Tentacular pedagogy: an embodied creative strategy towards transforming higher education culture

Tan, Kai Syng (2024) Tentacular pedagogy: an embodied creative strategy towards transforming higher education culture. First International Conference on Embodied Education: Breaking new grounds in embodied education, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark. 15 - 17 May 2024.

Abstract

Higher Education (HE) is broken. Its dog-eat-dog culture, neoliberalist structures and austerity measures have made it a harmful and non-inclusive space for many, especially minoritised staff and students, including those who learn differently.

In this presentation, I will introduce ‘Tentacular Pedagogy’ (TP), an embodied, inter-disciplinary strategy to teaching and (un-)learning that seeks to transform HE culture. Drawing on kinaesthetic and neurodivergent performance and participatory art, non-western body-mind poetics, as well as the extraordinary features of three hearts and nine minds of the octopus (hence ‘tentacular), TP counters Cartesian dualism and critiques the academy’s sedentary and logocentric conventions. Prioritising equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI), as well as creative thinking (the highest order of learning in the revised Blooms taxonomy), I will outline the heart(s) of TP, namely neurodivergence, decolonisation, intersectionality, as well as its 9 dimensions, namely Critical Creativity, Co-Creation, Collage, Can-do (resourcefulness), Curiosity, Community + (under-)Commons + Civic consciousness, Circulation (sustainability), Curating Change through Care, and Courage. I will share case studies, including a new pilot project FAB PALS (Futures Artful Biennale and Partnering Artful Leaders scheme) commissioned by the Social Practice Lab, Winchester School of Art, as well as other examples from my portfolio in UK, Japan and Singapore as a HE teacher and consultant, and lived experience as a neurodivergent learner, to show how embodied tactics can respond to UNESCO’s call for HE to ‘repair injustices while transforming the future’ by 2050, with a new ‘social contract’ that prioritises ‘human dignity and cultural diversity’, plus ‘care, reciprocity, and solidarity’ (2021).

The presentation draws on extracts from my forthcoming book, Neuro-Futurism and Re-Imagining Leadership: An A-Z Towards Collective Liberation (Palgrave Macmillan 2024), which re-claims ways to think about and do ‘leadership’ by colliding creative pedagogy, neuro-queering, critical leadership studies and social justice for the first time. It will also advance my iterations of TP thus far, including as a keynote lecture for the European League of Institutes of the Arts Teachers Academy (ELIA, 2021), an article for The Society for Research into Higher Education (2022), and my successful Principal Fellowship of Advance Higher Education application (PFHEA, UK’s highest HE qualification, 2022).

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Contributors

Author: Kai Syng Tan

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