Abstract:
Student voice has been identified as a central aspect of students’ empowerment and students’ learning in Higher Education (HE). This LD@3 presents the proposal and first steps of an action research project that aims to use poetry and other creative writing strategies as a reflective tool for our students to engage with each module’s content during the taught sessions to empower students’ voices. The intention is to promote students’ participation and attainment through writing. The underlying assumption of this project is that writing is a way of learning (e.g. van Dijk, 2022), as students have to reason through their ideas and responses to each session’s experiences. With poetry and creative writing, we aim to engage in embodied reflexivity, bringing together thinking and emotions (Faulkner, 2019). Evidence shows that students have valued writing to learn as a way of making sense of course content, and lecturers as a path to build rapport with students (Fry and Villagomez, 2012). We see empowerment, from a specific view of power linked to collaboration and transformation. ‘Power’ in this context is an enabler to achieve a purpose and shape lives (Chigudu and Chigudu, 2015; VeneKlasen and Miller, 2007, p. 5). Power comprises the capacity to declare and to influence (Batliwala, 2019), and for this reason, empowering our students’ voices is linked not only to their present lives but to their potential futures. This is why poetry and creative writing become part of a dialogic pedagogy.
Presenters:
Dr Mabel Encinas is a Senior Lecturer in Education and Early Childhood Studies at London Metropolitan University. Her research centres around social justice in formal and informal educational context. She teaches in undergraduate and graduate programmes, where she engages in action research. Mabel is also a poet and a member of the collective Las Juanas.
Dr Rebecca Warren has worked with young people both in the UK and internationally, specialising in working on youth volunteering and integration projects with young refugees. She did a PGCE in international education and a Doctorate in Education while living in Bangkok, Thailand and working for The British Council. Her doctoral thesis focused on the educational experiences of young refugees in Bangkok, an ethnographic study using poetry and visual arts in the design. This informed the curriculum for CEDAR Learning Centre, an alternative education provider for young refugees in Bangkok, who were unable to access mainstream education.
References
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- Faulkner, S. L. (2019). Poetic inquiry: Craft, method and practice. Abingdon: Routledge.
- Fry, S. W., & Villagomez, A. (2012). Writing to learn: Benefits and limitations. College Teaching, 60(4), pp. 170-175. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23525114
- van Dijk, A., van Gelderen, A., & Kuiken, F. (2022) ‘Which types of instruction in
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