Background
In Stage One of Spatial Practices this year, we have recently completed the first major design unit which has raised some interesting questions and reflections. Many of my students reported feeling overwhelmed, which is something I hear quite often at the moment. This case study will attempt to identify why this is and what can be done going forward.
Student feedback & responsive strategy
Feedback from students, Brookfield’s second critical lens (Brookfield, 2012), was crucial in identifying some key challenges. Multiple new concepts and tasks were introduced each week, leading to a feeling communicated to me in tutorials as overwhelm. This tallied with my own reflections as it felt as if I was trying to fit too much into my standard weekly one to one tutorials. Tutors were then asked to reflect on the unit prior to a valuable staff feedback session which I thought was well timed. The weekend before the meeting allowed, for the first time perhaps, some deeper reflective ‘helicopter’ thinking (Thompson, 2008) which enabled me to design a minimum learning cycle for the introduction of new topics based on the spiral approach by Jerome Bruner (Bruner, 1960). (see figure 1)
The learning cycle was well received but whether it will be implemented remains to be seen. I feel the above is a more straightforward problem to solve relying on principles of timing, volume and frequency.
My challenge
More challenging were reflections after feedback from my students via my line manager. The overriding feeling from them was of not performing well which added to a sense of pressure, signified by language that I had used which framed the work/engagement as lacking in some way. This was a surprise to me and challenging at the time but has led to some useful reflections in the spirit of Taylor ‘You need courage to look at yourself and your practice because it takes honesty and frankness to move outside your comfort zones’ (Thompson, 2008). Had I been pursuing an approach and a set of behaviours underpinned by the experience of past years and their measurable successes?
Reflections on feedback
It seems important now more than ever to take time to foster a sense of space and belonging by working empathically to support ‘an environment in which everyone feels comfortable expressing themselves and participating fully, without fear of attack, ridicule or denial of experience’ (Aaro, 2013). The pressure faced between short contact time, short project length and lack of weekly outputs made me increasingly involved in decisions students should have been making themselves, essentially robbing them of a sense of autonomy.
Observations from the microteaching
Strategies observed in these sessions engendered some lovely feelings of safety and equality:
- Guidance/feedback modelled best practices instead of highlighting shortcomings in outputs which faced work towards improvement for the future.
- Time was given to participants to process questions allowing the formulation of new ideas.
- Allowing outputs to simply be, without any kind of evaluative analysis encouraged self reflection/regulation rather than doubt or shame.
- Open ended and experimental tasks led to a sense of freedom and playfulness.
- Emphasis on questions rather than answers equalised the tutor/participant dynamic.
- The right amount of instruction engendered more self directed work and fostered a sense of autonomy.
I would like to take these forward into the next design project with my tutor group and test softer and more open ended methodologies in the midst of generating specific and challenging deliverables.
References
- Aaro, B. &. C. K., 2013. From safe spaces. to brave space; a new way to frame dialogue around diversity and social justice. Sterling : Stylus.
- Brookfield, S., 2012. Becoming a critically reflective practitioner. 2nd Edition ed. USA : Jossey-Bass.
- Bruner, J. S., 1960. The process of education. 2nd Edition ed. USA: Harvard University Press.
- Thompson, S. &. T. N., 2008. The critically reflective practitioner. Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan.