Tag Archives: Master's Program in Urban Studies

How do we navigate Eurocentrism? Reflections from teaching postcolonial urban studies

For the past four years I have been teaching a lecture on postcolonial urban theory within The Urban Question—a first-semester course in the international Master’s Program in Urban Studies. In this lecture, I try to explain the relationship between the postcolonial and its impacts on both the urban condition and the production of urban knowledge. (Meaning: the traces of Eurocentrism in how we learn about and teach urban studies today). I encourage students to reflect on examples of postcolonial conditions in their own countries—regardless if their country has an official colonial past or not. This opens a series of interesting reflections and questions. Last year, a student asked if trying to tackle Eurocentrism meant being at odds with the aims of modernity, for example, democracy. A few years ago, a student from Turkey wondered: what happens when ultra-nationalist governments hijack the emancipatory aims of postcolonialism to oppress their own populations by arguing “Western” notions, for example, LGBTQ rights, are “colonial” and therefore have no place in their society?

These important questions are at the heart of postcolonial and decolonial debates and are precisely two points that Kanishka Goonewardena and Tanja Winkler touched upon during their interventions in A Non-Occidentalist West: Learning from Theories Outside the Canon, workshop #1 of the Dislocating Urban Studies Series (which was also a PhD course in which I contributed). Pointing out that not all critique of the West that comes from the global South aims towards emancipatory goals, Kanishka wondered: What forms of critique of Europe and the West are then valid? What is the nature of critique of the West? While Kanishka was thinking about the ultra-nationalist governments in India and Sri Lanka, his point had echoes of the question the student from Turkey had posed in my class. Tanja, in turn, reflected how the concerns of the left had been hijacked by the intellectual political right but for negative purposes. For example, the post-structuralist concern that “all knowledge is important” had been twisted to dismiss science, support regressive standpoints, and promote undemocratic contexts. This reminded of the first student’s concern that postcolonialism could be wielded as a tool to attack democracy.  

While we have not been able to settle these debates in class, the discussions around them have stayed with me because of the important question that they raise: how do we navigate Eurocentrism? In Kanishka’s view, we need to have a dialectical understanding of binaries, (for example, center-periphery and north-south), in order to engage with thinkers that are genuine internationalists in the sense that they are not constrained by their geographical locations. The point is to look at the global North and global South as locations that both contain centers and peripheries. For Tanja, our epistemic tools need to be reclaimed. Adding to this, a source of guidance for me has been the work of Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2010) and his intervention A Non-Occidentalist West? Learned Ignorance and Ecology of Knowledge. Arguing that it is meaningless to carry out epistemological divisions across north/south, de Sousa Santos instead proposes engaging with thinkers that are anti-colonial and anti-capitalist, regardless if their work can be labeled as “Western.” In his view, there is much to learn from theories that, even though were produced within Western modernity, can nevertheless offer tools to fight capitalism and colonialism. At the end of the day, as Aníbal Quijano (1992) argues through his work on coloniality of power, what we are trying to dismantle is the colonial side of modernity, not necessarily modernity itself.  

I am eager to hear what questions students raise this year.

References
  • Quijano A (1992) Colonialidad y Modernidad/Racionalidad. Perú Indígena 13(29): 11–20. DOI: 10.1080/09502380601164353.
  • Santos B de S (2010) A Non-Occidentalist West?: Learned Ignorance and Ecology of Knowledge. Theory, Culture & Society 26(7–8): 103–125. DOI: 10.1177/0263276409348079.

Featured image: “Perpetual Ocean – Gulf Stream” by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC BY 2.0

“Zoom meetings frustrate me, I don’t get anything out of it”: From emergency remote teaching (ERT) to kind collaborative learning environments

Like probably all other lecturers at Malmö University, I have been heavily relying on a myriad of educational apps and software to teach and supervise since we switched to online teaching in March 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. While these technologies have worked well and we (teachers, students, researchers, and administrative staff) have demonstrated what can only be described as digital resilience, I have also experienced the hiccups of this new way of interacting with students. Lecturing into a void of black screens; learners that log off before class is over ; voiced frustration during supervision meetings (e.g., the quote in the title of this piece); anxious emails from students that find it hard to study in a context of worry (e.g., the fear of them or their families getting sick), isolation (e.g., forced lockdowns) or cramped spaces (e.g., small student dorms or apartments). While, of course, most of us lecturers are operating in an environment of emergency remote teaching (ERT)—in other words, teaching courses that were originally designed to be taught face-to-face—and some issues are unavoidable aspects of a pandemic, it does not mean that we are powerless. I began to ponder: What strategies can be put in place to decrease frustration and promote collaborative learning? I would like to share two concrete tips that I am trying to put to use:

Remember that a group is not necessarily a community

David McConnell (2006: 1) advocates in his book E-learning Groups and Communities that a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) should be an event that brings people together to “give them a strong sense of belonging, of being a community of like-minded learners.” While groups can work effectively (i.e., communicating, collaborating and cooperating to get a task done), a sense of community—or “people striving for a common purpose”—is harder to achieve (Siemens 2002 in Brindley et al., 2009). Most of the students that I work with are part of the international Master’s in Urban Studies program and some have been prevented from coming to Malmö and experiencing the thrills and challenges of being a student abroad. Constrained to an online environment, the possibilities for them to feel they are part of a learning community decrease. What I mainly put in practice to try to address this limitation is to make time for chitchat during our lectures and meetings. Simple questions like “How are things going?” make a difference. (This, of course, works better with students that you meet regularly.) Other strategies include: a) giving plenty of breaks to avoid Zoom fatigue (grumpy or tired students participate less), b) making time for Breakout Rooms so that students can discuss issues on their own, c) encouraging interaction in discussion forums in our teaching platform and the chat feature in Zoom, d) allowing them to form their own groups when possible, and e), promoting what McConnell (2006) calls “self-peer-tutor assessment processes” to improve communication skills.

Understand and acknowledge the difference between online and in-person interactions

In the article “Creating Effective Collaborative Learning Groups in an Online Environment,” Brindley et al. (2009) remind us that “the social milieu of online activities is quite different from in-person interactions, thus requiring new skills and behaviors.” This is, of course, perhaps obvious but easy to forget when the expectations and aims of a course were created around face-to-face interactions and not online learning. While, for example, Capdeferro and Romero (2012) show that the greatest cause of frustration among online learners working with collaborative learning experiences is lack of commitment from fellow group members, issues like “communication difficulties” caused by technology and having to deal with asynchronous discussions can also create exasperation. In my view, a way to address these potential problems is to give clear housekeeping instructions and etiquette rules when using a platform or communication app for the first time (and make sure to repeat this information every now and then in subsequent meetings). As Brindley et al. (2009) show us, students need structure and clear guidance balanced with a degree of flexibility to promote learner autonomy. Finally, empathy and patience are key. Thrown into emergency remote teaching, not everybody might have internet connections that are fast enough to support the online tools that we use. Time zones are another issue as there might be students that are forced to log in at irregular hours to attend meetings or lectures that are scheduled according to the local time in Malmö. Unexpected caretaking duties are also a cause of concern in these stressful times.

As we continue teaching in emergency mode, let us actively seek ways to promote effective, but kind, online collaborative learning environments.

References

Featured image: “Laptop Keyboard” by Peter Huys is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

This post was originally published in my student blog “Teaching and Learning in the Field of Urban Studies”, a project within the course Collaborative Learning in Digital Environments (spring 2021).

Why aren’t we teaching digital literacies?

Most of the students within the Master’s Program in Urban Studies at Malmö University seem to be young (between their 20s and 30s) and it might be accurate to assume that most of them are what Prensky (2001) would call “digital natives”—people that grew up using digital technology and are thus naturally competent using it. However, White (2014a) reminds us that being proficient in navigating the internet or using social media does not mean that a student actually knows how to effectively use digital technologies for the purpose of studying, evaluating the accuracy and legitimacy of a source, or formulating coherent arguments. This skill is part of a set of practices called digital literacies or “those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society” (Jisc, 2018). Digital literacies include a number of capabilities such as media literacy (i.e., the skill to critically read and write academic and professional outputs); information literacy (i.e., the ability to not only find information but also interpreting, evaluating, managing and sharing it); and learning skills (i.e., the capacity to “study and learn effectively in technology-rich environments” in both formal and informal settings) (ibid).

“Digital literacies include a number of capabilities such as media literacy, information literacy, and learning skills.”

These facts and interventions made me realize that we, as educators, hardly spend any time discussing or teaching digital literacy to our students. Of course, we discuss issues such as the credibility, accuracy, authority and legitimacy of online sources vis-à-vis traditional “legitimate” sources such as books and peer-reviewed articles. An approach like this, however, ignores the reality of how students actually learn and where they look for information. In other words, argues White (2014b), there is a tension between the requirements posed by formal academia and the day-to-day learning practices of students which in turns creates a “black market” of knowledge.

Let me expand using one of White’s (2014b) examples: students know that Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source of information (i.e., does not meet academic standards). Yet, students use it anyway as a learning practice but simply learn to not openly discuss or cite it in the classroom. What needs to happen is that we acknowledge the current learning practices of our students and instead of discouraging certain sources, we promote a critical learning practice around the use of online sources. In other words, in a digital era, students should not be forced to negotiate between how they learn and what formal academia expects of them. To tackle the issue (i.e., preventing a black market of knowledge), capabilities such as digital literacies need to be part of the curriculum in urban studies. I envision that such an approach could be introduced at the beginning of the program, developed during methods courses (e.g., Catching Urbanity and Making Urban Studies), and, finally, integrated during the time the students write their theses.

References

Featured image: “abstract digital” by monsieur paradis is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

This post was originally published in my student blog “Teaching and Learning in the Field of Urban Studies”, a project within the course Collaborative Learning in Digital Environments (spring 2021).