- Title
- Embracing failure through performative pedagogy: a report from the margins.
- Creator
- McKinnon, Jocelyn; Lowry, Sean
- Relation
- Performance Research Vol. 17, Issue 1, p. 47-50
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2012.651862
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2012
- Description
- Working at a satellite campus of an Australian regional university, where many students are the first in their family to attend university, fear of failure can present a strong disincentive to creative experimentation. Consequently, the authors have developed a number of tacit strategies with which to gently engender students with critical and creative skills at the expense of short-term vocational expectations. This de-emphasis of vocational specificity is particularly radical in a social context in which unemployment is high, cultural diversity is low (despite a higher than average Indigenous population) and education levels remain low. This paper seeks to explore the challenge of fostering a climate of critically engaged creative experimentation in a relatively conservative and socially disadvantaged regional context. The authors consider whether there is pedagogical value in facilitating the creation of liminal spaces between community and classroom in a social environment more attuned to vocational aspiration and economic sustenance than critical self -reflexive agency. The paper also addresses the role of student centred learning and the idea of the undergraduate student as researcher as critical to facilitating a holistic educational experience. This case study proposes a pedagogical climate that might performatively emphasise the importance of students re-imagining their own ethical, philosophical, spiritual and political futures. The authors find that the potential for failure is incontrovertibly linked to each of these aims. In a world in which previously unimagined contexts are routinely traversed the author's assert that the transformative potential of failure can unlock a transposable ability for students to critically navigate the complexity of contemporary cultural landscapes.
- Subject
- pedagogy; Australia; regional university; indigenous community; performances
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1058087
- Identifier
- uon:16326
- Identifier
- ISSN:1352-8165
- Language
- eng
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