Embroidery Uncovered :
My own teaching practice as a lecturer on the Embroidery BA at LCF includes a lot of 1-1 tutorials held either in the workshop or design class. The focus of these tutorials change week to week but are always focused on their current project. A common structure to all embroidery projects is to choose a market that the students are aiming for the embroidery to align with. The progression of this knowledge is built up term to term across the 3 years, supporting a scaffolding teaching structure where the gradual release of responsibility helps the development of independent learning and thinking.
‘Well-designed scaffolding materials, with customisation for different groups of students in a class, used by a teacher who is managing both access to these tools, and access to her direct input, can provide learning activities that are differentially supported so that it is more likely that all of the learners are working in their ZPD, and so guided in making the kinds of learning discoveries that facilitate their development.’ (Taber, 2018).
A fundamental skill that students need in helping them develop their practice is to be able to successfully analyse embroidery either through images online, samples or in stores/own wardrobe. This awareness is implemented in 1st year to allow for broader development in the students final 2 years.
I chose to focus on this as a task for the microteaching session, including a range of samples made by my 1st year students that showed a mix of processes, materials and end purposes. I decided that having a supporting list of questions would help the participants of the microteach session get into the head of an embroidery student and help guide their questioning of the samples in front of them. I have included this hand-out to this blog post.
The session was collaborative as I hoped it would be. Having one sample per person allowed for time to focus on the participants own analysis but also through the presenting their findings provided insight into other forms of embroidery and points of view.
There was a deviation from plan for the second half of the exercise which was to look at a wider range of samples to put their new knowledge to the test of being able to identify similarities, however, due to the discussion portion taking up more time than planned we ended there. Although the second part would have been interesting and provided a chance to look at more embroidery examples it wasn’t necessary for the objective of the session which was to learn how to analyse embroidery and to question how something has been made.
The feedback was insightful and great, it was useful to read how the participants not only understood the point of the session in relation to how it aids my students but also thoroughly enjoyed it. One comment read ‘Really great combination of theory and practice’ which I felt summoned up my intentions for the session. I think going forward the more collaborative the session the better, possibly working in pairs so there isn’t so much pressure on my students to have all the answers on their own, especially at the early stages of their study.
References:
Taber, K. (2018) Scaffolding learning: Principles for effective teaching and the design of classroom resources. Nova Science Publishers