I think we are always jealous of other people who are more attractive,
more intelligent, have a better car than us. That is inherent to who we are, so I think it’s
the same with the grade, or even worse with the grade because it is a number and is so
measurable. If you say “Is this person more intelligent than me?” there is no proof,
whereas a grade in our mind is proof of our intelligence, whether this is correct or not. So
we believe that this defines us.
How do you test or make sure that your work is academically rigorous?
If I am using a referring system I would take a look at the internet and make sure that I am
using it properly. [...] In my entire undergraduate degree I was not aware of the system, so
I learned it in my second semester of my Master studies. I learned how to reference. [...] I
learnt by submitting and getting it back. I think that it is very important that people who
grade your work tell you what you need to improve.
To what extent is the students’ knowledge of a specific style system more important than the
content of their works?
I can say again that it is more important. I think is more important. Specially as someone
who is grading essays in a field that I don’t know, because I cannot tell you if the content is
correct or not, so I am not really even reading the content. [...] We can’t verify all the
information; It would take us an hour to mark one essay. [...] So, in that case, if we got to
evaluate the work we have to look at the referencing system, the structure, and how well
they fit into this framework of expectation.
What criteria do you use to be as objective as possible in your grading?
When I recognize the name of the student and try and pretend that I don’t, but that is not a
very good technique because I still read the essay through the lens of knowing that I know
the student and then that is influencing me.
Do you feel a difference?
Definitely, if I know the student and I am marking the work and I know whose work it is I
just want to give them a better grade. I haven’t actually had the inverse experience, but I
am sure that if you have got students who you really don’t like the same thing would be
true. You would be marking their work and trying to give them a bad grade because they
annoy you. I think that in my case it’s just that I am very affected by the fact I know that
they tried. If I know they tried, they come to office hours, they sit at the front of the lecture
hall, they put their hands up during the lectures, even stupid things like that they smile at
86
me when I am in the classroom, obviously that makes me more sympathetic towards that
person because they are showing that they are pleased to see me, pleased to be in the
lecture or pleased to be studying, rather than a person that sits at the back, plays with
their phone during the whole lecture. In that sense I have judged their submission also
based on that, but luckily I don’t know my students names. So I often don’t know who is
the one sitting at the back and who is the one sitting at the front. That keeps me more
objective.
To what extent do the grades you assign vary, in situations where you have met the student
as opposed to situations where you have never met the student whose work you are grading?
I think almost all the time, if I have met the student I’ll give them a high grade, or not that I
will but I would feel that I want to. Sometimes I would go against that, but there is this
feeling of wanting to give back in return what they have given to you. Because they have
given me a satisfaction as a teacher – or as a teaching assistant – by showing interest, so I
want to reward that and reciprocate that giving them the satisfaction of having a good
grade.
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GRADUATE STUDENT – “Carmen”
Why did you decide to continue studying?
I think because I know I am good at school and I really didn’t know what I wanted to do.
My perspective right now is applying to a Ph.D. program because I don’t really know what
I want to do.
Who influenced your decision?
My parents wanted me to continue in school, but that is always my choice.
How different is your current educational experience from your previous ones?
It is different because I see the mechanics of what it is to be a professor.
Do you perceive yourself having a different social status than undergraduates?
No, and I feel like that there is this feeling of the impostor syndrome. When you feel like an
impostor. So I feel as a grad student that there is no difference. I just have more experience
than people in undergrad, but I am still learning. There is much more for me to learn so,
why do I have the right to say I am in Masters Degree? Teachers treat you with more
respect at a graduate level and there is a high expectation from family to succeed.
What would you answer if somebody told you that you should get a real job?
People have asked me that before. I kind of laugh about it because it is true and I don’t
think that if you are working in academia you ever have a real job because I think the
academic life is very different than a 9 to 5 job. You are working through a semester, you
have your summers off, you can go on sabbatical, you are constantly researching and I
think that in that regard there is no a real job aspect.
What do you consider the features of excellence in a graduate student?
I am not sure. Time management? I think just to be engaged maybe and privilege
assignments over than having a social life. I am not sure, it is a hard question.
Do you care about your grades differently than when you where an undergraduate?
Yes. But I also think the grading is different. Like, they hold you to a higher expectation but
the professors are more willing to help you getting good grades. I care more, I think.
What do you think is the key to getting good grades?
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I don’t know. I seek the teachers out a lot. Also, I talk to the other people in my program
because I think it is a collaborative process to be in graduate school. So both talking to the
teachers and the students and also understanding that you can’t read every article in
depth that your professor has given to you. So I think that learning how to skim is a really
good quality. Also to use what you are interested in, finding what you are interested in and
sticking with that as opposed to just doing random things.
Do you compare your grades with the ones that your classmates get?
Sometimes. Not really for final marks, but if we were applying for RAB applications we
would be comparing who passed the RAB application, who didn’t pass and that sort of
thing.
To what extent is the students’ knowledge of a specific style system more important than the
content of their works?
I don’t think the knowledge of a specific style system helps the students getting good
grades regardless of the content of their work. I don’t think so just because it is something
I still struggle with as a graduate student. I think that the content definitely trumps. If they
have glaring issues with citation and everything that’s important but the ideas are what
you are trying to get out of the student.
What criteria do you use to be as objective as possible in your grading?
I go through a couple of them, like a handful of essays and I separate them off into sections
like if I find a very good one I would put it over here and a really bad over here and then I
just mark the papers according to the two of those groups. Or even sometimes if I think a
paper is really good I would write a grade on the top but then if I find a paper that is even
better I might modify the other one just so it is more on a spectrum. Since I don’t know the
students I cannot be really subjective towards the actual student but I think that makes me
accountable just knowing what the spectrum is, what is a really good paper and what is a
really bad paper and what is the average.
What if you recognized the name of the students, would that make any difference?
It probably does indirectly but I try to make it not. If they took my advice and I saw that
they were trying... I would still provide critical feedback. I would check if they followed my
advice.
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What do you do to remember the names and faces of your students?
Sometimes I would do a sitting chart. That helps a lot. I have done Facebook. I think we
have all done that. At least if there is a person who sent us an email we would check
Facebook. I am not even sure if that is fine, but that helped a lot. From a big group of
students I knew all the names because the people who were talking the most of course I
remembered their names but then the people who didn’t talk as much I would go through
the list of students and be like “who is this?” and check it out.
What codes of sociability do you find the most complex and how do you navigate them?
One of the most difficult rules to follow was the professional distance. I tried to find the
balance between being a student and being an authoritative figure. I think as long as you
are not adding people on Facebook, as long as you are being nice but then also
disseminating the expectations of the course, I think that’s the only thing is necessary, or
not closing your doors or things like that in your office. I think that professors are hyper
focused on ensuring the distance and maintaining it.
To which extent does the setting of the classroom limit your teaching performance?
For me coming from a small school it was a lot different from how you would have to treat
a group of 40 people. In my other university we were in a circle and we always had
professors walking around and personally asking if we had a question.
How do you dress and how do you prepare yourself physically before teaching?
I treated that teaching assistantship the same way as I treated I guess my entire college
career where I always dress up for class. In my university we had a dress code so if you
weren’t dressed up enough in class you would be kicked out. I think that has had a major
impact on how I treat everything really. I think that if you are dressed up, if you are
presenting yourself in a way that is more professional, I feel that you act more
professional. Some people assume that you shouldn’t have to dress up for class and I
understand that to be uncomfortable and everything but I feel it also as out of respect. If
you are not dressed up then I feel like it is somehow not respectful for the students. There
is definitely not a dress code in the university, but I feel like privileged, I feel like if I am at
the university and if I am in a classroom setting that is an opportunity and I should treat it
as such, not kind of degrading it by not dressing up.
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UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT – “Megan”
How different it is studying at the University from what you imagined?
It is completely different. It is a whole other world. [...] You have to grow up quick.
Who influenced your decision to go to University?
Definitely my cousin. I knew I wanted to do European Studies. [...]
What would you have done if you hadn’t gone to University?
I think work probably. [...] My parents are always like “you need to have an education”. So
really not going to school wasn’t an option for me, maybe taking a year off but only if I was
doing classes on the side and working, not just work all the time.
Did you have the feeling of having a choice?
Not sort of ‘ish’. Like, I knew that now with the competition definitely you have to have a
degree, you have to have some sort of paper that says you have a degree so I knew that
strongly that I had to go to school but choices I knew I would have the support whether to
take a year off or as long as I went to a school and got some sort of education that would
be fine.
How different is your current educational experience from your previous ones?
So different. [...]
Do you connect going to the University with having social status?
At first I did. At first I really was focused on making a lot of friends and then coming to
University that is where I wanted to be. I wanted to be in a social [incomprehensible]. But
now, I am more focused now on academics more than anything, so I have established my
friends, I have my friendship circle and then other than that social status is not that
important any more. I think now it is more about academics.
Do you feel a gap between the friends who didn’t study in the university?
Oh yes definitely, I have friends who took two years off and now they come to university
and I don’t see myself as higher or below them. I think they are fortunate enough to now
go after two years and sometimes I envy them because they had two years to figure out
what they really wanted to do instead of jumping into something [...] There is no real
difference.
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How do you think your program is going to help you get the job you are looking for?
I don’t know if it will to be honest. I mean, it would be nice to say I am an alumni from the
University of Guelph, I graduated and stuff... I like to brag about it I guess “I go to this
University, I have the best professors and stuff” but whether that is going to help me in the
future I am not sure. [...] I see more of it as an experience. [...] I don’t know what employers
are going to be looking for. [...]
Do you think having a diploma is going to make a difference?
Yeah, definitely. I think you should have a diploma, I think you should have some sort of
form of education, but I also feel that you should have experience to back up what you
have. So even if you have volunteering in a Spanish community here at the university you
can say so here is my degree I can speak Spanish but I also have the experience of working
with other people. So I think is on the person’s initiative, you really have to get experience,
as well do well and get the diploma to.
What do you consider the features of excellence in a student?
I think in reality everyone is going to need a university degree, everyone is going to need a
master degree, maybe even throwing a Ph.D. over there because I think that there is a lot
of competition. I don’t think you can get away with just having, not to be rude, just having
a college degree. Employers and the excellence they will be just looking at your degree
they will be looking at your grades. [...] I really think that the university is the way to go in
the future.
How important is it for you to get good grades?
So important now. So in first year I thought it was a joke but now I am thinking about
graduate schools and the future and even if you take two years off they are going to come
and look at you transcript. [...] Grades are number one priority right now.
What do you think is the key to getting good grades?
I think definitely talking to the professors. I didn’t take advantage of how the professors
have hours, but now I definitely take advantage of their office hours, even go after class,
get to know them, it is definitely beneficial. And even small study groups, make friends in
the class, you never know the level students are at, so make some friends but definitely
talking to the professors. [...] They definitely know a lot more than you could probably
figure out yourself so to go and talk to them and to have that relationship with the
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professor you can definitely use it to your advantage and studying and continuing on your
studies because I may be a professor next semester and then you can always say “ok, I
know how they teach, I know they grade” so that is definitely the number one thing, to talk
to the professors after class, before class, anything.
Do you compare your grades with the ones that your classmates get?
Not really. [...] For me it is not a competition really because I am not competing with the
person next to me I am competing with myself. [...]
Do you think you don’t compare your grades because you are happy with them?
Yes, I am happy with mine and even when I am not happy it is just, not to feel pity or
anything, but I think it is just a sort of... I don’t know, like if I have done poorly and my
friends have done good I would definitely go and congratulate them, but then after my
grade I don’t want to tell them I did so bad I don’t want them to feel pity or anything. [...] I
kind of compare it to talking about money, you are not going to go to your friend like “how
much are you making?” [...] Like I like saying I did well, I did good, I won’t get into the
specifics of what my grades are.
How did your writing style change since you started University?
Oh my god, so much. [...] You definitely have to adapt to the class, to the vocabulary, to the
textbook [...]
How well do you know the style systems for writing academic essays and assignments?
Pretty good. [...] By now I am so used to it that it almost comes naturally to you. [...]
How fair do you think that the grading system is?
Pretty fair I think. Grading it could be worse I think than it could be better. I know that if
you compare this university to the University of Toronto this is almost like a god
[incomprehensible]. I think they are very tough from what I have heard from friends. Then
here it also depends on the professors. For instance, this semester I had one professor who
just buckled down my notes more on the essays. So I think it depends on the professor, it
depends on the course; it depends on how much you are willing to study for, to write for
the essay or the paper.
So if it depends on the professor it might be that it is also a bit subjective?
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Yeah definitely. For instance, this semester I had a very good paper and I thought I was
doing well but then I went to my professor and then I got the grade back and it was
horrible but then you give it to like my roommates for instance and “is this worth it of this
grade” and no, like they don’t know how this professor marked it that’s so difficult. So, I
would never go from one professor from one department to another professor in this
department, but like you see in my class there were papers I did so poorly while in other
class I was doing so well. So I think it depends on the professor, it depends on how much
you know the subject. [...]
What other methods of assessment would you prefer?
[...] I would like to have more class discussions. [...]
Do you think you are generally noticed or unnoticed by your teachers?
Definitely noticed. Especially this semester I felt myself more noticed than ever. I think
that it helped that I was in a smaller classroom and that the professor I had it was last year
too. So she still knew my name and that was very helpful. [...] I enjoy having that
interaction. I enjoy the professor knowing my name. [...] With even a hundred students
classes your professor is not going to know your name unless you go up and introduce
yourself and even ask for a problem or just say hi hello I am in class and I look forward to
this is better than just sitting back and not saying a word.
How do you think that you are perceived by your classmates?
Good. I can’t shut up in class. [...]
How much importance do you give to the way you dress when you go to class?
It depends on the class. Like from 7 to 10 not that much effort. In the morning, 9.30 that is
pushing it and I think that also depends on who is in the class. [...] If it is a smaller
classroom I definitely put more effort. If it is a large classroom who is really going to know
me? [...] Everyone is judgmental, so if you see a girl walking across campus with a dress
and she is all fancy it up going to class people are going to judge. If you see a guy wearing a
suit and he comes into class people are always turning heads and are going to judge. [...]
Here I think that the common things are jeans or leggings and a hoodie and that is about it.
[...]
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UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT – “Cynthia”
How different is it studying at the University from what you imagined?
Is not that different. [...]
Who influenced your decision to go to University?
My mom did. Well, actually both my parents. [...]
What would you have done if you hadn’t gone to to University?
I have no idea. [...]
Do you connect going to the University with having social status?
Not really. I think in Canada it is a little bit different because I am thinking like my cousins
got to the university in the states and since they got to university there they see
themselves a lot better than other people, but for here a lot of the time if you go to college
and that you actually sometimes have better chances to getting a job, so it is different.
There is not really a social status it is kind of more what program you are in. Like people
who are in computer sciences or engineering kind of have a little bit of better status
because they are considered to get better jobs and get more money, but not universities in
general.
What do you consider the features of excellence in a student?
Someone who can work hard and who knows how to do time management and to adapt
and to ask for help. I think that’s a big thing. If you failed and you don’t ask for help then
you are just going to keep failing without knowing how to go on that and get it fixed.
How important is it for you to get good grades?
At the moment it is very important. I am applying for a master’s program so I need to be
graded high. [...] It is more important now in my last year than it was in first year. At the
beginning it was important enough that I got good funding and my marks weren’t horrible.
[...]
What do you think is the key to getting good grades?
Being prepared, having good time management skills, I think that is really important.
Knowing what your professors expect, because I had different professors who have widely
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different expectations and so knowing what they expect is really important to tailoring
your work and tailoring how you study and all that.
Do you compare your grades with the ones that your classmates get?
It depends on who the classmate is. I think sometimes there are people who you know just
automatically for some reasons can do just amazing and they can just show up without
studying and get like 90 versus I think there are more people who are at the same scale as
you that you are like “oh, how did they do better than me? What did I do wrong?”
How fair do you think that the grading system is?
I think it depends on the professor. I think some professors are really fair and they are
really good at understanding perhaps that they should be considering all the process, but I
do think that there are other professors who do expect a lot from students. Like I had
professors who kind of expect you to have the same knowledge as they do when you go to
write the test, which for me I think is unfair, they have their Ph.D. and I am doing my
undergrad and I am still learning this stuff, they know it and so I honestly think it can be a
little bit bias towards those professors because they don’t... there is no like consistent
grading criteria for all the professors, it is kind of what they feel you should do. [...]
Do you think professors are objective when they grade?
It depends on the professor. I think some professors are really good at being objective and
just looking at your work. I had one professor who would literally say every time we had
an essay back “I want you to know that this is not a reflection on how you are, it is totally
on what your work is and how you wrote and it is not about you the person.” Which is a
really objective thing I am just looking at your work, I am not comparing you. But I do
think that there are other professors who sometimes they form opinion of the students or
sometimes they form opinion of their previous work and then they put that into the
marking, so I think that can be a bit of a problem.
What other methods of assessment would you prefer?
I don’t know I never really thought about it. [...] I like the idea of going over your work and
see what the professor is expecting. [...]
Do you think you are generally noticed or unnoticed by your teachers?
I think I am generally noticed. I know most of my professors. Four of my professors this
semester know me by my name and know who I am, so I think I am noticed. I did have
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bigger classes in my other university and generally in those the only way a professor
would know you is if you have gone to their office hours or gone to talk to them. [...]
How do you make sure that your teachers know you?
Go to their office hours, go and talk to them after class, ask questions. [...] It means that
they are more willing to help you because they know who you are and they know you are
trying.
How do you think that you are perceived by your classmates?
I have no idea. [...]
What do you see as the codes of sociability between students and teachers?
I think there are unwritten rules. Obviously you must treat your teachers with respect. [...]
I like university specially compared to relationships in high school where there is a strong
hierarchy versus the university where there is still hierarchy but there is also the
understanding that everyone is an adult and everyone can communicate. So I think there is
much more of an open flow of communication and as long as everyone is treating
everyone with respect then I think it is good. [...]
How do you feel physically during busy periods of studying?
Usually tired. […] When I sleep I don’t sleep well so I am generally pretty tired. […]
How much importance do you give to the way you dress when you go to class?
None. I just dress with whatever. I don’t go to class in track pants or that, I don’t feel
comfortable wearing that, but I am never going to... it’s more if I am going somewhere
afterwards that I dress nice. [...]
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