Real experience, real value: public and third sector work-related learning
Conference theme: The Student Lifecycle
Dr Angeliki Triantafyllaki
University of the Arts London
Introduction
Learning gained through work experience, volunteer work and extracurricular
activities could have considerable impact on undergraduate students’ personal
development, increasing their levels of confidence and helping them develop their
professional careers (Ball, 2003; Drury, 2007). Indeed, creative arts students
describe their own work-related activities that are oriented towards cultural, social
and not-for-profit activities as “entrepreneur-like” in that “they demand similar skills
and attributes to those needed when working in commercial sectors” (ADM-NESTA
2007). Yet, there is little empirical evidence of learning derived from work-related
activity located in the public, volunteering and not-for-profit sectors, the benefits to
students and challenges involved.
This paper will report on an ongoing research study that explores creative arts
students’ experiences of work-related learning in the public sector. The focal point in
this case study is the professional learning accomplished within work-related
collaborative group work and the challenges associated with its assessment in higher
education (HE).
Background: the Creative Interventions project1
The case study is part of Creative Interventions, a HEA National Teaching Fellowship
Scheme funded project (2008-2010) that explores HE creative arts students’ learning
experiences specifically gained in public and third sector work-related activity. This
wider project aims to identify:
1. The types of work-related learning (WRL) experiences that creative arts students
have in public, not-for-profit and voluntary work contexts,
2. The ways in which creative learning developed via a HE transfers into contexts
beyond the higher education institution (HEI),
3. The creative agencies that enable learners to tackle challenging situations and
problems in WRL contexts, and
4. The ways in which these types of student WRL experiences provided by both
curriculum-based and extra-curricular activities are recognised and valued.
The project focuses on the ways in which such experiences in public and third sector
work-related activities contribute to students’ employability and creative skills; how
these are identified and valued by students and tutors; and how they are currently
assessed.
1
The Creative Interventions (CI) project is a partnership between the University of the Arts
London, the Arts Institute Bournemouth and Surrey Centre for Excellence in Professional
Training and Education (SCEPTrE) at the University of Surrey. More information about the
project can be found at: http://creativeinterventions.pbwiki.com.
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Employing a mixed methods approach, the CI project aims: (1) to provide an
overview of students’, tutors’ and employers’ views of WRL activities in the public and
third sectors through online surveys (March-June 2009) and (2) more detailed,
illustrative examples from creative arts disciplines through a series of in-depth
institutional and disciplinary case studies (November 2008-March 2010).
Work-related learning and collaborative activity
Within creative arts HE, there has been a significant focus on work-based learning –
the knowledge and skills acquired as students engage in professional activities as
part of their course. Yet, unlike WRL, work-based learning normally does not support
HE students learning about their own capabilities or detailed work aspirations
(Moreland, 2005). The Quality and Curriculum Authority (QCA) defines WRL as,
Planned activities that use the context of work to develop knowledge, skills
and understanding useful for work, and this includes learning through the
experience for work, learning about work and working practices, and
learning the skills for work (2003).
Yet, as Moreland (2005) argues, this definition does not seem to be concerned with
the development of a graduate that better ‘fits’ the changing economic situation and
evolving job markets in ways that assist the individual graduate to respond to societywide developments effectively and proposes another definition of WRL as,
Involving students learning about themselves and the world of work in order
to empower them to enter and succeed in the world of work and their wider
lives.
Incorporating a stronger element of student agency, self-efficacy and voice this
definition of WRL promotes self-knowledge and moves towards self-managed
learning that students can subsequently build upon (p.5).
Within the rapid changes of the ‘knowledge society’ (Stehr, 1994), the key challenges
that arise both in education and working life are about individuals, their communities
and organizations continuously surpassing themselves, developing new
competences, advancing their knowledge and understanding, as well as producing
innovations and creating new knowledge (Paavola & Hakkarainen, 2005). When
considering work-related activities as a site for learning through collaborative activity,
it is perhaps not surprising that many of the examples readily sited are found mostly
within the literature on workplace and organisational learning (Eraut, 2007a, 2007b;
Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). Knowledge is now accessible from outside formal
institutions and learning has become an explicit goal in activities not formally
designated as education, especially work-related (Bentley, 2000).
Correspondingly, educators are rapidly moving away from approaches that focus on
developing individual skill levels and reproducing a canon of work to approaches
where group work and the creation of original pieces and new forms of expression
are encouraged (Rojas-Drummond, 2008). This approach explores both the nature
and influence of interactions, relationships and cultures, which constitute and sustain
such activity and the use of cultural tools and technologies, which mediate it (p.1).
Within this framework, learning is regarded as collaborative meaning-making and
knowledge construction rather than as knowledge acquisition (Eteläpelto & Lahti,
2008) and creativity is seen as a collective process that promotes professional
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growth (Cremin, Burnard, & Craft, 2006).
The Young Design Programme case study
Overview
The Sorrell Foundation’s2 Young Design Programme (YDP) is a 6-month annually
run project (since 2005) whereby a group of school pupils act as ‘clients’ by
commissioning a school design project, and their ‘consultants’ are students of design
at university who, in turn, are mentored by professional designers and architects in
industry. As a work-related activity encountered during creative arts higher education,
the YDP is accessed by University tutors on behalf of their students and usually
forms an assessed part of their course. The actual project involves groups of 4-6
creative arts students going into schools where a specific need relating to design has
been identified, i.e. designing new school uniforms, new social spaces. A group of
10-15 pupils in participating schools are selected by their teachers and are
challenged to identify a problem relating to design in their school that they would like
solved. Creative arts student groups are then set a brief that they have to respond to
by working together with and drawing on feedback from the pupils, the YDP
organisers and their professional mentor.
The aim of this case study was to investigate the ways in which collaborative workrelated activities with school pupils during a major school design project initiated new
and creative spaces for learning for undergraduate creative arts students.
Findings
Three broad themes have been identified within student interview/focus group data
collected during this case study that highlighted collaborative and creative
approaches to learning: (1) learning relationships; (2) skills for learning; and (3)
environments for learning.
(1) Experiencing new relationships for learning
Undergraduate student groups were often multi-disciplinary with members having
had little or no contact with each other prior to their engagement with the YDP. What
was for them a unique form of collaboration, students reported that the most valuable
element of the Programme was operating outside the formal learning situations on
their course much of which required little or no collaboration.
“Being at Uni it was a lot about your work and your ideas. To work in a team
and have such a big project and given the scope of the whole school and
how do you focus that down and getting working ideas in quite a lot of
detail…”
Acknowledging individuals’ strengths and weaknesses and enabling individual voices
to be heard as well as acknowledging one’s own responsibility within the groups,
were key ingredients of a successful collaborative process.
“You always pull out the strength of individuals rather than trying to fit them
into whatever the task needs doing, because if they are not fit or if they are
2
The Sorrell Foundation is a charitable organisation that was set up in 1999 to inspire
creativity in young people and improve the quality of life through design.
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uncomfortable with doing it they won’t be able to do the best but if you give
them a particular task that he or she is strong at you know the best comes
out.”
“There is a different pressure when you work within a team, a different
dynamic … the more into the project you get, and the more familiar you are
with each others’ roles the more responsibility you have to take on.”
A key element of facilitating student-pupil collaborations and inspiring pupils was
reported by students as being the creation of new codes of communication.
“To get (school) children to listen to you, you have to talk in a very exciting
way about something that you have to make them believe that you feel very
passionately about.”
Compromise and the negotiation of ‘control’ and ownership of ideas remained at the
heart of the knowledge creating process.
“In a team working experience you have to work with the other and it’s kind
of like compromise and things like that, but you can be very creative with
compromise. It means that your compromise is not lesser than others’
ideas; it could be a third idea that is even more wonderful.”
Working together with pupils in order to ensure their views and ideas for their schools
were fully incorporated in the final design concepts was valued by all participants.
(2) Building skills for learning
Encouraging self-knowledge and self-managed learning, the YDP incorporated an
experiential element that was acknowledged by students when talking about the
development of ‘know-how’.
“There are things like that you can pick up on, but not – you can’t be taught
how to communicate with someone … Those are just skills that you learn
when – that’s what you learn when you go and do something in industry …
(for example) working with others – I mean – even things like phone calls or
emails that you have to do in a certain manner - you know (my tutor’s) not
going to teach me how to write a letter to someone – you just learn with
practice, and you know, the more emails you send and the more you
receive, you learn how things work.”
“It’s about adapting how you talk to different audiences. So you are
addressing a client of 11-13 year olds and then you are addressing your
professional mentors. And then you are going back and doing a
presentation at Uni to your tutors. And we would tweak them according to
the audience.”
During the Programme, opportunities to take initiatives and greater responsibility for
their own learning abounded.
“At Uni if you don’t turn up then it’s your problem. But in the YDP if you
don’t turn up in a meeting, you let everyone down and yourself down
included. It was a bit more like it was your problem and you had to solve it,
and the responsibility factor was a bit more. If you didn’t turn up it was a big
deal, because everybody else was like ‘he let us down’.”
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(3) Facilitating environments for learning
There was a recurrent theme in the data of the dissonance between the more
protected higher education context of learning and the opportunities afforded by the
YDP for working on a ‘live’ project with a ‘real’ client.
“(a) great experience working with a real client and having to come up with
a design scheme that the client feels proud of.”
“closer to a real job than just a college brief.”
A key outcome of the programme highlighted by both students and their tutors was
the development of student voice, in that it provided students with a space where
their ideas would be welcomed as well as challenged.
“At Uni I was protective about my work and a little secretive at times. But on
the YDP it felt like an environment were you can talk about your ideas. I
guess it’s about being part of a team as well. You have an equal share of
responsibility for the ideas. You are not putting yourself completely out
there.”
Importantly, the Programme provided students with a space where their ideas would
be welcomed as well as challenged and opened up for students alternative pathways
into employment after graduation, allowing for a wider range of identities to emerge.
“It gave me much more confidence that whatever course I am on doesn’t
have to be the final thing. I can juggle things a bit more and be in the
creative industries somewhere and that course is not the label I am going to
have for the rest of my days. So it was a bit like there are so many sets of
skills that we have to work with … So it opened up a bigger perspective on
things.”
“It definitely did help in resolving in my mind as a practitioner what I liked
and what I didn’t like and where my stand was in terms of my architectural
self, so it did help define my personality as a practitioner.”
As these data suggest, students learnt about different ways of creating and learning
in collaboration with diverse groups of people and in a range of physical spaces.
Their participation in a work-related collaborative activity that comprised of settings
and processes quite different to those encountered during their course encouraged
students to build upon and expand their existing knowledge and skills.
Finally, one of the paradoxes of HE study but most obviously within the creative (and
performing) arts, is the necessity to arrive at a numerical figure which represents, for
example, a live performance, as well as to ascertain individual contributions within a
group project (Bryan, 2004:56). Students reported that the challenges of assessment
related to a focus on outcomes and product rather than processes:
“I found it really satisfying to get good feedback from the kids … you know
having good client feedback was more valuable for me than an assessment
from my tutors – probably because they just didn’t know what it was that I
was doing … they would not have known anything about it.”
“It wasn’t really formally assessed it was more like ticking the box … but it’s
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far better an assessment of the work having feedback from the clients on
the whole package and the whole experience.”
For many students, the assessment of collaborative group work in HEIs seemed at
odds with the kind of risk-taking and identity work promoted during the Programme
as reported above. Attempts are now being made to involve students in their own
assessment processes, with a student group currently undertaking the Programme
also being assessed on a Personal Development Planning (PDP) assignment that
asks them to reflect (both in visual and written form) on their experience of working
collaboratively in relation to how this influenced the actual work produced. Such
endeavours, often facilitated by individual tutors, represent a more holistic approach
to assessment.
Discussion / Conclusion
From these main themes that cut across the data there is evidence that students
forged close connections between (1) the significance of new roles and learning
relationships; (2) the impact of diverse contexts for learning; and (3) the knowledge
that they co-constructed within their groups and with the school pupils.
New roles and relationships for learning: The case study findings demonstrated
strongly the importance of educational practices providing greater experience of the
ways in which knowledge is used in society by challenging participants to take on
unfamiliar roles and responsibilities. Undergraduate students’ roles continuously
shifted from being ‘experts’ in their own disciplinary field within their multidisciplinary
groups; ‘apprentices’ within mentor-student relationships; ‘designers’ for schools and
pupils; and ‘representatives’ for their University when presenting their work to other
parties, such as the school or parents. During collaborative work-related activities
participants needed and depended on each other and in so doing adopted a mutually
adaptive stance to learning from which each was able to engage in what Schön
(1983) calls ‘reflection-in-action’ and share each others’ learning concerns whilst
inspiring confidence and commitment.
New contexts for learning: In the HE context a key question arises as to what sort of
informal learning works best in practice, and what kinds of partnerships are likely to
improve the undergraduate learning experience and encourage the integration of
students’ conceptual or formal knowledge with their understandings and expectations
of non-formal and informal contexts. Aligning employability agendas (Ball, 2003) with
calls for the social and moral responsibility of education could be a way forward. In
this paper, undergraduate creative arts students were offered a kind of ‘critical
vocationalism’ (Usher et al, 1997) in which learning took place in a climate of social
responsibility as opposed to more instrumental models of vocational learning
(Butcher, 2008). If the kinds of informal learning developed within work-related
activities are to contribute to formal educational aims and agendas, it is essential that
more attention is afforded to the social, cultural, and physical contexts in which they
are promoted.
Co-constructing knowledge: A key feature of the findings was the construction of new
knowledge within unfamiliar educational practices and contexts. The findings
revealed high levels of rigorous and deep learning as creative arts students adjusted
their language and practice to take into account pupils’ views and ideas; responded
to and reflected on the physical spaces they were called upon to (re-) design; took
responsibility for their own learning and showed commitment to the task; and
developed the ‘know how’ of processes and practices of working with others in
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unfamiliar conditions. Such deep learning seemed at odds with the outcome-based
assessment of collaborative group activity as reported by students.
With regards to this final point, Smith et al (2007) discuss employability in HE in
terms of transferable skills, through which engaged learners can relate (or ‘transfer’)
academic understanding to work-based experiences. They argue this depends upon
reflection-on-action, in which tacit knowledge is made explicit as part of an
experience encouraging reflection and deep learning. If education systems should
strive for three ends in enhancing youths’ knowledge-building capacities and,
consequently, lifelong learning: autonomy, responsibility and creativity (Bentley,
2000) and if creativity involves among others the ‘capacity to apply one’s knowledge
in ways which extend and develop it’ (p.357), it follows that transforming current
educational practices and learning cultures could very well depend on:
 Merging individual potential and competencies with collaborative practices in
non-formal contexts as important sites for creativity
 Finding new ways to value and assess both creative processes and
outcomes, and ultimately
 Shifting our understanding of student identity from that of ‘student’ to that of
‘creator’ of knowledge.
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