by Diana Scott
Deputy Head of Pre-sessional Programmes, Durham University
I’m writing to all who share the mission of helping students respond effectively to their academic demands. You know who you are!
I want to flag up a category of HE student you may not have reached yet. There are multiple initiatives to bring higher education into prisons (see https://www.prisonerseducation.org.uk/pupil). A popular model involves delivering a UG/PG module inside prison to a ‘mixed’ class of prisoners and run-of-the-mill university students.
Given that the prisoners frequently have fractured experiences of any kind of education you might assume we should get involved to help level the playing field. However, assignments are often reflective pieces requiring students to cogently express the impact of both experience and academic reading on their thinking. For traditional students, and even some academic tutors, reflective writing often presents a worrying departure from the familiar. We can play a role in ensuring the assignments are coherently explained, taught and assessed.
I and several other EAP colleagues got involved in our Criminology department’s ‘Inside Out’ module which was running in three local prisons. As well as working with the outside students and redesigning the module handbook and assessment criteria, a group of us went inside to teach a few times per term. After a quick flip-charted presentation on the structure and expectations of a reflective writing assignment using visual metaphors (see Kirk, S. (2017) ‘Waves of Reflection’) we would run rapid 1:1s simultaneously usually addressing their first formative assignment attempt.
For some, the first assignment had represented a rare invitation to write about themselves and their ideas, meaning that there seemed to be a primary need to tell their story or offload feelings about the criminal justice system. The nuances of responding to assignment parameters were sometimes missed at first, as one insider revealed on presenting me with essentially a work of fiction which was a metaphorical exploration of his ‘reflections’ inspired by the course. Some, with a professional background that entailed writing, or used to preparing their own cases for the courts, were loath to realise or write about their own personal interaction with academic material. Some likened the experience of having had to re-package their experience for court cases as similar to realising the need to structure and signpost their academic writing.
By working one-to-one we were able to take each student at their own starting point and first analyse the draft they had produced in terms of its apparent aims and functions. We would show them the weighting they had assigned in their drafts to background description, to incorporation of lived experience and published information. By questioning the students more deeply and summarising back to them we prompted them to discover further links and insights. We were able to show them the information structure they had chosen in their drafts and then map out alternatives to consider and start generating a more analytical plan for the next assignment that allowed more space for genuine reflective insight.
I learned that with something as personal as reflective writing, using samples of past outsider work (the only samples I could get) for analysis as a group quickly derailed inside into a discussion of the content and what it revealed about outsiders’ attitudes and knowledge, therefore we stuck with the 1:1 model as the most productive.
Our work seemed to generate focussed energy and enthusiastic feedback. For the prisoners it was an opportunity between the weekly module classes to re-create their learning community. Our presence and advice lessened the sense of feeling forgotten by the outside world, reassured them of their own value as HE learners in their own right, and built confidence and motivation.
There may be HE learners in a prison near you and indeed a University-prison partnership. You have much to offer.
Reference:
Kirk, S., 2017. Waves of reflection: Seeing knowledge (s) in academic writing. In EAP in a Rapidly Changing Landscape: Issues, Challenges and Solutions-Proceedings of the 2015 Baleap Conference. Reading: Garnet Education.