Tag Archives: inclusion

PROJECT FINDINGS & ACTION PLAN

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It has been a very interesting journey to work on my research, to read about how to do it from a creative perspective, to collect all the information, to challenge the process and to conclude with findings and an action plan.

After determining the participation on my survey was not conclusive, Saunders, M., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. (2019). I put all my attention on the casual interviews as I mentioned on my previous post “Research Challenges”.

Once I finalised all the interviews, I color coded the key mentioned topics which were common across the participants. The color coding helped me to visually unify ideas and to easily transcribe them in a table where I highlighted key categories, concepts and possible solutions. It has been revealing to observe both perspectives, from academic staff and from the students. 

The key findings are:

  • The MA FDM course doesn’t have any formal traceability tool in terms of employability.
  • Students wonder about their future in the industry from an early stage as the course lasts 1 year. 
  • Networking is key for employability, the LCF provides multiple options, but students lack confidence to take advantage of the opportunity, which makes them feel uncertain about their future. 
  • Students would appreciate guidance as networking help them to feel included and helps them to move toward their professional goals. It would be valuable to provide support to define and action plan and a follow up accountability process.
  • Networking should be contextualised and seen as an opportunity for development, a learning experience where information is exchanged, no matter the ultimate outcome. 
  • Not all the students are ready to participate in some of the activities provided by the LCF. We could support them building confidence, however, this is a journey where they need to keep being curious.

Is it evident on the research that the networking opportunities are there, students are eager to participate, but they feel not confident and equality somethings they’re not ready to move forward. The proposal solution would be to provide a space were we complement the current Tutorial Framework with a Tutorial Framework for employability addressing the MA’s FDM concerns about their future employability and where the current networking opportunities are consciously explored according to the students needs and interests.

Saunders, M., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. (2019) Research methods for business students. 8th edn. Harlow: Prentice Hall. (Pages 297 & 298)

PRIMARY RESEARCH & CONSENT FORMS

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One of the parts of the ARP I am enjoying the most is the Primary Research. It started last July 10th 2023 and finalised on January 5th 2024. I had conversations with different academics who work at the LCF as well as current & former MA’s Fashion Design Management Students. Most of the discussions were online and few of them in person after my lecturing sessions. I am glad I selected Casual Conversations/Non structured interviews as a method for my research as it allowed me to openly explore the subject. Indeed, I approached few of the participants twice, as there was the need of further exploring their insights.  In a time difference of few months, the conversation was much meaningful.

I believe this is a result of the process of research. Once the researcher starts the journey, the knowledge on the subject matter is limited and it expands as the research evolves. The conversation between the researcher and the participant becomes more detailed, specific, covering certain areas not explored previously and creating links between the different discussions among the participants. 

There is a more subjective aspect which impacts the research which is the relationship between researcher and participant, during the second rounds there was a higher degree of relaxation and trust. I would be very curious explore further in the future the impact of the research if the participants are also involved in the Step 3 of the Action Research Cycle, to deliver and implement a tool to increase the networking opportunities the students have during their one year course as well as their feeling of inclusion and adaptation.

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ACTION RESEARCH CYCLE

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THE ACTION RESEARCH CYCLE (Based on McNiff and Whitehead 2009)

It’s time to reflect on my research and at what stage of the Action Research Cycle I am currently in.

I have been able to got through Step 1, as the problem has been defined and the research question has been framed. The identified opportunity of increasing employability and the sentiment of being part of the LCF by participating in networking activities, translates in the the Research Question: How Networking can positively impact future employability for the MA’s Fashion Design Management Students as well as their personal adaptation journey to the LCF.

I am currently working on Step 2 and it’s being a challenging process, as mentioned in my previous post. Collecting data hasn’t been as smooth as I planned, specifically the survey data collection. However, the casual conversations have been really insightful and hopefully  they will help to shape how teaching or activities related to teaching can be updated. Nevertheless, it would be recommended to work further on increasing the participation ratio from the current 18% to at least a 95% of the survey targeted participants: Current MA FDM students and Graduated ones. This is the sample size recommended by Saunders, M., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. (2019). Research methods for business students. To conduct this research later on the time line, during the second term of the course, it would help to increase the participation as the students will be more settle.

In reaction to Step 3, the research aim is to deliver a tool to increase the networking opportunities the students have during their one year course, but unfortunately, it won’t be possible to implement it before the submission of the project. Post project submission, I will be involved in a process where I will be able to use the developed tool (Step 3), monitor and evaluate the changes made (Step 4) and review, reflect upon the changes and repeat the cycle if necessary (Step 5).

Saunders, M., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. (2019) Research methods for business students. 8th edn. Harlow: Prentice Hall. (Pages 297 & 298)

RESEARCHING ABOUT WHAT I AM SEEING

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December 2023, LCF

Since I started my Action Research Project I’ve been consciously paying attention to what I’ve been seeing and observing in the class room. The MA’s Fashion Design Management Students have been casually sharing their different networking experiences during the first term at the LCF. So far, they have had the opportunity of collaborating with other peers from the same course, working in a cross-unit which involves student from different courses, attending industry events and others. That translates in some relaxed discussions before starting my lecture. However, these conversations are not relaxed anymore for me as I’ve trying to gather as much information as possible which could be potentially useful to build my research. Basically, trying to actively understand the students’s experiences, views and challenges. 

This experience directly resonated with the article from our 1st ARP session, Documenting classroom life: how can I write about what I am seeing?. As the article mentions, we don’t write what we see, we scribble. In my personal experience, I scribble key words, tone of the conversation, emotions and feelings. It is more about the action being observed than the specific words. Even though, the author highlights the impossibilities of capturing “everything” when observing any social scene, the relationship between the researcher as observer and the own own subjective past impacts the witnessing of the present scenario. Considering that, I have used my notes as a starting point to further research during my one to one casual conversations and the survey I shared with the students. These notes have opened me a space of new areas of research. 

L. Jones, R. Holmes, C. Macrae and M. Maclure (August, 2010) “Documenting classroom life: how can I write about what I am seeing?” Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Vol. 10(4), pp. 479–491.

RESEARCH METHODS & ETHICAL ENQUIRY FORM

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Networking and its positive impact on future MA’s students’ employability and adaptation journey to the FBS, has been my research focus since we started the ARP, however it was not easy to summarise it in a tittle which I recently finalise it:

How Networking can positively impact future employability for the MA Fashion Design Management Students as well as their personal adaptation journey to the FBS

I believe this interest came from my years working in the industry and with the eagerness of detecting new young talent which could help any business evolving.

Furthermore, I wish many years ago I knew the importance of connecting with peers, colleagues, industry professionals, inspirational leaders… I’ve always done it instinctively but I would encourage everyone to be conscious and to have a methodology. The benefits are endless.

I am aware about students struggle to find a professional opportunity once they finish their MA’s, lots of competition, less job offers… they approach me asking for support and if I have any contacts. At the same time, I know the BFS/LCF offer different opportunities of interaction among the students and with the industry. However, I was not fully aware and I had to start my research. That translated in the need of learning about different research methods and evaluate which would be better for my ARP.

In terms of investigating the different networking opportunities, I had different options and among them: surveys, semi-structured interviews or simply casual conversations. I started from scratch as I was not aware of all the networking tools offered to the students, and this is why I decided to maintain casual chats with relevant staff members in order to shape the conversation depending on the inputs I obtain during the discussion. I believed to have some pre-defined questions would have limited the outcome as somehow, I would have been guided it. This decision was finally consciously taken after reflecting on it for weeks, after already having casual chats with the only goal of exploring and after our third ARP workshop.

Without knowing that this would be part of my research toolbox, I’ve started these casual chats in July and so far it has been an interesting journey which will help me to better define my survey to the Ma’s Fashion Design Management students, which I wanted to be quantitative to provide some data to my ARP.

The picture below shows the handwriting notes I tool during the casual conversations I’ve conducted so far.

I would like to highlight one of the key struggles has been to identify with who to maintain these casual conversations. For that, I hold few casual chats with peers and students, in order to understand who were those key stakeholders for my ARP.

Kara, Helen. (2015) Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences:  Practical Guide, Policy Press.

Susana-Guinau-Molina-Ethical-Enquiry-Form-2023-signedDownload

ARP TOPIC THOUGHTS

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I am currently taking my time to define my research topic. I am aiming to select a research that resonates with my interests, that can add value to my practice (MA’s Fashion Design Management), specific enough, feasible, and related to social/racial justice.

Within my personal experience at the FBS, I’ve noticed how the students struggle to find a placement or a job once they finish their studies. They are very well prepared, with a high level of knowledge and eager to work. However, at the end of the year there are always some students who reach out for help to start their professional career.

At the same time, the UAL and the FBS are offering multiple options to create interactions with companies to increase the networking among the students and with professionals. Few of these options are: Graduate Futures, the Mentoring Network, different industry projects throughout the year… I wonder if the students are fully aware of all these opportunities and if they are able to define goals which will help once they start their professional career.

A very high percentage of the students move to London for the first time, they start working while they study, they have multiple projects to work on during their MA’s year and in addition they should be thinking about their professional futures. My aim would be to make MA’s FDM students’ journey easier, to empower them, to help them with their inclusion in the university as well as with their future employability by offering a clear “one page” guideline which contains all the possibilities that the University offers in terms of networking. In addition I would like to go deeper in the topic and provide an easy tool to define their networking goals as well as follow up. To make the journey easier and to empower all the students would be my commitment with Social Justice.

In order to define my final research, it was very helpful to casually chat with few UAL colleagues as well as with few students. My next step will be to define a proper survey as well as formal interview framework respectively. 

A possible ARP title would be:  “Effective networking tool box for MA’s Fashion Design Management students”.

Faith

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My low level  of understanding of this  topic led me to delay preparation of  this post. However, I have found that this piece of work has helped me both to understand and develop a clearer idea of the complexity of “Faith”.

It was useful to learn about religion in Britain, reading the paper ‘Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education.’ Modood & Calhoun, 2015. However, perhaps more up to date data could have increased the relevance,

The paragraph that relates to “A national church (or churches), as key organisers of this public good, belong to the people/country, not just its members and clergy” struck me as a critical concept., I was also intrigued to find how secular criticism has had an impact in some of Church’s decisions. Finally I would highlight that the concept of religion as a “public good” and “public bad” in relation to State intervention is something I hadn’t ever considered before.

Highlighted below are some concepts which I felt were important in my overall consideration of the impact of faith in my role:

  • Higher education institutions  need to ensure that members of minority faiths are treated with appropriate respect and accommodation by other students and staff. 
  • Because it is important to many students, but perhaps even more so in public life, both locally and globally , it is crucial for universities to recognise religion – and the place of religion in public life – as matters worthy of their intellectual attention. 
  • Some Muslims may define their Islam in terms of piety rather than politics, just as some women may see no politics in their gender, while for others their gender will be at the centre of their politics. 

I especially connect with the last point, I believe that these different perceptions depend on our personal experiences and views. We shouldn’t consider anything as a given and we should recognise the space religion takes in our students’ lives and respect it. Personally, I would like to increase my knowledge of different religions as an exercise of recognition, acknowledgement,and  respect. This might allow me to be able to approach different intellectual discussions as highlighted in the paper.

I have always seen the concept of multiculturalism as a positive , as contained in the introduction from Kwame Anthony  in the  Reith Lectures. I would have never thought that it would have created so much debate.  In  summary, I deeply resonate with the following sentence. “This multiculturalism or multiculturalist sensibility can manifest itself in listening to the demands of  religious groups, in encouraging dialogue between religious groups and society, and in treating religious discrimination and incitement to religious hatred seriously, and enforcing the law through an agency such as the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission”.

Having lived in the Middle East for over 6 years I can recognise the profiles described in the Shades of Noir article, Alia Youssef. – strong independent women with a clear view on faith and other aspects in life. This article reminds me of many of the muslim women I met in those years. For the ladies who were part of my team in Dubai and female colleagues working in Saudi Arabia. faith was part of their identity, and they felt proud and honoured. I worked with them very closely and we had a mutual relationship of respect and admiration. As a team we achieved big goals and our diversity as a team was part of our success. This is why my aim in all my academic roles (lecturer, tutor and mentor) is also to “be an inclusive ally for others and seek consent always”, as the article mentions. How to do that? I believe by creating a comfortable space based on trust and where we could have open respectful dialogues. Using SoN as a tool to start these meaningful conversations will definitely be a must.

Modood, T. and Calhoun, C. (2015) Religion in Britian: Challenges for Higher Education.

Appiah, K.A. (2016) ‘Creed’, Kwame Anthony Appiah . The Reith Lectures. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07z43ds (Accessed: 06 July 2023). 

Shades of Noir, “Alia Youssef”, pp. 50-51

RACE

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As a child in the 80’s, I was raised in a working middle class neighbourhood where only one color of skin was the norm.  I didn’t think that was unusual, because I had no other experience. Years later, that neighbourhood started to be one of the immigration hubs of my city. Immigration rates now are 32.8% and that translates into multiple nationalities, citizens from Morocco, Senegal, Gambia, China…and more than 120 different languages.

When I was 10 years old,  primary school was where Moroccan students joined for the first time in their new life in Spain. It was 1988 and I remember Mustafa, he was seated beside me and we shared a few hours a day. I remember my first interactions as if it was yesterday I asked him if he could teach me his alphabet. I was quite naive, thinking I would be able to speak and write arabic by learning the alphabet. These were early days and , as kids, we were not conscious of racism. Or at least, I wasn’t. This is something which I connect with the Ted Talk video “Witness Unconscious bias” and makes me agree with Josephine Kwhali, about the importance of consciousness. I can reflect how at that time my teachers approached this new paradigm and I believe they did it brilliantly. They just normalised the situation and even embraced the mix of cultures and races. I hope I can be as good with my students as they were with us. There was no oppression as at that stage we were not aware of power and identity, it was a positive unconsciousness. 

It’s painful to read Shades of Noir testimonials, which reflect the discrimination present in the academic world, where supposedly there is a high degree of knowledge and culture. I believe Shades of Noir can help me to increase consciousness in my classes and to break the silence around these topics.  As Brazilian pedagogue Paul Freire says “education is the key to enacting social justice” (Freire 2006)

I really empathise with the thoughts compiled in the text: “A pedagogy of Social Justice Education Social Identity Theory, Intersectionality, and Empowerment” (Hahn Tapper 2013): “A teacher needs to create experiences with, and not for, students, integrating their experiences and voices into the educational experience itself (Freire 2006). Teachers’ and students’ identities are thus tied to one another in an interlocked relationship” (Rozas 2007). I believe my primary school teachers were embracing our realities, our “situation in the world” as Freire highlights (Freire 2006, 96). This also makes me reflect on the “Room of Silence” testimonials, in a few cases it looked like the teaching body was not part of the class reality. I wonder how I can create these dynamics and a safe space where there is room for all the voices and space for interlocked relationships.  

In this same text I’ve also learned about Social Identity Theory (SIT) and the concepts of intergroup and intragroup encounters and I would like to further explore the following thoughts in my artefact: “creating opportunities for intergroup cooperation and teamwork—activities that have the potential to lead participants toward the perspective that because they all have a shared humanity, they can focus on this common bond instead of their differences, thus marginalizing the seemingly superficial conflict between them—participants are able to have personal interactions with one another that shatter their group conflicts” (Allport 1954). 

“The participant interactions within intergroup settings are often a reflection of interpersonal dynamics or social group interactions or a combination of the two. Those who are facilitating intergroup encounters, both inter- group and intragroup (Dovidio, Saguy, and Shnabel 2009), need to take these dynamics into account. Students learn to embrace the notion that each of us has several social identities—identities based on ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class, and so on. In addition, each of us has an individual identity—a unique personality shaped in relation to our manifold social identities.” I have to consider how I can highlight the concept of one individual having several social identities without falling into intersectionality. 

Reading ‘Retention and attainment in the disciplines: Art and Design’ Finnigan and Richards  2016, I’ve learned about the importance of being aware of the lower attainment and retention rate in particular backgrounds and how important it is to act according to that with activities and intervention to reduce this difference.

The text mentions “So, students in their first year of study are constantly looking for certainty and reassurance, while staff are encouraging ambiguity and risk taking and expecting a tacit knowledge of how the subject is delivered. They rely on their tutors for guidance and for evaluation of the quality of their work”. Which makes me realise the importance of the tutors during the 1st year journey.  As an associate lecturer I am not aware of this service for undergraduates and I believe it is something I should explore, considering the latest data from the “Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Annual Report 2021/22”. In addition, the text highlights the importance of building trust with the student group to ensure that the students will find their voice. I wonder how it could be done from an HPL perspective where in most cases there is no consistency in terms of interaction hours. From my HPL position I also wonder if I could support a more inclusive curriculum and be more mindful about the “group crit” assessment and its impact on 1st year students. I believe it is something I will raise in the new course.

I’ve read the article from Shades of Noir:  White Fragility by Robin Deangelo. This text really impacted me. It was a reality check, especially the white fragility patterns and the social stress situations. As I mentioned above, I believe SoN is a very powerful resource which I will directly share with my students. it would be helpful to discuss a few of the articles in a context that makes sense with the content. This will hopefully support a more inclusive curriculum and will encourage open  respectful conversations, less silence.

See my comments on other posts on this topic:

https://sebastianmay.myblog-staging.arts.ac.uk

Bibliography:

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Annual Report 2021/22

Finnigan and Richards (2016) ‘Retention and attainment in the disciplines: Art and Design’

Hahn Tapper (2013) “A pedagogy of Social Justice Education Social Identity Theory, Intersectionality, and Empowerment” 

Robin J. Deangelo “White Fragility”,  Shades of Noir. pp. 100-105

Diversity & Inclusion

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When I joined the LCF as an HPL I had to undertake the training in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.

I believe these are fundamental and relevant topics which I’ve always tried my best to embrace, and to which I can personally relate because I am Spanish and I have lived abroad for few years.

Inclusion comes from many sources including culture, ethnicity, gender, and different learning abilities. My aim is to feel everyone welcome, a part of the group and in a safe space for sharing their thoughts and doubts. During my lectures, seminars and tutorials I seek to create an inclusive space where all the voices are heard.

My approach has had a number of elements:

  • Group Sharing: Students introducing themselves verbally to the group when we meet for the first time, including the reasons behind their academic choice and their future goals. I realise not everyone is comfortable in introducing themselves verbally and I have given them the option of writing their introduction in Padlet. 
  • Learning the names of the students and naming them/asking them directly during the sessions.
  • Knowing where they are coming from. I have had the opportunity of travelling a lot due to my corporate job and can often share stories related with their country of origin.
  • Asking them for examples of their own relevant industry experience. Few of them have had the opportunity of working as design intern and their knowledge of sampling development is very valuable when we cover this topic during the unit.
  • Creating small group activities where each student can participate in role playing.

Thanks to the PG Cert, I also incorporate the following ideas into my practice to increase the student’s inclusion and interaction: