9 May 2024 | Workshop by Dr (opens in a new window)Wajeehah Aayeshah
"Designingkind educational practices"
Time:1pm
Venue:HI Seminar Room (H204)
This workshop will explore and develop our understanding of the shape of kindness in educational settings. Students, as fellow educators, will be required to reflect on their experiences and practices of kindness. This reflection will contribute to a discussion about pragmatically embedding kindness in everyday educational life. A ‘Framework of kindness’ is going to be used for this.
Grounded in pedagogy of kindness (Denial 2019), this framework takes the immersive practices of ‘decolonisation of education’ (Brown, Kelada, & Jones 2020) and the idea of ‘Restorative Practice’ (Morisson 2015) and applies it to all relationships within the academia, and not just that of teachers and students. In the framework of Kindness, ‘decolonised restorative practice’ needs to be implemented in the whole academic eco-system.
The ‘Framework of Kindness’ is based on real-life examples of students and staff in higher educational settings. Dr Aayeshah is calling these settings, ‘pockets of healing’. To offer an education which is ‘inclusive’, ‘recognises prior knowledge’, ‘cultural capital’, and considers different needs of participants, and partners, we need to create eco-systems within academia that are kind. The Framework of Kindness in academia is a step to do so. It does this by acknowledging the challenging aspects of our eco-system and identifying ‘pockets of healing’ where positive change is gradually happening. Dr Aayeshah hopes that this workshop itself would be considered as a ‘pocket of healing’ as well.
This workshop is a part of an on-going collaborative research. Dr Aayeshah would ideally like to use the insights and stories as research data. However, this will only be done if participants are comfortable with it and give her explicit permission to do so.