Tactile and Pedagogy

I am writing this week's blog, the last blog in a series on embodiment, sensory, and accessible pedagogy, having spent the last week thinking about the impact of water. My city has been flooded not once, but twice in the last week, and that included me last Sunday with rain water coming in until I had about 6 inches of water in the basement. Luckily the basement only had some sporting equipment which I salvaged because I caught it in time and the washer and dryer (I rent), but my basement neighbour was not as lucky. 

I have been thinking a lot about how physical occurrences have real memory and tactile impact. We talk about this a lot within trauma-informed pedagogy and how we have no real way of knowing in our teaching and learning spaces what will be activating for folk. But I can safely say that for this region now, an activator is now simply the presence of grey clouds, or more rain. And that is because no one wants to do more work to clean up more basements of sewage, or lose more material items. And yes, stuff is just stuff, but stuff, also has tactile residue, a memory, a history. This is what I want to talk about today.

My interest in tactility, as I have mentioned before, comes from Ruskin (specifically the section of The Ethics of the Dust where he teaches the students to act like atoms to create crystals and become embodiment of what he is trying to teach them) but of course has extended beyond this to thinking about how much touch does impact learning. This impact is seen especially in the architecture of learning spaces, but also in the technology used, and the emphasis on experiential pedagogy. So I want to leave you, in this final post in the series, with some things to think about about touch.

One thing that I used to spend time talking to folk about at my former institution is just how much there is an assumption of tactility on behalf of the teaching team when it comes to controls in learning spaces. Most classrooms now come with some sort of touch pad that controls the screens, the computer, the device connections, the lights, and all sorts of ambient controls when it comes to the learning space. There is an assumption there the teaching team will, one be able to read and see the panel, and two, touch the panel in the specific places to control the learning space. There are rarely audio backups to the panels (or other sensory ways in) and no guidance given in teaching orientations about what to do if the panels don't work for your bodymind.

Another aspect of tactility that is seen in pedagogy is around pedagogical design for activities or assessments that are experiential in nature and assume some sort universal touch ability. I find myself having more of these conversations with folk who want to go back to hand-written exams or tests without realizing that folk with dysgraphia exist and that not all learners have the same fine motor ability. This is often a "touchy" conversation because reflection on tactile needs are not part of curricular designs. There are often ways to attain essential learning outcomes without assuming a monolithic fine motor ability. The same goes for some aspects of lab work, and in fact I have been really excited about the amount of pedagogical design work that has been in done in chemistry in relation to making lab work more accessible. 

You will have encountered me talking about "tactile residue" in my podcast, on this blog, and in my written work (including my dissertation). For me that residue is what remains and is embodied from something you have learned in different ways, formally or informally. My best example is how you can differentiate who is hugging you because you know how certain human in your life and their hugs feel like, you know their embodied touch. Or another example is how your fingers have to adjust when you go from using your computer to someone else's computer. The feel feels "off", the tactility different, but depending on your bodymind and sensory use you can readjust to the keyboard and continue what you are doing. However, not everyone can do that. That tactile residue can be really strong in some folk, in good or bad ways, and it can impact learning, in good or bad ways. This is important to remember in pedagogy and instructional design.

In a meeting I was in this week where we were talking about Indigenous ways of knowing, someone said, water has memory. And I can't stop thinking about that, because yes, yes it does. Water will go where it wants to go. Water contains the history of the planet. Water has its own tactile residue. And if we designed our courses in a way that kept in mind that what we teach and how we teach has a way of continuing on, as embodied knowledge, that immensity should give us a lot of pause to reflect on the how much the work in eduspace has the potential to impact so many different places. As Ruskin said in The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) "when we build, let us think that we build forever," and I think that is good pedagogical advice to keep in mind.

I am going to be taking a one week break from the blog next week to reset and vacation before coming back on August 23 with a post in preparation for the beginning of fall term. I hope these series of posts on the sensory have been helpful. They have been fun to think about and I am sure this topic will continue to be present in my blogs and podcast.