It’s August. I feel the necessity to ‘DO SOMETHING!’, written in scary capitals to illustrate a sense of this need. Despite the fact that we are on a break I have been dipping into where I can go with the ARP. After all the words ‘Action’ with ‘Research’ surely call for some kind of ‘doing’. I have I confess not been doing very much, it is a break after all! I have none the less so far found some readings and written some notes as ‘doing’ and it will all start to fall in to place.
I am also starting to think about the next academic year as I start to teach alongside completing the PG Cert. I am not feeling positive about any kind of ‘Action’ or ‘Research’. Maybe because there are changes afoot at one of the main buildings were I have been teaching. The Foundation Art and Design at Camberwell College part of Chelsea Camberwell and Wimbledon (or CCW as it is more commonly known, another lovely acronym). I feel efforts made there for the past 6 years or so are now being taken out from under me as the course is due to move out of it’s current home and merged with the Central Saint Martins (CSM, had to get it in!) course moving to another college site across London.
On the positive because I believe this is the way forward professionally it’s too easy to feel negative and despondent . The course is now having a syllabus written for it, with more teachers to be added, the classes to be face to face. This, also as the last year for the course to be at it’s current site feels bitter sweet. Efforts made by me have not gone unnoticed over these years and so I am adding to the syllabus design. This is surely progress and for me to be included in how this is planned and thought about is indeed positive.
Now for the BUT! I do feel a sense that after several years (10 + at this stage for me) of graft at UAL learning a great deal about students learner needs and requirements as their learning landscape shifts that at times despite the rhetoric, policy, strategy, discussion formal and otherwise. In that time and gradually it tends to feel like it’s not so much about people as it is about numbers. Literally. Data sets reign supreme. With this in mind I want to really get to grips with what is going on for international students as they are now bring in the funds more so than ever. As such their investments, and more likely their parent’s investment, whilst part of the global trend for internationalisation in education and the gains made for both parties involved. I do think that many international students in reality don’t always have the best experience. By this I mean that there can be a complicity also by both parties that without careful handling creates a vacuum. I want to look at the vacuum. What is going on?
So,
Action Research IDEAS thus far
Workshop – use my artefact? maybe not instead as part of a workshop I could instead ask learners to provide a multi-modal response using a Padlet on how students view learning English at UAL and how this can be developed?
Create a Padlet for all participants to use actively at the beginning or end of classes (almost as a side project/warmer/wind down)
Interview students – Yes, and (maybe) tutors ?
Possible Questions prompts fo students :
- How have you improved your English language skills in the past?
- What skills do you think you could improve now?
- Are there any ways that you improve your English language skills now
- What do you hope to be able to do using the English language this year (at University)?
- How will you do this?
- What do you think of current translation tools?
- Can you see a way to creatively express your use of English?
- ?
- ?
- ?
How can LD tutors facilitate undergraduate Chinese students adapt to a ‘western’ art and design holistic pedagogic approach to study?
Theory – Critical Race Theory )?)/Multi-Modal Pedagogy
MIND MAP IT!
START READING SOMETHING!!
DO SOMETHING!!!