eSTEeM Seminar Series: Listening to and learning from Black students in the Personal Learning Advice Service at the OU

Location: Via MS Teams
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eSTEeM continues its seminar series this month with a presentation by colleagues from the Personal Learning Advice (PLA) Service.

Listening to and learning from Black students in the Personal Learning Advice Service at the OU

Jennifer Hillman and Olivia Purcell

In her work on trauma among Australian Indigenous peoples, Judy Atkinson describes the “deep listening” (dadirri) necessary for hearing the voices of the oppressed and formulating a “purposeful plan to act” (Atkinson, 2000: 16; Manathunga, 2020). In offering this session, and sharing practices from the Personal Learning Advice (PLA) Service – a service offering coaching and mentoring to students from underrepresented groups - we will explore how “deep listening” might translate to the context of HE (de Sousa Santos, 2018). We aim to provide a closer insight into the coaching approach offered by the PLA service and investigate the value of listening, reflecting and validating, without agenda. We will use a series of video and audio clips of student feedback in 21J, along with a video from a practitioner perspective. We aim to raise questions and reflective practice about how the agenda for discussions can be set by students in these spaces, ensuring they can reflect on their own personal, idiosyncratic narratives, rather than listening to what we want or expect to hear.

The seminar is open to all OU colleagues. To register please visit the registration page by Monday 18th July to book your place. A recording of the seminar will be available shortly afterwards.