LEARNING FROM THE PATCHWORK TEXT PROCESS A RESTROSPECTIVE DISCUSSION
Jane Akister, Katalin Illes, Maire Maisch, Janet McKenzie, Peter Ovens,
Jan Parker, Bronwen Rees, Lesley Smith and Richard Winter
After about two years of work with the Patchwork Text process in our different contexts, and
after writing our individual case studies, we decided we would like to put together a 'joint
statement' about what we had learned. Given the quite different directions in which each of us
had taken the original general idea, this was itself necessarily conceived as a sort of
Patchwork. We decided we would individually prepare a statement of specific ideas that had
emerged from our own work, but present them in a spoken forum, so that discussion of points
of difference and overlap could take place. The occasion was tape-recorded and transcribed,
and the transcription was then edited, to convert the inevitable vagaries of speech into a
readable text..
Lesley Smith:
The first thing I'd like to say, from our work teaching perspectives on research and knowledge
with community nurses, is that using the Patchwork Text meant that the assessment became
the main teaching and learning strategy. Initially, I thought this would increase student
anxieties and make the module more assignment-led. But, paradoxically, it reduced anxieties,
both mine and the students'. During our weekly sessions they were so engaged in refining and
developing their ideas that the focus on the assignment became less significant. The teaching,
learning and assessment process became integrated in a way I never imagined possible. A
largely invisible part of this process is tutorials, which are perhaps the least observed and
researched area of learning. Our exercise on analysing the intellectual qualities present in the
traditional essay has helped to provide a framework for tutorial and group discussion work. I
now focus on asking the kind of questions likely to encourage the intellectual qualities we
have identified as part of our marking criteria. This again moves me away from 'coaching',
and seems significant in developing self-critical thinking. When I started using the patchwork
text, I was nervous, and did not really trust the process. I thought the 'invisible weak' students
might feel exposed and react by not attending sessions. But I had underestimated the
importance of sharing a common experience, where all students feel vulnerable and able to
support one another. I found that the giving and the receiving of each other’s work is
symbolically significant in providing the reciprocity necessary for collaborative learning.
Importantly, I have seen weaker students supported in this process, and the routine of writing
short pieces is helpful in developing writing and creative skills. I am really hopeful that the
patchwork text may be an inclusive, yet rigorous, form of assessment. The features that
students value most about the Patchwork Text have been, firstly, being provided with a
structured environment in which there is a pacing of their assignments and, secondly, having
an opportunity to digest and review all learning and to receive feedback from their peers.
These are both features which learning theorists have identified as central to the learning
process, and which seem to account for the success of the Patchwork Text.
Jane Akister:
My interest in the Patchwork Text was in the idea of building up assignment material
gradually throughout the teaching sequence, and of students receiving feedback during this
process - the opportunity to incorporate formative assessment in a summative process. I was
also curious as to whether it would be suited to a subject like Family Therapy, where a
prescribed sequential curriculum needed to be covered. The first time I used the Patchwork
Text, the students experienced a lot of anxiety about the process, and (especially) concerns
about the final piece of work. And, while the feedback for the module was generally positive
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and they felt in the end that they had benefited from the experience, there was a lot of ‘I felt
very anxious about this’; to the extent that I was slightly uncertain whether or not to repeat the
process. Despite the students' work being better, I wondered if I could contend with this
anxiety again! I decided to try again, and have just completed the second run of the
Patchwork Text. This second time I was quite confident about the outcomes, having seen the
previous students' work. Also, I had restructured my lecture inputs to allow adequate time for
the students to share their pieces. And this was a big piece of learning for me because,
whereas the first time I didn’t really leave enough time for sharing (since I wasn’t quite sure
how much they were going to learn from it), this time there was no anxiety expressed at all.
The students’ feedback this second time around was remarkably positive (the most
positive feed-back I've ever had at the end of a course, in fact) and the transformation in the
group atmosphere was remarkable. One student said, for example, ‘The patchwork text is a
brilliant idea, because it made me look at the relevant topics during the module, and to look at
these in more depth. I am not panicking about deadlines now and feel I learned more than
from writing an essay’. Another student said ‘this method of delivering the Family Therapy
module has made it more clear and relevant to work and home. The assignment makes it far
more real, and will make it much more individual’, which is something that has come up in
our discussions. When I asked, ‘How far do you feel writing the assignment has helped you to
bring together the various ideas presented in the module?’ one student said, ‘It helped a lot, as
I looked at them in more depth. I looked at all the areas that we covered, whereas for an essay,
I would perhaps have only looked at some’. One of my anxieties had been about students
being worried about people taking their ideas, and because I was worried about that the first
time, they were worried about it too. Whereas the second time they weren’t worried about that
at all; it has been much more positive.
Jan Parker:
I'd like to try to order my thoughts into three parts. The first is the single practical issue that
has stood out as a result of using Patchwork texts in my teaching [of Tragedy to Cambridge
English students], and the other two are issues that have arisen out of our discussions together
over the last couple of years. The most important thing from my own use of the Patchwork
Text is to do with students finding a voice, which is why I wanted to get involved with this
project in the first place. It is to do with using reflective writing, with getting them to use their
emotions and all different sorts of engagements (with each other, with the material, with
different sorts of writing) and finding expression for it all. I bring all that under the heading of
‘finding a voice'. This has involved looking afresh, and critically, at the advantages and
disadvantages of the traditional essay in quite a challenging way. It has also had implications,
more than I expected, for examining the way in which the final synthesis works: the way in
which they have brought together their ideas, their perceptions and their engagements into a
critical yet reflective narrative. And, the impression that comes out for me is that the
Patchwork Text leads to a broader-based piece of work than if they had taken the material off
on their own and worked in a traditional way to produce an analytical essay. But having said
that, I think I was surprised that the final form of their writing wasn’t all that different, so the
significant difference is not in the form of the writing but in the richness and variety of the
engagements that went into that final piece. And it's that breadth and richness of
understanding that they are able to bring to this process that stands out as their 'finding a
voice'.
The other issues which have struck me most in our discussions over the last couple of
years have been to do with assessment and judgement. We have had a lot of talk about the
way we have found the assessment process to work. How does our teaching and our way of
interacting with and advising students affect our understanding of our own ways of coming to
make judgements of the resultant texts? How have we presented Patchworking to external
examiners? And how have we positioned ourselves as assessors of Patchwork Texts?
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Because sometimes this seems to have actually had quite a lot of repercussions on ourselves
as teachers, as authorities and arbiters, and on our perceived relationship to our students.
Introducing a different form of assessment has led us to make explicit that assessment is not
an arbitrary, discrete and absolute end process, but rather a much more complex matter of
forming judgements. Questions have arisen about what should come into that judgement. Is it
a verdict over process as well as product? And who should do the judging - we ourselves as
teachers, wearing a different hat? All this has opened many important issues about
assessment that usually, by common consent, go by default.
And then the third issue is to do with us being 'reflective practitioners'. I feel that we
have talked (in a way that I haven’t been able to find elsewhere) about how we have coped
with the anxiety of making substantial changes; about re-positioning ourselves as teachers,
about devolving some of our authority, about seeing students' education as something that
they can take ownership of. So, investigating patchworking has involved becoming reflective
about teaching, learning and assessment as a whole. As Lesley implied, if you change one it
actually affects all three. And I feel that the result of our working through, together, the
implications of doing something so fundamental with teaching, learning and assessment I
have developed as a reflective practitioner in a way that wouldn’t have happened if I had just
gone away and thought about my own practice on my own. There is a lot of talk about the
effectiveness of communities of practice: I feel we have formed one small but radical example
of such a community.
Katalin Illes:
I think I would like to move away from teaching and learning and make a more general
statement that has struck me over the past few months. It is partly to do with Patchwork
Texts, but partly, also, to do with my individual journey as a management educator. It is this:
in management you need to grow the individual in order to grow the leader. If you look at the
current literature on management, you realise that we are looking for some sort of Holy Grail.
We are looking for the magic formula, for the one and only answer to the complex and
incomprehensible problems of society and of the business world. So we put people on a
pedestal, and, inevitably, they fall. Now, my first question, when I started working with the
Patchwork Text was how could I prepare my students best for the challenges they would
meet, and I realised that we needed to go back to developing the individual. I started to ask
questions. For example: to what extent does a set framework like the essay really allow
people to dig deep inside themselves, to be innovative? In the business place we encourage
(and almost demand) creativity: how do I prepare my students for that when I give strict
guidelines and expect them to think in boxes? The patchwork assignment seemed to offer an
exciting opportunity, and in the process of introducing it I realised that when students are
expected to reflect on the process of their learning, they link it to their previous experiences,
which are unique and varied, and so a much deeper level of learning takes place. It is part of
the individualisation process, or the growing process of the individual. Fortunately
management literature is now opening up, and appreciates the complexity of the evolution of
the personality. We need to support the growth of the individual, and perhaps the Patchwork
Text assessment is one of the ways to do that.
The other benefit that I found was sharing. One of the big issues in management
research is knowledge sharing. You are expected to work in teams, you are expected to share
your knowledge. Do we teach our students to do that? I think I learned that I needed to move
away the barriers around the individual learning process, to encourage and support creativity,
novel ideas and novel solutions. And this means increasing the students' courage to share
what they have. And, if we give them the opportunity to do that in the safe environment of a
classroom, with other students who all make themselves equally vulnerable, then perhaps we
can give them a natural opportunity to learn beyond the framework of the module. To learn
how to share, to learn how to make a contribution from their unique individual skills and
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competencies, and to make sure that everybody is benefiting as a group. This, I think, was my
most important experience when I consciously created an opportunity for students to go
through the patchwork process. And certainly, this is an approach that encourages more proactive problem solving, whereas the essay seems to encourage a reactive approach. If you
look at the business world, we have to encourage students to be pro-active, to come up with
ideas, And how do we train them? By asking them to react to a set task with prescribed
signposts; we say, 'Okay, this is the structure you have to follow'. Life is not as simple as that.
And I think the patchwork approach can help people to develop into more rounded
individuals, who can not only use their intellect but also tap into their enormous amount of
emotional and spiritual intelligence as well.
Bronwen Rees:
The first part of what I want to say is very much to do with what Jan was saying about
authority, the relationship between the student and the teacher and the learning process. I
think the patchwork format has the opportunity for really breaking down that conventional
relationship, but I also think that it would be very easy for it all to become formalised again.
We have all enjoyed the patchwork process, and we have faced our own anxieties and the
students’ anxieties, but I don’t know how one can keep refreshing it, how you can keep up
that intense awareness. So, what I am saying is that the patchwork idea is not, per se, a way of
ensuring proper learning, because, for it to be effective, you have actually got to be prepared
to go in there with the students and explore the unknown. And, this, for me, is particularly
helpful in teaching research methods to international business students, because I don’t think
you can do research unless you are open to that unknown. I would say that our experience
over the first half of the module was a sense of holding that anxiety, and of really having faith
that the students were going to come up with something. After the first few writing tasks
('patches'), I was a bit concerned about the nature of the patches and this made me realise that
there needs to be a lot of thought as to what goes into these patches. I know that some of you
have worked on that in doing it a second time. But, certainly, for Jill and me, it was a case of
providing this holding environment for them, in order to be able to engage with the students
(in the way that Katalin and Jan were talking about) so that they felt safe enough to express
themselves in a more personal way. Even if the patches had been tried and tested, I think there
would still be a need to provide this 'holding' environment - but it would be easier if one knew
that the patches had worked in the past. I think anybody wanting to introduce the patchwork
process would need to bear this in mind.
The other important point about our work is that we were using the patchwork
process with students that don’t speak English as a first or mother tongue. On the whole, I
think that the patchwork has helped in this respect, but there has been a lot of anxiety and
nerves about writing 'reflectively', which they certainly were not at all used to doing. But what
was really good, I think, was that despite the students’ problems with English, everybody
seemed to have benefited. Even though we had, as usual, a few failures, even those students
whose work for various reasons couldn’t pass, did seem to have learned something, and for
me, as a teacher, that was really encouraging. They had learned about themselves and that
seemed important, whereas I'm not sure I would have said this about students who failed in
previous cohorts, with a single essay type of assessment.
Finally, I'd like to say a bit more about 'reflection'. My main aim is to try and develop
student awareness, because I am teaching research methods, and as far as I am concerned,
reflexivity is absolutely crucial to that aspect of it. The patchwork was very helpful there,
because it gave me more of a framework with which to work explicitly on that aspect of the
work. This meant that I didn’t have to think quite so hard about the activities that could
develop this type of awareness. Because, in some sense I had done that work, it was already
built into the patchwork process. I think the other part was actually teaching 'reflection'. I was
co-teaching it with Jill, who is not used to working in that experiential way, but she very
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much wanted to do it. So, it all felt quite experimental and the two of us talked a lot about it.
Also, it was very nice that we had these meetings of the project group, not least to get the
sense that everybody else was experiencing some sort of anxiety in treading into the new
ground. But what was particularly exciting, as I was teaching the module, was realising that
the process that we were going through with the Patchwork Text, the feedback amongst the
students and that process of exploration, was actually reflecting the whole aim of the module.
The aim was to learn how you do research, and, actually, when you do research you do go
through those periods of confusion. So a great sense of integrity began to emerge, a sense of
coherence between the aims of the module and the learning and assessment process. I am only
just beginning to articulate this for myself, but I think there is an important potential here. I
don’t know how this would manifest itself using the Patchwork Text in other subjects, but for
us, teaching research methods, there was a real sense of 'dovetailing'.
Janet Mckenzie:
I came to Patchwork Texts thinking about the structure and agency debates in sociology,
about empowering students and giving them greater ownership of their own learning
processes. I felt that even so-called radical sociologists were not at all radical in the way that
they were actually teaching and helping their students to learn. I promised myself that, with
this wonderful new idea, I would be much more enlightened, enterprising and innovative. But
now, at the tail end of the second offering of Patchwork Texts on a Sociology of Education
module, I have found the experience to be quite an eye-opener with regard to my own
approach to teaching and learning. In other words, I have discovered that I am not nearly as
radical as I thought I was and that I have real problems in working towards genuine student
ownership of their own learning processes, real student empowerment. To put it in a nutshell,
some students have described me as a bit of a mother figure, rather motherly in my style, and
I have realised that this is not necessarily a good thing. If I was into transactional analysis, for
example, I would probably say I tend to have a parent-child relationship with students, and
that my struggle with the patchwork process has been to move towards an adult-adult
relationship with them. So, this has been the main theme that I have identified in introducing
Patchwork Texts: it feels as though each time I am struggling to peel my fingers away from
control of the contents and processes of the module, so that students will genuinely have more
freedom. This has included things like giving them more time for small group activity and
more time for individual work. The first time round, their contribution was minimal, so in the
second offering I realised I had to balance this out a bit more – reduce my contribution and
increase their contribution. This meant, for example, changing the timetable and ensuring we
had a room where the furniture could be moved around.
The second point is that the Patchwork Text seems particularly appropriate for
teaching the Sociology of Education, because students are not only reflecting on education
systems but also about their own experience of education, including the assessment process
and the different sort of assessments they have experienced. The patchwork process enabled
them to look critically at the different styles of course work assignment and how this relates to
education in general.
Another important general point that emerged for me is the greater depth of
understanding that the students achieved. This depth was increased in the second offering of
the patchwork process, I think, by encouraging students to identify one theme that covered all
of the patches, so that all the patches could more easily be linked. Some students in the
previous cohort, before I introduced the Patchwork Text, said they were concerned about the
patchwork idea because they thought they might not be able to take their thinking to the depth
that they experienced in engaging with one essay question at length. And in the first offering
of the patchwork approach some of their Patchwork Texts did seem rather bitty. So in the
second offering students were encouraged to identify a single theme that would be applicable
in all the patchwork tasks. Initially, two students identified topics that I thought were still
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rather bitty and not clearly identifying one theme, but then showed great sophistication in
showing how all the aspects were linked, so that you could actually see a single theme
emerging from all these different aspects. One of these is now thinking of moving on to a
PhD, to focus on what is quite an original idea that emerged from her patchwork assignment.
So that was one example of the depth of the students' work. And, as another example, I would
mention some school visits that we had this week. (One option for a patch is to write a report
on a school visit.) The students arrived at these school visits very well prepared indeed. The
teachers were told in advance what sort of things to expect, but one in particular was as
stunned as a long-standing teacher could be by the probing nature of the students' questioning.
It was a real revelation for me, as well as for the school-teacher, to witness this, because it
was so intense; at the end of the session we sat back and caught our breath, and my first
thought was, ‘No-one expects the Spanish Inquisition!’ And we all left with a great sense of
achievement. I think that is what the patchwork process is giving us all. And there will be
even greater achievements if I can manage to prise my fingers away from the controls!
Maire Maisch:
At the moment I have six students on the Masters Dissertation, using the Patchwork Text
format. Only one of these has completed, so I am in the very early stages of thinking about
and evaluating the process. I suppose I could say, though, that I have moved from feeling, to
begin with, very uncertain, diffident, and doubtful as to whether or not this is actually going
to work to feeling much more confident and positive. I think that, actually, if I got my
thoughts together and discussed in depth with the students, the Patchwork Text could be a
really exciting development in thinking about Dissertations. There are three aspects that I'd
particularly like to mention – assessment, the tutorial relationship, and the end product.
I have just marked the first Patchwork Text Dissertation and found the assessment
really very difficult, not only because I am used to marking traditional Dissertations, which
have a much more linear format, but because the Dissertation that I marked was so much
more personal, so much more reflective and honest. It was hard to comment on the patches
because they were really creative, personal narratives, somebody’s very personal thoughts,
and this is quite different from the conventional dissertation, where none of it is quite so
personal to the student. I also think there is a danger of self-indulgence in the Patchwork
Dissertation. At this stage I'm only thinking of one completed piece, but because some of the
patches are personal, there could be a danger of just being introspective, rather than
analytical, critical and reflective. I am not sure about this, but it is a worry.
In terms of the tutorial relationship, which is the second point that I would like to
make, I think, like other people, that there is an awful lot of trust and letting go, with the
students, and that there was far more interaction in the relationship between us than usual. In
the conventional dissertation, you, as a tutor, are much more sure about what they have to
write. With the patchwork format I felt a lot less sure about how to respond to what they were
writing, and what they were telling me what they were writing, and how it all linked together.
Because while they were going through it, it just wasn’t obvious. They were much more
possessive about it as well, and asserted a much greater ownership of it, because they were
putting together these personal pieces of work and then, as they saw it, a tutor, was coming in
and questioning it all in terms of a conventional Dissertation. So they seemed to be much
more resistant to changing anything. I think that is, in some ways, a good thing, but again, it
could be something of a problem. Another thought that occurs to me is that their willingness
to share the material, I think was largely beneficial because it articulated their thoughts and
gave voice to what they wanted to say, but getting feedback from everybody else was not so
beneficial. This was, again, because no-one was quite sure what the work should look like, so
the comments on each other's work weren't always helpful, I thought. It was as though the
other students' comments pushed them off at a tangent or took them away from their own
ideas. So that took quite a lot of sensitive handling on the tutor's part.
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The last thing I want to mention is the end product. So far I have had sight of two
completed Dissertations, one that is about to come in, and one that has been through the
marking process. In comparison to conventional Dissertations that I have marked before (and
I sort of hesitate to say this) they are really very interesting and exciting to read. I mean,
often with Dissertations you really have to force yourself to wade through them! So, these
Patchwork Dissertations are exciting, and they have other features as well. The empirical
research is less central to the Dissertation as a whole, they are more reflective, and there is a
greater mix of the personal and the professional. And this has made me think that maybe we
might need to apply different assessment criteria, beyond those we use for the conventional
Dissertations, to take more account of different balance between the personal and the
professional, the autobiographical and creative writing, and the very different textual format.
This is what could make it a really exciting development, as I said before. But initially there
could be a struggle with other academic tutors who will be worried that with the patchwork
format, compared to the conventional format, research is less central to the Dissertation.
Richard Winter:
I wonder if there is a different way of putting that final statement. Rather than saying that
'research is less central', we might say that the autobiographical and creative tasks in your
version of a Patchwork Dissertation are expanding the boundaries of what could count as
'doing research'. In other words, gathering empirical data from an interview, processing it and
generalising your interpretation of what people say: that is not the only way of 'doing
research'. And so, the question is: can we expand our conception of 'research' so that it
includes, for example, writing part of an autobiography, writing a story, or creating a new sort
of diagram that you haven't used before?
Katalin:
There seems to be an emerging theme here, that we as lecturers are having to learn to move
away from the traditional model of being 'in charge of' the students' learning. It's about
recognising that there can always be more than one good answer to a question, about sharing
our authority with the students. I think that what is coming up in different forms in all of our
reflections is that teaching is very much a learning process for us as tutors. And I do believe
that we can only teach effectively if we are prepared to learn and expand ourselves.
Jan:
I think that what Maire has just said is very important. Something that I have noted in my
work is a worry about students pulling away from engagement with what would normally be
thought to be the process and content of the course into something very personal, which could
indeed be judged to be 'self-indulgent'. That word has come up for me too, and I would be
sorry to duck that issue and say simply that we expand the boundaries of what we consider the
course to be. Because I think that in our work we are coming up with something important
about ways of using reflexivity and reflective writing. I would say that the claim of
Patchworking is that reflective writing is brought back to the central concerns of the course
and stitched back into it. So reflexive writing should not be self indulgent, any more than
analytical writing should be superficial or abstracted from the material – not because such
writing is ‘bad’ but because it is partial, not yet digested, not yet brought to a mature
engagement with the totality of the course. This is particularly important for those of us who
are involved in debates about 'academic' writing, as against 'reflective' writing. I think that in
this research we have begun to address this vital issue more directly, precisely because we are
using the Patchwork Text format, and so we are actually tackling this interface of ownership
and control within the structure of what has to be engaged with. That is actually, for many of
us, the 'fault line' that we, as teachers and as students, have to get right. Otherwise, if we
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accept that personal writing is to be judged on different terms from academic writing we are
allowing ourselves and our students to pull away from the academic community’s norms and
practices. And I would rather force that academic community to embrace our criteria and so
widen those norms and practices.
Bronwen:
This seems to me to be a question of holding 'the personal' in relationship to the research. The
personal isn’t something separate, just focusing in on itself. For me the question is: can
students reflect on their own experience of themselves in relationship to what it is that is
being done (and in the context Maire and I are talking about it would be in relationship to the
research)? And, if there isn’t that relationship, if that 'fault line' isn’t there, something is
wrong, something has slipped.
Janet:
In many ways this brings us back to what we label as 'intelligence'. Emotional intelligence is
one key concept here and that is something to consider. But these issues of assessment that a
number of us have been raising do link to the different sorts of 'intelligence' (or 'intelligences')
we might need to think about
Peter Ovens:
To begin with, I would like to re-emphasise what people have already said about the
anxieties, both for the students and for me as the tutor, that surround trying out something like
this for the first time. And I would like to say how important it was for me to have this group,
as a kind of reference group. I suppose this is also a practical point for anybody who might
want to introduce the Patchwork Text – have they got some critical friends that they can talk
to on a regular basis, as we have had with each other? It is paradoxical also how this initial
stage of anxiety for the students led to them actually being empowered, once they had got
over their initial fears and apprehensions. This links with something that Lesley said (see 1,
above). Although the assessment is up front (because you talk to the students quite early on in
the module about how you want them to start doing a piece of writing for a patch and how
this is going to relate to the assignment at the end) yet in a psychological sense, this does fade
away into the background. And this does lead to students in many cases taking advantage of
this protected environment, in which they can be playful and experiment with pieces of
writing. Their vulnerabilities are compensated for by the atmosphere of supporting each other,
where they read each other’s patches as well as having feedback from me.
This has been something of a revelation to me. Previously, before trying out
Patchwork Texts, I had tried to do apparently quite similar things, in my teaching of science
with trainee teachers. I had encouraged students to do short pieces of writing, tried to get into
real dialogues with students, where they were telling me about where their thinking had
reached, in relation to something that interested them, and offered a kind of formative,
prompting, stimulating feedback. But previously all that just disappeared, or seemed to
disappear. I suppose, looking back, this was because the students were probably thinking,
'Well that was all very well and very interesting, but it is nothing to do with the final
assignment, which is still weeks away and has a set series of tasks and expectations that are
quite unrelated to this; so this is something that I can just enjoy for the moment and then
forget about'. Whereas the Patchwork Text process seems to bring together all these sorts of
things that had failed in my earlier attempts, and enables a much higher level of success. It
has enabled me to feel a strong sense of knowing where their thinking is up to, and to offer
encouragement and feedback. I think the Patchwork Text has produced a quite different
experience for the students too. As I was saying before, the assessment drifts into the
background as far as they are concerned, and their minds now are really focused much more
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on what is interesting them and what they are going to try and achieve through writing their
current 'patch'. This gains real momentum in the case of many students, so that the patches
that they write towards the end of the module are ones that they have very largely chosen and
planned themselves. And this also leads them to write in their reflective 'jotters', in quite
powerful ways, about how they have gained confidence in themselves as learners.
That links with Ronald Barnett’s idea, which we discussed earlier, that the learners need
to become 'reflective practitioners' in the development of their own abilities to learn (in The
Idea of Higher Education, p.160). If anybody now claims in my hearing that that sounds very
idealistic and not very much to do with what can actually happen in a real situation, I would
challenge them very strongly, because I think that my students working with the Patchwork
Text did achieve precisely this.
The other thing I would like to say is something that is distinctive about this particular
module, in which student Primary teachers who want to specialise in teaching science to
young children are asked to achieve a sort of a paradigm shift in how they see science. Very
many of them still enter the final, fourth year of their degree course seeing science as being
about truth as certainty, and seeing the research methods of science as more or less infallible
ways of creating the truth. And many of them come to a very different view by the end of the
module. They realise that science perhaps can be about certainty, but that it is also open to all
kinds of personal and social influences, and that knowledge can’t always be certain, and so
on. But that is only possible when they can deconstruct their initial paradigm and reconstruct
it, and every student has to do that in their own way. Before the Patchwork Text, I felt I had to
put quite a lot of my own effort into getting that reconstruction process going and I thought I
was saying all kinds of wise and helpful and challenging sorts of things to make this happen.
But in the Patchwork Text environment I don’t feel that I have got to be pushing nearly so
hard. Because the students are doing their own reading and their own writing and having their
own discussions, this reconstruction process takes place on a much more personal and
individual basis. So, as Maire said, the Patchwork Texts in the end are really interesting and
exciting to read, because they have got such fresh ways in which different individuals have
seen connections across the whole range of the module ideas and activities: the history of
science, the philosophy of science, teaching science, how you talk to children in classrooms
and also the students' own enquiry project. The module covers such a large field, and yet the
students see all those links. This has been the most satisfying thing of all about the patchwork
project, and I couldn’t really, now, contemplate any other kind of assessment process for a
module that has those sorts of aims.
Richard:
So that completes the reports on the individual projects. As my contribution I would just like
to make a point that arises, for me, from things that other people have said. First, Bronwen
said that she thought the Patchwork Text is particularly appropriate for teaching research,
because it enacts the uncertainty and the confusion of doing research. And then Janet said that
the Patchwork Text is very helpful if you are teaching education, because it helps students to
look critically at other forms of teaching and learning and assessment that they have been
engaged with. I agree with both of those statements, but I'd like to go further and say that for
me one of the most important things about the Patchwork Text is that it enacts the actual
process of learning, and that is why it is an appropriate assessment format for teaching any
subject. Because any process of learning must, I think, involve the learner in going through
some process of uncertainty and confusion, and having a reflexive awareness of that
uncertainty and confusion. We need to actively encourage students to engage in a selfconscious awareness about their own process of transforming their state of mind. And, if one
is not transforming one’s state of mind, then I would argue that what is happening is not,
actually, 'learning'. So I am tempted to say that the phrase 'surface learning' is a contradiction
in terms: if it is a 'surface' activity, it can't be about mental transformation. I think that 'deep
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learning' is what we mean by learning, whereas 'surface learning' is, let us say, some sort of
acquisition of marketable goods, that can be 'cashed in' within the procedures of an
information-based economy. Surface learning works, but only as a way of coping and making
out in the quest for marketable credentials. But in an important sense it is not learning, if by
learning we mean transforming the structure of one’s mental processes.
Jane:
While I agree with part of what Richard has said, I also want to question some of it, because I
think that part of learning is variety. Why the patchwork text was exciting is that it was a
different form of learning for the students - they hadn't done it before. And if they had had to
do five Patchwork Texts each semester I don't think it would enhance their learning. So, I
think what is needed is a range of activities and assessment formats. Sometimes you need to
go to lectures and take notes, because that is actually a very effective way of learning for
many people. Sometimes you need more reflection. Sometimes my students have done
posters, and that has been good for them because they have to think in a different way in order
to get a visual representation. So, while I love the Patchwork Text work that I have done, I
wouldn’t want to do it all like that.
Moira:
Yes, I agree with that.
Bronwen:
Can I just come back to what Richard was saying. I think you said something quite
fundamental, which was that the patchwork process is about transforming the mind. So we are
talking about the basic principles of learning. I think it is interesting that the discussion has
moved round to different types of assessment, whereas I think this principle of the patchwork
process as transforming the mind is a question of its potential, of how it is used, and perhaps
of how we relate to it as teachers. Because from this perspective I don’t think it is any longer
a question of choosing between a Patchwork Text or an essay. Because in doing an essay it is
also possible that students are transforming their minds. But I suppose the thing is: can we
make the students aware of the processes they are going through?
Janet:
I'd like to follow on from what Bronwen was saying about the principles of learning inherent
in the Patchworks Text (transforming the mind). For me, this transformation seemed to be
there in my students' experience of the patchwork process, when they were able to begin the
module by probing into their own individual needs in deciding what patches to do and how to
do them, by deciding what theme to look for, and so on. They had to evaluate their own
strengths and weaknesses, because they were given the option of whether to carry out an
interview, to write a report on the school visits, to do a news report presentation or a data
analysis or a text review or a case study exercise. And, in making those choices, they were
deciding what they are particularly competent at, comfortable with and also where their
vulnerabilities are. They may choose to produce a patch that is actually in their vulnerable
area, just to evaluate themselves and see how they get on, bearing in mind that they will be
able to get feedback and support that they have not previously had in doing that sort of work.
Richard:
Could you just unpack what you mean by ‘in their vulnerable area’? Could you give us an
example?
Janet:
I am thinking for example of students who studied research methods in the past and perhaps
carried out an interview that was not particularly successful, but learned quite a lot from the
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process, and are wondering whether to go for it again or to just do something else. I think that
this process of self-evaluation is something very special in the Patchwork Text. It gives
opportunities that are not available in more closed forms of assessment, where your choices
are very, very limited, and your opportunities for the choice of assessment method are nonexistent. Another important thing is that at this university (APU) students can choose modules
according to the form of assessment. For example, some students might choose modules
because they are not assessed by examination. So some might choose to take a module
because it offers a Patchwork Text, whereas others might choose not to take that module for
the same reason. People can vote with their feet! My module has run twice now, with the
Patchwork Text, and it has maintained its popularity; so I think that says something!
Peter:
OK, I accept that other kinds of modules with other kinds of assessment could be entirely
valid, but the one thing that the Patchwork Text does, is to establish a close harmony with the
educational values that we have just been talking about. For example: autonomy on the part of
the students. So if part of the aims of any module or course relate to student autonomy, then
if it does not use a patchwork form of assignment, it has to have an assessment format that
still achieves that autonomy. And, to go back to the, admittedly slightly over-stereotypic
contrast with the essay and Richard's point about real learning being a kind of mental
transformation: I agree. I see learning as a kind of inquiry activity, requiring the student to
wrestle with doubt and confusion. In a Patchwork Text, a very high percentage of that
wrestling is done with matters that you are interested in, though obviously within the limits of
the module content. Whereas, as regards the essay: at a recent meeting at my university, we
came to the conclusion that if students were wrestling with doubts and uncertainties, they
were about how to play the game of 'doing an essay'. And that is a process of closing down, of
limiting, of setting up barriers. Whereas in a Patchwork Text, the barriers that prevent a
student from getting to grips with their own learning just aren’t there in anything like the
same way.
Richard:
Perhaps we might say that, in a way, the Patchwork Text is designed to make that process (of
getting to grips with your learning) quite easy; it pushes people towards doing it. Whereas
although it is possible within an essay, really it needn’t happen, and often doesn't. So from the
point of view of the notion of learning as transformation we might say that an essay is neutral,
whereas a Patchwork Text is positively encouraging.
Peter:
Within the essay, that transformational quality of learning would be in spite of rather than
because of the essay form.
A number of protests!
Richard:
OK, Let’s just say that it might, but it needn’t, and it depends very much on the sort of student
and what sort of skills they have already. But what pushed me towards the patchwork idea
was a sense that many of the students that I was teaching are people who have all sorts of
understandings, but they do not have an academic training, and so the essay is a particularly
difficult format for them to demonstrate the intellectual subtlety that they really do possess. If
we are talking about expanding Higher Education, to make it more 'inclusive', I think we need
to find ways of encouraging and rewarding students who are intellectually skilled and subtle
and complex, but not academically skilled.
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Jan:
I am still unhappy about the essay / Patchwork Text dichotomy in the way that Richard has
just explained it. I think it is more a division between looking at the product and looking at
the process, so there is a place for both. The final part of the process might involve ending up
with an essay, but it is the earlier part of the process that I care most about, and that is where
the Patchwork Text process is important.
Richard:
I see. You could argue, then, that many students, having written a Patchwork Text, could then
go on to write an essay, but that many students find it difficult to go directly (and
successfully) from learning about new ideas to writing an essay. Perhaps it’s a bit like in
maths, where I remember always being told how important it was to 'show your working'. In a
sense, the Patchwork Text allows students to 'show the working' for their intellectual
processes, whereas the essay just shows the answer, the final product.
Jan:
Yes: the Patchwork Text values and validates the working.
Richard:
Well, it's getting a bit late, and the tea things have already arrived, so now, to round things
off, perhaps I can just make a very general statement, picking up some of the things that
various people have mentioned in the course of our discussion that have seemed to me to be
particularly important.
The thing I like most about the Patchwork Text is that it enacts the gradual, tentative,
reflexive process of learning itself, and therefore enables students' writing to be true to their
actual learning experience. So it enables students to 'find their own voice' within an academic
discourse, to experience learning as a development of their individuality and to experience
learning as a social process of sharing with and learning from others. In this sense it reflects
some of our deepest philosophical understandings about the nature of knowledge. But this
also means that the tutor has to work hard and explicitly at supporting students in their
'epistemological anxiety', at helping them holding that difficult balance between 'the personal'
and 'the academic'. This in turn means that the Patchwork Text process requires the tutor to
'devolve' some of their responsibility, to let go some dimensions of their control over how
students interpret the significance of the course content, in order to enable students to find
their own unity behind the course 'fragments'.
The other thing is that the Patchwork Text integrates teaching, learning and
assessment, above all by incorporating formative assessment and collaborative learning into
the fundamental structure of the teaching process. This enables the assessment task to reflect
very precisely the aims of the module, but by the same token it requires very careful initial
planning of the whole process - the pattern of learning activities, the specification and
sequence of the tasks. But there is a complex tension between this need for planning and the
need for flexibility and the devolution of the tutor's control. Finally, the personal quality of
the students' writing within a Patchwork Text format also makes explicit the long-standing
problem of assessment criteria and, especially, of how criteria for highly individualised work
can and should be related to existing academic criteria.
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