Reflective Report
Talking together, we listen and hear beneath our words the possibility of making beloved community.
hooks, bell. 2008
Background
The first in my family to work in the arts, live in London, and attend university, I relate deeply to the feeling of isolation in the art and design world. Our identities are shaped by complex intersections that become apparent through interactions. The intersection of my queerness and fatness has at times stood as a visible otherness to my working and study environments, stopping others from fully seeing me. It has however also stood as a shining expression of love and joy, a connector flooding my life with growth and spirit. These experiences, alongside my belief that joy and success are shaped by those around us, prompted my research into the impact of culture and belonging on education..
The Diploma in Professional Studies (DPS) allows students a year of ‘placements’ within their chosen creative industry. Placements are found by students during their second stage of their BA; students spend the following year in placement and reflecting on their experiences. This year our team has put the course through revalidation, with the aims of placing a greater emphasis on UAL’s Climate, Racial, and Social Justice principles (CRSJ’s) in the curricula and assessment. This positions my work at the university within the Climate Action Plan.
As a British academic awarding body, UAL has a responsibility nurture spaces for students to experiment, flourish and belong in. Yet, like other UK universities, UAL has an awarding gap: in 2021/22, white British students were 11% more likely to achieve a first or 2:1 degree (UAL, 2022). This highlights the need for anti-racist teaching practices. “To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin” (Hooks, 1994)
Why? Why now?
Promoted within the team to a role as the DPS co-ordinator for Chelsea, Camberwell, and Wimbledon, my intervention came from a call to create a sense of community for DPS students who come from 20 home courses spread across 3 campuses. From my 3 years as a tutor on the placement year, I was aware of the isolation students faced. Their reflections often touching on the struggles of entering the industry alone. As the DPS stands as an optional year with serious barriers to access, each BA home course may only see a small handful of students join the DPS programme, with some courses having a single student access the placement year. This, combined with the course being almost entirely online, leads to a cohort of peers who remain unknown to each other, the blue-light hearth of vapid teams’ icons kindles no spirit, and hearts sit muted. In course development focus groups students repeatedly told us of loneliness, of needing to dig deep into their resilience to carry on and of the delight of moments together when they realised they were not alone on their journey.
Upon further research I found that fractured community wasn’t just a phenomena within our programme or UAL, but that in the UK ‘ 4 out of 10 students lack a sense of belonging to their institution’ (Wonkhe, 2019). In the same report Wonkhe spotted a corelation; formulating that ‘90% of those that feel they belong at their university are confident about completing their course, compared to just over half (51%) of those that do not feel they belong.’ (Wonkhe, 2019). Liz Thomas’ earlier work in 2012 reported that a sense of ‘fitting in’ was the most common reason for students to consider dropping out from their courses. From this we can see the tangible influence ‘belonging’ has on the potential for academic attainment, retention and engagement.
“When it (a sense of belonging) is present, motivation to learn and resilience to tackle challenges are higher. When it is lacking, students report greater anxiety and boredom, alongside feelings of being alienated and disenfranchised. Hindering their personal growth and creative thinking.” (Hill, Bunting, Arboine)
Universities historically reflect dominant cultural norms, with leadership, faculty, and curricula often centred on white, Western, and currently able-bodied perspectives. White British students with cultural capital are much more likely to feel that they ‘fit in’ to these spaces compared to their peers. With less systematic barriers such as racism, sexism, ableism, or complex socioeconomic challenges, white western students are much more likely to attend university and succeed in the arts post-graduation.
I witness the DPS be a transformative experience for the students who can access the course. Inquiry into injustice and justice informed design, students are supported to feel empowered in their abilities to create meaningful professional work. This has a positive impact on their work in the 3rd stage of undergrad, their final BA degree awards and the steps they take upon graduation. “Students that have a placement year embedded in their course are 10% more likely to feel confident about their future career compared to those that do not have a placement year.” (Wonkhe, 2019).
However, placements do not happen in a vacuum, they are very much set in the real world, where students are exposed to a diaspora of experiences based on their intersecting identities. It is important that if we are asking students to evaluate their experience, we provide an intersectional lens. With an awareness of the importance of belonging I wanted to support students in understanding each other, and validate the unfair quantity and severity of challenges different individuals were processing depending on their race, gender, faith or ability.
The big idea
Inspired by Freire’s beliefs that education should not be a one-way street but a dialogue (Freire,19) I began enquiry into the impacts and limitations of conversation as an academic outcome within higher education, and how this could foster deeper reflections on positionality, an expanded awareness of social injustices, and empathic future-scaping within the student cohort.
For my intervention I proposed introducing conversations as an additional, optional assessment method for students to reflect critically on their experiences with their peers – providing an additional option for those whose found conversation to be an exciting and accessible mode of assessment. Predominantly however I was interested in the relationship between a sense of belonging, the course’s culture, and the awarding gap, and began to explore systemic isolation as a barrier to success.
After reading Belonging by Bell Hooks, I was struck by a chapter where she is in conversation with another writer from Kentucky, who is white and male. After their conversation she reflects ‘here we are – finding a place of closeness despite all that would and could separate us. We do not think alike about all matters but there is so much shared understanding that our words seem to belong together as we talk…It was my hope that our words would break through the profound racial silence that is present in public discourse, a silence that must be broken if we are to truly find ways to end racism.’ (BELL 2008) Though the pair have a diversity of lived experiences, their histories in conflict with one another, they found common ground and compassion for the other and in doing so began to create a new way of being with each other, excited to create new landscapes for their communities shared futures.
I began to consider the potential of how a collaborative, dialogical approach mirrors real-world interactions where diverse voices contribute to shared understanding of intersectionality and ‘wicked’ problems. (Rittel, Webber, 1973)
Currently students maintain written ‘blogs’ which serve as reflective journals to document their time in industry and to reflect on their evolving skills and knowledge. These reflections are supported by informal conversations with tutors, and formative assessment points. While this format is massively useful – enabling students to analyse their experiences in a slow considered way and demonstrate evidence of their process – it remains an isolated one. This limits the student’s opportunity to place themselves within the context of their peers, their communities and in turn the wider industry and society. Conversation could provide a space of context and curiosity.
Crenshaw’s understanding of intersectionality emphasizes the interconnectedness of various social identities such as race, gender, class, faith and ability and how the overlapping of multiple social identities further influences experiences, opportunities, and systemic challenges. Written blogs stand as isolated reflections, and often does not adequately capture the multifaceted nature of individual’s identities and their interactions within the workplace. A conversational model could encourage students to learn about the experiences their peers have had, expanding not only their understanding of creative industry practices, but of different systemic challenges and levels of privileges people face. This has the potential for students to place their experience within the wider context of positionalities, fostering a greater awareness and empathy for each other. This produces space for empathy for those we are not in direct conversation with too, the student can begin to reflect on the experiences of others in the industry that they are indirectly related to. For example, a textile placement student expands their curiosity and empathy to consider the hands who wove their fabric, who grew their cotton, who will care for the item, and who will eat their garment as it decomposes long after its final use.
Through intergenerational conversations between current students, graduates, and alumni, the DPS community could gain insight into how these challenges evolve over time and share strategies of how others have navigated them in the past. Through a continued exchange this has this potential to build a community of practice that promotes shared accountability and collective action.
The possibility of dialogue as a form of assessment challenges the perception of academia as a competitive individual achievement. It values collaboration, diversity of thought, exchange, and the co-creation of knowledge. Dialogue based unit outcomes could support UAL’s commitment to racial and social justice by helping to dismantle some traditional hierarchies in education that often privilege specific modes of learning or communication that are based in western ideology and parameters of ‘knowing’.
Conversation as an assessed outcome from learning, validates the alternatives ways in which one knows something and their ability to express that knowledge. This model has the potential to support students with different communication styles and neurodiverse needs, allowing student to self-select the mode of assessment that is most suited to their skills.
Challenges
Upon reflection my own positionality had a large impact on my proposal. My blind spots of having English as a first language, and the confidence of being in a learning environment, the confidence of being in my home country, the confidence that I don’t not belong in a university because of my race or faith had an impact on how I strategized. I had not fully thought through how these factors impact a student’s confidence to talk in a group, particularly where they are being academically assessed.
There is a potential for uneven participation and power dynamics to unintentionally arrives and privilege those who are fast processors, have English as a first language, and feel confident sharing in an academic space. Students with different communication styles may struggle to be heard in the group. A plan for facilitation would need to be developed to support equity of conversation.
Facilitation would also support exposure to different perspectives. Students would need to be fairly and diversly matched to avoid reinforcing each other’s biases. Support from previous graduates working as paid ambassadors could help to model conversation, deepening investigation and understanding and to avoid superficial engagement.
The recording of the conversation is also to be considered. The lack of written evidence may provide challenges for the tutors assessing the work, as well as making it harder for students to return to their reflections in the future.
I think it would be important to have this model as an option of assessment formats rather than a requirement because of the issues raised above. This allows student to select outcomes that best demonstrate their learning.
Outcome
This January, our course revalidation introduced several changes: more diverse assessment options, extended time allowances, and clearer distinctions between reflective journals, reports, and presentations. Students can now respond to set questions in a written format, with word counts reduced to make reflective work more accessible.
We’ve also introduced curriculum sessions on creative autoethnographic writing, agency, and positionality in reflection, broadening students’ approaches to critical reflection. These changes aim to foster a culture of belonging, supporting students to feel empowered in their abilities and to engage meaningfully with each other and the wider world.
Reference List
Crenshaw, K. (1989) Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, pp. 139–167.
Freire, P. (1996) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 20th ed. New York: Continuum.
Hill, E., Bunting, M. and Arboine, D. (n.d.) Belonging and its impact on motivation and resilience in higher education students. Available at: [insert link if applicable].
hooks, b. (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.
hooks, b. (2008) Belonging: A Culture of Place. New York: Routledge.
Rittel, H.W.J. and Webber, M.M. (1973) ‘Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning’, Policy Sciences, 4(2), pp. 155–169.
Thomas, L. (2012) Building Student Engagement and Belonging in Higher Education at a Time of Change. Paul Hamlyn Foundation. Available at: https://www.heacademy.ac.uk.
UAL (2022) Annual Report and Financial Statements. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/.
Wonkhe (2019) Belonging and Inclusion: The Key to Student Retention. Available at: https://wonkhe.com/.