Abstract

Teaching is never neutral. Who we are, our identities, histories, values, cultural references, privileges, and lived experiences, all inevitably shapes the learning spaces we create.

This workshop explores a reflective check-in space for core course staff, designed to support wellbeing, reflective practice, and more inclusive approaches to teaching within studio-based creative education. Developed in response to insights from Hannah Ogahara’s “P4: Design for Human Equity, Social and Racial Justice in JTM” case study, the project responds to student experiences of structural barriers, representation, authenticity, and trust. The session offers a confidential, non-judgemental space for collective reflection on identity, positionality, and teaching relationships.

Session and activities

This facilitated reflective workshop creates a confidential, non-judgemental space for staff to pause and reflect on how identity, lived experience, positionality, and relational dynamics shape teaching and learning within creative education.

Teaching is relational work. Who we are inevitably influences how we give feedback, interpret student work, navigate challenges, and how students experience inclusion, belonging, and equity within the classroom. Recognising the emotional and complex nature of studio-based teaching, this pilot is designed for support and reflection rather than evaluation. The intention is not to measure or define “better” teaching, but to create space for more intentional engagement with social and racial justice within educational practice.

The session combines two reflective themes: Identity and Lived Experience and Perspective, Positionality, and Relational Power. Beginning with a short grounding exercise, participants are invited into a structured reflective process designed to encourage openness, listening, and self-awareness.

Participants take part in guided check-in rounds where they respond to reflective prompts through uninterrupted sharing, without discussion or problem-solving. Questions invite consideration of how personal histories, identities, assumptions, and experiences influence participation, confidence and engagement within teaching and working environments. Participants are also encouraged to reflect on visibility, representation and power, and how they may be experienced by others within institutional spaces.

The workshop concludes with a collective noticing phase, where emerging themes and shared reflections are acknowledged together without critique or resolution. This closing moment supports shared awareness, collective care, and ongoing reflective teaching practice, while modelling a facilitation structure that could be adapted for wider staff wellbeing and inclusive pedagogical development.