Page 131 - Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century

Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century | Showcasing UJ Teaching and Learning 2021
Popular culture pedagogies
Pedagogy of humour and playfulness
Pedagogy of care
Contextualise abstract theory (Tam 2000): Reflecting our everyday practices or lived experiences by critically analysing popular culture texts familiar to the youth, abstract concepts become relatable and meaningful. Students become more engaged as we debate, question and negotiate meaning around real-life issues such as race, power, ethics, social justice, disinformation, xenophobia, gender and sexuality depicted in popular culture.
A catalyst for participation (Nørgård, Toft-Nielsen & Whitton 2017; Bilokçuoğlu & Debreli, 2018): Drawing on satire and parodies of popular culture texts that students find highly enjoyable, we not only critically reflect and negotiate meaning around difficult topics but also stimulate engagement. Displaying humorous images and videos effectively disrupts the monotony of ‘boring’ PowerPoint presentations and appeals to short attention spans. First-year orientation games and role-playing games.
Affect and emotion (Hale 2016): Funny memes, cartoons and other comedic case studies of everyday occurrences brings a lightness and laughter to the learning environment. The appropriate use of humour creates a positive learning atmosphere, enhance memory, decreasing academic stress, especially for shy students and unprepared first-year students.
Teaching is a relational practise (Noddings 2003): First-year orientation games to build affective relationships, year-end semester cake and cold drinks in class, personally walking with students to Psycad to book appointments, proactively identifying and contacting at- risk students with the help of tutors, first day of the semester ‘survival guide’ type playful orientation sessions to discuss mutual expectations and tips to help students cope both psychologically and academically, being flexible during crises such as FeesMustFall and the coronavirus pandemic to facilitate different student-centred modes of engagement, maintaining a social presence in online teaching, teaching and assessing. Initiating Reading in the Discipline academic literacy interventions, receiving funding for an artificial pedagogy project to teach academic literacy skills as a game.
Special recognition of teaching expertise
Using a constructivist philosophy as the foundation of my authentic, problem-based 4IR teaching pedagogies is effective. My student projects have received several industry accolades by the Public Relations Institute of Southern Africa’s Prism Awards (Prism Awards 2018; 2019). Student campaigns collected nappies for abandoned babies at the Door of Hope (Allen 2017), soccer kits for under-resourced community football teams and cultivating active lifestyle habits for senior citizens in a care home.
In terms of teaching excellence awards, I am the recipient of a Humanities Teaching Excellence Award in 2011 and was nominated again in 2014. I was nominated and shortlisted for the Humanities Teaching Excellence Award in 2016. I was the winner of the Humanities Teaching Excellence Award in the category Students’ Choice in 2017. In 2021, I received the Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Award: Teacher Excellence.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I believe a buzzing class is indicative of an engaged and decolonised teaching and learning space where students are no longer passive spectators (hooks 1994; Freire 1998) but active participants (Ashwin et al. 2015: 23) in the discovery of knowledge. By creating a learning space that is communal and dialogical while embracing a somewhat chaotic and noisy environment that is interesting, creative and playful (Andrade-Guirguis 2020; Koeners & Francis 2020), power imbalances and bureaucratic approaches to processing large, passive classes may be overcome (Doll 1993; Motta 2013).
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