December 2023, LCF

Since I started my Action Research Project I’ve been consciously paying attention to what I’ve been seeing and observing in the class room. The MA’s Fashion Design Management Students have been casually sharing their different networking experiences during the first term at the LCF. So far, they have had the opportunity of collaborating with other peers from the same course, working in a cross-unit which involves student from different courses, attending industry events and others. That translates in some relaxed discussions before starting my lecture. However, these conversations are not relaxed anymore for me as I’ve trying to gather as much information as possible which could be potentially useful to build my research. Basically, trying to actively understand the students’s experiences, views and challenges. 

This experience directly resonated with the article from our 1st ARP session, Documenting classroom life: how can I write about what I am seeing?. As the article mentions, we don’t write what we see, we scribble. In my personal experience, I scribble key words, tone of the conversation, emotions and feelings. It is more about the action being observed than the specific words. Even though, the author highlights the impossibilities of capturing “everything” when observing any social scene, the relationship between the researcher as observer and the own own subjective past impacts the witnessing of the present scenario. Considering that, I have used my notes as a starting point to further research during my one to one casual conversations and the survey I shared with the students. These notes have opened me a space of new areas of research. 

L. Jones, R. Holmes, C. Macrae and M. Maclure (August, 2010) “Documenting classroom life: how can I write about what I am seeing?” Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Vol. 10(4), pp. 479–491.