PRISM: Casting New Light on Learning, Theory and Practice

A Tale of Two Objectives: The challenge of meeting diverse targets in UK Business Schools

Peter Wolstencroft — 2023-11-08

Business Schools in Great Britain are currently facing a number of major challenge due to the conflicting objectives that need to be met. The movement towards a metric-driven, performative approach that has occurred in the last decade has meant that the need to meet set measures that focus on the outcomes of students’ study have become imperative. However, focusing solely on these outcomes neglects a second set of objectives that relate to the journey students take during their studies. The need to ensure that both the process and the outcome of students’ studies are stressed is particularly challenging in British Business Schools which are often characterised by a large and diverse student and staff population. This think piece posits that by using a loose/tight cultural approach alongside a Schrödinger's leadership style, leaders can mitigate some of the challenges that are currently faced in the sector.

Confusion and Consequences: The power of 'We'

Maureen Royce — 2024-03-25

Business education is still driven by individualistic cultures (the ‘I’), which provides the sociocultural container for what education is and can be. Paradoxically, the pandemic’s drive towards online collaborative working is a stark reminder of alternatives (the ‘we’). This thought piece calls for a deeper re-examination and emphasis on the ‘we’ as a basis for educational development.

Employability and Assessment: How ’blogs’ can diversify the assessment diet and enhance transferable skills

Laura Dixon — 2023-11-14

Shifts in the Higher Education sector over the past decade have seen greater numbers of applicants than ever before entering university. As undergraduate cohorts have expanded, a diverse student body has emerged, with a rich and complex array of learning needs, desires and expectations. At the same time, public discourse around higher education has changed significantly, and particularly following the introduction and increase of tuition fees, this has led to an emphasis on programmes being seen to provide value for money; a value for money that is being increasingly measured via the metric of graduate employment outcomes. As a result, universities are being pushed to find new ways to ensure that students leave their degree programmes with the kinds of transferable skills necessary to succeed in a contemporary job market that, following shifts in working patterns introduced during the Covid 19 pandemic, values flexibility, and adaptation. This case study – using blogging as a summative assessment at Level 6 of an ‘Events’ Management programme – illustrates that engagement, criticality, and relevance can be successfully incorporated, providing students with a key skill directly relevant to industry.

Publishing & Supporting the Academic

Craig Andrew Hammond — 2024-12-17

Editorial for the General Issue 6 (number 1) 2024, entitled ' Publishing & the Supporting the Academic'; written by David Allan, Judith Enrioquez, and Craig Hammond

Effective Teaching in a Humanities and Languages Foundation Year: Lessons Learned from Teaching During a Pandemic.

Helen Hewertson — 2024-03-27

This paper will explore key research around Foundation year entry at a large Northwest university in England, UK and explore what makes effective provision. It will share lessons learned during Covid-19 from student feedback from a Humanities, and Languages foundation year. There is some research around what makes for a successful foundation year. This has not had the attention it deserves, and there are still only a few papers based in the UK context. The paper explores and discusses key aspects that make a foundation entry programme successful. Furthermore, the paper explores the experiences of students from non-traditional backgrounds, (or with non-standard qualifications), and how they can underperform in comparison to students with more traditional academic backgrounds, i.e., those that have successfully passed standard Advanced Levels. In relation to non-traditional students, a good Foundation Year can help improve the outcomes for these students, and offer them opportunities to be as successful – or indeed more successful – than traditional entry students.

Exploring the impact of Visual Impairment Awareness Training: Phenomenographic Research with PGCE Secondary Art & Design Trainees

Harriet Dunn — 2024-07-04

Post Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) secondary art and design trainees participated in visual impairment awareness training (VIAT), prior to facilitating an art education project for visually impaired (VI) pupils. This was designed to better prepare them for working with a range of learners. A phenomenographic methodology and research approach was adopted – to capture key data relevant to learning, gaining knowledge and understanding in education settings. This contributed to knowledge in the field, highlighting the shift in trainees perspectives towards working with VI pupils, as a consequence of participation in VIAT. Existing literature recognises that VIAT provides an understanding of VI but cannot replicate everyday experiences. The findings as part of this study indicate that initially an empathy response was evoked, as trainees were apprehensive about working with VI pupils. Following VIAT, trainees gained a superficial overview of VI. Having gained experience, an advocacy response was evoked as trainees felt more comfortable asking pupils how their needs could be met.

Catch it, drop it, leave it there: Writing for Wellbeing as a tool for compassionate practice in Higher Education

Anne-Marie Smith — 2024-07-09

This is the story of a series of writing workshops with four undergraduate final year students, in a non-formal, non-graded, non-curriculum space. Students were introduced to ‘writing for wellbeing’ (WfW), using expressive writing strategies adapted from poetry/bibliotherapy practice. Initially intended as a research method for their dissertation projects, the writing workshops evolved into a significant creative space for the students’ own personal development. Shared reflections about our experience of writing together sheds light on the broader potential of WfW as a participatory research method, and as a compassionate approach for writing the self in higher education.

On Mesoamerican Literacies: Two Examples of How the Ayöök Read the World

Araceli Rojas — 2024-05-07

This article reflects upon literacies that are encoded in the landscape and in natural forms, and which describe a different relation between humans and the environment. It criticises the Eurocentric biases that have equated literacy to writing and promoted the opposition of literate vs. oral societies. Although there has been a turn toward considering literacies to be multi-diverse social practices, education policies worldwide still push for a functional literacy that favours written languages, alienation from nature, and bureaucratisation. The focus of this work is on the Mesoamerican territory, which has experienced systemic dismantling of Indigenous literacies and implemented models that are functional to the rhetoric of modernity and coloniality. Two examples from the Ayöök people are described. These are presages, which are experienced through seeing, hearing, and sensing outside in nature, and maize reading, which is a divinatory practice using seeds. These examples show that the natural world can provide clearly defined signs that are read with consequent affects and effects on bodies and future actions. By acknowledging these literacies and becoming aware that this is a politically sensitive issue for Indigenous peoples, this paper argues for a possible way to change our present harmful relation with nature.

The strands of the Forest School implementation challenges: A literature review

Ziad F. Dabaja — 2023-06-16

The literature proposes that Forest School, which is a form of outdoor and environmental education, can improve the children’s overall wellbeing. Yet, the implementation of this promising and distinctive educational concept can be hindered by several barriers. In this paper, I draw on relevant resources to introduce the main obstacles to the implementation of Forest School and the factors that could mitigate them. Four criteria guided the selection of the resources: a) the source, type, and content of the paper, (b) the subject matter, (c) the publication date, and (d) the publication language. The present review of literature yielded five main Forest School implementation challenges encompassing the (1) adults’ risk perceptions and attitudes associated with Forest School outdoor activities; (2) meeting curriculum and stakeholders’ expectations; (3) cost and logistical difficulties; (4) finding an appropriate site and using the facilities, and (5) the administrative work. I then juxtapose these challenges with relevant literature, present various mitigating factors, and introduce some implications of this work for research and practice.