This paper proposes a reconceptualization of the T&L process towards a critical approach that more essentially employs digital means. It posits a turn towards socially oriented learning, emphasising ownership and resilience as long-term skills for students and underlining the importance of staff-student community-building as a pedagogical endeavour.
Despite the advent of digital platforms in L&T in HE having become the norm today, they have been extensively criticised for ‘passive’ modality of teaching. Yet, they also provide unique opportunities to explore interactivity. Taking a cooperative ‘punk’ pedagogical lens, social media and digital tools can drive engagement in class and within the student community. Interesting insights can be found when further considering the integration of student-staff communities into a symbiotic academic environment, and its benefits in forging confidence and resilience whilst applying a ‘pedagogy of care’.
The underpinning theoretical foundation for this examination rests on two levels. At the base, it consists of a blended focus on socially-oriented education with an emphasis on essential/meaningful learning (Ausubel, D; Novak J.D.) and approaching social fluidity (Bauman, Z.) from a critical perspective (Freire, P.; Giroux, H.) that challenges the power dynamics inbuilt within the HE system.
My approach is further refined into a combined practice of punk pedagogies (Smith, G.D; Parkinson, T.) and pedagogy of care (Pilato, N.; Thompson, T.). More specifically, punk’s emancipatory power as a pedagogical pillar stresses personal responsibility instead of relying upon the dominant ideology of teacher as transmitter (Dines 2015, 24) thereby transforming the pedagogical space into one that is empowering but also adaptive to crises (Santos & Guerra 2018, 222).
Drawing examples from initiatives that I introduced as Senior Personal Tutor (SPT) and module leader, I will be sharing my experience from practice across the aforementioned pedagogical lines. In my capacity as SPT I introduced two initiatives ‘Social Media Ambassadors’ (SMA) and subsequently student ‘Rapporteurs’. The aim of both initiatives is to increase student-owned material to fortify the engagement of Politics students and enrich their collective experience beyond the taught component.
It is at this notional juncture where the concept of peer-led and owned material is crucial. In engaging with this format of peer learning, students forge their own sense of achievement but also build confidence. They realise their responsibility in creating the promoted content alongside the way they reflect their peers' needs to maintain the sense of community. In terms of staff-student dynamic, assumptions that inhabit the ‘intermezzo’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987) are mitigated seeing that part of the teaching is undertaken by students themselves.
In a more societal trajectory, the attributes of responsibility, community and understanding act as a precursor to further real-life actorness. Students are not only taught skills enabling them to build upon their own understanding of academic matters, but are led to actively engage in the formation and the internalisation/socialisation of such matters. Therefore, the societal 'essential' learning of emotional skills becomes a fact rather than an empty promise of via rote academic skills that will only be relevant to narrow applications within employment.
