ARP Presentation Slides
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Summary of Project Findings
Student responses –
- Learning the new skill of bookbinding is positive to student learning journey: “to organise research, drawing, visual, working at own pace, re-contextualise ‘difficult’ material, clear, visual instruction, relaxed environment, choice of techniques to try out, multi-sensory, dyslexia-friendly resources, meditative, improved focus, presenting own work, freedom of expression, experimentation.”
- Making books is a sustainable way of working: recyling found papers/fabrics/threads/yarns, knowledege sharing on paper-making techniques;
Staff responses –
- Students are much more engaged when learning is practical and hands-on
- BAME and/or international students are less likely to disclose a ‘disability’ or a specific learning difference (SpLD)because they are already marginalised therefore disadvantaged; disclosure could impact visa status,
- Testing for SpLD is normed for dominant-English speakers and Whiteness
- Barriers for BAME and/or international students accessing support may be contributing to the attainment gap.
- A focus on inclusive practices/anticipatory adjustments would benefit all students and address issues surrounding undisclosed/undiagnosed/unseen disability and/or neurodivergence.
Reflective Summary – My Pedagogy
- Language used to address students, to explain concepts/techniques should be inclusive and accessible
- Never make assumptions about what I think students do and do not know
- Provide multi-sensory dyslexia-friendly written resources in learning environments
- Working alongside students reduces teacher pupil hierarchy
- Avoiding group crit allowed fluid student sharing and responses
- “simultaneously teachers and students” Friere (1970) p.53
- Foregrounding ‘making mistakes’ reduces pressure to ‘get it right’ and allows for fluid expression through the creative process, ‘happy accidents’
- Providing fluid structure to workshop enabled students to explore their own ideas and direction during the proposed activities, student autonomy
References:
Friere, P (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin
Examples of Visual Data collected from the Bookbinding Workshop
Data collected from 8 workshop participants
Disability Staff Questionnaire responses, anonymised
- I worked in the Disability Service for 10 years, and during this time typically had a caseload of around 250 students at any one time. Student caseloads were allocated by college and programme – which means I would work with all students who shared that they are disabled within a given programme. This would therefore include students with various additional marginalisations, including BAME students, international students, LGBTQIA+ students, and working class students. I wouldn’t always know about the marginalisations students experienced unless they shared them with me, although I suspect that as a queer working class person myself, students may have been more open about these aspects of their identity than if I wasn’t.
- BAME and/or international students often describe specific barriers to accessing disability support:
- There are potential barriers for BAME people accessing diagnosis (both medical and SpLD), which may make it harder for BAME students to access evidence to register for disability support.
- BAME and international students may have cultural differences in how disability is understood, which may result in lower disability disclosure rates. I’ve attached a recent paper by Soorenian (2023) which explores tthis is more detail.
- I can think of several times where BAME LGBTQIA+ students have said that they don’t want to also be ‘disabled’ – students have said that they are already multiply marginalised, and they don’t want to also be disabled.
- International students have also expressed concern about the impact on their visas if they share that they are disabled.
- For students who are not dominant-English speakers, there can be barriers to accessing SpLD diagnosis as the testing offered at UAL and in the UK is normed for dominant-English speakers. I also believe that SpLDs may not be picked up in school for students who use different writing systems (e.g. Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese), as this will manifest differently.
- I suspect there are also assumptions from UAL colleagues about disabled students. You may remember DisabilityTooWhite from the IP unit? Disability representation in the UK is normed for whiteness, so I imagine that colleagues may signpost white students to Disability Service support more than international and/or BAME students. I don’t have any data to back this up, but I suspect this might be the case.
- In terms of how the may impact learning at UAL, this is something I am very interested in. My suspicion is that the barriers for BAME and/or international students accessing support may be a contributing factor to awarding gaps. I did attempt to investigate this in my MA, but the data wasn’t clear cut so I chose a different topic to focus on. It seems logical to me that if BAME and/or international students don’t have access to reasonable adjustments or disability support, this would adversely impact their experience as students. My view is that UAL and other HEIs should focus on inclusive practices/anticipatory adjustments, which would benefit all students – and would ensure that BAME and/or international students who do not access disability support for whatever reason still benefit from inclusive practices in their day-to-day teaching.
- Most of my training was embedded into my daily practice, learning as I go. I have of course attended (and subsequently led) lots of disability equality and inclusion workshops. I am a Senior Accredited Member of the National Association of Disability Practitioners, and the NADP has been a wealth of information about the being a disability practitioner. Much of my learning has ben self-directed, and I expect that is true of my colleagues. Listening to students will always be an important part of professional development too.
- I feel like I’ve folded this answer into question 2 above, but let me know if you need any more information
- I suppose there are two sides to this: a) one is removing barriers for international and/or BAME students accessing individual support, and b) the other is embedding inclusive practices that will remove barriers even if students choose not to share that they are disabled, or don’t access individual support for any reason. a) In terms of removing barriers for international/BAME students accessing support, UAL’s Disability Service is currently piloting an approach where students do not have to provide medical or diagnostic evidence to access support. I think this is a fantastic initiative and I’m really excited to see how this develops. This will hopefully go some way to mitigating against some of the barriers I outlined in question 2. It’s not a secret that this is being piloted – but nor has it been widely announced, so just be aware that other colleagues may not be familiar with this initiative. I’ve left the Disability Service now, but I understand the aspiration is to roll this approach out for all students over a number of years. b) I could write so much on this! Can I be cheeky and signpost you to pages 34-36 of my dissertation (attached)? These pages refer to institutional recommendations relating to crits and presentations, but the principles could be expanded to all elements of curriculum design. In essence, inclusive practices will have the greatest gain for the greatest number of students, and I firmly believe that UAL and other HEIs need to have clear requirements of all courses to develop curricula with the principles of inclusion and Universal Design for Learning in mind.
Research Question and Action Research Cycle/Spiral
Final research question:
“How can learning bookbinding skills enhance access to learning for students with unseen, intersectional disabilities and/or neurodivergence? Can multi-sensory approaches reduce barriers to teaching and learning?”
Ethics
What, can we do to enable better understanding? What does our pedagogical expertise as educational researchers suggest?
how I had used participants’ voices in previous reports. I talked about how single words or phrases might be combined with others, or how a sentence might capture an important and unique idea, or express a feeling echoed by numerous others. I talked about why this might be helpful; who might read or hear and how; or to what extent I could ensure their identity was concealed. I also emphasised that if they wanted me to know an idea but not record or attribute it to them that I could interrupt or stop recording.
…heartfelt and revealing…
reflect on whether, as educational researchers, we use our pedagogical expertise not just to feed the relational and empathetic qualities valuable to qualitative research but also fulfil our ethical responsibilities. Enabling participants’ agency and helping them to be fully aware of the ‘possible consequences’ of their involvement in our research
References
Trowsdale, J. (2020) ‘How do we enact ‘informed consent’’. British Educational Research Association. Available at https://www.bera.ac.uk/blog/how-do-we-enact-informed-consent accessed 2.12.23
Creative Research Methods and Data Collection
References:
Rationale: How does learning and creative practice develop for a student profile including unseen, intersectional ‘disability’, international heritage and neurodivergence?
How might sharing my knowledge and passion for bookbinding assist students with unseen, intersectional ‘disability’?
Can I re-frame or re-think The Book as the pinnacle of knowledge, and transform it into an autonomous learning tool?
Within the framework of critical pedagogy and inclusive practices, during unit 1 of the PgCert, having recently received a dyslexia diagnosis, to help me engage with the learning materials, theories and assessment criteria I created a booklet or zine. As a dyslexic thinker this was a very useful way for me to grasp the challenges presented by the unit and to begin my journey of a greater understanding around neurodivergence and how my brain works and learns. I began to think about whether the creation of a similar learning tool might help my students who also experience marginalisation, confusion, dis-engagement with difficult concepts at a higher education level. I also considered the implications of intersectional ‘disability’ on staff and their ability to facilitate inclusive learning however, within the time constraints of the ARP I decided to focus on student experience (as per the learning outcome 1).
During unit 2 I delivered a bookbinding workshop to first year students, after which I obtained written feedback via a short questionnaire that was followed up with pre-submission, individual tutorials to the same group of students. I discovered that several students had embraced bookbinding within their practice, for purposes of assessment submissions and to help them contextualise their work. This provided pre-data to the ARP and further prompted me to consider delivering the bookbinding workshop to the whole BA Textile Design cohort as a research project, as an inclusive practice.
I considered how diverse cohorts of students and colleagues might also experience teaching and learning through intersectional disability, specifically dyslexia, and how this might be contributing to the attainment gap between white, home students and marginalised students. “A key assumption that continues to underpin much of Widening Participation (WP) policy and practice is that the main problem lies in the individual attitudes of potential students from traditionally under-represented backgrounds….Although the term ‘inclusion’ is often used in WP policy, the aim is to ‘include those who are excluded into the dominant framework/state of being, rather than challenging existing inequalities within the mainstream system, or encouraging alternative ways of being.” Archer, 2023:23 in Burke and McManus (2009) p.10
UAL disability data revealed that disclosure of a ‘disability’ occurs less with black, brown and international students. This information prompted me to consider how I might address unseen disability within my practice.
Dyslexia presents multiple challenges within learning environments: such as: dis-orientation with reading large volume of text – resulting in frustration and/or fatigue, confusion, low-self esteem; poor working memory – resulting in difficulties retaining just-heard information or instruction – confusion, loss of learning; misconceptions/ignorance from others and social stigma; social isolation – low-self esteem; poor comprehension – understanding complex theory/concepts is challenging; executive functioning difficulties – poor time management; procrastination; lack of motivation; auditory difficulties, visual stress (Irlens syndrome), poor fine motor skills; hyper/hypo sensitivity to sound, light, aromas, external movements – easily distracted and ‘bothered’ by these; tendency to ‘think big’ and go off on tangents – difficulties with staying ‘on topic’.
Dyslexia is a spectrum of learning difficulties and presents differently from person to person.
References:
Burke, P. J. and McManus, J. (2011) Art for a Few: Exclusion and Misrecognition in Art and Design Higher Education Admissions. National Arts Learning Network
Friere, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Continuum
UAL Disability Data. Available at https://dashboards.arts.ac.uk/dashboard/ActiveDashboards/DashboardPage.aspx?dashboardid=5c6bb274-7645-4500-bb75-7e334f68ff24&dashcontextid=638187172678717502. Accessed 31.7.23
UAL Attainment Gap Report – ArtsSU, 2019. Available at https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/62935733/artssu-attainment-gap-report-14nov. Accessed 31.7.23
Context and Background
As a Teaching Within candidate, being inspired and guided by the Shades of Noir resources, my journey through the PgCert has enabled me to critically reflect on my positionality, values and passion for teaching as a woman of colour. In the previous two units I have considered and steered my pedagogy within a social justice lens that centres experiences of marginalised groups and individuals, to which I affiliate.
My intentions within my Action Research Project are to foreground and explore the experiences of students who, through social stigma, institutional racism and ableism, issues of safety for marginalised groups, lack of access to specialist teaching and learning, may feel that disclosing ‘disability’, centring intersectionality, internationality will disadvantage them further in the learning journey within a higher education institution (UAL).
Obtaining Data
I am considering using emojis as an alternative method of obtaining data for my ARP. I have previously found that a written questionnaire, while positive as a direct form of feedback from participants, may present language and literacy barriers for students with undisclosed disabilities or specific learning differences (SpLD), neuro-divergent brain types, that typically think, learn and experience the world in visual rather than written language terms.