Context

These methods and the specific activities began as an attempt to address repeated problems identified by tutors and external examiners concerning the work of students attending a BA (Hons) Education Degree. The students on this part-time course were (and are) practitioners from almost every conceivable field of Pure and Applied Education Practice - Prison Education Officers, Nurse Educators, Fire Service Teachers, School Teachers, Dental Health Educators, Police (Drugs Squad) Educators and so on. What divides them are the professions and contexts which have educated, shaped and skilled them; what unites them is the need to become professionally qualified as Educators. As working and thinking professionals, most of them are in mid career, and are using this qualification either for promotion or significant career change within their profession. So it is vital that this course is not only able to significantly alter their expectations and aspirations but also to be able to unsettle their beliefs and confront many perhaps deeply held ideas and values. Whilst this is the case for the cohort of students that provide the case study for this intervention, the same is also true of beginning students at the university, since there is something contradictory almost about insisting that our learners be automors and self determining, yet constantly urging them to also engage with others' ideas and work and do so in a vital and original way. It's no wonder therefore that many students who plagiarise or who don't develop original thoughts do so because they don't fully understand what it is that we're telling them to do. Many of the students that we teach for example, tell us that they don't have ideas of their own, that they're not entirely sure what a credible idea actually us, or more commonly, that they've always learned never to express their own opinion. Consequently they copy others' work simply because they believe that published opinions and ideas are the only valid and credible ones. Arguably, if students are not openly asked to challenge and defend arguments early on (in any course of study) they may not find it easy or even possible to analyse and synthesise more complex and sophisticated works later on. Many of the teaching and learning methods we have developed and trialled here use others' work head-on, we hoped to make the processes of thinking and speaking about ideas transparent - but no less ambitious for all that. So then, analysis of external examiners reports over the last 5 years of the course, whilst praising the demanding standards, repeatedly criticise 4 aspects of the students' work:

  • large scale uncritical acceptance of published work and ideas therein
  • over-use of 'usual suspects' from contextual literature, with very little evidence of creative and thoughtful use of current research
  • in literature, weaknesses in development of students' own opinions, and relating this to a convincing argument
  • scant consideration of ethical principles and values in analysis of purpose and practice.

The course team decided to pilot a significantly changed course structure based on teaching and learning methods and applications to the educational context, rather than concentrating on specific context. Over two years of the course - 1999 - 2000 and 2000-2001, we have therefore piloted the new structure and activities together with tracking a 10% sample of student progress (using questionnaire and interview) for both final year cohorts.

The entire intervention together with its methodology and evaluation has been written up and submitted as a paper to the Harvard Educational Review, but this brief overview provides details of the most effective and transformative vehicles that we developed.