Undertaking this PG Cert has proved enlightening for many reasons, one thing being having been diagnosed as dyslexic. Not something that came as a huge surprise, yet something that at 30 years old felt like I finally had a grasp on my brain and way of working. I have always championed hands on learning and ‘understanding through doing’ and with this new piece of information it is not surprising why. I want to understand more about the pedagogy of this way of teaching/learning and in order to do this I think I need to understand more about dyslexia in a further educational setting.
In an 2015 article ‘Rebalancing Dyslexia and Creativity at the RCA’, dyslexia is defined as:
“Affecting the way the brain processes written and spoken language. Dyslexic people may have difficulty processing and remembering information they see and hear, which can affect learning and literacy skills.”
Firstly and very importantly I do not consider dyslexia to be a negative thing. Historically, dyslexia has been considered as a disadvantage, “yet it is widely believed that many creative ‘geniuses’, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso, might today be classified as dyslexic. Twenty-first century artists and designers who are also dyslexic include filmmaker Steve McQueen, architect Richard Rogers and Turner-nominated performance artist Marvin Gaye Chetwynd.”
The article goes on to hear from Robin Howie, an RCA grad of Visual Communication (the course I also studied):
“Communication underpins all of my design work, and for that I require a command of language; whether that be visual, verbal or experiential. Being dyslexic can at times derail putting language to work in what’s considered the right way. Sure, this can be inconvenient at times, but in the creative process a different perspective is always more than welcome.”
I like the idea of visual, verbal and experiential language and for me, this comes back to learning through doing. I was recently observed by my tutor during an interactive session I had planned, where the students were asked to ‘test run’ an interactive activity they had been developing for a professional project. The students were asked to come prepared with the visuals and materials needed and after their ‘test run’ they would receive peer and tutor feedback. I was pleasantly surprised with my feedback which noted how engaged both the students and myself were during the session, I agree that the students excelled at this task and worked really hard throughout the project.
The feedback suggested that this engagement came down to careful planning and I really do think a lot about how the students will engage and experience the sessions I plan. In writing this now it has made me think back to some reading I have done recently about Gadamer’s pedagogical theories:
“Through Gadamer’s discussion of art we have seen an exemplary account of how understanding is something that ‘happens’ only in the movement of our back-and-forth interpretive engagement with what we are trying to understand”
I believe that this is something which is the backbone of my practice. Another quote which stood out to me in this text:
“It is, rather, a dynamic, social, multi vocal process of engagement in which we move beyond the nearsightedness of our own individual perspective, and toward more universal points of view that enrich our grasp on the world and ourselves in it”
I’m still figuring out how to piece all these things together in an intelligible way but there are links here between experience, learning and empathy.