Using Enquiry Based Learning in Higher Education as Curriculum Tool for Sustainable Educational Development
Ian Kaplan, Susie Miles and Andy Howes, School of Education, University of Manchester, UK
Abstract:
Our paper addresses the design and outcomes of a course recently piloted at the University of Manchester. Supported by the University’s Centre for Excellence in Enquiry Based Learning (CEEBL), we used enquiry based learning (EBL) as a teaching and learning method with Masters and PhD students in special and inclusive education. EBL is a curriculum innovation which can contribute to sustainable educational development as it encourages democratic and student led teaching and learning. The course focused on Participatory Photography, a unique action research methodology in which participants represent their perspectives by taking, analysing and sharing photographs. Through active engagement with the methodology, students on the course explored the use of images as a qualitative research tool whilst considering their own socio-cultural perspectives on social and educational inclusion. Participatory Photography provides an accessible means (not dependent on traditional literacy) of engaging with different stakeholder groups and sharing perspectives cross culturally. A diverse group of students from Northern and Southern countries attended the course and were involved in devising their own criteria for assessment. Students have since used Participatory Photography in working with children/young people in the UK and in development education contexts (such as with students in non-formal education in Bangladesh).
Sustainable development and educational inclusion
The term ‘sustainable development’ is open to some interpretation and debate, and in its broadest sense sustainable development encompasses a wide range of social, cultural and political issues (and the interface between these). One of the most interesting and complex aspects of sustainable development is ‘social sustainability’.
Heng, citing Koning explains that a socially sustainable society is one in which ‘…there is no exclusion of social groups – a society characterised by
Emancipation, freedom and solidarity (Konig, 2001 in Heng:4).’
The importance of social inclusion to social sustainability can be considered by discussing the relationship between educational inclusion and sustainable development. Although not always explicitly linked, there are useful parallels between discourses in educational inclusion and sustainable development. The value of participation is arguably, one of the most important commonalities between these discourses. In terms of educational inclusion, for inclusion to be truly meaningful it must involve not only the physical inclusion (presence) of all children and adults in education, but their active participation as well (Booth and Ainscow, 1998, UNESCO, 2000). Similarly, education for sustainable development foregrounds the importance of the participation of educational stakeholders to ensure that both educational and developmental practices are relevant and sustainable over the long term (Okolie, 2003).
Furthermore, the participation of stakeholders can be seen as central to the realisation of equity, diversity and dialogue, aspirational concepts which underpin the foundations of sustainable development endeavours (UN, 2002). However, when such concepts become the focus of teaching and learning in higher educational contexts, they are often abstracted from the actual lives and experiences of students.
We have found that in teaching postgraduate students about inclusive education policy and practice, there is rarely space to explicitly take into account their own personal values and cultural understandings about social and educational inclusion/exclusion. One consequence of this is that it is all too easy for students and lecturers alike to take for granted shared values and perspectives about inclusion despite the actual diversity of students’ backgrounds and experiences.
Finding a means, within in the context of teaching and learning, to take account of students own perspectives can help challenge assumptions and provide students with explicit space to consider their own (and others’) values, understandings and experience of inclusion/exclusion alongside what is expressed through the taught curriculum. The sharing and consideration of one another’s perspectives goes some way towards addressing one of the main prerequisites for social sustainability, that is, ‘solidarity’ a concept embodying empathy and co-operation between different groups of people (Heng, 2004)
Moving from ideals to practice we consider how to actually involve students in reflecting on and sharing their own socio-cultural perspectives in higher education teaching and learning. To explicate this, we draw on our own experience of piloting of an enquiry based learning course for postgraduate students in special and inclusive education. Specifically, the use of enquiry based learning (EBL) as a platform for this approach has allowed for the development of a democratic, student led form of teaching in keeping with the ethos of social sustainability.
EBL
EBL (enquiry based learning) is similar to the more widely known PBL (problem based learning) approach to teaching and learning which is often used in higher education in disciplines such as medicine and engineering. Take, as an example of PBL, medical students who are asked during their course to investigate a particular medical case involving a patient with HIV as a means of engaging with the scientific (and social) issues around epidemiology and infectious disease. EBL differs somewhat form PBL in that it is more open to exploring issues/scenarios which need not be defined as ‘problems’ and also incorporates small scale investigations and project work (Kahn and O’Rourke, 2004). Despite EBL’s origins in medicine and the physical sciences, it is a very flexible approach that has been used in disciplines as diverse as nursing, literature studies and education.
Some of the characteristics of EBL, as outlined by Kahn and O’Rourke, are:
· Engagement – with a complex problem or scenario – that is sufficiently open-ended to allow a variety of responses or solutions.
· Students direct the lines of enquiry and the methods employed.
· The enquiry requires students to draw on existing knowledge and to identify their required learning needs.
· Tasks stimulate curiosity in the students, encouraging them to actively explore and seek out new evidence.
· Responsibility falls to the student for analysing and presenting that evidence in appropriate ways and in support of their own response to the problem.
(Kahn and O’Rourke, 2004:2)
In teaching EBL in higher education, the university lecturer takes on the role of a student ‘facilitator’ as opposed to a more traditional lecturing role. Conversely, whilst students often begin by investigating an issue or set of issues defined by their lecturer, they are encouraged, over time, to define their own issues and research questions within their area of study.
A method of enquiry
There are many possible methods of engaging learners in considering and sharing their own values and perspectives and this paper describes one such method of enquiry which we have termed ‘participatory photography’. Participatory photography involves groups or individuals who would traditionally be the subjects of others’ research in taking and interpreting their own photographs in order to address and share important aspects of their lives and experiences, and as such fits within an action research paradigm (Wang et al. 1996; Miles and Kaplan 2005). Participatory photography, sometimes referred to as ‘Photovoice’, ‘photonovella’ or ‘photonarrative’, seeks to alter the constructs of traditional qualitative research enquiry in which ‘outsider’ researchers investigate and assess the lives of ‘insider’ research subjects (Wang and Burris 1994; Karlsson 2001; Kaplan and Howes 2004). Image-based methodologies such as participatory photography are often overlooked, or little understood, within the field of educational research. Yet images have the potential as part of research processes to ‘represent, engage and influence’, in a way that traditional research processes often fail to do. Making, taking and considering images can play an important role in developing critical reflection skills, the more so when situated within an enquiry-based approach.
There is evidence to suggest that some forms of participatory photography have been in use in the social sciences since at least the 1960s, particularly in community photography/darkroom projects, and in social-psychological ‘autophotography’ work (Emison and Smith 2000). Regardless of its origins, participatory photography, along with other image-based approaches to qualitative research inquiry, has gained increasing credibility within the social sciences since the early 1990s (Schratz and Walker 1995; Prosser 1998).
Background to the course
The University of Manchester has recently developed a cross disciplinary centre, known as CEEBL (Centre for Excellence in Enquiry Based Learning), for the promotion and support of EBL as a means of teaching and learning within the university. We were interested in the development of this centre as the EBL framework it offered seemed to provide a more thorough articulation of nascent enquiry based teaching and learning we were already involved with in the school of education. When a small amount of funding became available from CEEBL for the development of EBL courses, we saw this as an opportunity to embed this approach more firmly within our teaching practice. In particular, we felt that the open-ended and participant led nature of the participatory photography method was both useful as means of student enquiry and fit well within the EBL paradigm.
The teaching methodology we developed involved students being guided in the use of the participatory photography research method to carry out their own research projects around the central theme of inclusion. Our objectives were:
1. To trial EBL image-based research methods with Masters and PhD students in Special and Inclusive Education and Educational Research;
2. To involve students in monitoring and evaluating the development of the course;
3. To develop image-based approaches to doing research with children and young people in six schools in North-West England. This work was documented for use as case studies within the course material;
4. To develop online and face-to-face teaching and learning materials on EBL-focused image-based research for use in the School of Education.
For the purposes of this paper we have divided the activities into two distinct strands:
· Strand 1: the pilot course - a series ofteaching sessions;
· Strand 2: developing resources for school-based enquiry.
The following descriptive account details the experience of piloting this course:
Strand 1: The pilot course
The main focus of this paper is Strand 1: the pilot teaching sessions, which were developed for a relatively small group of students opting for this course in addition to their core course units in their second semester. Fourteen students attended parts of the course; nine of whom attended all of the sessions, of which six students chose to be fully assessed. The course was the subject of extensive participatory discussion and decision-making and it addressed this innovative research methodology for the first time in the School of Education. This paper seeks to demonstrate the value of this piloting approach, although there is recognition that some of the procedures will need adapting for a larger cohort of students.
The student cohort
The three teaching sessions were offered primarily to students on an MEd in Special and Inclusive Education programme. Students were drawn from a diverse range of professional and cultural backgrounds, with a majority from countries of the South (e.g. Sub-Saharan Africa, Indian subcontinent, parts of Asia and Latin America). Approximately two thirds were studying full time, and the majority were qualified teachers involved in some way in teaching students identified as having special needs or disabilities. Two PhD students, whose main research interest is in inclusive education, also attended the course. Altogether nine students completed the full pilot course, with five others attending some of the sessions. A total of six students opted to be assessed on their participatory photography projects.
Taster session
A two-hour taster session introduced key concepts in visual anthropology and visual ethnography and their relevance to inclusion in educational settings through active consideration of examples based on printed images. All MEd students in Special and Inclusive Education were required to attend this session and several PhD students chose to attend. The taster was followed by two whole-day sessions, which were optional, and during which participants were invited to engage actively in making sense of the notions of participatory photography for themselves.
Session 1
The Session began with a short input on participatory photography and visual literacy. This was followed by a Diamond Sorting Exercise (Ainscow et al. 1994), which involved participants working in groups to organise a set of images and statements related to inclusion in priority order, according to their perceptions.
Figure 1 Example of a Diamond Sorting Exercise.
Participant groups were then given a digital camera and asked to ‘dramatize inclusion or exclusion’ within 10 minutes by means of a single photographic image. The focus was on framing, timing, lighting and meaning. The single images were then presented to the whole group.
A plenary discussion on ethical considerations followed the showing of an excerpt from the film, Born into Brothels. This film raised a wide range of ethical issues pertinent to participatory photography. It was made in the slum communities in Bombay, India, and it showed the children of sex workers being given cameras by an English woman who asked them to document their lives.
The main activity in the second part of the day involved pairs of students in an extended participatory photography activity. This was a two-hour, open-ended enquiry into the concept of ‘inclusion’, based on making and selecting a series of images through engagement with a local institution or other public resource. Prior to this fieldwork, participants were asked to identify up to six possible themes for their participatory photography project, from which they were required to prioritise one main theme. For one group, this translated into making portraits of couples in a large shopping centre; for another, a range of images reflecting physical access issues within the University buildings; while others pursued a more symbolic approach. In the photo below a canal lock was symbolic of a barrier to inclusion, but also an essential ingredient.
Figure 2 An example of a barrier to inclusion.
Finally, participants were engaged in an activity to develop criteria for the assessment of assignments and presentations. This was later adapted by the Project Team into the assessment guidelines used to grade the presentations.