Bonni: [00:00:00] Today on episode number 173 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast I’m so honored to have joining me today David Webster and Nicola Rivers.

Production Credit: [00:00:13] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni: [00:00:22] Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our personal productivity so we can have more peace in our lives can be even more present for our students.

Bonni: [00:00:49] Today I am joined by two guests David Webster and Nicola (Nikki) Rivers. David is currently head of learning and teaching innovation at the University of Gloucestershire and teaches Religion, Philosophy and Ethics courses there too. His academic background is in Buddhist Philosophy but he also teaches in western philosophy contemporary spirituality- in 2012 he published the book Dispirited. He’s interested in e-learning but also in how we conceptualize the role of the learner the tutor and higher education in general.

Bonni: [00:01:29] Nikki is a lecturer in English at the University of Gloucestershire. She has research interests and post-feminism transnational feminism popular culture post-colonial theory and feminist literary and cultural theory. She’s the author of Postfeminism(s) and The Arrival of the Fourth Wave: Turning Tides. David and Nikki, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Nikki: [00:01:56] Hi there.

Bonni: [00:01:57] David. As you already know I have been following you on Twitter for some time and enjoying your collegiality there and all that you have to contribute. Nikki I apologize I have not done as much with you but I’m really grateful that David has introduced me to you and that we get to have this conversation today.

Bonni: [00:02:14] But I wanted to admit to each of you that when I read I started to just the very very beginning part of the blog post that David thought we might frame our conversation today. I got a little bit scared. You’re going to today give us a lot to think about in thinking critically about resisting resilience and to me I thought oh gosh because so much of resilience and helping our students have more grit. A lot of that is really born out of a movement to care more deeply about our students.

Bonni: [00:02:52] So I thought we might start out today with just before we even get into our concerns about it. What is resilience? What is Grit? What does growth mindset? What is a little bit of the background here of some of the thinking that’s going on here? And then of course we’re going to flip it to what are some of your concerns – but let’s just start out with what you what are you hearing what are you reading about what resilience is what grit is and growth mindset.

David: [00:03:18] Absolutely. I’ll perhaps start out for a minute or so. We see an awful lot of writing both in education but also more broadly, culturally I think about the idea of great the idea that people need to be able to too tough in some respect, cope with things that people are more able to cope with failure- that gives them certain advantages.

David: [00:03:39] And that really transfers over into the notion of resilience that somebody who is resilient bounces back. Somone who is able to be not thrown by life to something challenging and problematic. To still cope and to still to a large extent thrive.

David: [00:03:55] So these are seen as benign character attributes to have, I think. We’re not necessarily going to argue that is always bad some these character attributes. We’re really interested in and – as you’ll see – quite critical about the way in which they get deployed within education and often they get plenty of being a panacea to a whole range of problems that we think may eclipse.

David: [00:04:18] The other one. The other member that tried that you mentioned Bonni was the growth mindset. This idea that there are two fundamental mindsets. A kind of fixed mindset where you believe that your intelligence is a fixed quantity.

David: [00:04:31] And a growth mind set where you believe you’re able to become more skilled by doing various things. And that is a kind of semi or quasi neurological account of intelligence which is very – I think very enchanting to people working in education. It’s become very popular.

David: [00:04:49] But certainly I’ve begun to notice that my students were being – we’re talking about resilience when we seem to be being presented with it as a potential solution to a range of difficulties they found. I think you perhaps came across, Nikki, in a slightly different way.

Nikki: [00:05:05] Yeah I suppose interesting I was having a conversation with a colleague just yesterday about this kind of stuff and he said I’m really interested in your critique of resilience but you need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. I thought I mean I don’t think in any way either of us are saying that being resilient is a bad thing or having grit is a bad thing.

Nikki: [00:05:27] For me growth mindset is slightly different. I have yet to encounter anyone with a fixed mindset. So to me it is a slightly false dichotomy. I think in terms of resilence- So the issue comes when you let people be more resilient rather than questioning why they need to be more resilient. I guess I guess that’s where the critique comes in.

David: [00:05:47] Certainly our inital concerns with it were preceded by kind of seeing it flourish as a notion so much so that you can find the notion of grit in all sorts of different areas. People could describe themselves as the grit doctor and recommend and say it can solve things in a way that is very much redolent of self-help books.

David: [00:06:09] So these we see that sometimes as a movement – as self-help language in the educational setting.

Bonni: [00:06:16] As I mentioned, I have been reading so many of your tweets and blogs over the years. I think I feel it’s been years now David, since I started following you on Twitter. So I feel like I already know your heart and care but people listening maybe if they have not heard of you or heard of Nikki before would you each share a little bit about your own teaching philosophy when it comes to care and concern for your students.

David: [00:06:43] I’m happy to. And I think what I hope comes from this conversation we’re having and certainly from say from online and other contexts is very kind of a humane approach to learning. We see students as individuals.

David: [00:06:56] And one of the things we might an opportunity toward the end of the conversation today is talk about alternative ways of framing or conceptualizing students attributes are that we think might be more benign. And one thing I think is often seen as negative or can be framed as negative in this kind of resilient context is vulnerability.

David: [00:07:18] So we are quite keen – we kind of re-lionize vulnerability and openness and hopefully have a learning and teaching environment in which students feel is emotionally open. They can be safe spaces. We can discuss really kind of problematic things and it’s OK for both me and students not to understand things, not to get things and I’m not trying to toughen them up in that sense. But I’m trying to allow them to explore what it means to be them through the subject matter that I’m working with them.

Nikki: [00:07:49] Yeah I mean similar to David, I obviously haven’t haven’t been teaching as long so I’m still kind of early career probably for five years of teaching experience. But I’m increasingly concerned with how anxious our students are and the kind of pressures that are placed upon them.

Nikki: [00:08:07] I don’t know as much about the American context but the kind of focus on employability which from my sort of position is is an important though perhaps not particularly welcome focus, in as much as they are anxious about being employed.

Nikki: [00:08:22] But where it kind of dovetails with resilience is I think the fear for me is that we’re kind of pushing the blame onto them. If they they leave universities still being unemployable and I’m not sure that that’s how it should work, really.

Nikki: [00:08:36] It also kind of marries in with this broader discourse around students, or millennials or a certain generation of always being presented as lacking something that’s kind of lacking drive or lacking ambition, or being lazy or not being tough enough. So yeah I suppose I completely see where you’re coming from with the fact that a lot of people pushing a resilience agenda are doing that from a positive place. But I suppose my take on it is that it’s actually compounding a problem rather than offering any solution.

Bonni: [00:09:07] Those labels really do come through to them I’m teaching in this class. That’s a personal leadership and productivity class and one of the things that they were assigned to do early in the semester was what is called an ideal week template which was originally introduced to me by Michael Hyatt who’s a blogger leadership blogger and they put down an ideal week would look like if they weren’t in school. But I mean given their priorities given their goals what would a typical week look like. That was framed around their priorities and their values and what’s important to them.

Bonni: [00:09:41] And that the reason I bring that up is I have a pretty good idea how all 17 of them are spending their time this semester because I’m getting to know them really well and I’m seeing their schedules and how they’re managing their tasks and things like that.

Bonni: [00:09:54] And just the other day it came up with someone saying something about being lazy because he was watching Netflix for a few hours on a weekend. And I interupted him and I was like, “I’ve seen your schedule you have two jobs. I don’t even I don’t know how you wake up. You’re not sleeping enough.”

Bonni: [00:10:12] I would never describe [him] as lazy but those labels really do come through around millennials and in the post that you each collaborated on I’ll be linking to in the show notes. But you have all these things that people have blamed on millennials for having broken.

Nikki: [00:10:27] Yeah. Yeah. I mean part of the thing is that you know that’s such a kind of broadly how this discourse goes – It’s almost amusing – but I think the people that those labels are attached to really genuinely feel that. And that’s part of the issue. I don’t know of anyone who works harder than my student. Most of them hold down one two job, some of them have caring responsibilities and I guess in that sense they are deeply resilient people with tons of grit so offering them training in that area seems to be infantilizing them or acting like they’re lacking in an area that they’re actually excelling in already.

Bonni: [00:11:03] One of the big concerns that you express is this student blaming and you wrote resilience also works to shift the focus from challenging the multiple social and structural barriers students face to instead suggesting the only barrier to success is the students themselves. What is then presented as an unequivocally good thing to be resilient is actually offering another way to fail. Another way to be blamed. How are we blaming students when we focus on resilience?

David: [00:11:37] I mean I think I recognize that very idea that things that we must have written.

Bonni: [00:11:43] Yes. Yes. I’m quoting you. Yes. Yes. Yes. [laughing]

David: [00:11:46] But my sense is that when we- when students fail and some of them will fail when they leave or when they don’t thrive in the way that they expect to thrive. They don’t necessarily get the job that they’ve been dreaming of straight away. Or for some time or whatever it might be.

David: [00:12:02] This discourse often seems to very much internalize on their behalf the idea that the only factor which is responsible for their success is how they perform – how gritty they are, tough they are, with how well they can fake it.

David: [00:12:14] And sometimes you get – I think there’s a term for it – kind of inspiration [?] For this kind of label. There are nice sunsets on Tumblr or on social media saying all you need to do to succeed is to believe in yourself. So what we find is that many of our students are incredibly resourceful hardworking full of resilience and grit and still don’t succeed. Some do.

David: [00:12:35] Some don’t. But there were so many other factors that were involved in one’s own success in the world. So the idea that the successful failure of individuals is purely down to their own efforts and that any failing is a failing of theirs is really problematic and is part of kind of an metitocratic myth that we sell students to think that they are parallel to ours.

Nikki: [00:13:01] I suppose I would add. I’m not sure that I mean I think student shaming is a big factor certainly in [?] and in the way that we sometimes people sometimes discuss their student. But I think in this instance it’s as much about setting them up to blame themselves. It’s as much about abdicating responsibility rather and insisting they take responsibility for their own success in a way that certainly those of us who are invested in our own research and looking at kind of issues of meritocracy, feminism, gender equality and racial equality know not to be true. And so the blame is what I think as Dave said it’s more about forcing them to internalize that critique.

Bonni: [00:13:44] Earlier today I recorded a monthly Q&A podcast on my husband’s podcast and a woman had written in and she aspires to grow and move up in the hierarchy in her organization and my husband ended up answering her question first because she said you know essentially she was asking how do I have more executive presence. That’s not the word that she used but that’s to be more concise what she was asking about.

Bonni: [00:14:10] And so we had some ideas for her and I’m sitting on the other side of the table. Kind of, he doesn’t know this but I’m sort of seething because I had just been preparing to speak with both of you and I’m thinking and I did say I did say this but I was maybe not quite as blunt as I’m about to be.

Bonni: [00:14:28] But I said, “Oh great. You can take on all these masculine qualities that these male CEOs have because we just have an abundance of them here in the United States. And it’s not actually going to work because the studies would indicate that if we females tried to take on masculine qualities we actually have a very revolting experience for the people they don’t receive it as well from a woman so you can try to be more confident than you’ll be seen as arrogant and cocky and you can try all these things.”

Bonni: [00:14:58] So that’s sort of what I heard out of what you’re saying is that first of all it doesn’t take into consideration enough of the other factors that come in besides resilience.

David: [00:15:11] Absolutley. And one of the things I want to go on to say is we are but one thing that operates as part of this discourse is it tends because it focuses so much more individuals like that they might succeed or not. It almost treats oppression, inequality, discrimination as being something that can’t ever change. Because the world is unfair because the words tough, the words mean, you need to toughen up to face it.

David: [00:15:37] Rather than thinking as educators what would it take to have a world that wasn’t like that. Where we didn’t treat inequality like the weather. Something that can’t be helped. So I think I think is much more of a open problematic question for educators. Rather than saying we just need to slightly give our students a different set of attributes. I think well actually – how do we make our students go out in a different world in which they don’t need to take on these qualities and often it doesn’t work anyway.

Nikki: [00:16:05] Yeah I mean well I’m really glad that’s what you took from our post and our stuff, because that was certainly in there and from my perspective. And I guess that also highlights the fact that resilience and grit aren’t equal across certainly across genders or across race or across class. And they’re also quite gendered terms themselves.

Nikki: [00:16:27] You know kind of a gritty woman would be received in a different way than the gritty guy. And so then if we’re going to persist with resilience training these are all things that need to be thought out more clearly and more explicitly rather than just pushing forward that this of implicit quite masculine idea that just tough it out and you’ll eventually make it.

Bonni: [00:16:48] I really got a lot out of I believe it was a footnote at the bottom of your post but you said the authors are not against employability both having had experience of unemployment and are acutely aware that students will be facing realities where they need to demonstrate their employability. Our reluctance to be gung ho advocates of resilience is also drawn from the need to be open about the current economic environment and the opportunities available even if a student has the right attitude mindset and toughness.

Bonni: [00:17:21] There is no guarantee of success further having quote the right attitude of mindset and toughness is not an authentic set of tangible outcomes to demonstrate to an employer. Are not actual skills that really resonated with me and I wonder if you would discuss a little bit where you think we can be helpful in higher ed thinking about employability and building skills and then where we need to be reluctant to fully embrace that?

David: [00:17:51] Certainly. I think it’s interesting you pick on that kind of thing because we felt the need to kind of point out that she was quite interested in our students doing well and thriving. We genuinely really care about them and want them to succeed in various ways they can.

David: [00:18:04] And one of the problems with this kind of discourse in its very crass version is it is like kind of a Wild West kind of parody of masculinity. Just toughen up and be on your own. [?] everyone else. And the world isn’t like that. An awful lot of employees – there are exceptions. But, there are some people who can get on well with the people, who can be trusted who can trust other people, who can use that to empathize with other people.

David: [00:18:29] There are an awful lot of things that you might consider to be more genuine skills that people might feel more happy to embrace. More ethically open to taking on – that aren’t as problematic at all. But at least from my perspective is that there are there are optimistic ways to kind of travel from this particular – and it starts with this discomfort and dis-ease with these kind of notions in the form they are very previlent in and I hope we can drive in this sort of more optimistic direction.

Nikki: [00:19:02] Yeah. I mean I suppose I can kind of critiquing resilence by by being an early career searching kind of precarious and not unemployed or underemployed that you know working long hours doing lots of stuff for free and a lot of very well-meaning very decent very good kind people who are saying to me Don’t give up hope, be resilient, keep going. And that’s fantastic. And it’s encouraging.

Nikki: [00:19:29] But it’s also quite difficult when you are surviving on meager wages working long hours trying to support a family. And so that was kind of one of the things that made me think actually this is well-intentioned discourse is is not as benign as it seems.

Nikki: [00:19:45] And I suppose in terms of employability I’ve worked a lot with students on employability, taught a lot of skills modules. I think it’s something that academics need to take seriously as I say because students are rightly anxious about their employment opportunities. I guess one of the places that I think we can go with this and somewhere certainly David and I are starting to go with the paper we are writing up. Is trying to think more broadly about how we define success and how we define failure. And having more honest conversations with our students about what what that means for them and how to kind of really re-think these ideas.

Bonni: [00:20:25] How are you starting to reshape that conversation with your students? What are you finding as you start to introduce the word success and how loaded it is as you share that with your students?

David: [00:20:40] In a way I’m almost lucky I’m looking in lots of ways but in in teaching terms I tend to teach philosophy students who probably haven’t come to university in order to make their fortune and therefore are already kind of very open to conversations about what it is they’re here for.

David: [00:20:56] What kind of people are they aspiring to become? So in a sense that’s an easy conversation perhaps with a student and a tutor who’s got a group of accounting students or something or business management students but I think nonetheless you still have open conversations about what would it look like for them to be successful. What they actually want to get out of university.

David: [00:21:16] And I actually for many people irrespective of their in the back of their minds about employment or about how do you get a job. There is something also about doing it partly to transform selves into somebody different who they left home they left you know they have a school life behind and they kind of they use it as a transition to adulthood. Kind of crafting who they are going to become partly through the means of education.

David: [00:21:42] So I’m very interested in this idea of them working with me but also with each other, working out the boundaries of how other people interact with the people. I think there’s an awful lot you can do to help them have those conversations and help me better not hopefully drive down the idea of thinking they need to do down there their classmates in order to be the one that succeeds.

Nikki: [00:22:04] Yeah I suppose it’s in certain things I teach – if I’m doing all skills modules or this stuff – one of the things I really I try and get across to students who want a Bachelors or a lesser degree is how impressed with them I already am. You know just how successful I think they already are to be in the position that they’re in to be working as hard as they are.

Nikki: [00:22:29] And I suppose to sometimes obviously you kind of if you give an employability workshop and you focus on that employability is a really tricky thing and the economy is quite difficult and jobs are scarce and there’s all these things kind of stacked against you, they can leave feeling slightly disheartened. So one of the things I try and do then is just talk to them about how they are in it together. If they think about being in it together rather than as Dave says locked in this competitive mindset. So share resources and share ideas and hopefully start creating something better.

Bonni: [00:23:04] When we get closer to graduation I do try to always carve out time in my classes to have conversations about identity. A lot of times the students haven’t really done a lot of deep thinking about that and they’re about to have their identity ripped from them of being a student.

Bonni: [00:23:21] And for some they will immediately be able to replace that with perhaps an ill fitting perhaps not you know idea of what it means to be an adult even though I consider them adults when they’re in college but they often don’t consider themselves adults.

Bonni: [00:23:35] And then all the pressures that that brings and I try to talk about if you fall into this hamster wheel of life you’re never you’ve never checked in off enough boxes because yes you may get that job when you graduate according to the timing that people say you are to or you feel like they’re saying.

Bonni: [00:23:54] But then it’s when are you going to get married and when are you going to have a child. What about the next child. I mean it’s it’s it that never stops is that pressure that you’re not done yet. And then how often do we just sit with ourselves and and realize who we are without all those external strappings. I’m not saying it very well right now about this. It really does. Often we have to think hard about this word success.

Bonni: [00:24:16] And then also about timing that makes it so hard because they’ve been indoctrinated with this idea of whether it’s terms or semesters or however the classes are measured in terms of weeks. And I checked off that box and I got that grade and everything is so measured and inputs and outputs you know they’re just sort of trained in that.

Bonni: [00:24:38] And then that immediately goes away and it’s really hard to adjust and then as you pointed out earlier in our conversation there oftentimes isn’t support. There’s not the social support to be around people that are experiencing the same thing.

David: [00:24:52] And I think that’s made worse when the expectation is that they are going to be fine – all by themselves completely alone and that the goal is to thrive alone – this idea that they need other people is something that most of us would want really to inform Students. Think about how they can cope with the world beyond university together not as individuals.

David: [00:25:15] And I think you’re right that part of education ideally should be a chance for them to think about what they want to do with their lives and your life is very short. They soon are going to go these various things then this will be over. And why are they using educational opportunities to reflect on what they want to do with their life.

David: [00:25:36] Do you want to get on this career road or do they want to go down other routes, which might also be fine. So in terms of thinking about what success looks like for them this equation has kind of a big role to play. Tutors, course leaders, people they see regularly often have the ability to chat to – talk to have some responsibilities there to allow them to reflect what the point is for them rather than what the point is for the people to impose on them.

Nikki: [00:26:04] Yeah. I mean I agree I think that when life becomes a kind of checklist or that’s never really success if you just always rushing from one one goal to the next.

Nikki: [00:26:15] I think it’s really interesting to talk to students about identity that is something that I do with an awful lot. Talk about what shapes their identity. And in fact just the other day I was talking to a group of students about notions of the self of true self and if there is such a thing. And they say well I’ll know – my true self is when I’m happiest so if I’ve got the job I want, or the – and all of the stuff that they link to happiness are kind of external. And… I don’t… I don’t judge that.

Nikki: [00:26:42] I’m quite understanding of the fact that a good job means that you can afford to eat well and you can afford to feed your children. You know there’s all sorts of things that come off that rather than just that you know that’s an awful capitalistic ideal. So I don’t think that either David or I are at all invested in in judging students who view success in that kind of monetary or fashion or you know… But I think it is also about helping them to see success in smaller things.

David: [00:27:12] Yes I want to say hopefully they will have things externally that allows them to be happy and find things to do that. But also a reflection on kind of intrinsic things that make them happy as well. While I don’t think that having that rooted in the things they can’t control it that way which makes me sound awfully like Greeks stoic philosopher [?].

Bonni: [00:27:32] Before we go to the recommendation segment. I wanted to make sure and leave some space for you to talk about alternative ways of framing students. I know you’ve you’ve mentioned some already but I just want to make sure and leave space for that before we transition to the next part. So what would you like to share about what your hopes are for how we might change this conversation.

David: [00:27:53] Certainly think that questioning the discourse and having that conversation in the open with colleagues is quite important within institutions is quite important. Making sure that if we do feel there is something to be gained within training students to be more resilient. That that is a more nuanced and sophisticated context so we understand what we’re doing what we’re up to.

David: [00:28:15] But also making sure we don’t go down this route of the cross notion of the wild west masculinity or whatever it might be and talk to other qualities that might develop to do with compassion to do with collegiality to do with vulnerability and these things are really important.

David: [00:28:30] And you know when we were writing a recent presentation on this we ended up thinking of Paulo Freire and a liberative pedagogy – ways of teaching and also reading lots of bell hooks and teaching to transgress to what education is the practice of freedom of thinking. Actually there’s a much better way to frame the system starts with the purpose of education and work from there rather than starting with people’s anxieties and kind of becoming more anxious. Result.

Nikki: [00:29:00] Yeah. I mean I suppose to add to that. I don’t want to misquote that would be an awful thing to do. But I think that part of the stuff that she talks about and that is that we need to be in in order to have this to aspire to this kind of freedom we need to be honest with our students.

Nikki: [00:29:16] And I think I think that most of the difficulty in this situation is in being honest with students. That isn’t to say in a way that doesn’t just say this is all going to nothing. It is going to fail so don’t try you know because that isn’t where we’re coming from. More just to say just to equip them with the tools to look externally as well as internally to look at the factors that are influencing what’s going on around so that they don’t leave with the burden the feeling like they are always lacking.

Bonni: [00:29:48] Well I’m looking forward to reading more of what you both work on together and just thank you for starting this conversation today. This is the point in this show where we each get to give some recommendations. And I just wanted to mention to listeners I had. I can’t believe I got myself into this but I think at the end I’m going to be excited that I decided to do this.

Bonni: [00:30:08] But there’s actually two conferences that are happening here in Orange County where I live. Orange County, California. And it seemed I would be so disappointed if I didn’t just find a way to carve out the time to be there and there I saw a lot of people that I know from Twitter but I’ve never met in person that are going to be there so I just wanted to mention if anyone listening is going to be at the OpenEd conference in Anaheim California on October 12th through 13th. Please stop by and say hi and seek me out. You can tweet me tweet on me tweet me on Twitter. That was a tongue twister there.

Bonni: [00:30:42] And for those of you who can’t be there which is probably most of you listening I just wanted to make sure that we all remember that there often are opportunities to still connect with conferences like this through virtual connecting. We’ve talked about this before on the show but they are planning on being at OpenEd 17.

Bonni: [00:31:00] What that means is that you could go connect and actually whether it’s watch a session while it’s happening or I always find even better is these hallway conversations where you can hear from some of the keynote and other presenters that will be sharing there and have more of an informal conversation like we do on this podcast so I’ll be putting a link in the show notes to virtually connecting so you can find out not just about OpenEd but it seems almost every week they’re at a different conference and connecting people who are not able to be there in person with people who are and is just a really great experience.

Bonni: [00:31:34] I have experienced it on the side of being the one in front of my computer and this will be the first time I’ll be experiencing it where I’m actually there on site. It’s going to pass it over to David now for his recommendation.

David: [00:31:46] Sure. I want to recommend a book which is certainly relevant to what we’re talking about and I’m enjoying it and it’s an autobiography or memoir by the British comedian and writer I guess, Rober Webb. The books called How Not to Be a Boy. It’s a kind of story of his upbringing. The reason I thought it was relevant to this is it’s an account of growth in a similar time to when I grew up in Britain in the 1970’s and it’s all about masculinity and what it is to be kind of inculcated into culture being male and the late 20s and early 21st century his attempts to reject that or to kind of get a question about that discourse.

David: [00:32:27] So I think it’s very easy and it’s very kind of relaxing simple straightforward read but there’s more to it than meets the eye in terms of getting into the grip under the surface of what all boys are told they must be like in order to survive.

Bonni: [00:32:40] Well it sounds lovely. Thank you, got that one down for for the show and also for myself selfishly. And Nikki what do you have to share today.

Nikki: [00:32:50] I guess I’ve got a couple of books as well. I think the first book is so widely recommended but I can’t not recommend it myself also would be Sarah Ahmed’s Living a Feminist Life, which I just think is just resonates across everything that we say in almost all of the things that we researched we think that is really something that shouldn’t be missed by anyone with any interest in any of this stuff it just gets you a meritocracy or gender or even just content the culture.

Nikki: [00:33:20] And the second thing with be Jo Littler’sbook Against Meritocracy which is fantastic and I’m still half way through it and really enjoying it it’s a really insightful and really accessible look at how this myth of meritocracy functions across various areas of culture and the kind of damage that can do.

Bonni: [00:33:41] I’m so excited about all three of these recommendations on the list just gets longer of things I really want to read they all sound really wonderful. Thank you so much.

David: [00:33:49] Pleasure.

Bonni: [00:33:50] Well I just want to before we close the show just say thank you so much for investing your time and not only are you investing the time in terms of minutes but this is night time for you and you. Have carved out a space to be a part of this conversation I just really want to express my gratitude to each of you.

David: [00:34:08] Well thank you thank you for coming and talking with us. Get people interested in some of the things we’ve been working about.

Nikki: [00:34:13] Yeah thank you. It’s great to hear your take on things. The stuff you got from the book and the things we’ve been doing. Been really interesting.

Bonni: [00:34:22] Oh my goodness. Even more books that sound amazing to read and add to my list. Those sounded great and I really appreciate both Nikki and David for participating in this conversation. And I love the word that David used as he suggested alternatives for talking about resilience is to also have that nuance in there so that we don’t get the blaming that they describe so well.

Bonni: [00:34:48] And just thanks to both of you for being on the episode again and to everyone listening. I feel like we’re having a conversation and it’s just great I’m hearing from more of you whether it’s over email or Twitter and just really treasure to hear and read what it is you’re experiencing out of the show and how you’re able to put it into practice in your own pedagogy.

Bonni: [00:35:06] Thank you so much for all those opportunities and share the show with a friend if you haven’t talked about it with your colleagues maybe send an e-mail because it just grows the community even more. I’ll see you next time. Thanks for listening.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.