Gideon Bohannon

I am an ex-professional modelmaker who now works in higher education. I completed the PGCert Creative Education to gain a pedagogical practice that can enable me to engage my students in my professional knowledge. I wanted to bridge the gap between industry knowledge and understanding how my students learnt from that knowledge to improve the effectiveness of my delivery.

Theory and research have shaped my enquiry and proved to be the mainstay of my outcomes, developing a real interest in reflective practice and how it can help students to get out of stuck states. This exposed the importance of ecologies for learning and established the study I undertook for my final journal article. In a break from my traditional format, I decided to present the study as a video essay, using on screen citations and in a documentary style. This was challenging, filming and editing myself, but I felt I had successfully demonstrated an alternative, academic essay format that I could then disseminate through my students to look at more inclusive assessment methods for critical studies submissions.

The main approach that I have taken through my work is one of challenging the status quo. I have addressed decolonisation issues within reading lists and learning materials and recently presented conference discussions around improving students learning mindset by addressing alternative assessment, specifically an ungraded model. Having been a grade focused student throughout my HE studies this research has significantly adjusted my outlook towards ungrading being beneficial for student learning.

My participation in the PGCert Creative Education has proved to be a watershed moment in my career, enabling enquiry into my practice using critical strategies based on theoretical research and has refined my constructivist, student centred viewpoint. I am looking to progress my teaching and pedagogical research with new subject challenges and higher levels of enquiry in the near future.

My creative practice Instagram is @nanodig