Contextual Background:
During the tailoring skills sessions, some students have never sewn before whilst others are very experienced or believe themselves to be. We struggle with engagement and pace, which feels pressured as this is the only timetabled technical teaching some students receive during their four years on the course.
Evaluation:
This year H&S inductions were shorter and held earlier in the term, giving additional time during workshops and sole focus on sewing skills. As the induction was held on a different day to the tailoring skills sessions, this separation improved engagement by reducing the perceived length of the mandatory health and safety inductions to two hours. It gave clarity and focus to the students when attending the tailoring skills workshops as it focused solely on sewing technique and increased the sewing time. This also meant that students who attended had ‘opted in’ to those classes, unlike the compulsory health and safety induction.
Moving forwards:
By planning a clear timeframe for students to complete tasks in, along with a checklist, I think this will create more motivation for students to actively participate and focus on the task at hand. It will create pace to the class and the students will be accountable for their use of time and focus.
Encouraging more peer-to-peer learning by verbally directing students to help one another could also ease the pressure on myself as a teacher and give students more confidence in their skill. This would also allow me to focus on students who may be struggling to grasp the task at hand. Adding in time to review work as a collective at the end of each day and encouraging peer-to-peer feedback would also give more weight to, and reflection on, the skills the students have acquired. Both tutor and students could give pointers of how they would like to take these skills forward and build upon them.
I would also like to push for more time to be given to the tailoring workshop, perhaps spreading the skills over a few weeks which would give students more time to reflect, digest and implement the skills they have learnt each day. It would also give us more time to complete the jacket as usually this does not happen due to the time constraints.
I believe the technicians should have involvement in design tutorials, where students will be implementing these classic tailoring skills into creating their own designs and garments. I feel the role of the technician should be elevated to be on a par with other academics and tutors. This would be a massive culture shift within the department and is something that needs to be implemented from the top.
As this workshop will not take place until later on in the summer term I have not yet been able to implement or reflect on these changes.
References:
Impact Teachers and Impact Teachers (2024) Effective lesson pacing strategies, Impact Teachers. Available at: https://impactteachers.com/blog/pace-2/ (Accessed: 12 March 2025). Nicholls, G. (2007) Developing teaching and learning in higher education: New dimensions and directions. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.