This reflection is about the need for inclusivity in education.  Earlier this year I had a job interview for the University for a Permanent Position and in order to prepare for this I read MMU’s education strategy.  The education strategy emphasises the need to ensure that to make lectures and teaching sessions as inclusive as possible  in order to ensure that students learning needs were met in the best possible way.

It is important for me to have as a wide as possible definition of diversity; Hockings (2010) states  ‘Diversity’ is used by some to refer more specifically to groups of students traditionally under-represented in HE, the so-called ‘non-traditional’ or ‘widening participation’ students. These include working class, mature and some ethnic minority students, often with no history of higher education in their families’ (2010:2) This is of particular importance for the social work degree programs as students are often from diverse socio cultural, ethnic and class backgrounds as well as educational backgrounds and, given this, it is vital that students aren’t excluded from learning because of their background or experience.

Williams (1967) writes of education’s general ability to exclude on the basis of intellectual ability and its subsequent perpetuation of class inequality, and there are clear issues with encouraging people from diverse backgrounds to go to university.  Forsyth and Furlong (2003) found that students whose parents attended university were more likely to attend themselves, and students from disadvantaged backgrounds were less likely to have parents who had attended university.  Whilst I did not believe that if students were from a working class background or a background that was unrepresented in HE would be less able to learn from a lecture it has seemed to me essential to account for the fact that I would have a group of students who had previously diverse experiences of education and learning.

In order to promote inclusivity as part of my teaching I felt it could be helpful to move away from sessions that are only based around lectures.  As French and Kennedy (2016) indicate, the lecture can be a beneficial way of delivering learning , in allowing teachers to provide a sustained narrative and to help develop skills such as active listening.  Conversely, there is, ‘There is strong support in educational literature that students develop their understanding of concepts and best retain knowledge by engaging with so-called ‘active learning’ methods that include problem solving and critical thinking.’ (2016:10)

My own reflection, based on my initial year of lecturing, is that students have a better learning experience when there is a range of learning opportunities in each session.  I have observed students being less able to concentrate for lengthy lecture based sessions and when I have sought feedback from students it has been apparent that some students gain from there being a variety of learning opportunities in each session.

Analysis

I was to deliver a session about what social justice is with students from my BA1 group.  In addition to a short introductory lecture to the session I asked students to bring in an object, that represented social justice for them. Schultz (2012) states “interaction with artefacts deepens students’ learning”(2012:66) Students were invited to share their object with the person sat next to them, write down why they felt that their object represented social justice and then pass the post it to someone random in the group who would then share it with the group.

The reason for this last part of the exercise was to maximise the potential for student participation  as students would feel free to read out what was on their post it note.     Whilst I cannot objectively prove that this session met all the needs of a diverse set of students, what was clearly observable was that this session worked extremely well.  All students were extremely engaged with the task, as I went around the group there was a good deal of conversation about the objects, students were enjoying the discussion and the exercise and all had bought relevant and in some cases extremely powerful examples.  For example, the student who bought a swimming costume to illustrate how children from financially poorer backgrounds are discriminated against, by the ending of free out of school swimming lessons and how equality and child safety can be promoted via provision of free swimming will stay with me for a long time to come.

When I sought student feedback at the end of the session via the use of the one minute paper (https://www.celt.mmu.ac.uk/lectures/try_oneminute.php) the students stated how much an impact this part of the session had had on them.

Action Plan
The plan for as I continue as a teacher is to try and ensure that the sessions that I deliver meet the needs of the diverse set of learners that I am likely to encounter.  The techniques that I use should take into account the differences in educational background and other factors that are likely to have an influence on this such as class, race and gender.  One of the ways in which I hope to be able to do this is to devise sessions that encompass different approaches such as object based learning.

Bibliography

Cooke, R, Barkham, M, Audin, K& Bradley, M (2004) How Social Class Differences Affect Students’ Experience of University, Journal of Further and Higher Education, 28:4, 407-421

French, S and Kennedy, G (2017) Reassessing the value of university lectures, Teaching in Higher Education,22:6,p.639-654, Forsyth, A &

Furlong, A (2003). Access to higher education and disadvantaged young people, British Educational Research Journal, 29: 205–225.

Hockings, C. (2010) Inclusive learning and teaching in higher education: a synthesis of research. York: Higher Education Academy.

MMU (2017) Education Strategy accessed online 10/01/19 https://www2.mmu.ac.uk/education-strategy/

Schultz, D. (2012) Three-Dimensional Learning: Exploring Responses to Learning and Interacting With Artefacts. In: Jandl, S.S. and Gold M.S. (eds.) A handbook for academic museums, exhibitions and educators. Edinburgh: MuseumsEtc, pp. 166-89.

Innovative pedagogies series: Wow: The power of objects in object-based learning and teaching Dr Kirsten Hardie, accessed online https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/system/files/kirsten_hardie_final.pdf http://www.celt.mmu.ac.uk/lectures/creative_teaching.php

Williams, R (1967) The Long Revolution Pelican London

FLEX Reflection one

The activity was an interactive session with students on social class in Social Work. As a result of the feedback of the group that I received, as part of my microteaching session on the ILTA course, I wanted to find a way in order to develop a teaching session that was more visual and more interactive than a traditional lecture based format.

One of the aspects of the ILTA module that had resonated with me the most was when we considered the efficacy of formal lectures in the university as this is how I deliver much of much of my teaching. French and Kennedy (2016) suggest that lectures are ‘as effective, but no more so, than discussion based and other learning methods’(2016:no page no) Using reflection on action (2014:52) I concluded that my teaching should be more participatory for the students, in order to try and enhance their experience. To do this, I invited a local historian and activist to speak to the students on the 1984 miner’s strike, using this as the historical point where neoliberalism was embedded as the main political ideology in the UK.

The second part of the session was self-directed task where the students were to go to the Peoples History Museum to identify an area of social justice that inspired them and then return to Birley to discuss this as a group.

Analysis One of the ways in which I analysed the sessions effectiveness was to use the ‘one minute paper’ (2007) Feedback was largely positive. Students overwhelmingly felt that the lecture worked well This seemed contrary to Freire’s (1993) principles of eschewing the ‘expert teacher’ that is required by a lecture, however, “Research indicates invited guest speakers can build linkages between academia and the practitioner, ….. and greatly enhance student learning” (2005:1). I reflected on this and felt that the difference may have been because the lecturer was a guest who worked outside of mainstream education and who, as someone involved in trade union lead education and  was used to lecturing to a group of students from a variety of different educational backgrounds.

One of the aims of the session of the session was to encourage the students to think critically about the subject of class and neoliberalism. Students had previously done a session on neoliberalism and some of the feedback that I had received was they didn’t properly understand the ideology. The question and answer session was positive. Students engaged, there was a good level of discussion and students seemed to be far more involved than I had expected. I had intended the session to be underpinned by constructivist principles: positing that ‘learning is not simply about adding new knowledge but is about making changes to existing knowledge in order to accommodate new ways of understanding’ (2015 65)

I also wanted students to apply critical thinking skills to the subject. Fry et al (2015) set out that critical thinking is establishing connections between different concepts and how these can be situations and issues in the world. What I was seeking, was to get students to use a historical moment to understand an ideology, which has had such an impact on society, which is where the students, as social workers, will work. As students had previously had teaching on and around this area (but had remained unenlightened) my hope, that this new way of considering neoliberalism, would make sense, appeared to have worked.

For Freire (1993)‘ no one teaches another, nor is anyone self-taught. People teach each other, mediated by the world, by the cognizable objects which in banking education are “owned” by the teacher.’ (1993:54) the interaction and engagement with each other and with the world (that is the guest lecturer and the museum and its collection) was fundamental to the student’s development of their understanding of the subject of Neoliberalism and social class. This was demonstrated by the response that this part of the session received. However, some of the feedback was that students felt that it would have been beneficial for everyone to be involved equally in this part of the session. , Some felt that certain individuals had dominated the discussion. Literature shows that this is a perennial issue in education Karp and Yoels (1976 in 2004) ‘found that regardless of class size the vast majority of contributions to classroom discussion will come from a very small number of students’(2004 2) .My students recommended having group tasks so they could reflect what they had learnt, more fully.

Action Plan Having gained students feedback from the session I have been able to plan for what I would do differently in a session such as this in the future. I feel that the session would benefit from having a more planned task and generally more structure overall Fry et al (2015) state that there is a need to provide structure to group work. I feel that this could co-exist with the social constructivist element of the exercise, which I felt was integral, but would allow for the group having different learning styles.

References Freire, P. (1993) Pedagogy of the Oppressed New York Continuum International

Fook, J, (2014) Social Work: A Critical Approach to Practice 3rd Ed London, Sage

French, S and Kennedy, G (2017) Reassessing the value of university lectures, Teaching in Higher Education,22:6,p.639-654, accessed online 08/01/19 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13562517.2016.1273213

Howard, Jay R. (2004)Discussion in the College Classroom: Jon Wiley San Francisco accessed online on 18/12/2018 https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1163&context=facsch_papers

Light, G and Cox, R (2001) Learning and Teaching in Higher Education The Reflective Professional London Sage

Sniezek, T. (2005). Avoiding the pitfalls of the invited speaker. in Kamoun F and Said S (2007) A Framework Towards Assessing the Merits of Inviting IT Professionals to the Classroom Journal of Information Technology Education Volume 6, 2007Accessed online 08/01/19 https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3b6b/c4ed576cbae32793dc32754bca1189faa22e.pdf

Flex reflection two

I am a social worker on a part time secondment as a teaching consultant on the social work degree program within health and social care. The trigger for this reflection was a lecture that I undertook with BA students this autumn on Community Asset Approach. This is a way of working in social work, which, is a strength-based approach to supporting people to make changes to their own lives through using and utilising their communities. This could be through accessing support from public or private organisations, charities or relationships such as friends, acquaintances and other relationships (2014).

This is a subject that I am familiar with and it is an approach that when working as a social worker. I felt that my lecture went well and that students were engaged but after the lecture I reflected on the session and felt that I could make changes to how the session was delivered which would enhance the learning experience of the students .

Analysis

I had recently completed my micro teaching session for my ILTA module. In line with what I had delivered, which had been a short lecture on Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, I was continuing to reflect on how to make my teaching more interactive and how students could have more opportunity, within these sessions, to interact with the world. My feeling about the lecture on CAA was that it was counter-intuitive to deliver a session on a subject that was intrinsically about community, in the classroom. For me this did not allow students to be, as Freire (2005) states, ‘with the world’ as opposed to ‘in the world’,(2005:74) that is, to have a learning experience where the active participation is stressed, as opposed to one characterised by passivity.

Furthermore, in delivering this teaching I was continuing to follow the model of the ‘expert teacher’  that Freire criticises in his book. In line with Freire’s principles the session would be more horizontal than vertical, that is despite the fact that ‘any social formation –indeed any given object, person or body- is constituted by both vertical and horizontal relations’ (2014:92) (In this case, there remains a degree of verticality as I as the teacher have organised and will be running the session)

A colleague and I devised a session whereby students would take the bus from central Manchester and travel to Stockport along the A6. They would be required to make several stops to try and ascertain what resources they could, and could not, identify in the areas in which they stopped and discuss with members of the communities what they had which was supportive and what they lacked in their respective communities.

Students weren’t provided  any further guidance as the session was organised in a way that allowed students to move towards learning in a way in which ‘…. no one teaches another, nor is anyone self-taught. People teach each other, mediated by the world, by the cognizable objects which in banking education are ” owned” by the teacher. (2005:78)

The students would then be required to return to campus and share their findings about what communities had and what they lacked. Removing the teaching from the classroom and from the strictures of top down teacher lead sessions hopefully leads the students to develop their own ideas and think critically about what it is that they are encountering, in terms of ‘community assets’.

I hope that the session will enable students to ‘identify the obvious and the hidden messages more accurately’ (2005:2). That is, what is and isn’t present in communities for people to use and why this may be (the influence of government imposed austerity and political ideology.) I also hope that from their discussion of ideology students are able to critique this approach and its link with neoliberalism through its devolving of responsibility from the state to communities, that have, in turn already been disenfranchised by neoliberalism (2011)

The session will also allow students to develop additional skills, essential to anyone in HE  but particularly to social work students,  around professionalism and community and will also be in line with MMU University Strategy of integrating students with the communities in which they live and work.

Action plan

The action plan is to deliver a session on community asset approach with students on the social work course. The session will be based on the principles put forward by Freire and social constructivism in general, that students will learn and develop their knowledge through interaction with their environment and the people therein. The idea is to deliver a session that is community based as it centres around a subject that is about community and peoples lived experience therein. It builds on knowledge that students will posses of this area but then develop them as will learn from each other and from the experience they have in the community and will then be able to take this experience and develop it through discussion and interaction back at the campus to think critically about this particular model of working.

Bibliography

Cotterell, S Critical Thinking Skills (2005) Palgrave McMillan London

Freire P Pedagogy of The Oppressed (2005) Continuum New York

Gilbert, J Common Ground (2014) Pluto Press London

Gray, M (2008) Back to Basics A Critique of Strengths Based Perspectives in Social Work in Families in society: the journal of contemporary human services ·No Volume or Page ref available – taken from a PDF

Heather, F, Ketteridge S & Marshall, S (1999)A handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: Enhancing Academic Practice Kogan Page London

MMU University Strategy accessed online on 18/12/2018 https://www2.mmu.ac.uk/about-us/our-strategy/

Payne, M (2014) Modern Social Work Theory Fourth Edition Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton