Proactividad (Escala de Proactividad)

Masters' level approaches and practices from one discipline to another with respect to the EI.

Bringing forward the findings and reflections of the mainstream course observation, the second phase of the programme took place on 23rd October 2017. In the morning, a 30- minute introduction to the programme and an announcement of recruitment was given to the 2017/18 MA JSRP cohort (23 students). After a period of consideration through their lunch break, twelve students showed an interest in the programme. I then had a further one-to-one conversation with students, during which I collected information relating to their learning experiences and to understand the reasons why they were interested in the programme. This, in the meantime, gave them an opportunity to become more familiar with the programme and to finally make the decision whether they would like to participate. At the end of the day, there were nine students who decided to join the programme; they all signed the consent form to make sure that they understood the terms and conditions of participation.

As the Master’s first module assessment was taking place in January 2018, it was negotiated with the course tutor that this phase of programme needed to be accomplished by the middle of December 2017, just before the Christmas break, to minimise potential impact on the students’ preparation for their assessment. So, given the limitations of the time scale, I then decided to remove the one-to-one tutorial sessions and designed interventions in the form of workshop-based sessions only. However, a tutorial could still be offered to the individuals through a booked appointment.

5.3.2 The brief for the Phase 2 workshops

This phase comprised five three-hour workshops. The brief for the activities conducted in each workshop are presented in Appendix 8. This phase of LEP took place on Monday afternoons, from 6th November 2017 to 4th December 2017. Compared to the workshops in Phase 1, which were more independent from each other, these Phase 2 workshops were designed as an interrelated group, with developing levels of challenge. This strategy emphasised both the participants' transition from one learning experience to another, and progressively the development of knowledge and skills associated with deeper learning.

146 / 368

l Mirror, through a condensed and abstracted version, the developmental processes of

the students' Master's jewellery course

l Help the students to link the developmental processes of Bloom's Taxonomy (Bloom,

et al., 1956) to their Master’s course.

An important difference between the five workshops and the students' Master's course was that within the former, for obvious reasons of time and the enhancement status of the EI, the students were not expected to acquire any of the actual Master's course skills and areas of knowledge. The intention of the workshops was instead to help the students to begin to construct a conceptual picture of their course, its learning challenges and developmental processes.

5.3.3 Initial analysis and reflections on Phase 2 of the LEP:

The following analysis and reflections concentrate on the findings from both Phase 1 and Phase 2 and their influence on the adjustments made to pedagogical strategies and approaches in preparation for Phase 3. It includes details of the adjustments made, why they were mad, and the extent to which they had an impact on Phase 3.

5.3.3.1 Adjustment to the LEP: Phase 1

Adjustment to the workshop plan

As emphasised in the introduction to Phase 2, the main adjustment to this phase concerned misconnection. That is, some of the key different ideas of educational experiences expressed by the experts interviewed and Chinese participants during this phase. As discussed in Phase 1, evidence suggests that such misconnections can impact fundamentally on the effectiveness and meaningfulness of learning. I therefore proposed building a bridge for communicating different perceptions and understandings of learning.

The experts offer views on how to communicate across two different educational experiences and traditions. H, for instance, suggests that it is necessary to help students to understand what is expected from them by using certain methods to prompt their realisation. H suggests that:

147 / 368

“I think a lot of it is just about getting close to the students and finding things that will trigger their realisation about what is acceptable: what is expected.”

G offers the following viewpoint through one of the examples based on G’s mentoring experience:

“In the beginning of the mentoring scheme, nobody tells me what I should do, so I don't know where should I begin. But what I did perceive was that expectations from students are kind of different from the university’s, which means that students might feel confused sometimes when some of the university’s expectations are contradicting their own. So, I started from there to help them with their understanding of the university’s expectations, which did help.”

It seems that to make the connection between two educational experiences, the understanding of expectations to students’ learning performance is as a key to unlock the complexities behind it. However, it is hard to make it work by simply telling them what they are expected to be able to achieve. B indicates that she strived to explain to the students that what they have to do to meet the requirements of the study at Master’s level in the UK. However, she says that:

“No, I don’t think it works. I think it’s all down to experience and your construction of the world. Because even the way that I’ve been trained to teach is very student- centred, it is still hard to shape their perceptions of learning as they’ve been trained in a totally different way, where they’ve been taught by philosophy, values and believes are totally different.”

So, if the technique of telling students what they are expected to do does not work, then ‘what would be the effective way of triggering students’ realisation?’ S, here, demonstrated a good example when I was observing one of her lectures on the MA Interior Design course, in which she was using the Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom, et al., 1956) to illustrate different levels of learning and key skills that are expected to acquire associated to each level. Alternatively, she encouraged students to analyse how the levels of learning showing in the Taxonomy can be connected to the levels of Batchelor’s or Master’s studies; and to what extent students’ own learning abilities can be matched to the levels classified in the Taxonomy.

148 / 368