Month: July 2024

Undergraduate students in the Design School at LCC have two dissertation options in their final year of study: CTS3 Route A is a 40 credit unit, where students submit an 8000-10000 word dissertation (Element 1) and a visual artefact representing their research (Element 2); CTS3 Route B is a 20 credit unit where students submit a 4000-5000 word dissertation (Element 1) and a visual artefact (Element 2). Students who choose the second option also need to take another 20 credit unit, usually titled Self-Initiated Project. Over the last few years, attainment has consistently been lower on CTS3 Route B than on Route A, with an awarding gap that varies by course and by cohort. For example, in 2021/2022 academic year the overall attainment on Route A was 60%, while on Route B it was 45.6%. On Route B, the attainment for international students was 36.7%, for home B.A.M.E. students 50% and for home white students 58.8%. (UAL Central Dashboards). The table below (Fig.1) outlines Route A/B attainment differentials for the 3 courses in one of the programmes in the Design School across 4 years.

Figure 1: Overall attainment for Route A and Route B on IDVC courses compiled by CTS staff.

Numerous discussions with colleagues on the causes of this disparity have identified a few possible reasons: students get less contact time with their tutors on the 20 credit unit meaning they have less support; students juggle three different units, with competing demands and deadlines; and students who are less confident with writing and academic research tend to select Route B, fearing the larger word count on Route A, and considering Route B therefore to be the ‘easier’ option. Some of these reflections and anecdotal evidence is supported by secondary research on the role of writing in higher education. For example initiatives that widen participation mean that students may ‘perceive academic cultures as alien to them’ (Chiu, Rodriguez-Falcon, 2018, p.37) and ‘many students  are  not  fully  prepared  for  the  demands  of  academic  writing,  which  is  the  key  assessment tool at universities in the UK’ (Wingate, Andon and Cogo 2011, p.70). Students from lower socio-economic backgrounds may not feel that ‘academic’ success – with reading, writing and research representing ‘traditional’ academic practices – is part of their identity and thus “lower SES students will perceive less compatibility between their social backgrounds and the stereotypes of high achieving students”, which, in turn, may influence their approach to academic study and outcomes (Easterbrook et al, 2022, p.1180).

However, some research challenges this perception of writing as ‘difficult’, which is a common narrative in creative education, especially with neurodivergent students. For example, dyslexic students, do not necessarily perceive writing per se as difficult. While some tasks may be more challenging or take additional time due to the particular nature of their disability, a possible negative experience of writing does not come from this associated difficulty. Rather, it comes from wider contextual factors, often to do with the clarity of the task, tutor and disciplinary expectations (Carter and Sellman, 2013, 155). As Lea and Street have argued, ‘one explanation for problems in student writing might be the gaps between academic expectations and student interpretations of what is involved in student writing’ (1998, 159). It is this reflection that this intervention takes on board and seeks to address.

Taking on board student feedback which consistently identifies the need for more support in the form of tutorials as well as available research[1], over the years, the CTS team has tried to implement many changes to support Route B students, which mostly focused on the pattern of delivery, increasing contact with larger group sizes, introducing different writing formats (report, review, reflection on practice), and providing additional formative submission points to scaffold the students’ journey. However, we have never fundamentally rethought the way CTS3 Route B assignment brief is structured, which has resulted in an essentially identical brief to the Route A unit that simply required to be delivered within a smaller word-count and reduced contact time.

To address this issue, my intervention focuses on redesigning the unit’s project brief. While any formal modifications to the brief are not possible, I believe that providing students with more structured guidance on the task at hand, would allow them to evidence their research and critical thinking skills, without being anxious about the writing format. It would also help them plan and manage their research.

This intervention is important from an intersectional perspective for a range of reasons: it will clarify the aims and expectations of the assignment which will help both students with disabilities as well as those who do not have a disability but may come from less ‘traditional’ academic backgrounds and may feel like they don’t have the skills needed to develop an extended piece of academic writing. It will also support international students, hopefully helping to address attainment for the cohort where English is normally not their first language or where diverse cultural norms arounds modes of writing may impact attainment. It will also empower students from minority ethnic backgrounds to explore their identity and histories within this project, encouraging them to bring their personal voice and research skills to the fore.

I recognise that my approach to this task comes from a particular perspective: I do not have a learning disability and do not know what challenges dyslexic students, for example, may experience in their writing; while English is not my first language, I consider myself to be a fluent speaker; having successfully completed a PhD in history, I could also be seen as coming from a ‘traditional’ academic background. In the course of researching this project many of my assumptions, or narratives that I’ve heard from colleagues, have been challenged, making me see the ‘difficulty’ around writing in a different way.

The intervention focuses on two aspects. The first aspect aims to address the issue of student understanding of assignment expectations. It does so by providing clear guidance on the research approach, structure and content of the final essay. As Chiu and Rodriguez-Falcon have documented, “Often, students are not explicitly made aware of what is expected of them in terms of written assessments nor instructed on how best to fulfil the requirements, thereby compounding the challenges of writing.”  (Chiu, Rodriguez-Falcon, 2018, p.38) By providing a working essay structure, for example, the redesigned project brief shows students very clearly what the expectations are for the final format. The aim of this is not to be prescriptive or formulaic: rather, this structured approach is designed to allow students the freedom to find their own voice, engage in critical debate and evidence their research skills without having to worry about ‘what a dissertation might look like’.

Additionally, such a structured approach also recognises that there are particular disciplinary traditions within the humanities – the broader field within which Design School students are situated – making them explicit to students, rather than expecting they would understand these from previous experience. This also recognises the “Bakhtinian idea that language is ‘interanimated’ with the voices of others” (Bakhtin, 1981 in Carter and Sellman) and, therefore, that writing is socially constructed, where individual identities and positionality of authors needs to be balanced with wider disciplinary expectations. While students are more than welcome to question or negotiate those disciplinary expectations, that can be challenging if those same norms are kept tacit.

The second approach draws from the book Anti-Racism in Higher Education: An Action-Guide for Change, in particular chapter 13 on Curriculum Design. In the text, the authors argue for more flexibility in the curriculum that would allow students to draw connections to their own knowledge and experience (Verma, 2022,129). As the authors argue “in allowing the flexibility of using localised case studies in curriculum design, students internalise that there are multiple ways of seeing the world, which have unique advantages when it comes to theorising on the causes and impacts of events and ideologies.” (Verma, 2022, 130).

In this approach, students are encouraged to identify a case-study – whether related to their own design discipline and practice, their personal history or identity, or wider cultural, social or political phenomena – that they can explore by drawing from their own situated knowledge, as well as by positioning it in relation to broader theoretical or contextual ideas. A case study anchors students’ learning and invites them to put their own interest and positionality at the centre of their research. This approach, as the text above suggests, explicitly supports diversity in the curriculum by inviting students to engage with something that may be related to their own interests, identity, personal narrative or familiar history. It also may be one small step towards epistemic justice in contemporary academia (Reki, 2023). By focusing on content and positionality, rather than form, this project brief also encourages students to bring their own voice to the work. By encouraging them to write in the first person and make their own position known, it invites a more embodied approach to writing that, as Suresh Canagarajah has argued, is crucial to the way writing practice is perceived in many cultures across the Global South (2024, 285).

This assignment, and the unit as a whole, has helped me question certain assumptions about academic writing, ‘academic’ forms of knowledge production and their relation to the creative industries. I have come to understand that it is not the ‘writing’ per se that students find difficult – as we often seem to imply – but it is the wider context around it that needs to be demystified. While I have not yet been able to test this approach with students – this will be implemented in the Autumn term of 2024/2025 academic year when this unit runs – drawing on secondary research, available student feedback through unit surveys ad NSS free text comments, and discussions with CTS coordinators and tutors, reaffirms my belief in this project’s purpose. I see it as a tool that through which students can demonstrate independent critical thought, which is at the core of CTS and ensure that our students achieve their desired outcomes.

The brief is included as an appendix to this assignment as a PDF.

Bibliography:

Canagarajah, S. (2024) “Decolonizing Academic Writing Pedagogies for Multilingual Students”.  TESOL J, 58, 280-306.

Carter, C. and Sellman, E. (2013) “A View of Dyslexia in Context: Implications for Understanding Differences in Essay Writing Experience Amongst Higher Education Students Identified as Dyslexic”. Dyslexia, 19, 149-164.

Chiu, T. Y-L and Rodriguez-Falcon, O. (2018) “Raising Attainment With Diverse Students: An Inclusive Approach to the Teaching of Academic Literacy” Journal of Academic Writing, 8 (2), 36-47.

Dobson Waters, S. and Torgerson, C. J. (2020) ‘Dyslexia in higher education: a systematic review of interventions used to promote learning’. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 45(2), 226–256.

Easterbrook, M.J. et.al. (2022) “People like me don’t do well at school’: The roles of identity compatibility and school context in explaining the socioeconomic attainment gap”. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 92, 1178–1195.

Lea,  M.R.,  and  Street,  B.V.  (1998)  “Student  Writing  in  Higher  Education:  An  Academic  Literacies Approach”. Studies in Higher Education. 23, 157-172.

Reki, J. (2023) Religious Identity and Epistemic Injustice: An Intersectional Account. Hypatia. 38, 779–800.

Verma, A. (2022) Anti-Racism in Higher Education: An Action Guide for Change. Bristol: Policy Change.

Wingate,  U.,  Andon,  N.,  and  Cogo,  A.  (2011)  “Embedding  Academic  Writing  Instruction  Into  Subject Teaching: A Case Study”. Active Learning in Higher Education. 12 (1), 69-81.

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[1] This information was identified through unit surveys, as well as NSS free text comments in the period between 2021 and 2023.

Appendix – Intervention PDF

The resources for this blog have all in different ways reflected on structural ways that racial discrimination operates within wider social and institutional frameworks: whether through inadequate EDI policies, through cultural and historical factors, or through specific educational practices. As with the other two blogs, I found one of the readings particularly helpful I allowing me to situate some of the more day-to-day experiences shown in the videos, in the wider social and theoretical context. Alice Bradbury’s research on the use of CRT within early childhood education appeared particularly relevant. It examined how apparently neutral structural systems – such as a specific policy – as a way to produce subjectivities. She writes how “policy has its ‘own specific rationalities, making particular sets of ideas obvious, common sense and “true”’  […] Policy establishes and re-inscribes particular ‘regimes of truth’ about what matters in education, and who can be recognisable as successful or failing.” (Ball 2013b, 6–7 in Bradbury, 2020, p.243) Equally, policies meant at addressing social justice, might also unintentionally reproduce social hierarchies through the “production of subjectivities – the ‘underachieving student’, the ‘disadvantaged’ child, the ‘troubled family’ – while at the same time policy is being produced through debates about what matters and what and who needs to be ‘solved’.” (Bradbury, 2020, p.243)

The quotes above seem particularly relevant in higher education where the attainment gap is often taken for granted, seen as part of the ‘normal’ day to day functioning of the higher education environment. And the policy that seeks to address it, further reinforces the division between white and BAME students, by projecting particular kinds of stereotypes (underachieving students, students who are the first in their families to attend university, students with caring responsibilities, etc.). Those students may be ‘targeted’ by specific interventions designed to support attainment, and yet further marginalise those same students who may singled-out or stereotyped.

In terms of the subjectivities produced by policy, I have often wondered about the way UAL’s dashboard data is collected and aggregated. For example, what kind of subjectivities does the policy of separating race-based data for home students only produce? Why are awarding gaps less relevant for international students? For example, there is a great deal of differentiation in terms of class, ethnicity, race, language, etc. from our large international cohorts, yet that data is inaccessible or considered less relevant due to specific (if unclear/invisible) policy reasons. This may result in specific actions/interventions not being taken to address perhaps some gaps in learning/attainment for those specific groups of students.

From the three videos shared, I was particularly struck by the last one for the way approached making racism visible by enacting the privilege walk with young schoolchildren. I found the video uncomfortable, as it made me reflect on issues around visibility/invisibility of racism as well as care in the way intersectional approaches form the foundation of education across all age-groups. It also made me reflect on how we can truly create safe, open spaces for learning in an increasingly polarised, yet also diverse environment.