Title: Can reflective practice and collaborative environments support students in developing a more experimental approach to their work?

Abstract

This research project explores strategies to enhance students’ reflective practices and experimentation in creative industries education. Despite the expectation that university environments foster creativity, the constraints of academic schedules often limit students’ willingness to take risks and experiment. The study focuses on improving the quality of reflection in student work, particularly in the context of collaborative projects.

The research draws on theories of reflective practice by Schön and Candy, emphasizing the importance of reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action for professional development. It employs action research methodology, utilizing qualitative methods such as reflective journaling, semi-structured interviews, and analysis of student submissions.

Key interventions include:

1. Implementing weekly reflective journal workshops in seminars

2. Introducing exercises to assess experimentation possibilities and evaluate risks

3. Leveraging collaborative projects to create environments of complexity and uncertainty

Data collection will occur at multiple points throughout the module, including initial project pitches, mid-semester reflective sessions, and final portfolio submissions. The researcher’s own reflective journal will document observations on student engagement and the adoption of reflective practices.

The project aims to foster a culture of experimentation and meaningful reflection among students, preparing them for the uncertainties of creative industry careers. By enhancing students’ ability to assess risks, manage uncertain outcomes, and learn from their experiences, the research seeks to develop more adaptable and self-aware creative practitioners.

Ethical considerations, including participant anonymity and respect for personal agency, are central to the research design. The project acknowledges the complexities of educational practice and remains open to unexpected outcomes.

Evaluation

Students seeking a career in the creative industries need to assess risk and manage projects with uncertain outcomes. The development of skills in any area of the creative industry involves some elements of experimentation, with some element of risk attached to the potential outcome. This experience, in turn, becomes the starting point for the next iteration or cycle of experimentation. The closeted environment of a university dedicated to the study of skills suited to modern popular culture might be expected to enable a high level of creative experimentation, with students able to flex their creativity in new and challenging directions. However, limits to contact time and the need to address assignments in a regular cycle of submissions appear to have the opposite effect, driving students to polish the skills they are initially recognised for. This experience aligns with the conceptual model offered by social constructivism (Clark, 1998). This project intends to change the student discourse that limits the definition of what constitutes a successful outcome for performance students at BIMM, enhancing their perception and management of the risks associated with artistic experimentation.

This behaviour was common in the reflective essay used as part of the portfolio submission for the module COM522, which reflected on the experience of a collaborative project. The module curriculum provided techniques including semi-structured interviews, qualitative analysis, as well as a discussion of auto-ethnography and artist research methodologies, designed to help students engage with the benefits of reflection for personal and professional development. However, the essays submitted were largely descriptive in discourse and lacked the mode of reflection that would provide access to the benefits explored by Schön (1984) and Candy (2019).

Schön highlights the role of reflection-in-action as a mode of experimentation.  The practitioner makes decisions based on experience and tacit knowledge, gained through earlier play or experimentation. Later, the process of reflection is returned to, and reflection-on-action enables the instinctive creative act to be rendered as knowledge, and thus made available for future practice.

Candy (2019) highlights how contemporary practice is often based in uncertain environments, where a proceduralisation shapes professional development but limits the opportunities for the individual to develop a personal, intimate, understanding of their craft, where they may retain greater agency over approach and in establishing the significance of their creativity. This is a process most effectively supported by a practice that supports experimentation. Reflection on everyday experience breeds skills in being effective in a variety of environments, supports the development of self-awareness and enhances emotional intelligence. All of these outcomes are recognised as essential in developing students for their future careers. 

Research and Ethics 

McNiff and Whitehead highlight the connections between the reflective practitioner and the philosophy associated with Action Research, observing that it forms a central component of learning (McNiff and Whitehead, 2002). To be an effective means of assessing the impact of any intervention, the findings of a project must be adequate in capturing data that is reliable in assessing the impact from the perspective of the project participants. The student body provides the only forum for the assessment of outcomes. The student cohort, whose experiences are shaped by the lesson plans and the environment of the seminar, provides the public sphere for this pedagogic communication (Kemmis, McTaggart and Nixon, 2014). So, while McNiff resists the need for a fixed hypothesis, making the research process developmental, this project does start from an intention to develop an approach that enhances the experience of collaborative experimentation for students in this module and later in their final year project and further career.

This research project will deploy a cluster of qualitative methods, including a reflective journal and interviews with colleagues and student feedback, to inform the design of pedagogic interventions, as well as offer a measure of the merits of any impact they have. The final assessment will be an analysis of the reflective essay component in the portfolio submitted by students in COM522. This assignment offers the clearest comparison to measure whether the changes to seminar development and personal reflective practice develop the cultural change I hope to see in the students of this module. However, I hope to remain prepared to accept the uncertainties in any educational practice and not expect ‘predetermined outcomes’ (Savin-Baden and Major, 2010).

The reflective journal will follow the structure and approach defined by Kemmis, McTaggart and Nixon, 2014, and semi-structured interviews will be used to document the experience of my colleagues who use a reflective journal elsewhere to document their teaching experiences (Rubin and Rubin, 2012). I intend to use both qualitative approaches to trace the influence of planned interventions that are designed to help students in their perception and management of risk, primarily associated with the inclusion of experimental elements, practices or approaches in their creative practice. This will triangulate against student-responsive questionnaire data, which will offer insight into the immediate reactions of the student cohort to a seminar (Stockton, 2015).  

Further, I plan to exploit the benefits found in teaching with multiple methods explained by Brookfield (in James and Brookfield, 2014, and Brookfield, 2015), with the intention to develop both critical and reflective thinking skills in students. A research lens appropriate to each participant cohort will enable the assessment of every potential intervention (Brookfield, Rudolph and Tan, 2024). 

The ethics of Action Research builds on an ethos of how one perceives oneself as a teacher. A willingness to see every teaching experience, or further, every interchange with students as an opportunity to self-observe is, for me at least, an expression of faith in lifelong learning. This is also balanced by the reality of being part of the wider communicative sphere represented by the student body as well as incorporating the broader faculty of the college. Part of the ethical consideration for this project is establishing the collective sense of importance that surrounds the need to enhance skills of risk assessment and experimentation in students at level 5. For this concern to appear valid in the minds of the student cohort, it needs to be fully understood and accepted as a preference, as well as being recognised in the wider public sphere represented by the institution (Kemmis, McTaggart and Nixon, 2014). 

Interventions

A reflective journal practice will become part of each seminar, with a short weekly journal workshop added to every seminar for COM522 Reflecting on practice in collaborative projects. This will adopt an approach similar to the approach used by Crawford, Sellman and Joseph (2021), where a journaling practice provides time for students to capture experiential learning. Exercises in developing a realistic assessment of the possibilities for experimentation and the evaluation of risk will also form part of the seminar dedicated to the reflection on professional values by students (Thomas, 2009). This element of the project will use a mix of direct prompts to reflect, and indirect discussions with students that highlight the merits of the form of discourse this will capture.  

Collaborative projects offer students an environment that provides complexity and uncertainty (Gratton, 2019). The willingness to adapt to others and creatively problem-solve provides scenarios which enable students to generate transformative experiences as well as offer opportunities to reflect on their own learning strategies (Gecowets, He and Lee, n.d.). The module, which provides opportunities to explore the merits of reflection, is designed to place students into an uncertain environment where the relative risks associated with the outcome of the project are low. Students are likely to perceive these risks in different ways, and the reflective practice element is the key opportunity for students to explain how risks were evaluated and what impact the project had on their creative practice. 

Kolb (1984) highlights the intimate nature of experiential learning, and with this comes the challenges in gaining access to the impact and outcomes of this personal learning. To capture the benefits of this type of learning, a wider selection of qualitative data is required, enabling the project to reflect the findings offered by a mix of lenses, capturing both the immediate and later benefits.

Data Collection

My role as a Lead Lecturer for COM522 enables this module to become a test bed for the developments in reflection I intend to foster. 

The COM522 A0 assessment, which takes the form of an in-seminar pitch, will be used as evidence of the nature of student projects being developed. I plan to use the A0 presentations as a sample of student mindset, with an evaluation of how students assess the potential and risks of collaborations, and what influence this has on the design of their projects. This evidence might take a number of forms, with the structure of the collaboration, whether the project is part of an ongoing relationship, whether the material used in the project is new, and how new the practice might be to the student. A key concern here is that the material outcomes of the project are free of evaluation by anyone outside of the project. They are not used as evidence in establishing a grade for students, who are only assessed on the relative merits of their assessment of the collaborative experience. While this elaboration may appear to be contrived, it has the benefit of containing the perceived risks associated with the project and offers students an opportunity to experiment in an assessment where the outcomes of that experiment are not the chief object of assessment. Hence, the significance of reflection in evaluating the experience of the project. 

A second intervention point where an assessment might be made is at week 10. This is immediately after the period in which the project should be completed, and this seminar is a natural point for the student cohort to start the process of untangling the experience of the project from their personal development. The seminar is a reflective session, which includes work on the portfolio and a peer review of their shared achievements.

 My reflective journal will document my perceptions of how each seminar was received and assess whether the journaling practice was being adopted by students involved in the module. This will form part of an existing journaling practice. Particular focus will be given to the development of feedback, both in session and in writing, to students on the development of projects and the structures they choose to document the experiences of collaboration. Care will be required to maintain the experimental nature of student projects and to enhance the reflective nature of journaling practices.

I will interview other members of the teaching team working on this module and develop a support structure with the intention of enhancing the experimental elements of student projects. I plan to use my journal to capture some elements of this feedback from other lecturers.

6. Timeline

Online source here: https://shorturl.at/H0lyD

References

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