ABSTRACT
This chapter is an exploration of some aspects of student responses to the Inquiry Into Learning 1 module that have been examined in depth as part of my contribution to the teaching team’s action research. Our module development has been through weekly team meetings to which tutors brought issues arising from their observations of their seminar sessions. Often our meetings had a primary school staffroom feeling to me, in that discussion was focused on students’ contributions and our personal responses. It might begin with comments like ‘I was amazed by …’ or ‘What can I do to help move this student’s issue forward?’ or ‘I can’t believe it – they’ve said … what could I try next?’. This mutual, collegial support was crucial since we were opening ourselves up to shared observations of the student experience, listening to their views and problems. We were often faced with the very unexpected. We had to hear their authentic student voice in order to support them to be reflective and assess themselves; opening up this dialogue provided great insights and great challenges. This chapter explores how we responded as part of our ongoing research into strategies that might support students in developing growing intrapersonal awareness of their learning. It begins by focusing on students’ interpersonal and intrapersonal kinds of reflective activity and the use of the Intervision method. Through examples of students’ mutual support in learning how to learn, attention is given to learning-oriented goals rather than performance-oriented goals, and how students decide whether to attribute a difficulty they experience in a task to either the hard effort needed to complete it or to their own limited ability as a learner. The chapter concludes with ways in which the person-centred principles which underpin our relationships with students apply to spoken as well as written contexts for reflective learning.
