ABSTRACT
Encouraged by the response to our ‘performance’ at a recent conference, where we had presented a paper in the form of spontaneous dialogue, we decided to try a similar approach with a group of students. We were due to run a whole day session as part of a short course organized for local healthcare tutors. The course had been designed to enable the tutors to reflect on and develop their own teaching and learning strategies. The perfect opportunity to practice what we teach. The perfect audience, potentially a ready-made learning organization. The day dawned clear, and feeling very optimistic, we arrived to a circle of sixteen welcoming faces. We edged our chairs into the circle and started a conversation between the two of us, discussing how we might approach the day, involve the students, meet the needs of the various clients and so on. Imagine our surprise at the students’ lack of interest and disengagement; some of them even started to talk among themselves. We moved rapidly on! Not to be deterred, and always looking for an opportunity to process the process, we raised the subject of their response to our own ‘innovative teaching technique’ in the middle of a discussion they were having about how they could be more innovative in their teaching. We asked the tutors to reflect on how they had responded to our creative approach. Some enlightening comments were forthcoming. Members of the group described feeling ‘confused’, ‘excluded’, ‘stressed’; others wondered what they had let themselves in for by agreeing to attend the course. This triggered what proved to be a fruitful discussion for all of us on student expectations of tutors, and the dilemmas we face in challenging assumptions by enacting our roles contrary to expectations. Students at all levels generally expect to be lectured - to be taught is part of the deal; to engage in their own learning, with its accompanying anxieties, is not.
