Knowing and responding to students’ diverse needs

Background

Not long ago, I was a student on the course I’m teaching on, MA Innovative Fashion Production. During my studies, I struggled with the weekly workload because I wasn’t able to work efficiently in the classroom setting. As a teacher, I am observing significant differences in how effectively students are working on tasks during seminars. 

Evaluation

I believe that there is diversity in student’s working preferences and learning needs. Exemplified by my own experience, some of the struggles that students experience might be feeling too self-conscious to think and write, particularly when seated directly next to peers. Personally, I experienced feelings of insecurity, fear of failure and self-doubt – all against my better rational judgment and beliefs. In other words, I could not free myself of my emotional response even though I was committed to improve and overcome my difficulties, knowing that at home, I would meet practical and personal challenges endangering efficient work practices. 

Moving forward

My aim is to facilitate a better work-life balance for my students; first, by identifying different learning preferences and then subsequently, by reducing stress factors that prevent students to work efficiently in the classroom and the communal university spaces. According to Hussey and Smith (2010), helping diverse students to become autonomous learners is best supported by choosing a flexible approach, such as acknowledging the dynamic system between the student, the teaching environment and the task (p.153).

Thus, as a starting point, I can converse with the students about their preferred working practices, share what I have observed and find out in a ‘reality check’ (Bamber & Jones, 2015, p.162, strategy 1) how they experience working in class. Bamber & Jones (2015) state that such a conversation “may uncover disparities or communalities, which can be negotiated.”

Then, opting for an area I can influence, opposed to one being out of my control, such as ‘lifeload’ factors (Kahu, 2013: 767), I can think about shaping the learning environment during my seminars whilst accommodating diverse needs, in the sense that “good teaching […] puts both the student and the intellectual experience at the centre, and is good teaching for all students.” (Bamber & Jones 2015, p.152) 

To mitigate learning-inhibiting feelings of self-consciousness, I could provide more privacy to each student for individual seminar tasks. For example, this might include to space out tables and/ or to make use of additional spaces the university provides, such as the private cubicles of the library or the heart spaces, spaces that are usually not fully populated. 

On the opposite side of the learning-preference spectrum, I observed students thriving in the classroom, specifically during collaborative work. It seems that only then they are performing at their best; their response is bold and spontaneous. These student characteristics align broadly with the ‘intentional learners’ described by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (2002:xi). 

I believe that collaboration helps all learners in various ways, one of which is to strengthen social bonds and belonging another is the increased ‘time on task’ leading to higher learning gains (Gibbs, 2015: 14). Both learning types might benefit from one another, the spontaneous and the critical cross-pollinate to increase productivity and achieve high quality work.

References

Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) (2002) Great Expectations: A New vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College Washington, DC: AAC&U.

Bamber, V. and Jones, A. (2015) A handbook for teaching and learning in higher education: enhancing academic practice. Fourth edition. Edited by H. Fry, S. Ketteridge, and S. Marshall. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York: Routledge.

Fry, H. and Gibbs, G. (2015) A handbook for teaching and learning in higher education: enhancing academic practice. Fourth edition. Edited by S. Ketteridge and S. Marshall. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Hussey, T and Smith, P (2010) The Trouble with Higher Education: A Critical Examination of our Universities. New York and London: Routledge.

Kahu, E.R. (2013) ‘Framing student engagement in higher education’, Studies in Higher Education, 38(5), pp. 758–773. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2011.598505.