Knowing and responding to your students’ diverse needs
Background
Everyone has their own experience of negotiating the city, and every year in Studio 2 (CSM BA Architecture) we set a first pedagogical task designed to take those personal and individual ways to seeing the world as the starting point of the students’ learning journey. This academic year (2024-25), for example, we kicked started the year with a walk in East London led by a local artist and asked the students to record their ‘first impressions’ of this part of the city informed by their idea of the ‘Civic’, without defining how to do it or which media to use.
Evaluation
It’s difficult to evaluate the overall impact of this approach, but for me this is the moment I start to get to know the students, their individual interests, claims, feelings, needs and personal experience of being in and negotiating the city. For the students, this is the starting point of their learning journey, and first time they have to connect to their gut’s instincts to respond to a pedagogical task in Studio 2.
This year, just after this initial exercise, we jumped straight into group-work and students embarked into a long site investigation and strategic design phase of around 6 weeks. For some students, the initial ‘impressions’ (ontological perspectives) were consolidated in that one session and carried through to inform their main line of the inquiry, building brief and design proposal. For some students, the group-work ended up overriding their initial approach causing a certain sense of loss.
Moving Forwards
The reduction of the teaching time this academic year, a total of 3 studio days compared to last year, has put a significant pressure into the remaining sessions. Nevertheless, the emphasis on the student’s ontological perspectives is one of the foundations of my teaching practice and despite the constraints, it is something I want to further develop and explore as a pedagogical approach.
How it happened:
In relation to the task and evaluation presented in this case study, the work produced and shared by the students during this initial task was great. Students presented their ‘first impressions’ in a studio session and, collectively, we talked about the relevance of their personal and emotional responses in relation to the studio brief and study area. This was a moment of “reflective practice in action” where we consider the situation, decided what was relevant and how, and made the connections to the brief and subject of study (action). (Third 2022, p.31).
How to improve:
Knowledge consolidation: Propose a reflective task – “reflective practice on/for action” – where students could individually reconsider the situation, think about how it could feed forward, (Third 2022, p.31) and propose ways to consolidate this ontological perspective as a forms of knowledge, translating it into a visual or written format such as: a manifesto, poem, collage, mapping, diagram, image or video. In this way they would practise reflective practice (learning consolidation) and demonstrate it (produce outcomes). This outcome could then become the first page of their portfolios and design thesis, a point to start from, re-visit, re-consider, re-invent and retain.
References
Raven, L (2025). Reflective practice – Developing Personal and Professional Insights. Lecture – Wednesday 12th February [online] Available at:< https://moodle.arts.ac.uk/mod/folder/view.php?id=1378604> (Accessed 17 Mar 2025)
Third, S. (2022). Reflective Practice in Early Years Education. UK: Fanshawe College Press Books.
Barnett, R. (2007) A will to learn: Being a Student in an Age of Uncertainty. Maidenhead: Open University Press.