Alice Hellard on the Ethical Dimensions of Design Education (part 2)

In this episode, Alice Hellard and I explore the  impact of design on our lives and society. Alice's work highlights the importance of design education in navigating modern complexities, emphasising student agency and the dynamic relationship between humans and their environment.

We talk about how objects like smartphones influence behaviors and interactions, prompting a shift in educational focus towards process over outcomes. Everyday objects are also examined as a means of exploring personal values and political expression - hear me get very excited talking about the Memphis design movement!

Some of the topics we discuss are challenging to us both and maybe to listeners as well. We talk about ethical considerations in design education as we reflect on aesthetics, materials, and socio-political contexts plus we explore cultural  biases in museums and classrooms, and other social issues such as gender inequality.

Overall, we hope the episode offers an insightful exploration of the ethical dimensions of design, encouraging active engagement and reflection.


(Text generated by AI, edited by Alison Hardy)

Ciaran Ellis posted a thought-provoking question on LinkedIn recently: Do design decisions involve value judgements?

What do you think? Join the conversation over on LinkedIn and let us know what you think. 

Transcript

Alison Hardy: 1:03

I'm back with Alice Hellard for our part two, where we ended the last episode saying that we were going to talk about agency learner agency and about Alice's research in a bit more detail. So we're not going to take any time this time about introductions. So, alice, you've got some ideas and thoughts. Ideas sort of is kind of implying that you should just come up with them, but some thoughts about what agency is. I know you've done a lot of thinking about this I'm going to hand over to you about people might not be familiar with that word and that concept.

Alice Hellard: 1:36

Yes, so thanks. I guess it's useful to start with the idea that it's a widely understood thing that agency is our ability to act or ability to take action in the world. And I think through my own experience in schools and also museums, actually there are sort of plenty of opportunities to develop students people's agency within design and technology and particularly within design capability, developing design capability. And there's some literature actually. Kay Stables talks about design capability in relation to agency quite a bit, but she also sort of talks about agency in relation to designing in context and pupils' ability to take positive action, for example in relation to sustainability. She talks about the idea that sort of nurturing pupils' design capability through activities and contexts that are culturally relevant can impact the well-being of society as a whole. So it's not just agency as a kind of individual endeavour, it's a bigger thing than that. And she also she talks about pupils drawing from their own funds of knowledge, so bringing in their own kind of cultural and personal knowledge into the classroom in order to kind of inform their design capability. So this is kind of cultural and social also.

Alice Hellard: 3:12

But my view, I think, is that we have a tendency perhaps to think of agency and design and technology in some quite simplistic ways. So and that is actually if we think of it at all. So I suppose what I mean by that is that taking action in design and technology can be applied to decision making during the design process, for example, and we're really focused then on the outcome of designing and not so much at all on the things that contribute to our agency or our having agency in the first place. So I think in design and technology there's something that's already there at a much deeper level. This agency is already there at a much deeper level than, say, deciding on whether something is blue or orange or straight or curved. We think of it in some really simplistic ways, but it's there already underneath in some quite deep ways. So I think that as teachers, we can provide opportunities for students to recognise but also to do their agency Now that's interesting.

Alice Hellard: 4:23

This is kind of the idea that some of the theories that I'm drawing from in my research point out that agency is not something that we have, it's something that we do, it's a doing OK yeah. And I'm drawing from a couple of theories that argue that agency is distributed between humans and things, so it's not just a human facet, if you like, and that humans and things are always acting together. I've got this one theory in particular that argues that agency is a continual practice of making and doing, so it's an always there, always acting between and within people and objects.

Alison Hardy: 5:02

So can. I interrupt you there. What's the?

Alice Hellard: 5:04

theory.

Alison Hardy: 5:04

What's the theory? If you want to look it up.

Alice Hellard: 5:08

It's Karen Barad's theory of agentual realism Right.

Alison Hardy: 5:13

So we'll get at it with the details of that.

Alice Hellard: 5:15

I'll put the link in the show notes because If anyone's interested, it's in the book called Meeting the Universe Halfway. It comes out, of course, in physics as well, right, ok, I don't, yeah, and it's a sort of it's a, it's an ontological, it's a kind of way of being, kind of theory. And so, for Barad, it's the idea that the relationship between and within things creates matter, creates things. And I'm also sort of exploring this idea that design has agency. So, drawing from the idea of ontological designing and that is the theory from Willis, that people design things and then things act back and design people, we can see this in some really obvious ways through kind of the smartphone, for example, and think about how our phones, you know, design us and our behaviors, for sure, or social media, for example.

Alice Hellard: 6:22

And then for Tony Fry, design is always acting and sometimes in kind of unexpected and unseen ways. So agency is not just a human decision to act, it's an always-there thing, a doing that's always there between and within objects and people. And that's my opening gambit there. I think for me that's the important thing there is that, you know, agency, particularly around design capability, agency is really very much within design and technology education, but I'm not sure how much we kind of we think on that or act on that. You know, within our design technology teaching other than to think of us having agency or students people's having agency to make some decisions about the thing that they're making or doing or designing.

Alice Hellard: 7:21

And I think that does agency down, if you like, it's a very simplistic kind of view of agency.

Alison Hardy: 7:28

Yeah, and I would say that would be my way of thinking about it in that context People being able to make decisions. So, having learned things, they're more empowered to make decisions because they have a greater bank of knowledge and I'm using knowledge in a spectrum of language, not as in facts, as in what the body does. They've learned to do things in design and technology that they can then draw on in responding to a new context and there, for that, allows them to show their capability and also to grow their capability in design and technology.

Alison Hardy: 8:07

But this idea of agency, in the way that you're talking about it, isn't something that I think I've really thought about. So could you, to make it concrete, can you give an example of what that might look like in a classroom?

Alice Hellard: 8:26

It's going to be a long pause here.

Alison Hardy: 8:28

Yes, you can't just throw these difficult things out there, Alice, and not expect I'd not be able to back it up.

Alice Hellard: 8:39

Well, it's a hard question. So, as you know, as I've already sort of discussed as part of our conversation, I'm doing my practice research at the moment with a group of year 12 students and really the point of this is to try out a pedagogy, is to see how, what this can look like in school, what it can mean, what it can feel like. So one of the things I've been trying to do with the young people is to make some things that are already there visible, right, and we've been looking at mapping their subjectivities, for example. So thinking about the things that kind of make them them and then how we can sort of map their things onto other things or between other things. So it's like it's a way of making the things that are there visible, if you know what I mean. So I'll give you an example of this. I need a picture, a picture, okay. So I'll give you an example of this.

Alice Hellard: 9:54

So I asked them to bring an object to one of our earliest sessions. Actually, I asked them to bring an object from home, a thing it doesn't, you know could be anything really and I asked my I haven't got it with me actually, but I've got a Casio watch from. This goes along with my collection of Sony objects actually from my childhood. My watch that I wear every day is a Casio calculator watch from the 1980s, so I brought that back with me. You know they're all a bit like okay, you know that's brilliant.

Alison Hardy: 10:31

Being very nice to you.

Alice Hellard: 10:32

Yeah, and so we, I asked them to identify some of their kind of their subjectivities and then map them onto the object that they had with them, that they brought with them, and so it was really about looking at how they relate to that object but really unpicking it in quite a kind of granular way.

Alison Hardy: 10:59

So could you do that for your Casio?

Alice Hellard: 11:03

watch. Is that what you did? I did it for them, yeah Right, I sort of shared my mapping with them, not if I didn't do it for them, but I did share it with them. So for me it was very much things. Like you know, some of my values are. I tried to, I suppose, poke a bit at consumerism and capitalism perhaps.

Alice Hellard: 11:27

So you know, I was able to then, you know, map that onto this 30-odd-year-old watch, which definitely isn't smart, but it's smart enough to calculate if you can use your fingernail to push the buttons. In fact, I did actually use it for the first time in about a decade as a calculator the other day because I didn't have anything else on it. But you know, so I'm making the connection there between you know why I wear it and some of the values that I have. So that's just one tiny example of that. There might be all kinds of other things. You know, my values are not just the soul thing that make up my subjectivities. It's also things about, you know, my family or my politics, my beliefs, my education, my work. So I'm able to then map onto this object all of these other different kinds of things which helped me to understand the object, but also, in a kind of broader sense, helped me, us as a and my group of participants, to see how we might do that with other objects as well.

Alice Hellard: 12:44

And we might then go okay. Well, actually, when I'm looking at this thing we remember in our last conversation we're talking a lot about looking, weren't we in the museum when I'm looking at this thing or touching it or feeling it, these are some of the ways in which I am connecting with it, or connected already with it.

Alison Hardy: 13:04

Yes.

Alice Hellard: 13:05

You know, and I suppose thinking about looking for or making visible that agency, that's kind of already there. It's then about, you know, it's almost like bringing those things, some of those things, to the surface and then seeing where they go next. It's all, it's fluid.

Alison Hardy: 13:29

Have I explained how in I think so, I think so. So let me take an example, because I only were talking. I was thinking like what would be? An object, so I use a rocker round small rucksack if I go out, which they've become very trendy. Well, I bought mine on Vinted about 18 months ago because I didn't want to pay full price and I'm kind of so.

Alison Hardy: 13:59

that starts to say something about me, yeah, about avoiding spending all that money as I saw it, that maybe I didn't think the object was worth it at that price, but equally it says about me, about my environmental values, my sustainability, because I'm thinking about things that aren't going into landfill then. So I look on Vinted for quite a lot of things. I walk the dog, and so actually the rucksack is about me taking my dog out because I can put a bottle of water in. It's just big enough. The colour is it's a bright blue, which I know is a great colour for me. It makes me feel alive.

Alison Hardy: 14:42

In fact, about a year ago, a friend said to me you wear too many drab colours, alison. I have some friends who obviously feel like and talk to me very directly, and she's quite right. She was quite right and I was in a moment in my life when I was low, and so actually I'm now purposefully making sure I'm wearing, as you can see today, bright things. Yeah, so yeah, and it's got pockets in there, so I was put my keys in the same place. There's like a security thing that it gives me. It's big enough for my tissues, the poo bags, my little bag with other bits and pieces in that I think I need. So yeah, so then I suppose if I was then given a design context that isn't about carrying but could be anything, I suppose, are you saying then, because I'm more able to recognise those, my subjectivity, I can bring that agency into something new that I'm designing. Is that, is that where you're going, or I got that wrong.

Alice Hellard: 15:44

I suppose. No, you've absolutely got it right and I'm so in kind of intently listening to your mapping, your subjectivities in relation with your rucksacks. Brilliant, I mean, you've just done it brilliantly, thank you. Good example. But also, as you were talking I will answer your question in a second but as you were talking, it reminded me of that conversation we were having about Memphis and I've thought about that since, since we had that conversation it's that Memphis, for example, is a design movement that has a politics. Yes, and it's quite. We can see that quite kind of overtly in lots of ways, but we know about that in some quite overt ways just through reading about those, that group of designers.

Alison Hardy: 16:33

But your bag has a politics yeah, it's made out of recycled material. That's another reason I'm drawn to the product.

Alice Hellard: 16:40

Yeah, yeah, exactly, and I suppose it's, it's almost, it's like it's kind of mapping, mapping your politics in relation with the, the object, the bags kind of politics, if you like, and I guess one of the. I suppose what I'm looking at is is, and I don't know the answer to this yet but what is, what is, what is the benefit of doing that? How is that helping us to sort of be? And one of the things that I think it can do is just open us up, be within design and technology, learning beyond, just, you know, the object of design, and it's also opening up a kind of criticality and opening up a kind of and understand much, much kind of broader understanding of how we are with other objects, with things you know, with design and with designed things. But I suppose it's also using design methods, the methods of designing, design methods and processes to to unpick all of that stuff. Yes, I'm not sure if I, if I'm answering directly your question.

Alison Hardy: 17:52

I think so because I'm kind of then going back to the bag and I'm thinking I make a choice not to buy the new so that I've got the money that I'm not spending on the new bag to use in other ways. And then there is also about the fact that I'm not buying in for me buying into that idea about sometimes these new products are pitched at a price, not because that's what's needed and I'm not talking about rocker in particular but to exclude other people from buying them hmm, so it's called market exclusion.

Alison Hardy: 18:30

I remember working with a bunch of academics of quite a few years ago and they were doing all this work about market exclusion, about how some products, whether it's deliberate or or not, exclude certain parts of society because they're a certain price. So yes, so, so buy.

Alison Hardy: 18:51

So things like vintage open up the avenue hmm, to people to be able to buy things that they want, need, admire, desire, but at a price point that is more comfortable, for all sorts of reasons, with them.

Alison Hardy: 19:09

And I do think I think you're absolutely right by in designer technology, by teaching children how to do that with objects, not just looking at its function, because I mean, I'm not even talking here about the fact that it's a well-made product, you know the fact that it's durable, I mean the fact that the way it's constructed is beautiful in many ways because it's so well thought through it's. It's not just looking at that one level about the functionality in the aesthetics, it's the then, by understanding all of that, why that blue, why that shape, why that size mm-hmm, why have I bought it there? Why that one? It does mean whether you then go on to design something that imbues that, but it means you've then got that agency to make those decisions when you're designing mm-hmm, which then surely the children will then be able to start to see why when there's some things that they're asked to design sits uncomfortably and some of the things sit more comfortably and I think I, yeah, thank you, because you're really opening this up also.

Alice Hellard: 20:19

Just you know it's brilliant. Yeah, I agree with you this couple of things that I just made a few notes on as you've been talking. One of the things is how many different objects have you referenced as part of your? I'm picking, if you're bad, yeah, vintage keys. Who bags is one, yeah.

Alison Hardy: 20:42

I know, by home compostable poo bags. Yep, that's a deliberate choice.

Alice Hellard: 20:46

So there's you know. Then we're bringing this whole, all this other stuff, you know.

Alice Hellard: 20:52

But all of those things are in relation with each other and and and so it's not you, it's not really possible to understand that bag and isolation, and certainly in isolation from from you, its owner and its user. And the other thing I wanted to kind of to, to maybe just draw out a little bit, is that in everything that, all of the things that you're kind of saying and relating it to design and technology education is always in this conversation seems to be back towards the act of designing.

Alison Hardy: 21:27

Yeah.

Alice Hellard: 21:28

And I wonder if there are some more expansive ways of thinking about it in addition to that.

Alice Hellard: 21:34

So, obviously, designing is something that we do in design and technology education and it's really one of the obviously main things that we do, isn't it? Yeah, it's also not the only. The act of designing is not the only purpose of design technology education. No, so it doesn't necessarily. You know, using this kind of methodology doesn't always necessarily excuse me need to bring us into back into the act of designing. We don't necessarily need to use this information in order to design, yeah, but but we can. It's also about being the consumer, understanding ethics, understanding some of the politics, understanding, you know, that whole kind of suite of knowledge which is really tied in, tied up within the object.

Alice Hellard: 22:32

And I suppose also to bring it back. You know, let's remember that my research is focused in museum, yeah, context, and so it's very much thinking about how, you know, how do we understand and do our agency within that learning context, and so we're not necessarily designing anything when we go to the museum. We remember, you know, we had this conversation, didn't we, about the predominance of visuality and and all things visual within the museum context. So for me it's it's also about going underneath that and thinking OK, when we're in the museum, how can we see and make visible some of these, some of these, these relations that are going on all of the time and bring, draw out in order to understand the, the object a bit more in relation to us and make connections between the learner or me, the visitor, and the object in the museum In some different ways? Yeah, so you're not going to ask you for an example, an example of how I do that in the museum, yeah, I'm just kind of thinking about when we knew we were at the V&A last year, weren't we?

Alison Hardy: 23:53

We walked through some of those spaces and you're making me think I want to walk back through them and look at those objects in a more purposeful way, with kind of what I've learned just from this conversation about who I am and my subjectivity and then how these objects challenge that or give me a different perspective on it.

Alice Hellard: 24:18

Yeah, yeah, I give you lots of examples. So again, this is partly because I think it's it's very accessible. I've done a lot of my kind of thinking and and working, if you like, within the 1900 to now gallery Right. I think it's been a deliberate decision because a lot of you know there's a lot of kind of contemporary kind of works in there as well as some slightly older pieces, but it's, I think I decided that that would be quite accessible rather than going off into an obscure kind of gallery. But I've tested this out in other, in other spaces in the V&A as well.

Alice Hellard: 25:03

So here's an example I suppose I use the design methods of lenses, actually thinking about and and a bit of a bit of sort of psycho geography kind of you know a method called the derevée.

Alice Hellard: 25:22

So it's the idea that you kind of focus on one or two lenses and that's that's all you kind of are looking for or are noting down as you experience the space, and so this, the derevée, is kind of a way of exploring a kind of physical space.

Alice Hellard: 25:42

So I, my own methods, then the IPUs or my own lenses, have been thinking about. So this is from my own subjectivity kind of mapping, thinking about globalization and to a little, to some extent, kind of religion and belief. But but then I'm gonna have to edit this Alison, because I'm just working this out. Well, so my using my lenses of globalization and something it's difficult to explain, but something around religion and belief is that's one of my personal kind of motivators. I've explained already I'm not a person of faith but I'm really really interested in a lot of the stuff that I that I work around comes back to religion and belief and how that sits within kind of society. So, thinking about those two lenses, I'll give you one example of an object in that gallery. It's called the June driving jacket and you can I bet you're gonna go straight on to the V&A collection and write it down.

Alison Hardy: 27:01

Actually, that's what I'm gonna do right, and it was a.

Alice Hellard: 27:04

It's a green, it's a green kind of is it a bomber jacket type thing? I think so we. And embroidered across the back is the date on it, which is the 22nd of June 2018, I think, and it is that is the date where, in Saudi Arabia, women were allowed to drive again after a 61 year ban. And so I was kind of like, you know, thinking okay and reading through the label and thinking, gosh, that's an interesting thing when I look at that through the lens of kind of globalization, from a Western kind of viewpoint, is what we're looking at here? Am I relating to this? And thinking, is what we're looking at here, the idea that, wow, isn't it great, women in Saudi Arabia are free again? And I was thinking, okay, well, how does that relate back into this, to this context? Then, do we? Is there an equivalent? Like you know, I mean, I'm not sure that we've got kind of equality for women in this country, you know, and you know there's a massive.

Alice Hellard: 28:23

I was like, okay, I'm gonna start looking up sort of figures about the gender pay gap, for example, or what about domestic abuse or what about? Are there any kind of, you know, things that we can think about with. You know, is there some you know statistics about driving and men and women and stuff that kind of slightly. You know that make a mockery of this, because essentially what I was doing is standing there thinking, okay, well, when we look over the hedge into the into kind of Middle Eastern context, are we, you know, are we judging and going? Isn't it great that finally women can drive in in Saudi Arabia?

Alice Hellard: 29:03

But that seems a bit condescending, yes, and so actually what I've ended was oh, when was that Roe vs Wade ruling overturned in America? You know the one where about abortion, about abortion where, where suddenly women were not constitutionally entitled to in America to have an abortion across across all those states. It turns out is on the same day, four years later, that on the same day as women were allowed to drive in in Saudi Arabia, four years later women were no longer allowed to have an abortion in Saudi Arabia. So what I was really kind of doing was, you know, was mapping my values onto this thing and then questioning them, and then and my values then were kind of questioning how, how we were looking from the museum out into the world through the kind of label and the interpretation and then going what it doesn't work, if you, if you, if you ping it back in the other direction, if you, if you, if you look through that lens back to a Western context, you know is actually we're regressing yes yeah, so.

Alice Hellard: 30:19

So it just meant it led me to make this kind of web of kind of connections really, and I could do that in any number of, on any number of objects I suppose, using that, using those lenses and the design methods and mapping my own kind of subjectivity. There isn't necessarily a kind of an end game here, it's not about, but it's just where my values kind of took me, yeah, and mapped it and you can see it's the purpose of that is not, is not to, is not to design anything, it's just to explore what I'm being presented with about design.

Alison Hardy: 30:59

Yeah, so that our relationship with the products, how we're responding to products how we're relating to them and thinking about them.

Alice Hellard: 31:06

So I've gone from walking through going oh, isn't that nice and isn't that interesting. There's a, there's this jacket and it's great that women can drive again. This is quite political, but actually, you know, thinking much more expansively than asking much different questions about the context that we're, that we are looking at that in and within it's. It's definitely, you know, it's a way of redirecting and understanding.

Alison Hardy: 31:38

Yes, yeah, rather than just looking at it for the lens of being, as in my case, a middle-aged white woman in in.

Alice Hellard: 31:48

England well, and you know likewise exactly, and I think you know a lot. I suppose one of the things that I'm really trying to kind of get out here is that a lot of the processes that we use and a lot of the within the museum context and it's definitely within the school context that a lot of the kind of methods in the processes that we're using around design are really linear or, you know, they're really kind of taking us from A to B to sometimes the.

Alice Hellard: 32:19

CD, x, y, z, but that's not how things are and this and the theory that I'm kind of working, working around is it always locates kind of agency in the making of matter, as it were, as a kind of really complicated networked relationships between human things and non-human things, you know.

Alice Hellard: 32:46

So it's about exploring what that actually looks like and can look like, rather than just having a, you know, a straightforward kind of here's the design, brief kind of approach to to those stages it's. It's about picking out the agency of things and everything and I suppose one of the things that feels I suppose I'm still at an early stage of exploring really is that out of the kind of Christian colonial context of the European museum setting which we explored a little bit when I was sort of explaining the paper and it's also it's in the paper Out of that I'm exploring the positioning of this research as potentially a kind of decolonising methodology. I'm saying that tentatively and I'm not sure whether I'm sitting in a decolonising kind of way or not yet. But one of the things that I talked about in our last conversation is that the idea that representation is great and really important it doesn't fully connect us within those contexts and I know that in fact, a chapter that you and Rose and Fath.

Alice Hellard: 34:18

I think in that chapter you talked about the idea that actually representation is great but we need to think more deeply about methodologies, and I couldn't agree more. I think we often don't question the methodology that we're using or the pedagogy that we're kind of using. We don't go under the surface enough in order to kind of effect change. So we're really focused on being seen and what can be seen, but we're not really scratching it or looking at what, those things that are harder to see. So I guess that's where I'm kind of coming from. Is that actually as a methodology for decolonising? It is about engaging with the politics and the social contexts of objects in a broader way through using design methods and not necessarily coming out with a kind of design or designed outcome.

Alice Hellard: 35:23

It's about exploring that in some very personal ways and the reason I'm a bit tentative about it is because I think well A I'm a white woman talking about decolonising, although I'm coming at it from a very much from the kind of Christian colonial side of things and in terms of of Christianity I've got some of the academic footing, if you like, around that but also from the point of view that I guess a lot of kind of decolonising methodologies have really focused on being seen and heard and right in there, which is important, and this isn't that. This isn't really what I'm looking at here. So I'm exploring all of this stuff.

Alison Hardy: 36:19

Which I can hear. Yeah, and I think people listening will hear that and value that, and it'd be really interesting. We're hoping I'll be doing a third episode where we have a teacher who comes on and talks about how what this might look like in the classroom and if we haven't found anybody by the time this comes out, I'm going to put an advert out now. If you want to be that teacher and come on and explore what this might look like in the classroom, have a three-way conversation. That'd be great. You can drop me an email and contact Alice and then we can set that up.

Alison Hardy: 36:52

So, yes, because while you were talking, I was thinking about a document that I've written which talks about the end goals of design and technology. They're actually taken from the National Curriculum in England, but one of them is around design and technology capability, which we've spoken about, which we do kind of get fixated on, even though I think it's not language that we use very often, but that is basically what we're doing, but we do get very fixated on that. Everything has become a design and make or a design, although quite often I think it's make, manifesting design and make. But the other end goal is in the National Curriculum which is really interesting as I'm reading it and to participate successfully in an increasingly technological world. So I'm reading that in the light of what you've been talking about and the previous episode that we recorded, and I'm thinking, wow, that is such a limiting aim Creative, technical, practical expertise, but it's not got this thing about values, morals, because that's that's about performing, isn't it?

Alison Hardy: 38:04

We have to if we understand what those are if we've developed them. But I know in England the government were very much were not about teaching children values. That's why they didn't want sustainability in the National Curriculum, because they see that as political.

Alice Hellard: 38:20

I can't remember, didn't we have values in the previous iteration of the National Curriculum?

Alison Hardy: 38:25

Yeah, values has been just putting together a book proposal where I'm talking about this. Values has pervaded the D&T National Curriculum. It's been the very key part of the design technology until the last one. Now, I'm not blaming the people who were involved in developing the National Curriculum. I can't, because I was in that room.

Alice Hellard: 38:49

That was like the second or third. Oh God, tell me about it, it would still be.

Alison Hardy: 38:58

DIY and bike maintenance and doing flower ranging which was an interpretation of part of it to participate successfully in increasingly technological world. And that increasingly technological world is kind of denying the past.

Alice Hellard: 39:16

Yeah.

Alison Hardy: 39:17

And what you've been talking about is looking I mean, even if that past is just yesterday is looking at objects, artifacts, product systems what you want to call them that are imbued with all of these different things that are there if we go looking at them with these different lenses on and our own awareness of our own subjectivity, which is something to teach.

Alice Hellard: 39:43

Yeah, to children, yeah, and I think you know one of the things that well, I suppose the thing to kind of remember is that I am really keenly trying to draw attention to how our own values and beliefs are impacted by institutional or kind of you know. Well, that's to take institutional, for example, institutional values and beliefs within that museum setting. But equally, it is possible to think about how our own values and beliefs as teachers also influence the vibe and the understanding of our classroom. So that's one way in which we can maybe translate from that kind of you know yeah, back into the classroom. Right, the classroom, yeah.

Alison Hardy: 40:51

So I think we've probably given people who are listening plenty to think about, or you have, as before, made me think and think about the fact that I do some of these things anyway. But was that because I went through the education system at a time when not so much that I was taught about values, but more when I was teaching? Because I started to teach when the National Correction came in and it was a key part?

Alice Hellard: 41:26

It's interesting because I've also, you know, values and beliefs and those some things are also really important in my teaching. But I've always studied religion, yeah, since school, you know, and I've always kind of not been a sort of religious person. You know practicing, so I wonder how much that comes into what I'm doing as well. You know, I've always been interested in driven by the ethics and values.

Alison Hardy: 41:56

Yeah, yes, yeah, you think about me, about that Brin. Yes, yes, I was a serious church goer and my family are very, my parents particularly. Yeah, how much that influenced Cricky.

Alice Hellard: 42:12

Okay, I'm going to stop now because I don't think my brain can cope with anymore.

Alison Hardy: 42:16

Thanks, alice, and hopefully we'll come back for a third with somebody who's willing to come on and explore the practicalities of what does the pedagogy look like?

Alice Hellard: 42:24

Yeah, and what's it doing in the classroom.

Alison Hardy: 42:27

And that's an open invite to anybody in primary or secondary, if we haven't already found anybody. But yeah, let's continue the conversation. So thanks, ever so much, alice.

Alice Hellard: 42:34

Yeah, brilliant, thanks, alison, thanks, Thanks, alison, thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks Thanks.