LTA Connect: Compassionate Pedagogies - Practice-based reflections on student-led module co-creation and design

Session Outline

This webinar will present key practice-based reflections of collaborating with UHI students in the designing of History modules. This webinar will particularly feature my new Level 10 module: 'Deviants, Rebels, Outcasts and Villains: History from the Margins in Medieval and Early Modern Europe'. The core purpose of this module is to centre the experiences and perspectives of individuals and groups from premodern Europe who may have found themselves marginalised, whether this was via a political act or piece of legislation, or occurred because of their gender, race, age, health, occupation, religion or behaviour. The module facilitates comparative analysis of people from this lengthy list, exploring tolerance, charity and compassionate alongside punishment, intolerance and cruelty. Co-designing the module with students aligns strongly with the theme of compassionate pedagogies. The learning environment is welcoming and inviting, encouraging each student to contribute where they feel comfortable: this might be in determining the overall thematic structure of the module, but it might equally be in terms of highlighting specific questions, sources or aspects relating to a weekly theme that the student wishes to explore together with the class. The module starts by prioritising equality and openness between lecturer and students - the module leader makes no assumptions as to what the students will wish to explore but facilitates conversations and listens. Each student contribution is valued for its own contribution as well as how other students respond to it. Class themes and focuses engage learners to prepare for free-flowing, minimally structured class discussions. Learners are encouraged and supported to specialise for module assessments. Co-design also plays a fundamental role in fostering group discussion, individual and group reflection, maturity and development. The subject matter in this module is directly relevant to the aims of supporting, celebrating and promoting diversity, equality and inclusion. The study of marginalised groups and individuals in the premodern period prompts greater understanding of contemporary barriers to equality, as well as celebrating examples of marginalised peoples in the past not just surviving but often thriving. Consequently, students explore together the rich lived experiences of marginalised peoples that are far removed from the pervasive and limiting stereotypes often voiced about them. This process of discovery not only facilitates a significant expansion of knowledge about the past, but prompts students to connect that knowledge with their own identities and communities.

Presenter

Dr Linsey Hunter

Dr Linsey Hunter is a Lecturer at the Centre for History, with over ten years of both face-to-face and blended learning. Her research and teaching expertise is in the medieval and early modern periods and her upper-level module specialisms are the Crusades, the World of the Normans and the history of marginalised people and groups in premodern Europe. She is regularly highly commended in the HISA student-nominated teaching awards, winning 'Best Assessment Feedback' in 2023. Her hobbies include yoga and knitting, both of which are frequently interrupted by her Maine Coon cats.

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