This paper reviews the process of adopting a collaborative approach to enabling final year students to develop autonomy through the use of a negotiated learning plan and coconstructed curriculum. The students undertake a collaborative project that models realworld working practices. The lecturer supports the students' objectives. This piece takes a narrative approach to reflecting on the experience of the lecturer.
The ApproachThe intention of the chosen approach was to explore the possibilities of taking on a less traditional form for research and academic writing. The narrative approach to research involves documenting the "lived experiences of the interacting individual" (Cresswell, 2007). This could mean recording the stories of others or, as in this case, recording one's own story. The resulting material is then written in a narrative genre. The process was modelled on Cresswell's discussion of the 3D enquiry space of narrative form (Cresswell, 2007). In this model, my lived experience becomes the data. This data is expressed in the form of a treatment, which provides the outline of a story; it is an initial development tool for a film or television programme, setting out how the audience will experience the narrative. Dramatic conflict is provided through the use of a literary device adopted by Marlowe in Doctor Faustus: A good and a bad angel characterise the internal conflict in the protagonist's mind. The two chosen voices are: Graduate Attributes and Market Forces. They are not intended to be oppositional in terms of good and bad, but to characterise concerns lecturers need to address and the internal conflict this may cause. Graduate Attributes, the less critical voice, is a reflection of my purpose. Market Forces is a reflexive voice, reflexivity being a "continuing mode of self-analysis and political awareness" (Callaway, 1992). Here, Market Forces is used as a questioning voice from the current political inclination for a market-led curriculum.
The ScenarioI'm sitting in the back of a small classroom, in which the tables are arranged in a rectangle with an open centre. There is a presentation console at the head of the room, in front of a window overlooking Greenwich Park. I'm sitting by a small stray table behind the door, watching two students presenting to a group of around ten peers sitting around the rectangle. They are having a discussion about the suitability of the work being presented for their project and considering alternatives and possible adaptations. I'm wondering about my role: I feel somewhat redundant; things haven't turned out quite as I've planned. I'm happy about this, but can't help feeling a tinge of guilt.
