- What is your project focus?
I have been experimenting with using Miro in my teaching to support the opening up of dialogical space with a large cohort of 50 students. This ARP will focus specifically on how it can be employed with Industry Talks for this purpose.
- How can the use of Miro in the classroom turn FCP Industry Talks from a passive ‘lecture’ experience, into an ‘active’ one which fosters student participation and opens up a dialogical space?
- What other scaffolding and adjustments to the classroom space can be made to an Industry Talks session to improve student engagement?
Forging connections to industry is key to Stage 2, so it will also be an opportunity to get more insight into what FCP students want and need from Industry interactions.
- How can this research also be an opportunity to better understand what FCP students want and need from Industry Interactions?
Unit 8 runs alongside, which focuses on Professional Development and includes a speaker programme. However, this Unit covers all Fashion Pathways. Last year, Fashion Communication students identified the need for more FCP specific practitioners, and within the team we have discussed how we can address this in Unit 7.
Why am I interested in this topic? What is the Social Justice angle?
Freire describes a horizontal approach to education, generated through dialectical engagement of teacher and students, which is fundamental to generating authentic thinking – in opposition to the ‘banking’ model of education, where students are treated as passive ‘deposits to be filled’.
“Through dialogue, a problem posing pedagogy creates the conditions for new pedagogical relationships to emerge, where teachers are also students and students are also teachers” (1)
I am looking for new ways to create dialogical space with a class of 50 students, which can be challenging.
“Teacher’s voices tend to have authority within dialogic spaces but they can use that authority to open up possibilities for learners to speak”
I am motivated by an interest in fostering active vs passive learning.
‘Students need to be engaged in an active process of meaning making if they are to retain and ‘understand’ what they are being taught”
- What are you going to read about?
Research Methods
- Focus Groups – Using Miro
- Post Event Survey
Themes
- Dialogical Spaces
- Classroom formations
- Student centered talks / Active Lectures
- Blended learning tools for the classroom
- What action are you going to take in your teaching practice?
Research: A Survey on Industry Talks
Action: Explore a new approach using Miro /adapt classroom set up which will encourage student participation in the talks.
- Who will be involved and how?
I will invite full class participation via a survey and an Industry Talks Day.
- Use Miro for a pre-session task, with information on the speakers one week before the event
- Experiment with classroom furniture to break down hierarchies between speaker and audience
- Engage students in tasks to support event production – call out for 2/3 student volunteers ahead of the event
- Prepare a Post event survey to gauge success
- What are the health & safety concerns, and how will you prepare for them?
- Bera Guidelines
- Identify potential risks such as physical, social or psychological distress to participants and researchers, whether directly or indirectly involved
- 6. How will you protect the data of those involved?
- informing participants about how their data will be used, shared and retained, as well as their rights
- Privacy / Data storage – password protected university folders
- Minimising the use of personally identifiable data wherever possible
- Having in place safeguards to protect the data of research participants
- Discussing the uses of the data with students, as co-researchers – so together we can decide on appropriate uses
- How will you work with your participants in an ethical way?
- treating participants with respect
- identifying with participants’ needs, experiences and concerns
- treating participants as partners in the research, rather than as data sources
- being aware of power imbalances between researcher and participants
- making an effort to connect the academic research world with the participants’ world in the FCP Classroom
- Consider and discuss dual roles as teacher and researcher
References
1. Darder, A. (2024) The Student Guide to Freire’s ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
2.What is ‘Dialogic space’? (no date a) Rupert Wegerif. Available at: https://www.rupertwegerif.name/blog/what-is-dialogic-space (Accessed: 10 July 2024).
3. Thinking together – learning through and for dialogue (2023) 21st Century Learners. Available at: http://21stcenturylearners.org.uk/?page_id=1228 (Accessed: 13 July 2024).