Art, Design and Communication in Higher Education: Volume: 6 - Issue: 3

Art, Design & Communication
Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education | Volume Six Number Three
Volume Six Number Three

ISSN 1474-273X
in Higher Education
Volume 6 Number 3 – 2008 6.3
139–144 Editorial for ADCHE special issue
Articles
145–158
159–171
Coping with stress: the perspective of international students
Silvia Sovic
Producing fact, affect and identity in architecture critiques –
Art, Design &
Communication
a discourse analysis of student and faculty discourse interaction
Gavin Melles
173–186 Playgrounds, studios and hiding places: emotional exchange
in creative learning spaces
in Higher
Olivia Sagan
187–199 Reflections on Interactions in virtual worlds and their implication
for learning art and design
Dr Julia Gaimster
201–207
209–219
Graphic design: can it be something more? Report on research
in progress
Samantha Lawrie
Reflections on emotional journeys: a new perspective for reading
Education
fashion students’ PPD statements
Dr Noam Austerlitz and Dr Alison James
221–226 Reviews
227 Index
intellect Journals | Art & Design

ISSN 1474-273X
63
intellect
9 771474 273009 www.intellectbooks.com
ADCHE_6.3_cover.indd 1 5/19/08 5:25:04 PM

Art, Design & Communication
Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education | Volume Six Number Three
Volume Six Number Three

ISSN 1474-273X
in Higher Education
Volume 6 Number 3 – 2008 6.3
139–144 Editorial for ADCHE special issue
Articles
145–158
159–171
Coping with stress: the perspective of international students
Silvia Sovic
Producing fact, affect and identity in architecture critiques –
Art, Design &
Communication
a discourse analysis of student and faculty discourse interaction
Gavin Melles
173–186 Playgrounds, studios and hiding places: emotional exchange
in creative learning spaces
in Higher
Olivia Sagan
187–199 Reflections on Interactions in virtual worlds and their implication
for learning art and design
Dr Julia Gaimster
201–207
209–219
Graphic design: can it be something more? Report on research
in progress
Samantha Lawrie
Reflections on emotional journeys: a new perspective for reading
Education
fashion students’ PPD statements
Dr Noam Austerlitz and Dr Alison James
221–226 Reviews
227 Index
intellect Journals | Art & Design

ISSN 1474-273X
63
intellect
9 771474 273009 www.intellectbooks.com
ADCHE_6.3_cover.indd 1 5/19/08 5:25:04 PM

ADCHE_6.3_00_FM 4/30/08 9:29 PM Page 137
Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education

The journal of the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre
for Art, Design, Media
Volume 6 Number 3
Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education is a refereed journal Editor
which aims to inform, stimulate and promote the development of Linda Drew
research with a learning and teaching focus for art, design and commu- University of the Arts London
nication within higher education. 16 John Islip Street
The journal includes contributions from a wide and diverse commu- London SW1P 4JU
nity of researchers. It seeks to generate and promote research from both Email: l.drew@chelsea.arts.ac.uk
experienced researchers and encourage those new to this field. The aim
is to provide a forum for debate arising from findings as well as theory
and methodologies. A range of research approaches and methods is Editorial Assistant
encouraged. Laura Lanceley
The research field of Art, Design and Communication in Higher University of the Arts London
Education includes: all relevant areas of Higher Education, including the 16 John Islip Street
fields of practice-based education in fine art and design and theoretical London SW1P 4JU
studies including media, cultural studies and art and design history; all Email:
aspects of learning and teaching in art, design and communication l.lanceley@chelsea.arts.ac.uk
including research underpinned evaluations of curriculum, student
learning, approaches to teaching, teacher and educational development.
Editorial Board
Dick Buchanan (Carnegie Mellon University)
Frances Corner (London College of Fashion)
Linda Drew (Chelsea College of Art and Design)
Linda Dryden (Napier University)
Christine Geraghty (Glasgow University)
Stuart Laing (University of Brighton)
Malcolm Miles (University of Plymouth)
Sally Morgan (Massey University)
Sid Newton (University of New South Wales)
Anna Reid (Macquarie University)
David Sless (Communication Research Institute of Australia)
Keith Trigwell ( The University of Sydney)
Toshio Watanabe (Chelsea College of Art and Design)
Jonathan Woodham (University of Brighton)
(The views expressed in this journal are those of the authors and do not coincide
necessarily with those of the Editor or the members of the Editorial Board.) Abstracts and Indexing
Articles appearing in this journal are
abstracted and indexed in:
• Research into HE Abstracts,
• British Education Index,
Art, Design and Communication in Higher Education is published three times per • Contents Pages in Education, and
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© 2008 Intellect Ltd. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal ISSN 1474-273X
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Notes for Contributors

Types of contribution Where a direct quotation or specific Copyright
reference is used, the page number Before publication, authors are requested to
Major Papers (5,000-6,000 words)
should be given. assign copyright to the journal subject to
Should include original work of a research retaining their right to reuse the material in
or developmental nature and/or proposed other publications written or edited by
References
new methods or ideas that are clearly and themselves and due to be published at least
These should be listed alphabetically at the
thoroughly presented and argued. one year after initial publication in the
end of paper as per the following examples:
Shorter Items (1,000-2,500 words) Cina, C. (1994), ‘TINA’s Academy’, Journal.
Reports of research in progress; reflections in De Ville, N. & Foster, S. (eds.),
A credit to the publisher and the original
on the research process or research The Artist and the Academy:
source should be cited if an article which
evaluation of a funded project. Issues in Fine Art Education and
appears in ADCHE is subsequently
the Wider Cultural Context,
Reviews reprinted elsewhere.
Southampton: John Hansard
Relevant recent publications, electronic Gallery, pp. 41-62
media, software and conference reports. Permissions
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Format ‘Joining the dots – permissions from copyright holders for
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any). The full name of each author with Higher Education, 2:1, pp. 64-80 elsewhere.
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Prosser, M. & Trigwell, K. (1999),
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teaching: The experience of higher
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SRHE/Open University Press.
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being submitted. Reference to websites or webpages thus: indemnify the Association and hold the
ii) Abstract of 100-150 words. Moore, I. (2001), Providing Association harmless from any damages
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These notes can be referred to by contributors to any of Intellect’s journals, and so are, in turn, not sufficient; contributors will
also need to refer to the guidance such as this given for each specific journal. Intellect Notes for Contributors is obtainable from
www.intellectbooks.com/journals, or on request from the Editor of this journal. For additional guidance on submissions, review-
ers guidelines or general information, please contact: Becky Parker, Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts
London, 16 John Islip Street, London SW1P 4JU. Tel: +44 (0)20 7514 2078. Email: b.parker@chelsea.arts.ac.uk
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Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education Volume 6 Number 3.

Editorial. English language. doi: 10.1386/adch.6.3.139/2. © Intellect Ltd 2008.
Editorial for ADCHE special issue
Art and design education in the United Kingdom today is seen as an impor-
tant contributor to the creative economy; students are being prepared for the
unknown future and the biggest growth in UK economy is in the creative
industries sector. As hopes of future economic prosperity are placed in our
students becoming creative entrepreneurs, the teaching of art and design
becomes more challenging every year. Educators today are required to
broaden the intake of students to include those who traditionally have not
pursued higher education, to include more international students and adapt
themselves to a competitive higher education environment in a globalized
market with less finance per capita. At the same time we wish to address the
individual student’s needs and incorporate a student-focused approach.
Consequently the student learning experience becomes recognized as central
to the quality of the learning outcome, and as having great impact on the way
that he or she constructs their identity as a future practitioner. Yet the emo-
tional and embodied dimensions of the ways in which students experience,
know and act have been denied for too long in higher education discussions.
Anyone who has made any kind of artefact or has been involved in a cre-
ative production knows that such making is not simply about following a
set of objective formulae. When students and tutors are engaged in such
creative processes they are required to bring in not only intellectual reflec-
tions and analytical skills, but also their entire self, including their emo-
tional interpretations and embodied knowledge, to ways of working. These
ways of knowing can be seen as part of what is frequently referred to as tacit
knowledge (Polanyi 1967) and is hard to articulate. Such tacit knowledge
has to be discovered through one’s own experience and not so much by
learning about it from a third party. This process of acquiring such knowl-
edge and learning to apply it has a high potential to be emotionally laden:
To hold such knowledge is an act deeply committed to the conviction that there is
something there to be discovered. It is personal, in the sense of involving the per-
sonality of him who holds it, and also in the sense of being, as a rule, solitary; but
there is no trace in it of self-indulgence. The discoverer is filled with a compelling
sense of responsibility for the pursuit of a hidden truth, which demands his services
for revealing it. His act of knowing exercises a personal judgment in relating evi-
dence to an external reality, an aspect of which he is seeking to apprehend.
(Polanyi 1967, pp. 24–5)
It is well recognized that the quality of processes which are involved in dis-
covering through practice and engagement with actual creative acts elicits,
by its very nature, intense emotional reactions, yet these are often left unspo-
ken and are not regarded as relevant kinds of knowledge. We wish to stress
here that since competent practitioners in the creative disciplines have to be
able to apply emotional and embodied ways of knowing, thus the challenge
ADCHE 6 (3) pp. 139–144. © Intellect Ltd 2008. 139

for teaching in art and design disciplines is to support and facilitate the learn-
ing of such aspects as these, which are not so readily accessible to speech.
Furthermore, as competence is also about understanding a practice as it
is socially situated, we wish to develop knowledge in relation to people, com-
munities and practices which are lived out, not just written down. Hence in
order to learn about art and design as social practices students need to
develop their social (emotional) intelligence and learn to negotiate mean-
ings with others. Through unspoken and spoken interactions with tutors,
peers and their most inner self, students develop these abilities that will
allow them to become part of the community of practice in their discipline.
This special issue of Art Design and Communication in Higher Education
is part of a growing interest in emotions and interactions, both social and
embodied, in higher education. Within the Creative Learning in Practice
Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CLIP CETL) at the University
of the Arts we have worked to raise awareness of the role of emotions in
teaching and learning.
As part of a visiting research fellowship at the University of the Arts,
London, Dr Noam Austerlitz presented workshops and seminars based on his
doctoral research (‘The educational impact of emotions and student–tutor
interactions in studio courses’). This raised awareness and instigated reflec-
tion and action research by tutors and support staff working with students at
the university. This process attempts to go beyond the important acknowl-
edgement of emotions and social interactions, into more in-depth examination
of the roles they play in learning in art and design, their impact and how we
can use and build on such knowledge to improve learning.
One of the results of these collaborations was that we initiated a one-
day symposium in December 2007 as a means to bring together a range of
people who had similar interests, and research which was relevant to devel-
oping an approach to teaching that recognized the importance of social
interaction, emotion and embodiment in the learning process. In parallel
workshops with the Open University’s Practice Based Professional Learning
CETL we explored how the physical and embodied knowledge of our spe-
cialist areas enabled us to ‘read’ educational videos in particular ways and
how important the physical understanding of space was in learning how to
become a professional practitioner. A review of the symposium by Howard
Riley can be read in this issue.
The interactive workshops we included in the symposium show that a
traditional academic approach is not the only way to develop our knowledge
of these issues and to change or develop our approaches to teaching and
learning. However, this issue of Art Design and Communication in Higher
Education is an opportunity to present a series of papers dedicated to acade-
mic enquiry into these aspects of learning within creative disciplines.
The affective domain is a huge territory waiting to be discovered, yet for
many it is a vague area often ignored or taken for granted in everyday life.
Thus getting lost in an academic quest for relevant information, becoming
unclear about the phenomena which is researched (feelings, sensations,
affects, emotional expressions, discussion of emotions, emotional memo-
ries etc.), mixing together a few theoretical perspectives and becoming sen-
timental about the researched phenomena are only some of the risks which
a researcher in this area is facing.
140 Alison Shreeve and Noam Austerlitz

Emotions are different to intellectual ways of thinking and yet this does
not exclude them from being open to intellectual analysis. We wish to stress
here that theoretical and empirical research is essential, yet we also wish to
emphasize that researching these issues requires careful design. Research,
which aims to enable better understanding of emotions and social interac-
tions as educational factors, needs careful design and clarity in its objec-
tives and the application of appropriate research methods, according to the
kind of emotional or social interaction aspect in focus.
The papers in this special issue represent different research approaches
and theoretical perspectives. Sagan’s paper brings a psychoanalytical per-
spective to interpret narratives of learning, Sovic brings stress theory into
the discussion and uses interviews to expose the kinds of stress students
are facing when they enter new learning regimes. Melles brings in discourse
analysis, which exposes the everyday emotional interactions in studio
teaching. James and Austerlitz’s paper suggests a new way to use narrative
analysis of students’ own writing about personal and professional develop-
ment. Lawrie brings forward a theoretical lens to enquire about the content,
purpose and meaning of graphic design studies.
Emotions have not normally been part of research into higher educa-
tion, yet there are a growing number of exceptions to this. In a recent paper
by Crossman (2007) she shows how three methods of data generation all
indicate that emotions and personal interactions in assessment are integral
and profoundly lasting aspects of human experience in formal education.
Another example is the powerful nature of emotions’ lasting impact on
learning in mathematics (Ingleton 1999) explored through narratives of
learning using ‘memory-work’, which are central to self-esteem and identity.
Until now such aspects have been overlooked in the area of the creative
disciplines in higher education and thus we have very little evidence-based
knowledge of their impact in the learning environment. We feel that it is
timely to address these issues in art and design teaching and learning in
order to support our students to maximize their learning opportunities. We
present here some examples of research and analytical frameworks for
understanding the role of emotions and personal interactions and hope
that these will inspire and inform debate.
Sagan presents a lyrical account that highlights the taken-for-granted
aspects of our educational environment and asks us to look at the
internal/external transitional spaces we need to support learning. This is a
scholarly approach that emphasizes the differences that we all bring to learn-
ing encounters and the fundamental need we have to structure encounters in
ways that we feel comfortable. How often do we have the opportunities to
provide time and space for encounters in learning? Pressured as we are by the
need to conform, to adhere to quality assurance rules, and with the limited
time we have to engage with students, how frequently do we consider con-
structing our learning spaces? This paper carries important messages for
policy-makers and managers in higher education if we are ever to achieve the
widening participation agenda in the United Kingdom.
A more specific look at students’ perceptions of stress within first-year
international students’ experiences in art and design is provided by Sovic,
who emphasizes the prevalence of stress in response to a whole range of
questions about the first-year experience. As international students appear
Editorial for ADCHE special issue 141

to have similar emotional experiences, but more intense than their home-
based peers, we would do well to heed the messages contained in the
paper and act to improve experiences for all. How might we alleviate stress-
ful learning situations or ensure that learning takes place in spite of the
stress we might feel?
Some of the answers to increased student numbers and less time to
teach them lie in adopting new technologies. Virtual learning environments
and web 2 provide opportunities for learning beyond the traditional studio
environment. But technology, too, brings with it a set of problems and
issues to be faced. Gaimster shows that it is not just the real world of stu-
dio and design subject that require emotional awareness in designing learning
activities. Virtual worlds now provide different opportunities to learn, but
still require knowledge, etiquette and intelligent use of emotion in virtual
interactions. Paradoxically, in virtual space the embodiment of the avatar
highlights rather than reduces the sensitivity of embodied action and social
interaction in learning.
Melles provides us with a discourse analysis of the architecture ‘crit’,
which adds to our knowledge of both issues and methods of analysis that
are appropriate to the study of emotions. He shows how ‘fact, affect and
identity’ are forms of discourse and are constructed through language used
in the crit. The performance is also embodied and shows how complex the
demands are that we place on students, but also how important it is to
address the whole person in learning. Melles suggests that making the
affective dimension more apparent might help students to develop more
self-esteem and succeed in their studies.
Art and design tutors are perhaps more likely to be pragmatic rather
than theoretical about their teaching thus some of the papers here also deal
with practical aspects of learning and teaching in art and design.
Further instances of the curriculum in relation to emotions and interac-
tions are provided by Lawrie, who asks: how can we develop a more rounded
approach to students’ understanding of our subject and the impact that we
have as designers? Here it is the embodied nature, the experiential aspects
of the designed object, that requires greater awareness of the different ways
that we understand and read our designed world, and we need to view the
subjects we teach as holistic, social interactive ones, not simply commercial
solutions for companies.
Austerlitz and James examine accounts produced for a specific function
in UK higher education, reflective journals and personal development plan-
ning. This research highlights the individual’s emotional investment in
learning through creative practices, which is closely allied to the creation of
identities. With personal development planning and the production of port-
folios in the United Kingdom this brings into focus assessment in relation
to personal, emotional aspects of learning. The authors ask how emotional
response can be recognized as part of the learning process in more mean-
ingful ways than descriptive accounts of process can give. How can tutors
be encouraged to allow the individual to speak and how can we recognize
and value that, particularly if assessment by the tutor is the accepted practice?
Emotional Intelligence is being seen as an important idea which recog-
nizes many of the previously ignored aspects of everyday life and the prece-
dence set in the Enlightenment for rational thought processes divorced

from emotion and feeling, which were characterized as feminine attributes

and therefore nothing to do with education. Workshops like those sug-
gested by Alan Mortiboys, in his book reviewed by Austerlitz, provide some
practical ways in which we can counteract the hegemony of mind over body
and maximize awareness of the role of emotions in learning and teaching.
The papers presented in this issue indicate that specific research rather
than general approaches can increase our understanding of the role of
emotions, interactions and embodiment in learning. Each one of these
researchers reveals a small part of this vast area, which has been over-
looked until now. We need to develop more specific knowledge, looking at
different students, different learning situations, settings and activities.
General concepts need to be broken down and each area would merit fur-
ther examination to contribute to our knowledge of teaching and learning in
art, design and communication. In areas such as those that have been
examined by the authors of the papers in this issue it is very difficult to
come to clear-cut, incisive conclusions. Likewise it is an even bigger mis-
take to expect research to provide answers to those who teach art and
design. Nevertheless such research has great value in raising awareness of
such unnoticed aspects and brings new ideas into the educational dis-
course. We hope that the ideas that have been presented in this issue will
be taken up more generally through readers’ own practice, personal reflec-
tion and increasing awareness and also through more specific research on
emotions and interactions in everyday life.
We hope you enjoy reading these papers, we would urge you to under-
take some research and to contribute to the debate in the future.
Alison Shreeve
Noam Austerlitz
References
Crossman, J. (2007), ‘The role of emotions in student perceptions of learning and
assessment’, Higher Education Research and Development, 26(3), pp. 313–327.
Ingleton, C. (1999), ‘Emotion in learning, a neglected dynamic’, paper presented to
HERDSA Annual International Conference, Melbourne, 12–15 July.
Polanyi, Michael (1967), The Tacit Dimension, New York: Anchor Books.
Suggested citation
Shreeve, A. and Austerlitz, N. (2008), ‘Editorial for ADCHE special issue’, Art, Design &
Communication in Higher Education 6: 3, pp. 139–144, doi: 10.1386/adch.6.3.139/2
Contributor details
Noam Austerlitz holds a Ph.D. degree from the Faculty of Architecture and Town
planning, Technion, I.I.T. (Haifa, Israel). He graduated from the Faculty of
Architecture, Bezalel Academy of Arts, Jerusalem, in 1996 and since then has been a
practising architect. He teaches design in the Faculty of Architecture in Hiafa and
also has eighteen years of experience of teaching in varied educational settings,
such as: Field Guide in the Israeli nature society; teaching in guides training courses
and teaching yoga. In his academic research Noam is trying to merge his interest in
education and design. Therefore since 1999 he has been conducting studies into
the emotional and social aspects of design education.
Editorial for ADCHE special issue 143

His principal areas of research interest are: design theory; pedagogy and design
education; creativity and innovative thinking; design psychology; emotion research;
education philosophy; science philosophy; ethnographic research. Noam is cur-
rently a research fellow at the Creative Learning in Practice Centre for Excellence in
Teaching and Learning (CLIP CETL) – University of the Arts, London.
E-mail: noam06@gmail.com
Alison Shreeve is the Director of the HEFCE-funded Creative Learning in Practice

Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CLIP CETL) at the University of the
Arts, London. The centre’s role is to enhance and disseminate successful student
learning activities and to reward excellence in teaching. The centre’s activities
include developing pedagogic research in the university and investigating what is
specific to learning in the disciplines of art and design. Staff development is used to
share and disseminate learning from all the centre’s activities.
Alison has over twenty years experience in teaching Textiles and a Masters in Art
Education. She is interested in research into aspects of learning within our disci-
plines and this includes students’ and tutors’ conceptions of assessment. Alison is
currently completing the doctoral programme in Educational Research at Lancaster
University and the focus of her research is on the practitioner tutor’s experience of
practice and teaching. Alison has published and presented at conferences both in
the United Kingdom and internationally.
E-mail: a.shreeve@fashion.arts.ac.uk

ADCHE_6.3_02_art_Sovic.qxd 4/30/08 9:25 PM Page 145

Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/adch.6.3.145/1. © Intellect Ltd 2008.
Coping with stress: the perspective of

international students
Silvia Sovic CLIP CETL, University of the Arts, London
Abstract Keywords
This study explores how stress is experienced by international students in the cre- stress
ative arts at the University of the Arts, London. 141 students from six geographical international students
areas were interviewed in their own language by social science postgraduates creative arts
from various institutions within the University of London. The findings are in
line with those of much current work on international students generally, though
some are specific to the creative arts. While problems connected with language
are the most widespread cause of stress, other less obvious issues are also important.
Alongside the well-known phenomenon of ‘culture shock’ is what has been called
‘academic shock’ or ‘study shock’ – the difficulties of transition to a different system
of teaching and learning, and of integration with peers and communication with
tutors (which might also be described as ‘social shock’). The problems experi-
enced by international students are not all peculiar or specific to them, but such
students, a long way from their own cultural, social and linguistic environment,
are more likely to feel the cumulative nature of the potential difficulties to which
they are exposing themselves by studying abroad.
This contribution explores the impact of stress on teaching and learning

among first-year BA and foundation degree international students in the
creative arts at the University of the Arts, London. It is based on the findings
of a project on ‘The Experience of First-Year International Students at UAL’,
commissioned by the Creative Learning in Practice Centre for Excellence in
Teaching and Learning (CLIP CETL). The aims of the project were:
• to assess the extent to which international students integrate and adapt to

a different teaching and learning environment
• to identify the causes of obstacles to such integration and adaptation
• to propose ways in which these can be remedied.
141 students from six geographical areas were interviewed in their native
languages, along with a benchmark group of 21 home students. The partic-
ipants ranged across the whole spectrum of creative arts disciplines taught
at the six constituent colleges of the University.
The research context

The study took place within the framework of a rich literature on international
students, much of which has drawn on research into the psychological effects
of cross-cultural migration. In this context, a first point to be emphasized

concerns the dangers of stereotyping. The students involved in this project

came from a range of different backgrounds and different educational his-
tories. While their responses show that they have many experiences in com-
mon, they are not so homogenous as to allow grand generalizations across
the spectrum. It would be equally mistaken to attempt firm conclusions by
nation or regional grouping (Kember and Gow 1991; Watkins, Reghi and
Astilla 1991; Chalmers and Volet 1997). For example, much cross-cultural
research, on emotions as on so many other subjects, has assumed a
dichotomy between cultures that emphasize individualism and those that
emphasize collectivism. This has rightly been challenged by more recent
work, which has shown the dangers of attempting to view these individuals
as representatives of homogenous, stereotyped groups (Shore 1996; Lazarus
1991 and 1999).
A good explanation of why this should be is found in the literature on
stress. The notion, put forward especially by cultural psychologists and
anthropologists, that people within specific cultures share the same values,
beliefs etc., and therefore feel and react in the same way when it comes to
emotions and stress, has been challenged by Lazarus (1997 and 1999). He
argues that the evidence on which these concepts are based is insufficient,
and that data
have been interpreted with too much sanguinity by the protagonists of cul-
tural differences in emotion. Most of the data seems to restate the cultural
values of countries and ethnic groups. Much of it is based on reports by people
who may be just restating their culture’s formal values rather than portraying
the actual dynamics of their stressful and emotional transactions.
(Lazarus 1999, p. 65)
Various studies have already demonstrated that the experiences of stress

should not be perceived as something that is ‘culturally specific’, but, on
the contrary, stress is felt on an individual basis: ‘each person sees the
world “through stress-coloured glasses”’ (Sarros and Densten 1989, p. 48,
quoting Veninga and Spradley 1981, p. 29). Coping strategies for dealing
with stress thus vary from person to person; what one student treats as a
challenge, another might see as a threat (Sarros and Densten 1989). Burns
states that ‘stress occurs when the individual believes that they cannot
meet the demand being made on them by the environment, i.e. it is a sub-
jective self evaluation of not being able to cope, of feeling overwhelmed to
some degree’ (1991, p. 67).
Burns’s description of stress follows the classic definition by Lazarus
and Folkman, which is the one adopted here. They defined psychological
stress as ‘a particular relationship between the person and the environment
that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding his or her resources
and endangering his or her well-being’ (Lazarus and Folkman 1984, p. 19).
International students are subjected to many stresses during their time at
university. Although it is common knowledge that there are many factors
that cause stress, this topic is relatively unexplored when it comes to inter-
national students, especially those studying creative arts.
It is widely accepted that the transition of students from one country to
another is accompanied by various emotions, positive and negative. Many
146 Silvia Sovic

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aspects of the process of adaptation that students have to experience –

cultural, social and academic – have a significant impact on their achieve-
ments. Students are confronted with many stressful situations, of which
‘culture shock’ is just one. Oberg, who coined the term, describes culture
shock as ‘precipitated by the anxiety that results from losing all our famil-
iar signs and symbols of social intercourse’ (Oberg 1960). He proposed
four stages of this phenomenon: honeymoon, crisis, recovery and adjust-
ment. Studies have questioned the construct of culture shock. Searle and
Ward argued that it
has been utilized both as a descriptive and an explanatory term …As a descrip-
tor, however, it is largely inadequate to define the nature of the psychological
and emotional difficulties or the adjustment demands faced by sojourners,
and as an explanatory concept it becomes tautological and constrains the
worthwhile investigation of variables that predict adaptation during the transition
process.
(Searle and Ward 1990, p. 450 and cf. Ward and Kennedy 1993, p. 221)
In their alternative view, these scholars placed greater emphasis on two types
of adjustment during cross-cultural transition: psychological adjustment,
which is ‘primarily affected by personality, life changes, and social support vari-
ables’, and sociocultural adaptation, which is ‘primarily affected by amount of
time spent in a new culture, cultural similarity-dissimilarity, host-guest relations,
and acculturation strategies’ (Ward and Kennedy 1993, p. 241).
Culture shock is certainly not dead. Lago and Shipton (1994) proposed
a model of culture shock specifically for international students, in which
they identified five transitional stages. These are: a honeymoon period; dis-
orientation; reintegration; autonomy and independence; and finally, a
‘bicultural competence’ phase which enables students to absorb both cul-
tures. When students go through these phases their sense of identity is of
critical importance; students often feel that they have lost their identity, or
that their ‘normal’ identity has been disrupted and replaced by another due
to study abroad. In his study of the relationship between identity and stress,
Burke argued that this disruption can cause lower self-esteem, causing
stress and even depression (Burke 1991). Perrucci and Hu believe that the
focus of research should not be placed on students’ capacity for adaptation
but rather on ‘their feelings of satisfaction with their academic program,
their academic appointment, and their social and community relations’.
They proposed a ‘general theoretical model of satisfaction among graduate
international students’ (Perrucci and Hu 1995, p. 497).
Student transition involves separation and loss, leaving their family, rela-
tives and other social support networks behind (Walton 1990, p. 509; Werkman
1980). It is also closely associated with the influential attachment theory
advanced by Bowlby (1973). He and others argued that a child’s separation
from its mother results in anxiety, and that this experience can be observed
later in the adult’s life. Many studies have demonstrated that the influences of
maternal attachment on individuals are closely related to the later develop-
ment of teacher-child relationships and remain, throughout the course of
life, able to be unconsciously re-awakened in any new situations that
remind them of their past experience. Klein (1959) called this phenomenon
Coping with stress: the perspective of international students 147

1. http://www.ukcosa. ‘memory in feeling’. Recent research has also suggested that gender and
org.uk/about/statistic
s_he.php.
different ethnic backgrounds influence the quality of the teacher-child rela-
tionship: ‘ethnic differences between teachers and child may be an issue if
2. http://www.hesa.ac.
uk/index.php/content/
the cultural norms of each are in conflict’ (Kesner 2000, p. 136; and cf. 139).
view/600/239/. International students invariably encounter several new situations by com-
3. Or in English, if they
ing to study in the United Kingdom, and in comparison with home students
preferred. Only a few they face additional problems which relate to unfamiliar ways of thinking
bilingual students and behaving. The interaction with their tutors evokes many emotions that
took up this option.
relate to their infantile hopes and fears. Salzberger-Wittenberg, Henry and
Osborne (1983) argued that the teacher can play an essential role in the
mental and emotional life of students, managing their expectations and
relationships, and in due course enabling them to succeed. With temporary
support right from the beginning, the student will achieve an easy transition
into university life and avoid further disappointments which might easily
turn into anger and other negative emotions.
Looking at these issues specifically in arts and design, Austerlitz and
Aravot explored the complex set of emotions in tutor-student relationship
in the architectural design studio (Austerlitz and Aravot 2006, 2007).
Communication between student and tutor is ‘a central vehicle for educa-
tion as it includes more than transference of professional knowledge’. They
found that all participants, but students in particular, ‘may experience a
high level of cognitive stress and a tendency to emotionality’ (Austerlitz
and Aravot 2007). The relationship between emotions and educational
processes is perhaps even more complex when dealing with international
students, who bring with them their own sets of values and norms.
Memories of their previous experiences with tutors, communication diffi-
culties, and their past learning experience can build up into a stronger set
of emotions than were experienced by those who have never attempted
such a transition.
Methodology
The University of the Arts, London, has a high proportion of international stu-
dents. According to the UK Council for Overseas Student Affairs (UKCOSA)
the University of the Arts was ranked fifteenth in the list of recruiters of inter-
national students in the United Kingdom for 2005–6;1 international students
were 17 per cent of the total students. If undergraduates from European
Union are included the proportions are even higher – 32 per cent.2 The
research focused on six geographical areas which supply high numbers of
students: Japan; South Korea; Hong Kong; Taiwan; India and the United
States of America. Some UK students were also included for comparative
purposes. A key feature of the project was that the students were inter-
viewed in their own language, by their co-nationals.3 Fourteen social science
postgraduates were hired from outside the University of the Arts, mainly
from the School of Oriental and African Studies, the London School of
Economics and the Institute of Education. The interviews were recorded
and subsequently transcribed/translated.
Before being interviewed, students filled in a short written questionnaire
giving basic details about their educational background, time spent in
England before studying at UAL, some demographic information, how they
heard of the institution etc. Interviews were semi-structured, consisting of
148 Silvia Sovic

sixteen questions. The questions covered topics such as reasons for study-
ing abroad, expectations, cultural and educational differences in arts and
design, friendship, gender issues, stress, support services etc. The inter-
viewers were consulted during the process of finalizing the questions, to
ensure that there were no ambiguities or culturally inappropriate questions.
The interview lasted between twenty and thirty minutes. 141 international
students were interviewed. 21 home students were also interviewed, for
purposes of comparison, by a native English speaker. The approach of the
analysis was both qualitative and quantitative. NVivo and Excel were used
as the main tools for analysis, together permitting connections to be made
between the interviews and the written questionnaires.
The decision to conduct interviews in the students’ own language had
both positive and negative implications. The interviews provided rich insights pre-
cisely because the language barrier had been eliminated; students could express
their thoughts more easily in their native language, and to their co-nationals.
The fact that the interviewers were international students themselves also
helped; many of them reported that the interviewees saw them as an ‘older
brother or sister’. The danger, of course, was that a high degree of empathy
between interviewer and interviewee might lead to unconscious distortions.
Moreover, having such a large multinational team of interviewers also
brought with it problems. There were some differences in their interviewing
techniques, especially at the beginning, and for most of them English was
not their first language. Students’ views were thus filtered by the translation
process, and some information may have been either misinterpreted or
‘lost in translation’. The fact that the interviewers were not creative artists
may also have affected the outcome of the exercise, as they may have been
less instinctively insightful of the subject. (On the other hand, they might
also have been less likely to lead their interviewees in this respect.) To an
extent these potential problems were dealt with by intensive management
of the interviewing process. Weaknesses remain, but have to an extent been
offset by the scale of the response which went well over the original target of
60–100 interviews. This was a conscious decision; given the nature of the
responses it was felt that volume should be prioritized. If it is not always
possible to be sure exactly what a student meant by a particular remark, the
frequent recurrence of the same points over a substantial number of inter-
views allow some clear conclusions to be drawn.
One of the sixteen questions put to the students at the interview was
specifically on stress. It asked ‘What, if anything, do you find stressful on this
course?’ Unsurprisingly, however, stress featured prominently in answers to
almost all the questions. Since all the data was extensively coded, it was pos-
sible to evaluate what students said on the subject in a wide range of con-
texts (and of course to relate this to the data they supplied on their gender,
age, nationality and linguistic competence).
Findings
Of the many findings of this survey, the following will focus mainly on those
which related to academic issues. The problems students experience with lan-
guage, adaptation to the English academic system, relationships to tutors,
classroom participation, group work and assessment are all foregrounded in
their responses. A focus on academic issues suggests that it might be useful

4. This is in line with the to consider not just culture shock – the features of which are well known –
findings of Chang
(2007).
but actually also ‘academic shock’, which is composed of some less obvious
elements. Some of these might also be considered as ‘social shock’.
The range and extent of stress which international students experience
depend on a number of factors, including linguistic proficiency, degree of
familiarity with the system, and the length of time they have spent in the
United Kingdom before enrolling. There are some less obvious factors as
well. One is gender; it appears that, while the great majority of the interna-
tional students who were interviewed said that they had experienced stress,
female students tended to deal with it better than male students, either
talking about it to their friends or using the counselling services.4 Another
is the age of the students:
The students are generally very young. I am 24. I feel like an idiot in front of
younger people. Well …I don’t know what they think about me.
South Korean student
The ages of these students, and their previous educational backgrounds,

are of profound significance. Many international students already have
degrees from their home country and are slightly older than home students;
many also have previous work experience. The analysis suggests that it is
precisely these students who experience greater levels of anxiety and stress,
because they come from different teaching and learning environments, and
thus have, in many respects, a more fixed set of expectations.
Language
The most visible and obvious area of stress for the majority of international
students is language. For those whose first language is not English this is
usually singled out as the biggest obstacle to their adaptation to the educa-
tional setting at UAL. The study has identified the concern of international
students that high IELTS (The International English Language Test System)
test scores do not guarantee success with study. It is perceived that students
Figure 1: Age profile of first-year international and home students interviewed.
150 Silvia Sovic

are taught ‘how to pass the test’ rather than how to understand and com-
municate in ‘real life’ situations with fast-talking native speakers. Many stu-
dents acknowledge that they had never been exposed to anything like these
situations before, and stated that they consequently found it extremely hard
to understand what was expected of them in their new environment.
Although the basic problem of language can appear monolithic, it is in
fact complex and can impinge on all aspects of teaching and learning.
Some students say that they cannot speak, others that they cannot under-
stand, or answer questions, or read at the speed required if they are to keep
up with the coursework (and they consequently need a lot of time for essay-
writing). Students who are technically qualified and even fluent in a non-UK
version of English (Hong Kong, Indian and even American students) can
also have significant problems with the demotic London version of the lan-
guage, delivered at speed and without restraint, in class or outside it. An
additional problem is tacit knowledge; much that is communicated to them
appears to them to be indirect, so they often cannot understand what is
expected of them. They can be left out if they feel that tutors do not explain
concepts or references which local students would grasp immediately, while
the speed at which native speakers talk leaves them further at a loss:
When I give a presentation, other students ask me about my work and I have
to answer immediately. But if I don’t understand, I cannot answer properly.
It’s particularly difficult to understand young students who speak very fast.
I cannot catch their accent. Then, I miss a lot for my study …
Language is an obstacle not only for my learning but also for my social
life. I’m really scared to speak to English students. I’m too shy …
South Korean students
The English system of teaching and learning in arts

and design
The distinctive system of teaching and learning in English universities, and
specifically that of UAL, form the main element of academic shock which
affects most international students, whatever their mother tongue. These
students come with different expectations of what it is like to study at uni-
versity, and neither descriptions of what it is going to be like nor experience
of university in their home country prepare them adequately for the transi-
tion, which is a major cause of stress.
The process that I have been through is: (1) I had high expectations about lib-
eral teaching and learning approach in the UK; (2) I was shocked and lost; (3)
I gradually learned to accommodate and to accept this approach, after doing
so many projects. I can see my improvement, but it is a bit slow.
Taiwanese student
The degree of emphasis on independent study, obviously well known to

practitioners, has of course to be rediscovered by individual students for
themselves:
The system is very different here. In India, you are literally told what to do. Here
you are on your own. You have to make your own decisions. In a way it is very

good that it makes you independent. But at times you are so lost because
when you come here initially you want someone to tell you what to do …
Indian student
In the creative arts, there are additional differences. Many students did not
expect the strong theoretical slant of their course, and were surprised that
(as they saw it) skills are not valued more. Several were equally surprised
that the process of creative design was given such importance relative to
the product:
…in Korea, you just have to turn in the final project and there is no emphasis
on the process. But here in the UK, you have to put more emphasis on the
process of the project which makes it more difficult and something I definitely
had to adapt to.
Others found that the emphasis on originality, and what they perceived as
the constant demand to be original, were particular causes of stress, again
because this was so different from what they were used to from home.
Closely related to this is the difficulty referred to above, namely the stu-
dents’ feeling that it has not been made clear what is expected of them:
I am not sure what (tutors’) expectations are. So it stresses me; I don’t know
how can I work harder …
Indian student
The system of independent study also leads to stress over time manage-
ment, the indispensable skill which students have to acquire in the English
system. This affects all international students:
In the States, I wouldn’t stress this much about my work, because the teacher
would be stressing for me, saying ‘you have to get this done’, and I’m like
‘okay, okay!’, but here I have no-one saying that to me, so I have to say it to
myself. That’s stressful!
American student
It places particular burdens on those students who have to contend with

language problems as well:
Of course English is stressful, as I told you. That is the most difficult thing …
When I have a project, I cannot do anything else. The task is so tough, so I
cannot spend my time on practice such as speaking English with others or
watching TV to improve my English. I’ve got a deadline, and it’s not easy to
have an idea and finish the work in a good time.
The use of student support (in the form of an essay checking service) can
undoubtedly help, but it also adds to the pressure on students who wish to
use it, as they have to hand in their work well in advance of the coursework
deadlines.
152 Silvia Sovic

Interaction with teachers and students

All the stresses connected with comprehension and social integration come
to the fore in the many situations in which students have to communicate
and work together with teachers and with their peers. Many of the interna-
tional students interviewed in this project stated that they were naturally
shy, even before the stresses of difference, language and adaptation were
factored in. Natural reluctance to speak, combined with the difficulty of
doing so in another language in front of a mixed audience, usually with a
predominance of native speakers, makes class discussions and group work
immensely stressful situations:
If the tutor points at me, I will speak. I will hide if nobody asks me to speak
because my English is not good and I can’t speak fluently. I feel shame to speak
in front of twenty, thirty something people as they are local and their mother
tongue is English.
Hong Kong student
Asian students are less likely to participate in this kind of discussion. UK stu-
dents would not really give many chances to us to speak …
Taiwanese student
Also when there is a classroom discussion, if you don’t know something about
it, then you feel left out because since you are not born here or have not spent a
lot of time here, you don’t know a lot of things that have already happened …If
I don’t know that I feel like I am on the moon or something like that.
Indian student
The overall consequence of such stresses is that it is all too easy to opt out
of interaction. But the consequence of that is isolation, failure to form
bonds or friendships with fellow students, and failure to establish a com-
municative relationship with teachers as well. Such isolation in turn makes
progress with study even harder than before:
Sometimes when I get really stuck on something and I can’t talk to anyone,
like talk to a tutor, that’s the most stressful thing for me.
Isolation, in the form of retreat into individual study, is ultimately not an

option in the creative arts as taught in most courses at UAL. Participation is
critical, be it in group projects or in formal presentations in class. Group
work can be even more stressful because a silent student is effectively
excluded, whether voluntarily or not. It is also something that many inter-
national students have not really encountered before. Students were elo-
quent to their compatriot interviewers about the dynamics involved:
It was difficult for me. One of the reasons was my English, but another reason
would be the characters of students in my group. My students have strong
characters and they tend to be uncompromising to others so it was difficult to
produce an outcome as a result of group work.
Japanese student

Firstly, it is English. Secondly, UK students don’t understand why Asian stu-

dents spend so much time on thinking. And the ways that these two groups of
students work are so different. Sometimes, some Asian students try to explain
what they think. These UK students just are unwilling to listen. Third, these
UK students believe that they are entitled to dominate and to lead where our
discussion should go, simply [because] they are westerners.
Taiwanese student
Presentations in class entail similar stresses, again because they may be

new to the student; because of language and differences of cultural per-
spective; and because in the creative arts, students are offering up so much
of their own personality in the work that they do. Peer opinion is thus criti-
cal, and can be much feared:
To me, the stress comes from my peer group. When I see others work, it is a
kind of competition …As a result, I need to push myself forward as well.
Taiwanese student
The ‘presentation culture’ can also appear alien:
I feel it stressful that the teachers value the presentations more than the work.
I think that the practical skills are not respected enough, and it’s more like
philosophy than Fine Arts.
Japanese student
I don’t like that students often cover their poor job with their fluent presenta-
tion. Everybody does that. Presentation is considered the most important
thing. I am not happy with that at all. However, I think this attitude is normal
in the British art scene nowadays.
In the teaching of the creative arts, the student’s confidence appears to be

highly prized. Participation in class, giving presentations and working
together in groups can all be immensely stressful for international stu-
dents, and are often a completely new experience for them. Many Hong
Kong students, whose English was very good, found it hard to adapt to
these activities. Classroom situations are precisely where international stu-
dents are at the greatest disadvantage – culturally, linguistically and socially.
For many, these situations are exacerbated by the difficulty of transferring
from a system in which standing out in class is not encouraged, to one in
which self-confidence is everything. Many of the students whose overall ver-
dict on their experience was positive said that this was the hardest part of
adaptation, a stage that they had to pass through in order to progress.
An illustration of how stressful this could be was what was learned
about the ‘crit’, where students offer their work up for discussion in a group
critique. Students who commented on this practice do not appear to have
enjoyed the experience:
We present [our work] in a group crit. If my work is not good, then people
look at you differently. People may say, oh him, I saw his work, it’s not that
154 Silvia Sovic

good. The stress comes from worrying that my image to others will be 5. Blair (2006: 88)
damaged. points out that the crit
is stressful even where
Hong Kong student tutors have gone to
considerable lengths
In fact very few of the international students had anything to say about this to provide a support-
ive environment for
(unlike the ‘benchmark’ home students, many of whom also found crits students, in smaller
daunting). Yet a tutor who participated in the ‘Unspoken Interactions’ sympo- groups.
sium at which these issues were aired pointed out that international students 6. This echoes the
rarely came to crits, perhaps precisely because they found the exercise so findings of Blair
stressful.5 (2006: 86).
Assessment
A final area to be discussed here is assessment. Almost by definition the
UAL system will be different from those to which international students
are accustomed. In addition to the by now familiar issues of adaptation
and comprehension, international students get stressed about their
grades for other reasons. Because the students interviewed tended to be
older, and thus more aware of the effects of the march of time on their
career prospects – and given the substantial fees they have paid in order
to study at UAL – they are very anxious to achieve, and that anxiety is eas-
ily compounded if they are unclear about, or distrustful of, the grading
system.
I feel stressed when I came all the way to UAL to study, and all I get is a C0.
I want to get better grades. In Korea, there is a lot of emphasis on good
grades and an impressive transcript.
Difficulties in understanding a new or foreign grading system are perhaps

inevitable, and the solution is comparatively obvious. For the students
interviewed, however, the problem is deeper. Many expressed frustration at
not being able to understand how they could improve their grades. The
feedback that they are given is often not perceived as helpful. Some stu-
dents are upset by very negative comments; others find flattering remarks
too superficial. What both groups have in common is a feeling that the
feedback is insufficiently detailed and specific.6 Yet again, the linguistic
and cultural barriers between international students and their teachers
appear to aggravate the problem, which is felt deeply by some students.
The danger of misunderstandings is ever present, and some of the rea-
sons for this are systemic. While the specific terminologies used in the cre-
ative arts can be an obstacle for all students, it is harder for non-native
speakers to surmount. The widespread practice in these disciplines of giv-
ing verbal feedback disadvantages non-native speakers yet further (Blair
2004). Ultimately, assessment too is a cultural issue (MacKinnon and
Manathunga 2003).
Conclusion
International students do not face a completely different set of problems
from their ‘home’ student counterparts. Many of the most common causes
of stress among students are experienced by home students as well. Group

work, presentations and the crit are singled out in particular by the bench-
mark group of UK students interviewed. Yet international students are more
likely to be confronted by an accumulation of these problems, and at the
same time have greater difficulty in dealing with them, precisely because lack
of integration is one of them; they find it harder to develop social networks,
to communicate effectively with their tutors and peers, and to articulate their
concerns to the host community that is providing the support services –
issues which the home students interviewed did not see as problematic.
What can be done to mitigate these problems? There are no instant or mag-
ical solutions. One way of alleviating stress must be assisting with cross-
cultural communication and integration, by increasing opportunities for
social integration both inside and outside the classroom. The most impor-
tant key to progress, however, can be summed up in a word: understand-
ing. International students badly need to be given full initial and ongoing
explanations of what is expected of them, how the system works, and where
to get help (be it from tutors, peers or support staff). But such information
and support can only be effective if, as well as being organized and sus-
tained, it is based on better insight, by both staff and home students, into
what international students are up against.
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Contributor details
Silvia Sovic is Research Project Coordinator at the Creative Learning in Practice
Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of the Arts, London,
where she is running a project on the experiences of first-year international stu-
dents. Her background is in History: she took her BA in History and Ethnology at
the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; her MA at the Institute of Historical Research,
University of London, and her Ph.D. in Historical Demography at the University of
Essex. She has worked as Research Training Development Officer at the School of
Advanced Study, University of London, and as Researcher at the Cambridge Group
for the History of Population and Social Structure. She is Senior Research Fellow at
the Institute of Historical Research, where she also teaches statistics for historians.
Contact: CLIP CETL, University of the Arts, London, London College of Fashion,
20 John Princes Street, London W1G 0BJ.
E-mail: s.sovic@fashion.arts.ac.uk
158 Silvia Sovic

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Producing fact, affect and identity in

architecture critiques – a discourse
analysis of student and faculty
discourse interaction
Gavin Melles Faculty of Design, Swinburne University,
Melbourne (Australia)
Abstract Keywords
Among the academic genres that architecture students must learn to produce, Architecture critique
the architecture critique or ‘crit’ is a significant moment in student enculturation affective
to disciplinary norms. Students must simultaneously re-present the visuals rep- discourse analysis
resenting the conceptual design of a built environment space and negotiate the
social and affective dimensions of peer critique. Academic skills textbooks
emphasize the informational structuring and ‘staging’ of presentations while
paying little attention to the social and affective dimension of the group social
interaction. Building on recent linguistic critique of the separation of cognition
and affect (including emotion), this study focuses on the affective and factual
nature of the discourse of architecture critique and its constitutive role in student
and faculty identities. I examine extracts from four architecture critique presen-
tations recorded during a two hour session (123 minutes) at the University of
Michigan for the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE). This
discourse analysis demonstrates how fact and affect (including emotion) and
identity is produced in the turns of student presenters. The paper concludes with
how a discursive focus may contribute to more transparent student and faculty
approaches to managing emotion.
Architecture ‘crits’ as problematic oral genres

Students encounter a range of spoken and written genres in research con-
texts, all of which have specific cognitive, affective and rhetorical particular-
ities (Swales 2004). Oral presentations are a spoken genre familiar to
students in their undergraduate and postgraduate years, and participating
in the genre aims to acculturate students to conference presentations and
professional practice. The architecture ‘crit’ or jury, similarly, aims to social-
ize students to academic and professional practices in a ‘highly charged
emotional’ (Frederiksen 1990, p. 22) environment. Two decades ago,
Anthony (1987) lamented the lack of studies on the architecture critique,
finding negative attitudes to the practice among students, and consensus
on the need to improve the ‘jury’ practice.
Emotional events take place throughout the crit (Austerlitz, Aravot
& Ben-Ze’ev 2002), and the quality of faculty feedback can have a devastating

effect where pithiness may be interpreted as insulting (Blair 2006). Orr

(2006) in her introduction to this journal’s special issue on assessment
practices (5[2]) also suggests that dominant techno-rationalist assessment
practices sit uncomfortably with assessment of art and design studio cre-
ativity. Noting a lack of research, Dannels (2005) consequently claims that
‘it is of great importance to explore issues of climate, anxiety, equity, sup-
portive and defensive communication, and student responses to feedback’
(2005, p. 156). Discourse analysis as exemplified in this paper takes the
position that affect (emotion) and facts are ‘done’ in contexts where student
identity is also ‘on the line’.
Academic skills and technical communication texts focusing on the oral
presentation stress the need to rhetorically structure the factual representa-
tion of knowledge in presentations to persuade and convince the audience
(e.g. Alley 2003). In architecture, Morton & O’Brien (2005) claim that the
general ‘public speaking’ rhetoric of texts inadequately treats the linguistic
resources and strategies students can use to give rationales and defend
their position, proposing a genre-based approach ‘that focuses on the
actual language resources on which they can draw’ (2005, p. 9). To hold
the floor, students must
succeed in holding their jurors’ attention and preventing them from taking
over the floor by realizing two interconnected rhetorical objectives: first, by
offering an account of the design model at various and changing levels of
specificity, rationality, and generality; and secondly, by integrating these levels
in ways that are convincing to architects.
(Swales et al. 2001, p. 445)
In the examples analysed below such strategic moves are apparent in stu-
dent responses to critique and part of the professional architecture identity
students aim to develop.
Reinhart (2002) is a genre-based text in the spirit of Morton & O’Brien
(2005), which is aimed at the increasingly significant cohort of English
Second Language (ESL) students in higher education. This ESL cohort is
under particular emotional stress in dealing with critique in an imperfectly
controlled second language. Thus, Swales et al. (2001) show the emotions
and stress faced by international ESL students in a Masters of Architecture
is even more acute than for their local native-speaking peers. Kvan &
Yunyan (2005) have shown in their study of Chinese architecture students
that both learning style and culture correlate with degrees of success in the
studio and jury assessment. However, even genre-based studies and texts
do not address the discursive production of fact, affect and identity in the
crit.
In combination with language, material and virtual architecture con-
cepts contribute to the architectural identity students wish to project in
relation to their peers and academics (Medway 1996; Smith & Bugni 2006).
It is these peers and faculty who create a climate conducive to learning,
consequently, ‘the student/teacher relationship and student’s perception of
self within the crit environment can and does impact on the quality of learn-
ing and the validity of the formative assessment’ (Blair 2006, p. 91). In her
study of engineering design students, Dannels (2003) also notes that in
160 Gavin Melles

addition to competent delivery techniques, students must demonstrate

epistemological confidence, showing they know, ‘what knowledge was valid
for presentation, how to structure that knowledge, which audiences would
be appropriate for that knowledge, and how presenters’ identities con-
tributed to the ways in which that knowledge was understood (p. 166).
Dannels (2005) notes that faculty identify several dimensions as exemplify-
ing student expertise, including ability to explain process not just product;
prioritize information; show command of design jargon; observe and listen;
and separate work from self. Such dimensions are realized in the ‘doing’ of
the crit.
Dannels (2005) also shows how the genre functions as a ‘ritualistic’ perfor-
mance, identifying four distinct oral crit genres distinguished by setting, the
prominence of visual and spatial elements and audience feedback. First, the
‘desk crit’, is an oral presentation in a one-on-one setting – between a faculty
member and one individual student without formal scheduling, and within the
studio time. Second, the ‘Pin-up’ is a genre where students display work on a
large wall or board and receive feedback from both faculty members and other
students. Third, juries, crits, and reviews, take place at mid or end of project;
the end-of-project crit or jury is the most significant and emotionally charged
for assessment purposes. Finally, the ‘open house’ is where a broad public is
invited to view material and visual outcomes; the recordings under considera-
tion in this study fit both the Pin-up and jury or crit genres and are campus
re-design projects at the end of semester.
Producing fact, affect and identity in architecture critiques … 161

ADCHE_6.3_03_art_Melles.qxd 5/7/08 10:39 AM Page 162
Thus, studies to date illustrate the need to distinguish the different oral
genres employed in architecture and affective and identity dimensions of
the genre. Ritual is maintained through particular discursive and material
practices, and analysis can lead to identifying strategies for successful stu-
dent presentations, including strategies for both understanding and man-
aging emotions. Emotive events (Austerlitz, Aravot & Ben-Ze’ev 2002) are
inseparably linked to the performance of expertise and identity in the dis-
course of the crit, and discourse analysis can highlight this.
Oral presentations as recipient designed identity work

Spoken discourse is more than the monologic staging of information but
typically realizes two broad functions. ‘That function which language serves
in the expression of “content” we will describe as transactional (original
emphasis), and that function involved in expressing social relations and
personal attitudes we will describe as interactional (original emphasis)’
(Brown & Yule 1983, p. 1). Spoken language, and particularly everyday conver-
sation, shows much greater emphasis on the ‘interpersonal’ maintenance
of social relationships and affective expression than does writing, and the oral
presentation has a broadly transactional (monologue) and interactional (peer
discussion) structure. The distinction is, nonetheless, relative since even the
primarily transactional focus of a student monologue includes interactional
features (Rendle-Short 2006, pp. 6–8).
Thus, following Bakhtin (Bakhtin et al. 1986; Todorov 1984), we can see
spoken discourse as explicitly designed for the social context in which it is
produced, and performing a range of pragmatic functions beyond factual
informing, including persuading, justifying, etc.. In general, institutional talk
is recipient designed ‘designed for particular recipients, in particular contexts,
and within particular conversations’ (Rendle-Short 2006, p. 10). As Drew &
Heritage (1992) note, institutional talk tends to be distinguished from every-
day conversation through being oriented to a specific task-oriented goal and
having specific constraints on allowable contributions and turns. It is also
associated with particular inferential frameworks, where people ‘use their
understanding of what the institution wishes to achieve to make inferences
about the meaning or function of an utterance that they might not make in
other contexts’ (Cameron 2001, p. 102). For example, questions in court are
heard by defendants as accusations not requests for information, and in the
crit questions about the project are not simply information requests but part
of a general inferential framework of assessment and individual critique.
Spoken discourse is also about identity work, where ‘you put language,
action, interaction, values, beliefs, symbols, objects, tools, and places
together in such a way that others recognize you as a particular type of who
(identity) engaged in a particular type of what (activity)’ (Gee 2005, p. 27).
As mentioned above, the architecture crit is about identity work and being
recognized as in the academic discourse of architecture, a discourse where
emotion is generally marginalized. Identity work is not limited to the
student currently occupying the presenter position; peer critique by fellow
students is also an opportunity for students to ‘display’ their identity as
knowledgeable architects. More generally, the presentation is socially and
ideologically constitutive, ‘in using a discourse we are also tacitly teaching a
version of reality and the student’s place and mode of operation in it’
162 Gavin Melles

(Elbow 1991, p. 146). Even in circumstances where academics attempt to

level academic distinctions and democratize critique, as in this set of exam-
ples, their contributions and those of the peer students are distinct. It is
with an understanding of their significance as a socially produced institu-
tional genre for doing identify work that the affective elements, and emotion
in particular, should be understood.
Affect, emotion and discourse

A number of language-oriented fields have contributed to questioning
the presumed separation of cognitive and emotional states from language.
The philosopher Wittgenstein questioned the correspondence between the
language of emotions and psychological states while also indicating the
inherent ambiguity of the language of emotions when seen out of a context
of actual use.
Are the words ‘I am afraid’ a description of a state of mind? I say ‘I am afraid’;

someone else asks me: ‘What was that? A cry of fear; or do you want to tell
me how you feel; or is it a reflection on your present state?’ – Could I always
give him a clear answer? Could I never give him one? We can imagine all sorts
of things here.
(Wittgenstein 2001, pp. 160–161 and see Green 1979)
In a systematic review of studies of language and affect in linguistics and

anthropology, Besnier (1990) points to ways in which anthropology has
developed a position on language and affect which questions existing
‘Western’ cognitivist and linguistic assumptions, emphasizing the dialogic
construction of meaning.
Ethnographic work on emotions has shown that the opposition between cog-
nition and emotion is a Western construct … thereby casting doubt on the
validity of a referential-affective dichotomy. Similarly, attributing the owner-
ship of meaning to the individual has proved considerably less useful in the
analysis of the anthropological material than a ‘dialogic’ position …in which
meaning is constructed in interactional processes.
(1990, p. 420)
Besnier also notes that a broad notion of affect rather than emotion per se is
preferable to other Western psychologistic and ‘folk models’ which distin-
guish emotion, feeling and affect (see Holland & Quinn 1987).
Psychological and folk models in the West distinguish among feelings, a broad
category of person-centred psychophysiological sensations, emotion, a subset
of particularly ‘visible’ and ‘identifiable’ feelings, and affect, the subjective
states that observers ascribe to a person on the basis of the person’s
conduct …Most anthropologists view this categorization with at least some-
suspicion, in that it subsumes a Western ideology of self and person’.
(Besnier 1990, p. 421)
More recently, Bamberg (1997) argues for a pragmatic approach to emo-

tion, ‘exploring the range of possible meanings of emotion terms – in the

sense of what they are used for in emotion talk’ (1997, p. 315). Similarly to
Besnier and others he also questions the separation of cognition and affect.
In addition to being culturally differentiated, affect (and emotion) is also a
functional tool in social relations. Keltner & Haidt (1999) observe that in
addition to individual (intrapersonal) purposes, (interpersonal) social func-
tions of emotion can be examined as ‘(2) dyadic (between two individuals);
(3) group (a set of individuals that directly interact and has some temporal
continuity); and (4) cultural (within a large group that shares beliefs,
norms, and cultural models)’ (1997, p. 506). Anthropology’s sensitivity to
the cultural relativism of emotion was mentioned above and emotion in
architecture is also part of the cultural model at issue in the context of this
study. In relation to the group context of the crit, Erikson (2004) shows how
emotional key is established and maintained across turns by verbal and
non-verbal (gesture, posture) strategies. Emotional key is the general envi-
ronment of irony, seriousness, etc., which is produced in the discursive and
material interaction of the crit Thus, ‘Continuity of topic and of emotional
key (e.g. irony, seriousness) can be maintained across a set of successive
utterances, and such connected strips of discourse tend also to be marked
throughout by sustained postural positioning’ (2004, p. 109). In the dis-
course analysis below, I focus on the local contexts of (2) and (3) while also
recruiting (4) to help explain the more general institutional, disciplinary and
ideological framing of the crit.
Wittgenstein and ethnomethodology have also influenced a discursive
move against prevailing cognitivist psychology in discursive psychology
(Potter & Wetherell 1987). Through analysis of language in use, discursive
psychology focuses on the social and discursive production of fact and
attitude. As Potter and Wetherell note this centres on seeing discourse in
the context of speaker accounts, ‘the discourse approach shifts the focus
from a search for underlying entities – attitudes – which generate talk and
behaviour to a detailed examination of how evaluative expressions are
produced in discourse’ (1987, p. 55).
A recent practical example of discourse analysis illustrates the potential
of such approaches to illuminate the production of emotion and identity in
a culturally (and ideologically) specific context. Cameron (2001), for exam-
ple, looks at the study by Montgomery (1999) of the British PM Tony Blair’s
speech following the death of Princess Diana where Blair, in comparison to
Queen Elizabeth, was judged to have produced a ‘sincere’ discourse
marked by emotion. In the extract of the televised public speech the ‘PM
constructs himself as voicing a collective response to the event on behalf of
the British nation’ and does so through judicious and strategic use of pro-
nouns ‘I (personal grief), we (collective grief), and they (the British people)’
(Cameron 2001, pp. 134–137). The fragmented utterances of the discourse
are separated by lengthy pauses and embedding an emotive lexis, including
‘painful’, ‘utterly devastated’, to produce a response which was judged
sincere in comparison to that of Diana’s mother-in-law.
Identity, fact and affect have a significant manifestation in the peer and
faculty critiques that follow the largely monologic student presentation. As
Rendle-Short (2006) notes in her recent study of the oral presentation, ver-
bal and non-verbal (gaze, hand movement, gestures etc.) behaviours are
employed to indicate engagement and other aspects of the social interaction
164 Gavin Melles

as a dialogic encounter. Her exemplary study illustrates the full embodi-

ment of oral presentation work. Deixis (the use of indexicals referring to
visuals) is also achieved by non-verbal gestural and postural techniques
and in this sense, the presentation is fully ‘embodied’.
Recski (2005) has shown how metadiscourse marks the interpersonal
character of dissertation defences, an observation that is also relevant here.
Combined with non-verbal (laughter, pauses, overlaps) reflexes of the social
and effective dimensions of talk, analysis shows how fact and affect are
‘done’. This metadiscourse often employs the very terms which ‘Western’
folk models of affect refer to as emotional abstracts, such as feeling, think-
ing, finding difficult, etc. It is these concrete manifestations of affect in con-
texts of ‘factual’ description together with any non-verbal resources, such
as laughter, which is the focus here.
Methods and setting

The Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE) is a multi-genre
and multi-disciplinary collection of spoken academic genres available in tran-
scribed and audio form (Simpson et al. 2002). Among the collection of genres
is a 123 minute recording of student presentations in an architecture critique
performed at Michigan by students (see http://www.spdc.msu.edu/), which
was downloaded from the corpus.
The crit projects involved students in re-designing a campus space. The
details of the setting were that there were twelve speakers and a total of
25 participants. Four crits and Pin-ups were presented during the session,
distributed among seven main speakers in dyads or alone: presentation
1 (S2/S4), presentation 2 (S8/S9), presentation 3 (S11), and presentation
4 (S12/S13). As mentioned above, in relation to the non-verbal affective
manifestations, there were 49 instances of laughter by individuals or groups
in the transcript, many examples of overlapping turns, and a range of
significant lengthy pauses, which simultaneously marked the emotional
tone and dialogic character of the interaction. No emotional ‘breakdowns’
of the kind illustrated in Austerlitz, Arazov, and Ben-Ze’ev (2002) occurred
while discursive and non-discursive (e.g. laughter) resources were used to
maintain an emotional key throughout.
In what follows, I focus below particularly on the interactive turns fol-
lowing the student monologues where the management and production of
affect is particularly significant. Given space limitations I have selected one
sequence from the three presentations. One particularly interesting dimen-
sion of group level interaction in institutional contexts is how academic sta-
tus is mobilized by faculty in their interactions with students. In the
examples, I allude to or exemplify where S1 (the senior academic) employs
her academic status in the interaction; each sub-header briefly contextual-
izes the extract, which follows.
Exemplifying the discourse of architecture

The example below is taken from the initiating monologic turn of the faculty
member (S1), whose initiating turn, length, and non-dialogic discourse
serves to identify her as the speaker empowered to direct proceedings.
Thus, she can ignore the attempt by an unidentified male (SU-m), interject-
ing in the middle of the turn with a ‘backchannel cue’, to take the floor.

1. In this paper I have Balancing her ‘powerful’ display, the academic exploits the opportunity at
adopted the following
conventions from
the end of this initial turn to mark the emotional key of the session by elic-
MICASE. [square iting laughter (<LAUGHTER>). This key is maintained through the two-hour
brackets] mark session with 49 instances of laughter over the 123 minutes.
insertions in a current
speaker’s turn while
The fragmented syntax of the utterances shows typical properties of
bold marks spoken discourse, such as frequent discourse markers (‘alright’, ‘okay?’,
overlapping with ‘um’) marking particular points in the discourse (Schiffrin 1987). The
another speaker.
<DIAGONAL>
indexicals (‘this is Bonisteel here’) of the discourse trace the geographic
brackets mark layout of the design concept. All the pauses mid-utterance or utterance-
non-linguistic final are relatively short, with none over two seconds, indicating a relatively
phenomena and
(parentheses) enclose
fluent and confident delivery by the facilitating academic. The student
transcription guesses. monologues and dialogues examined here show many of the general prop-
In terms of pause erties of this example above. In the following analysis, I focus on the post-
timings a comma (,)
indicates a brief (1–2
monologue crit interaction between student presenters, academic, and
second) mid-utterance peer students:
pause with non-
phrase-final intonation
S1: (um. or Mark?) okay. we1 have two sites, one is on North Campus which
contour while a period
(.) indicates a brief uh, if uh this is the, Pierpont Commons the Media Union and the bell tower,
pause accompanied this is Bonisteel here, and Murfin goes up the hill here, uh so the site is really,
by an utterance final
largely where the current parking lot is, to the north of Pierpont Commons. or
(falling) intonation
contour; not used in that slope. that whole area was open for, choice. and the other site is um, in
a syntactic sense to town on Central Campus, uh State Street is here, um Student Union, West
indicate complete
Quad, [SU-m: (looks exactly like)] Thompson Street Thompson Street parking
sentences. Where
relevant, pauses of 4 structure. this is currently used as grade level parking. alright um, and Blimpy
seconds or longer are Burger is here, (lying down,) okay? just to set the context. this is South Quad.
timed to the nearest
so the two sites uh you’ll see schemes on both sites through the afternoon.
second, e.g. P: 05.
Embedded utterances okay, some students have been working individually and some have been
are marked in [square working in pairs. so um, this is obviously a pair.
brackets] and indicate
<LAUGH>
a backchannel cue
and unsuccessful
attempt to take the S2/S4: addressing the suburban feel and the quadrangle
floor; in some cases
these attempts
Students who take up the discursive role of peer critique must do so in a
include overlapping way consonant with their status and relationship to peers and faculty.
speech. Following the presentation of their concept (S2/S4), and some interaction
between S1 and S3, S5 questions the correspondence between the design
concept and the aim to ‘achieve something really urban’. The peer critique
of S5 begins with an intertextual link to a previous speaker comment
(‘Teresa’). The beginning of the negative critique proper (‘but’) and then a
heavily hedged (‘i almost feel like’) claim with the lengthy packaging of the
claim in a personalized metadiscourse (e.g. ‘what I think the difficulty I’m
having’) that employs the language of feeling and emotion and reflects the
tentativeness with which students must propose architectural knowledge,
S5: i, i think there’s, something also that uh Teresa’s comment on that in terms
of, what were you trying to accomplish, in getting rid of the suburban? and, my
thinking is that you’re trying to make it more urban, is that correct? and i think
about uh, you know the idea of bringing the street to the building and that being
the driving force in in making this more of an urban state. um, but i almost feel
like you really need to, you know in order to accomplish that, it’s somewhat set
back as well wh- whereas to achieve something really urban you kind of need a
166 Gavin Melles

continuation, of pedestrian traffic along that urban side. and what i’m s- i think
the difficulty that i’m having with that is that, on what you would truly consider
your urban side where the street is, you’ve placed the mechanical room. so you
there’s not even, really maybe the potential, for, if something was to happen on
either side, for activity to happen along that urban side face.
Shortly after this S1 comes to the defence of S2/S4, and S5 responds con-
cessively (e.g. ‘not to get hung up on’) mitigating her comments (‘some
sense of’ and ‘somewhat’) and acknowledging the status of S1:
S5: …is actually the existing condition…not that_ i mean i, i_ you know not to
get hung up on this issue either i, i think that it’s very interesting, your explo-
ration between the way the, classrooms relate to the studios. um, i i think that
that’s actually a very interesting notion.
S8/S9 layering the plans

Following their presentation of their ‘layered’ response, S6 takes a particu-
lar interest in following up on the design of space and staircases in the con-
cept. In responding to critique, S9 and S8 defuse the criticism by proposing
reasons for rejecting it for what they argue is a more important reason:
S6: did you look at the um at the entrance to the lobby? you’ve got this very
large enclosure outside the building and then inside you’ve got almost the
well you’ve got a bigger area inside, for circulation and lobbies, at all levels.
did you look at, trying to provide it by putting some of the staircases actually
into your glass box? [S8: um ] i’m just saying [S8: into here?] that (Difanico)
would think this was quite wasteful of space.
S9: originally we actually had a (xx)
S8: (originally) we had that in, we had the stair in the, in the glass box.
S9: yeah <PAUSE:04> but [S6: did you?] where we we did [S8: no] it was here
S8: it was further out
S9: it was somewhat round. and then we, we began to, work with our circula-
tion and, um, when you put your main stair here, then if it’s here then you
always have this
S6: it’s not across the building i agree but on the other hand [S8: but ] to have
that huge area kind of pretty well empty (xx)
S8: but i mean, as far as the auditorium we’re th- i mean i guess one idea we
were thinking that the auditorium isn’t just, a normal architecture auditorium
and that the whole campus could use it and so this would be a space where
you could hold receptions or whatever afterwards and
While negotiating their combined response to the question, S8 and S9 main-

tain the floor through rationalizing their choice on alternative architectural

principles to those offered by the peer critique. The tentative language of the
peer critique follows the previous example although with no direct faculty
intervention (S1), the student (S6) is not obliged to package his critique to
account for the higher status of S1 in the way S5 previously had to. Note how
S6 while offering critique proposes an architectural solution (put it in the
glass box) which S8 and S9 are likely to have considered on the ‘efficient
use of space’ principle. Given the equal student status among the students
the response of S8 and S9 does not have to acknowledge the greater expertise
and authority of S1 should she have intervened at this point.
S12/13: studio as heart and soul of architecture school

In the following extract S5 again takes a prominent role in making observations
on S12/S13 pin-up and presentation. Another student – S7 – develops the idea
of the need to redefine the plinth and access to it, overlapping with S5 to do so.
S1 closes the critique while providing some expert closure to this section of talk
S5: would [S7: uh i think ] it make more sense then to kind of reverse that let the
plinth come around and open the open-air side to the, to the court so that you
sit, relative to the courtyard, if that_ if i’m understanding [S12: mhm ] that that’s
the cafe [S12: yeah ] and that’s the exterior eating area. except that it’s on the
north side, which is unfortunate.
S12: uh_ yeah that’s true. i mean you could just hold the corner with the building,
would be another [S5: well ] option instead of, plinth
SU-f: (plinth, plinth)
S5: you really wouldn’t want that on the north side
S7: i think the plinth, the plinth is more believable, if you could see a stair or
a way to get to it. now it’s just, hovering above you and you can’t, get there
from here, [S12: well the- ] you have to ge- you have to know that you can do
that. [S13: right. ] it’s_ if if, maybe if, this continued to peel under the stair or
somethi- … (give turns follow)
S13: Leah did it Leah tried a couple of different entries to it and, i think we
ended up resulting that the best way that we knew to hold the corner, was to
leave it as the one entry because the other ways was really seeming to disinte-
grate and not taking as strong of a stance. and we decided we would take a
strong stance. by doing that.
S1: well, there are a couple things the, the corner is, i mean you could extrapo-
late it, zeroing in on the difficult bits don’t they? <SS: LAUGH> i mean their dif-
ficulty was that if if if this extends down and the auditorium begins to occupy
that corner, then um, when you’re looking from this way, it’s kind of disappears
from view. it it goes out of the frame. and, so and this also becomes in- incred-
ibly attenuative. you know it’s just such a long link that it, becomes less credi-
ble and so, i think there was an effort to kind of close this in a bit more so that,
from the street you would you would begin to perceive that space.
168 Gavin Melles

Throughout this particular example, S12 largely acquiesces to the critique

while S13 suggests that trial and error resolved on taking ‘a strong stance’,
a generally laudable move in academic discourse. S1 resists applauding the
move, preferring to signal design strategies to resolve the difficulty and
including in her turn, as she does elsewhere, a phrasing of the difficulties in
expert terms (e.g. ‘extrapolate it’, ‘attenuative’).
The maintenance of a balanced emotional key throughout the crit is evi-
dent and the ‘democratic’ sharing of critique in a context of quality academic
feedback continues throughout. Student presenters manage the consequences
of the crit through providing alternative architectural rationales for choices.
Interaction involving the facilitating academic, with student concessions to
academic power, mobilize verbal and non-verbal resources in a deliberate
attempt to be democratic and constructive.
This emotionally non-eventful architecture crit plays out in an environ-
ment of quality feedback. While others have signalled the problematic
nature of the crit, this particular example shows that although affect (emotion)
and fact are present in the discursive performance they need not be prob-
lematically salient. The crit ‘language game’ exemplified here presents the
architectural ‘form of life’ (Wittgenstein 2001) as a promising environment
within which to form a professional identity, and perhaps offers an exemplary
look at how this can be done.
Conclusions
In architecture, negotiating the multimodal semiotics of text, materials and
image is a challenging aspect of the architecture presentation for novices
(Morton 2006). The small body of literature addressing the architecture
critique has signalled its emotional significance and the potential lack of trans-
parency in its aims including in relation to future professional practice
(Dannels 2003; Webster 2006a; 2006b). Discourse analysis offers tools to
examine the transactional and interactional functions of spoken interaction in
the architecture critique and the simultaneous ‘embodied’ production of fact,
affect, and identity. This study shows that even in the ‘democratic’ familiar set-
ting of the classroom the crit is a site for identity, emotive and ideological work.
While performing their respective identities, students and faculty must
negotiate an emotional key commensurate with the purpose and emotional
environment of the crit genre. Academics can bring expertise and construc-
tive critique without unduly upsetting students by acknowledging the
merits and limitations of the current presenter and his/her peers. Peer to
peer and student to academic critique is differentiated linguistically, and the
tentative nature of the discourse signalling the interpersonal (e.g. Keltner
& Haidt 1999) social and academic relationships and the significance of the
event in the developing expertise of the student. In the metadiscourse of
student presentations the abstract ‘Western’ categories of feeling, emotion
and thought are discursively produced and linguistically indexed.
Further detailed studies of the situated talk of architecture juries could
help substantiate some of the problematic issues, identified in the litera-
ture. However, this paper has argued that further attention should be paid
to the discursive production of emotion, fact and affect in educational
settings so that architectural education does not lose sight of the discursive

significance of the event and the value of constructive feedback. Perhaps

paradoxically, making these affective dimensions more transparent may
lessen the anxiety that students face in presenting their work.
References
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really hard but all she said was “fine” and I was gutted’, Art, Design &
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London; New York: Routledge.
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sis’, Cognition & Emotion, 13(5), pp. 505–521.
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performance in architectural design studio’, Design Studies, 26(1), pp. 19–34.
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Diana’, Language and Literature, 8(1), pp. 5–33.
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Hampshire.
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and accommodation: reflections on an EAP course for Masters of Architecture
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Webster, H. (2006b), ‘Power, freedom and resistance: excavating the design jury’,
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English Translation, (3rd ed.), Oxford: Blackwell.
Suggested citation
Melles, G. (2008), ‘Producing fact, affect and identity in architecture critiques – a
discourse analysis of student and faculty discourse interaction’, Art, Design &
Contributor details
Gavin Melles is a Research Fellow at Swinburne University, Faculty of Design. His
research interests include research supervision, qualitative methods, genre-based
thesis writing, and English for Academic Purposes (EAP). His background is in lin-
guistic anthropology and education.
Contact: National Institute for Design Research, Building PA, Prahran Campus,
Faculty of Design, Swinburne University of Technology, VIC 3181, Australia.
E-mail: gmelles@swin.edu.au

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Playgrounds, studios and hiding places:

emotional exchange in creative learning
spaces
Olivia Sagan Centre For Learning and Teaching in Art and
Design (CLTAD), UAL
Abstract Keywords
This paper explores notions of space in learning, specifically that of the creative creativity
learning space. It maintains that space, far from being neutral, is both socially emotion
and psychologically constructed, and reproductive of inequality. identity
The paper draws directly on the psychoanalytic, Winnicottian concept of space
transitional space, and supports its use and value as a tool via which to explore transitional
and deepen our understanding of the learning and creative space. The paper
looks too at how the very language through which we discuss learning and its
spaces is riddled with hierarchical beliefs. Finally it argues that moves towards
greater democratization of learning through widening participation must include
a more nuanced understanding of the structural inequalities which are embedded
in our thinking about learning and its spaces.
The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space.
(Foucault 1986)
I wonder where you’re reading this now. Did you choose to read it in a particu-
lar place? How do you feel about that space, and how is that space impacting
on your reading of this paper, your enjoyment or not, empathizing or not, bore-
dom or not? Is space really that important, that it can affect the way we read,
understand, learn, express ourselves? Maybe not. But this paper discusses the
possibility that for some, spaces are that important, that alive, that dynamic –
because they are filled with emotion, or residual emotion.
Introduction
This paper aims to do three things, in a short space, which immediately
tells you something about me and space. I fill it, cram it, then find that
crammed space oppressive and set about stripping it into a minimalist
expression. Something there, one might interpret, about needing the full-
ness before being able to be calm in a void. When I painted, I did pretty
much the same thing. I thickly and lusciously over-painted, then, exhausted,
I’d white-emulsion over the whole thing and go for a one-liner, as though
that one line somehow contained and condensed all my previous super-
fluity. In my research now, there is a similar pattern of behaviour with the
research space. I collect, magpie-like, all and every scrap of data (some call it

ethnography) – I develop multi-perspective interpretations. Multi-dimensional

speculations. Multi-layered readings. Then, boom: a one-line finding about a
tiny something in something tiny.
But I digress . … back to the three things: firstly, I want to give an
overview of some selected ideas about space which I find pertinent to our
thinking about emotions and the educational creative space. Secondly, I want
to briefly illustrate how some of these ideas came into play in a research pro-
ject I undertook with a group of mentally ill learners. Thirdly, I want to extract
from both these sections and apply the ideas and findings to our under-
standing of pedagogical encounters in art and design spaces.
I now leave a space for you to reflect on this, and decide whether you
want to continue reading.
OK.
Spaces in learning and learning spaces

One of the first learning spaces I ever taught in was a designated space under
a particular tree, highly sought after for the shade it offered from the blistering
sun which would hit us within an hour of school starting. Clearly, we were not
in Harringay, where my own primary school classroom, some fifteen years
before that, was a quaint blend of tall arched windows and parquet flooring
lightly carpeted with chalk-dust near the blackboard. Both spaces I recall
acutely – and in both spaces, happy learning took place for me, whether as
pupil or teacher; but this may of course be down to the recasting of thoughts
through rose-tinted memory. What such memories enable, however, is a per-
ception of emotional and affective dimensions of learning as (also) contributing
to a positive educational experience. (Dirkx 2001, p. 67). In both instances,
emotions positively infiltrated the learning and the learning space – and the
latter would forever become a happy space which, in turn, ‘magically’ enabled
learning. However, the opposite is also possible, as testaments to failed,
thwarted, ‘difficult learning’ (Britzman 1998) teach us.
Since both of these instances of learning, I have taught and learned in
spaces less sanguine though no less memorable. The white, bare-walled
high security unit of a psychiatric hospital comes to mind, with its ingrained
stench of piss and despair. There, learning was arduous and sometimes
desperate, though spotted with short breaths of relief in the form of hope,
humour or rest, the three elements Immanuel Kant so aptly claimed were
given us to counterbalance the miseries of life. There, the best of intentions
became quickly eroded and the lightest of lessons swiftly turned turgid in a
space tragically difficult to imbue with positive emotion.
Literature on education, from government policy to pedagogical
research, is replete with references to the learning environment and its
174 Olivia Sagan

potential to motivate learners and promote learning as an activity (HEFCE 1. Pilot interviews
I recently ran in which
2006, p. 3). Yet while we all have some idea of the constituent factors of a students were asked
good learning space, there is in fact a dearth of studies exploring what this to talk about studio
might actually be, and what, if any, is its impact. But there is more that I find space became focused
on how they felt;
puzzling. The three examples I give above (tree, Harringay, hospital) are, in interactions;
my mind, saturated with emotion. And whilst there has been a surge in the memories and so on.
levels of interest in the complexity of emotional factors of learning
(Salzberger-Wittenberg et al. 1983; Todd 1997) and teaching (Carlyle & Woods
2002; Troman & Woods 2001; Woods & Carlyle 2002), emotions are still
regarded somewhat as ‘baggage’ and split off from the rationalist, cognitive
task of learning. There is also an absence of the study of space and emotion
as being inextricably linked in learning1; a tired, Cartesian insistence on
splitting off the ‘out there’ of space with the ‘in here’ of affect. Ian Craib
(1997) goes so far as to suggest that this proliferation of binaries (with
which we are intensely preoccupied in the field of education), is not only
Cartesian but psychotic, while for Michael Rustin the fracturing and atomiz-
ing of current educational policy and practice constitutes an attack on think-
ing (2001, p. 213). What is so threatening about an embodied, emotional
subject – one who impacts emotionally on the space in which s/he learns,
and is, in turn, impacted on by the space and emotions in it?
But there also remains something intrinsically ‘malestream’ (Tanesini
1999) about this preoccupation with binaries – with a discourse of ‘emo-
tional space’ being associated with a clichéd notion of women, femininity
Playgrounds, studios and hiding places: emotional exchange … 175

and the emotional. Furthermore our reluctance to consider, holistically, the

emotionality of space, or the spatial in emotionality, is redolent of a classi-
cism and ethnocentricity in which one (the privileged, the male, the white)
posits space as neutral, ‘open’ for all. Spaces, in fact, and the emotions they
provoke, contain or deny, are not neutral at all, but branded with particular
race, class and gender ‘affiliations’. Spatial organization is also a mecha-
nism through which ‘othering’ (De Beauvoir 1949/1972; Said 1978) takes
place. As certain spaces come to be implicitly recognized as more powerful,
less powerful subjects/activities/courses can be relegated elsewhere. We
all, in addition, have a sense of space and territory which is a potent part of
our identity; think of the wonderful saying ‘you can take the girl out of the
hood, but you can’t take the hood out of the girl…’ That identity is built in
direct relation to what is sometimes ‘devalued territory’ (Taylor 2004) and a
liminal space (Turner 1997), one which is either physically or psychologi-
cally experienced as a mid-way, borderline space which shares none of the
recognition or security of orthodox, delineated spaces. Liminal space, how-
ever, may ironically also offer freedom and possibility. In playing truant
from school (way after my halcyon days in Harringay), and having no set
space to occupy as I was always ‘elsewhere’, I was given the freedom to
roam the then sleazy streets of Soho and Chinatown. It was a space in
which a troubled teenage identity could be bizarrely moulded through dank
basement record shops and poetry readings in the dim backrooms of
crammed bookshops. Liminal space can be isolating, but it can also offer
the possibility of resistance and even rebellion with one’s ‘fellow liminars’
(Sibbett 2003).
In the field of education, as Carrie Paechter states, Space is subordinated
to time in both the theory and the practice (2004, p. 449). We are busy thinking
about the duration of learning without paying so much heed to the location,
other than to ‘allocate’ a studio/classroom. And yet we are all immersed in
a discourse which is saturated with descriptors of space, albeit in
metaphoric form. We know all too well the spatial notions of top and bottom
grades; of ‘under’ graduate, ‘foundation’ level, and ‘Higher’ education. We
know of the ‘mapping’ of criteria, and assessment in different ‘fields’. We
have learned about the ‘spiral’ curriculum, ‘scaffolded’ learning and ‘zones’
of proximal development (Vygotsky 1962). We have ‘open’ learning and
‘distance’ learning, ‘threshold’ subjects, ‘core’ subjects, ‘peripheral’ learn-
ing (Lave & Wenger 1991). Students get ‘stuck’ and can’t overcome obsta-
cles on their learning ‘journey’ – despite engaging in both ‘vertical’ and
‘horizontal’ learning (Shulman 1987). We have academic ‘ladders’ and glass
‘ceilings’ – we strive for ‘breadth’ and ‘depth’ of knowledge and ‘deep’
learning to counteract ‘surface’ learning. Sometimes the language betrays
the very social structures we are trying to eradicate: ‘inclusive’ learning sug-
gests there is something such as ‘exclusive’ learning, an ‘in’ to be included into
and an ‘out’ to which we exclude others. The hierarchical, height-privileged
notions of ‘upper’ class, ‘higher’ degrees and ‘foundation’ degrees or
‘bridging’ courses are examples of how spatial language can capture us,
almost unthinking, in particular, pernicious discourses… (Paechter 2004, p. 458)
and regulatory discourses in art education (Atkinson 2002; Brown et al.
2005) come to determine the pedagogized identities and art practices we
bring to the learning and teaching space. Whilst these discourses refer
176 Olivia Sagan

to spatial notions rather than actual spaces, they nevertheless reproduce

hierarchical structures and hint at the non-neutrality of space. These hierar-
chical structures of society are embedded in and through the very education
which teaches us to analyse and deconstruct those structures (Bourdieu
& Passeron 1977):
Learning can provide a space for contesting and critiquing the dominant
hegemony in society; it has the potential to be a liberating and empowering
experience. Yet education is also contradictory, as it reproduces the dominant
social order.
(Merrill 2004, p. 75)
So despite the spatial rhetoric of ‘student-centred’ learning, and the fantasy

of democratization through ‘open-access’ and e-learning with virtual tutors
in cyberspace, educational discourse is riddled with embedded ideas of top,
bottom, and…elsewhere, out there, perhaps in the ‘community’, spaces to
where participation has to be ‘widened’.
Metaphors, one might argue, are merely linguistic and do not accurately
represent how we organize or use ‘real’ space in educational institutions.
However, post-structuralists from Derrida and Foucault on have argued
forcefully that the subject is constructed through language; subject positions
being constituted through the larger discourses of society (Davies & Harre
1990). In being so constructed, we embody and reproduce the very dis-
courses which have constructed us. Certain ‘knowledge’ is enscripted onto
our bodies, and this is the mechanism for the self-regulation (Foucault 1977)
which we undertake. This helps to explain the comfort or discomfort we feel
in particular public spaces. Such public and social spaces are also the
means by which different forms of capital (Bourdieu 1989) to which one has
access, come to have currency:
So when one enters a physical space such as a bar, school or home, one
brings with one, embodied, certain quantities of different capitals. It is the
physical embodiment of the different positions that the body has previously
been able to inhabit. So one is always moving in and out of spaces carrying
and sometimes increasing the value of different capitals. Although for some
groups this may not be possible.
(Skeggs 1999, p. 214)
So if language structures how we think and feel about the social, and if
embodied experience of space helps constitute our identity, then the spatial
metaphors through which we teach and learn may powerfully reproduce
inequalities in society. The waters are further muddied, when emotions are
thrown into the fray, as being inextricably linked to language and space. Being
top of the class feels very different to being bottom of it. Within art education,
we have a sublime muddying of the waters; for we form part of, and think
through, an educational discourse stiff with highly emotive metaphorical
notions of top and bottom achievement. In addition, we are working with an
artefact, a product, which is created (and criticized) within a certain physical
(studio) space which has a high potential of being emotionally saturated
(Austerlitz & Aravot 2002, p. 87). And finally, the creation of that artefact

(to be ‘exhibited’ in yet another stratified space) is historically regarded as a

product of self-expression which is, if nothing else, an emotional process.
Later on, I’ll give an example from my research of how an individual may
(or may not) negotiate the emotional terrain laid down by this blend of dis-
course, space and self- expression in order that learning can progress.
Learning: finding a space small enough to contain anxiety

OK, back to me. When I was three or four, my favourite place to run and hide
from the turbulence that was my home was behind a small cupboard door.
When the door was open, the alcove created between door, cupboard and
wall was tight and snug and private. Within a year it would be too small for
me and my picture book, but for an important space of time, it was perfect.
I felt safe. To this day I like a quiet, small corner to study in. Not wanting at
this juncture to enter into dense interpretations of this, let’s just posit, for
argument’s sake, that one’s feelings towards space are not only socially con-
structed through a given social order and its discourse, but psychologically
constructed too, through our own individual histories. In this psycho-social
approach (Frosh 2003), the social and the psychic are mutually constitutive.
This is what a recently graduated student from a foundation degree had
to say about her learning, shared space and how it related to her back-
ground:
I found it difficult …all this sharing of space …I couldn’t get things done … cause,
when I was growing up, you know, it was just me and my mum …she’d be over
there, and I’d be over here and I’d have my paints and things, she always really
encouraged my creativity … and it was quiet, you know, nice …a nice space …
Stephanie
What seems to be being alluded to, in both my experience and Stephanie’s

(neither of which is unique), is the idea of transitional space (Winnicott
1971), in which aspects of the self are created and transformed in relationships
with others and with the matrices of culture (Day-Sclater 2003, p. 326).
Transitional space is the ‘facilitating environment’ par excellence.
Stephanie, in the quotation above, had a strong internal model of this. It
arguably sustained her through later years of disruption, interrupted learn-
ing and phases of failure. When she returned to study as a mature student,
she needed to recreate something of that early experience of interaction,
trust and creativity, and found the studio space and the crit less than con-
ducive, spending her most productive time at home.
Transitional space is one of the more useful, as well as poignant and tex-
tured, concepts of space nestled within psychoanalytic theories. It is to a
small selection of these which I now turn. In order to get a grip on any psy-
choanalytic theory or application of it, it helps to hold in mind the concept
of the ‘defended subject’ as best articulated by Wendy Holloway and Tony
Jefferson (2000). This draws mainly on Kleinian models of the individual as
driven by very rational, though unconscious, urges to keep levels of anxiety
down. The defended subject can be interpreted as engaging in behaviours
and thought processes that have, as their aim, the warding off of the
unpleasant sensation of increased anxiety. Holloway and Jefferson have
been able to offer stimulating analyses (Holloway & Jefferson 2001) of how
178 Olivia Sagan

and why individuals sometimes follow apparently illogical deductive rea-

soning, or engage in acts and behaviours which are not, at first glance,
apparently in their favour. They offer a most persuasive argument for look-
ing seriously at the impact and meanderings of the unconscious in the
social, including, of course, learning and teaching. What’s important to us
at this point is that the notion of anxiety and defence, as being at the core of
human experience, provides a context to look at notions of space within
psychoanalysis. Popping back to me in my cupboard, for example, I could
offer an interpretation of that particular space, and its constituent elements,
as being intrinsic in my surviving high levels of anxiety at the point in time.
So instrumental was that space in offsetting the anxiety, that I would carry
this memory (and others, unconsciously) of certain elements being prereq-
uisites in any space which would be considered as safe, and, by extension,
potentially creative.
But psychoanalysis has done more than offer us images of the porous-
ness of the human condition. It has given us an unimaginably (because now
taken for granted) important way of thinking about both our internal and our
external space. It has helped examine how we negotiate movement from the
internal, with its thoughts, imaginings, phantasies etc. to the external, with
its enacting, projections, and so on. It is easy to see the importance of this
internal, external and intermediate (transitional) space for both learning (in
which we take from the outside, combine with internal subjectivity, and
reproduce, in a given form, back into the external) and artistic endeavour, in
which we draw deeply on the internal in order to express, externally, some-
thing which is a fusion of psycho/social elements. Winnicott’s transitional,
or potential, space has been used and explored richly in contemporary work
on learning (Richards 2002) and creativity (Gosso 2004). It is a space
(which can be both physical and/or abstract) which is the:
‘space between symbol and symbolized, mediated by an interpreting
self, (the) space in which creativity becomes possible’ (Ogden 1992, p. 213).
Transitional space offers potential, and is the prototype of a successful
infant/primary care-giver dyad, in which the infant is ‘held’ physically
and/or emotionally. Importantly, it is a space where one is allowed enough
risk to learn, develop and create, a space where the natural anxiety provoked
by learning and development is contained. It is a space in between inner
and outer world, where inter-relationships and creativity occur (Winnicott
1971). Whether we are in a learner/tutor one-to-one, a peer interactive space, a
desk crit or an exhibition space, a meeting of inner and outer worlds and inter-
subjectivity is occurring.
The idea of containment (Bion 1984) is also useful in any discussion of
learning, for it is the capacity, again based on pre-verbal interaction, for a
care-giver to accept, hold and detoxify the infant’s projections of fear, anger
and anxiety. In showing/modelling a capacity for mentalization, for a toler-
ance of the difficult, the ambivalent, the ugly, the care-giver ‘contains’ and
detoxifies the raw, sensory experience. This containment is essential in the
management of anxiety necessary for learning:
‘If well enough contained, anxiety can (therefore) act as a source of cre-
ative, task-related energy, as reflected in the phrase ‘anxious to learn’.
Unconscious anxiety, however, is an all too powerful inhibitor of learning’
(French 1997, p. 484).

The model followed in much of today’s educational practice, for the con-
tainment of anxiety and any ‘emotional disturbance’, is to relegate the emo-
tion elsewhere, literally, to another space, often student support systems
and/or counselling. While these are both important aspects of an effective
learning framework (Coren 1997) a reliance on these enables us to ‘clean’
the immediate teacher/student space and maintain an illusion that it is
emotion free, intellectual, cognitive. It also continues the fallacy that stu-
dents are the main drivers of emotional exchange, while we teachers are
often equally anxious or defensive, and similarly prone to casting past expe-
riences and their emotional residue into the teaching space (Britzman & Pitt
1996) creating an emotionally fraught learner/teacher terrain. Arguably, our
role is both more responsible and more creative:
In clinical settings, it is the capacity of the therapist to contain anxiety and

process ambivalent feelings as well as projections … and feed these back in
intelligible and digestible forms. Similar dynamics can apply in adult learning
too (teachers and activists may contain and process a whole range of feelings,
often unconsciously) yet relatively little attention is paid to these dimensions
of learning.
(West 2007, p. 13)
But there is more to the job of containment, and of co-constructing a transi-

tional space along with the student, in which one feels safe, stimulated,
inspired and valued. It is not only part of good pedagogical practice; it is also
the role of the institution to contain anxiety (Obholzer & Zagier-Roberts 1994):
‘In secure organizations social influence is exercised in a framework
dominated by an awareness of mental states, concerns, thoughts, and
feelings of individuals within the system – that is, a capacity for mentaliza-
tion’ (Fonagy 2003, p. 223).
For any initiative towards widening participation or greater democratiza-
tion of public/learning spaces to be fundamentally successful, the possible
fragmented mind-states, anxieties and emotional memories of thwarted
creativity need to be faced as part of the package of working with students
from disadvantaged, non-traditional or ‘high-risk’ backgrounds. We in art
institutions need to consider the spaces we are (re)creating – and question
to whom they ‘belong’ and which/whose purposes they serve. Reception
areas, for example, seldom ‘receive’; studios are rarely studious; and class-
rooms invariably have more room for some classes than others.
Many of the students widening-participation initiatives are hoping to
attract have not just walked out of domestic and social situations in which
their emotional development, learning or creativity have been carefully nur-
tured. Their relationship with learning spaces may be dense with past con-
fusion, anxiety, hostility or even humiliation. In research I carried out with
very disadvantaged learners with mental health difficulties (Sagan 2002;
Sagan 2007b) social disadvantage was the norm, and high levels of anxiety
were repeatedly experienced as part and parcel of learning.
Learners referred to several characteristics of the provision which they
felt enabled them to continue and persist, rather than drop out of one more
learning situation. Amongst these there were few surprises; learners
wanted a local, safe space in which they felt ownership over the course and
180 Olivia Sagan

its contents. They wanted to be treated like adults and accepted and under-
stood for any shortcomings. They wanted to make friends and socialize
with others who shared their worries about learning, about not ‘measuring
up’. They wanted less prescription and more time to talk about the busi-
ness of learning. And they wanted consistency; of teacher, time, place and
pedagogical approach. However, interestingly, one of the elements of the
teaching provision which was to emerge as being instrumental in contain-
ing anxiety and developing a transitional space in which individuals felt
more able to engage in symbolization and reflexivity, was the biographic
narrative interviews being carried out as part of the research. It seemed that
this space of autobiographical expression, in which memories could be
accessed and subjective experiences spoken of, was functioning as a cre-
ative, transitional arena:
It’s like …helped me think about things I’ve not thought about before …and yeah,
Iget upset sometimes …but that’s better than it happening in public … there’s no
rush, neither …then I can go and get on with the writing which I find really hard,
but at least then I’ve got something to say, cause I’ve already thought about it,
and know that it wasn’t that bad .…
Marian
What was also emerging, as this extract suggests, was that there was a rela-
tionship being built up between the learner, her ‘product’, through which a
highly personal expression was strived for, and the space of the interviews
and sessions. In Winnicottian terms, there was both transitional space and
transitional object. Both of these were being used, rigorously, to work
through anxiety created through the double whammy of learning (which
was difficult, and provocative in challenging old notions of ‘self’ and ‘identity’)
and engaging autobiographically, reflexively and creatively, for some individ-
uals, for the first time. And because as educators, despite government tar-
gets and policy, we don’t want ‘simply’ for people to persist and ‘achieve’,
but we do want them to be able to engage deeply with learning and live
more expressively, critically and creatively, it’s worth looking closer at what
might be going on, in this transitional space.
Psychoanalytic theory has long been preoccupied with both learning
and creativity, linking both at different times to desire, repetition, compul-
sion and sublimated sexuality. While these each form provocative and rich
theories which have spawned a whole industry of intense epistemological
and ontological speculation, it is Melanie Klein’s work (Klein 1988; Klein
1998) which has perhaps offered a way of thinking about the confluence of
both learning and creativity. Her work on reparation and loneliness (Klein
1963) for example, presents a delicate process of unconscious rebuilding
of internal objects (people, real and imagined, part-memory figures, phan-
tasised others) in our inner landscape through engaging with a literal
‘building’ in the external world (Sagan 2007a). The profound sense of
relief/release at both learning and creation, as well as the deadening frus-
tration of stuckness or failure are, by any account, deeply emotional and
personal experiences. These, I argue strongly, indicate the depth of the
process and the density of the psycho-social knit involved in these
processes. Going back to my research with mentally ill learners, briefly, it

appeared that long-term engagement with an autobiographic project (one

which could be regarded as an ‘identity text’, exploratory of self and iden-
tity through its process and content) enabled a more reflexive learning
experience which, in turn, gave rise to a process through which individuals
could talk and think more intimately (and at times painfully) about their
subjective past experiences. This is not to suggest all teaching should
encourage autobiographical excavations; but that for many learners, a
period of working through identity concerns may be necessary. This need
was evident in much of the narrative of the research participants; the
process of rebuilding inner schemata of one’s life history was, in some
cases, underway:
It’s made me think of things …oh, that I haven’t thought of …not in fifty year or
more .…memories that I haven’t had …
Pauline
Marion Milner suggests that we create and try and express ourselves when:
‘the conditions of our living are changing so rapidly (that) the old forms for
describing our feeling experiences become no longer adequate’, and that
there is a gap between the inner reality of feeling and the available ways of
communicating (Milner 1950, p. 132).
Both learning and creative engagement offer some form of rescue here,
offering ‘new forms for describing.’ Both, through enriching one’s internal
symbolization, reflexive engagement and overcoming of psychical barriers
to change, can become a reparative project:
‘Art can provide space for reparation as people project painful, confused
feelings, and work on them, imaginatively and symbolically, and can create
more of a good object to be re-introjected, over time’ (West 2007, p. 12).
This model of the educative/creative project, in which emotions and
psychosocially constructed identities engage in a stream of negotiations
between inner and outer realities, past and present, self and other, may
seem perilously vulnerable and demanding. And yet psychoanalysis has
also indicated the sheer resilience of the epistemological and creative drives,
a resilience which we, as educators, will also be familiar with.
The one liner: conclusion

The transitional space is one in which the student, artwork and tutor ‘play’
and enable playing, in the Winnicottian sense of ‘allowing’ risk-taking and
co-construction of identity and ideas. It is superbly akin to the space of the
desk crit, where there may be a charged dynamic of play, attack, learning
and creation in the triangle of tutor, student, object. This is a terrain where
development of creative ideas and sensitive transformation of identity can
take place, yet all too often, the crit, and the studio, becomes a theatre of the
repressed (Morris 2005, p. 147). Students project onto the teacher and the
teacher in turn projects back onto the students, and transference runs a
potentially harmful course (Ochsner 2000) with ego, identities and power
investments running amok. In this dynamic triangle, the psychic traffic of
our unconscious desires, anxieties and fears needs to be recognized as hav-
ing a profound impact on learning.
182 Olivia Sagan

Pedagogical practice generally no longer adheres to Anna Freud’s sugges-

tion that all teachers be psychoanalysed and this paper certainly is not
suggesting this. What I am suggesting, is that it is the job of educators, and
art educators specifically, to engage in a reflexive understanding of the emo-
tionality of space and the way we all, each of us, bring our psychosocially con-
structed identities, desires, fears and power-games into this space. Britzman
and Pitt go further, maintaining: (it) is the ethical obligation teachers have to
learn about their own conflicts and to control the re-enactment of old conflicts
that appear in the guise of new pedagogical encounters (1996, pp. 117–118).
However, this is acknowledged as asking a lot of an increasingly over-
burdened workforce:
Such reflexive and emotionally attuned capacities are not easily won and ask a
great deal of educators: including knowledge of self and self in action as well
as an auto/biographical sensitivity to the emotional dimensions of the strug-
gle to learn.
(West 2007, p. 12)
This over-burdening may, however, be at least in part a result of a particu-

lar set of priorities in a given institution, priorities which may be at odds
with the need to allow space for reflexivity. So it is also, as indicated earlier,
the job of the art institution, within which I include its curriculum, evalua-
tion, research and assessment procedures, to offer a model of a thinking
apparatus – one: with sufficient psychological resilience and consistency … to
cope with the ambivalence, rejections and projections that are part of change
(West 2007, p. 12).
Yet there is an inherent difficulty here, as education is increasingly sub-
ject to the instrumentalism and performativity rife in a Third Way reconfigu-
ration of public services, in which certain provision is under attack as a
result of social anxiety (Cooper 2001). This tension means education is,
arguably, less and less able to allow breathing space, let alone creative, tran-
sitional space in which profoundly different positions, practices and values can
be voiced and realized (Danvers 2003, p. 50). Despite this, we seem set on
a course of continued fragmentation and atomization of experience, with
a greater ‘dispersal’ of emotion rather than containment (French & Simpson
2001). This, in the teaching and learning space, contributes, I suspect, to
a more depleted, or threatened sense of identity, and subsequent anxiety.
This may well contribute to drop-out rates amongst those less able to
manage this.
To develop a holistic view of the individual learner (and teacher) as
embodied, socially and psychologically constructed, emotional, and situ-
ated in space, is, I argue, a more challenging, but authentic way towards a
student centredness based on actual diversity. This means inviting and tak-
ing risks with emotional interactions. It means questioning ownership (and
indeed non-ownership) of creative learning spaces. It means asking whose
emotional interactions are being foregrounded and whose denied by our
traditional structuring of spaces. But surely risk-taking, emotional connect-
edness and a questioning of traditional structure are at the very heart of any
creative project.

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Suggested citation
Sagan, O. (2008), ‘Playgrounds, studios and hiding places: emotional exchange in
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Contributor details
Currently Senior Research Fellow in Pedagogy at UAL, Olivia is involved in a range
of research projects across the university which investigate learners’ lives and
experience. Her background is in education and therapy in community, forensic,
voluntary and FE settings, through which work she has focused on the extreme ends
of learner disadvantage.
Olivia’s main interests remain in mental health and learning, creativity and
social disadvantage – and her methodologies of choice and passion are biographic
narrative, auto/ethnography and psychosocial approaches to interpreting social
phenomena.
Contact: Senior Research Fellow (Pedagogy), University of the Arts, London, 2–6
Catton Street, London WC1R 4AA.
E-mail: o.sagan@arts.ac.uk
186 Olivia Sagan

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Reflections on Interactions in virtual

worlds and their implication for learning
art and design
Dr Julia Gaimster London College of Fashion
Abstract Keywords
As more educators venture into virtual worlds there is a need to consider the Second Life
impact that these worlds have on the interactions between learners and teach- Virtual Worlds
ers. The paper explores what is known about the impact of computer medi- Art and Design
ated communication and relates it to rich interactive 3d virtual environments. Emotions
It recommends areas for consideration when using these spaces for art and Interactions
design related activities The review of the literature reveals that many of the Learning
emotions and norms found in social interaction in the real world also transfer to
the virtual world. Virtual worlds offer opportunities for engaging student centred
activities but these require careful planning if they are to be successful.
Introduction
3D virtual learning environments such as Second Life are being promoted as
the future of e-learning in education. However, there are many questions to
be asked about the nature of interactions in these environments and how
teaching and learning in art and design translates from the real to the virtual
world. For example:
What is the emotional impact of engaging in learning in a virtual space?

What are the issues that educators need to consider when venturing into
this new territory?
What impact does it have on the teacher/learner dynamic?
Although there is little research in this specific area, there is however a body
of literature that has investigated computer mediated communication and
the impact of emotions in educational environments. Although, much of
this work was carried out before rich 3D virtual environments such as
Second Life became a reality, there are parallels to be drawn and lessons to
be learnt from this literature. This paper explores existing literature to
reflect on the nature of the advantages and risks of learning in art and
design through virtual reality.
Real life student tutor interactions

In recent years the value of emotions in the learning process has begun to
be recognised (Spendlove 2007). Educators increasingly talk about emo-
tional literacy and the need for learners to have emotional intelligence.

David Spendlove claims that emotions play a particularly important role in

art and design education and that critical emotional literacy is a “prerequi-
site of creative educational practices” (Spendlove 2007, p. 157).
He also points to the emotional dependency that students have on their
teachers and the power of the teacher to determine the types of interaction
that are allowed within the classroom and to adjust the environment. The
tutor is in a position of power and what they say and how they interact with
a student can have a major impact on a student’s sense of value and well
being (Cotten & Wilson 2006).
Positive social and academic interactions can have a strong impact on
a student’s confidence and academic performance. However, as Cotton
& Wilson have noted the amount of interaction between students and
tutors can be limited to the classroom or lecture space. Noam Austerlitz
and Iris Aravot (2006) note that student - tutor interactions are an impor-
tant aspect of the studio method of teaching in art and design. They state
that the tutor’s character, verbal and non-verbal behaviour can generate
different and quite intense emotions in students and these can have a
lasting effect.
Thus key questions relating to delivery of art and design in virtual worlds
would be:
Is the same intensity of emotion generated when students and tutors are inter-
acting with each other’s avatars?
Does the studio approach to teaching translate to a virtual environment?
If body language and other cues are missing will students still connect with
tutors and have the same emotional responses?
One of the central issues in art and design education and which requires
examination in relation to learning in virtual worlds is exposure and criti-
cal assessment of students work. This aspect of studio learning, where
students and tutors interact in fairly informal ways as work is being pro-
duced is highlighted by the formality of the crit (Blair 2006; Orr 2006).
The critique is a particular and well-used form of interaction in art and
design education. Handled properly the ‘crit’ can be a creative and inspir-
ing experience but it can also be an occasion in which students feel
demeaned and embarrassed by a tutor who may or may not be aware of
the emotions that their words are eliciting. One theme that may be
explored in a virtual setting is whether a mediated ‘crit’ elicits the same
emotional responses as a real life version. Does the crit transfer to a vir-
tual space and how is this best done? Does it add distance between the
student and the tutor, the student and the work or are the emotions just
as powerful?
The ability of the student to become self-critical is essential to their devel-
opment as a reflective practitioner. In order to achieve this they also need to
learn to cope with the emotions which are elicited by critical reflections. The
tutor also needs to apply emotional intelligence to facilitate a learning environ-
ment which supports such processes. Daniel Goleman (1998) describes one
of the aspects of emotional intelligence as “managing feelings so that they are
expressed appropriately and effectively, enabling people to work together
smoothly and toward their common goals.” (p. 7). Alan Mortiboys (2005)
188 Dr Julia Gaimster

suggests that teaching with emotional intelligence enables the tutor to be

more flexible, that if you can use emotional intelligence to build a relationship
of trust with your learners that they will respond more positively to new activi-
ties and methods of teaching. Building this trust will be a key factor in enabling
students to engage in meaningful learning in an unfamiliar environment.
In virtual worlds too, where interaction is between avatars, visual repre-
sentations standing for the person behind the keyboard, trust is a key element
in building relationships, because one cannot see the real person behind
the avatar, you have no visual and sometimes no auditory clues as to their
real identity. There have been reported cases of deception in virtual worlds,
however, keeping up a deception is a fairly complex process that requires a
great deal of determination and a good memory. The number of people
engaged in this, particularly in an educational environment is probably min-
imal but one needs to be aware of the potential of the environment to sup-
port this kind of behaviour.
However, educators have the tools to create protected environments
where the participants are known to each other and outsiders can be
excluded. This helps to form a sense of community with the associated
social benefits. As well as trust in the tutor students also need to develop
their self-esteem.
Spendlove (2007) points to the fact that students are more likely to be
successful and to develop critical emotional literacy if they have a high level
of self–esteem. This self-esteem needs to be nurtured and developed through
Reflections on Interactions in virtual worlds and their implication… 189

the pedagogical process and is especially important in area such as art and
design where:
the outcome of the learning process is not predetermined in terms of the pre-
cise, tangible outcome as in the execution of a creative and learning orien-
tated challenge …
(p. 157)
Negative emotions and low self-esteem are usually not conducive to learn-
ing; creative people often have a very personal involvement with their work
that needs to be nurtured in a supportively critical environment. Students
also want to hear their tutor’s opinions about their work and often they
want this to be in a one-to-one rather than a group situation, possibly to avoid
the embarrassment of public humiliation if the work does not meet expecta-
tions (Blair 2006). The communication tools in virtual worlds enables a pri-
vate exchange within a public forum and this could be a valuable addition to
the critique scenario, enabling the tutor to provide the student with individual
attention within a group activity.
It is clear therefore that communication in virtual worlds is not just a
technical issue but also involves an understanding of the social context in
which the communication is taking place. However, before moving real life
activities into virtual environments it is important that students and tutors
understand the social rules.
Rules and conventions in virtual worlds

A “newbie” (newcomer) entering a virtual world for the first time can be
easily confused by the social conventions. These can range from the use of
acronyms – LOL (laughs out loud), BRB (be right back) and to other issues
around codes of behaviour, whether it is appropriate to ask questions about
an avatar’s real life persona etc. This is often described as “netiquette”.
Many sites post frequently asked questions (FAQs) dealing with these
issues and some like Second Life have rules about what is acceptable in
areas that are PG (Parental Guidance) rather than mature. Even with these
guidelines to help the first time you enter a virtual world can be daunting, a
little like arriving at a party where you don’t know anyone.
Participation is the key to becoming part of an online community, and
indeed in any community (Wenger 1998) and as Markham (1998) points
out you need to know the rules in order to participate. Moving around in
Second Life is an art that takes practice if you are not going to crash into
walls or commit the taboo of invading an avatar’s personal space.
In order to fully engage in the experience students will need to under-
stand the norms in this environment, to build confidence with the tools for
participation, to feel that they are in a non-threatening environment and are
part of a supportive learning community. This mirrors the ideal function of
a tutor working in any learning environment, but there are differences
between virtual and real teaching and learning worlds.
Computer mediated communication

This paper aims to identify what the differences are between teaching and
learning in a virtual world and the real world. Will the current pedagogies

transfer? Will students and tutors experience the same emotions when
interacting through avatars? Is it possible to elicit strong emotional
responses when there are limited non-verbal cues? A partial answer to
these questions can be found in the literature on computer-mediated
communication.
Much of the literature argues that computer-mediated communication
(CMC) is not as rich as face-to-face communication and that it also can be
more liberating. Adam Joinson (2003) argues that ‘over time the amount of
social information communicated using CMC converges with the amount
sent verbally face to face’ (p. 36). The reason for this is that typing is slower
than talking and people need time to understand the particular nuances of
the medium such as the use of acronyms and emoticons, visual indicators
of how people feel. He calls this “paralanguage” and stresses its impor-
tance in the social aspects of communication where body language and
facial expressions are missing.
Joinson (2003) states that ‘when our communication is mediated [by
computers] it is possible that the outcomes are likely to be quite different
than in a similar encounter face to face. This is the crux of cyberpsychology’
(p. 3). Certainly email in particular has been accused of being lacking in
emotion, hence the development of emoticons and smiley faces to help the
writer convey the emotional intention of their communication. This practice
has extended to virtual worlds where the uses of acronyms such as LOL
(laughs out loud) are used to convey humour or emotion where the main
tool for communication is text.
Annette Markham (1998) points out that one of the positive aspects of
computer mediated communication is that of control, that users can “limit
the extent to which others can view or touch them, physically and, presum-
ably, psychologically”(p. 124). This may enable introverted personalities to
become more extrovert and to participate more easily in communication,
participants have more time to consider what they are saying and how they
are presenting themselves (Markham 1998).
What is clear therefore is that many people see computer-mediated
communication as a positive way of engaging in communities, networking
and socialising as Howard Rheingold states:
People in virtual communities use words on screens to exchange pleasantries

and argue, engage in intellectual discourse, conduct commerce, exchange
knowledge, share emotional support, make plans, brainstorm, gossip, feud, fall
in love, find friends and lose them, play games, flirt, create a little high art and a
lot of idle talk. People in virtual communities do just about everything people do
in real life, but we leave our bodies behind. You can’t kiss anybody and nobody
can punch you in the nose, but a lot can happen within those boundaries.
(Rheingold 2000, p. xvii)
There are however powerful differences between communication in virtual

worlds and other forms of computer-mediated communication. Users of 3D
virtual worlds report that it is the sense of presence, of feeling as if you are
actually within the world that sets these environments apart from other web-
based forms of communication. Companies like IBM use them extensively for
meetings because unlike a videoconference, where users disappear once the

call is finished, in virtual worlds people break into smaller groups at the end
of the meeting, they socialise and create new networks (Metz 2007).
Ellie Brewster (her Second Life name) of Ohio State University teaches
an introductory course in women’s studies in Second Life. She finds that
students communicate within Second Life on three levels, using voice, via
the chat window and on a one to one basis using the instant messaging
system. She has discovered that the students still like to have a structure to
their in-world activities and that discussions still require guidance from the
tutor. The main difference she says is that “you are no longer the expert on the
stage, you are working beside your students and the group are finding things
out together”. She has found that teaching in Second Life is very much a
communal activity.
The potential of virtual worlds to create a sense of community is also
noted by Jens Jensen (1999)
“ …the encounter with the computer is transformed from an experience of a

two-dimensional interface, which can be clicked on, to the experience of a
space in which the user feels a presence and a community with other people;
and correspondingly, that the encounter with the Internet tends to change
from an experience of a web of linked 2D-documents, to and experience of a
galaxy of interconnected 3-dimensional Virtual Worlds.
(p. 26)
This sense of community can be so strong that relationships can be formed

in similar ways to those in face to face encounters (Turkle 1995, Rheingold
2000, Joinson 2003). Indeed there are examples of these relationships
moving into the physical domain and resulting in real life friendships and
even marriage (Turkle 1995).
The evidence in the literature on computer-mediated communication
suggests that the norms of social interaction and the powerful emotions
generated by social interaction in the real world are also evident in the vir-
tual worlds. We should expect therefore that this would also be true for
interaction between students and tutors in virtual worlds. Tutors engaging
in virtual worlds should expect to experience a wide range of emotional
responses from their learners and indeed to have their own emotional
response to the learners and the environment. It is also important to under-
stand that whilst it is the avatar that one is engaging with in the virtual
world it is the identity of the avatar’s human driver that is important
(Meadows 2008) even though that driver may choose to represent them-
selves in a form that is at variance with their real life persona.
Identity and anonymity

In virtual worlds it is possible to create any number of avatars and each of
these may have a different persona. The avatar’s persona may reflect or
exaggerate that of its real life owner but can also be quite different. Avatars
can adopt different roles and enable their owners to experience situations
that would be impossible or uncomfortable in real life. In virtual worlds you
can be yourself or live out your wildest fantasies.
The ability to be anonymous and to try out new identities is a key com-
ponent of life in virtual worlds. Anonymity carries with it both advantages

and disadvantages. You are never totally sure whom you are conversing
with. The natural instinct in the real world is to believe what people tell you
and to check this against their facial expressions and body language. In vir-
tual worlds these cues are either absent or can be controlled and therefore
falsified by the participants.
It has been noted that anonymity can have a strong impact on people’s
behaviour and in particular the degree with which they conform to social
norms. Joinson (2003) points to the context in determining the level to
which people either conform to social norms or set their own personal
norms and standards:
whether or not people conform when interacting on the Internet depends on

two factors: whether they are visually anonymous or not, and whether there is
a shared social identity or personal identity salient at the time.
(p. 45)
It appears that the screen provides a barrier that enables people to act or
communicate in a way that they would not do otherwise. It has been noted
that when people are lacking the usual “social context cues” that their
behaviour can become more self centred and less regulated. (Sproull and
Kiesler 1986, p. 159).
The impact of anonymity can also sometimes lead to aggressive behav-
iour, known as flaming or griefing, harassment or other behaviours which
the perpetrators would probably not engage in if their identity was known or
they did not have visual anonymity.
One resident described how he had been “shot, caged, insulted and
orbited” but that it did not bother him as he had developed the ability to
“retaliate in like manner”. For a newbie entering a world for the first time this
can be an upsetting and unsettling experience and can feel very personal.
The issue for teaching in virtual worlds is that depending upon the set
of circumstances it may not be possible or desirable for people to remain
anonymous; this then creates a new set of dilemmas. It may be necessary
for the tutor to know the identities of the students in order to assess the
learning or confirm participation.
These are issues that are not unique to virtual worlds but are amplified
by the open-ended possibilities presented by the environment and they
raise a lot of questions. Is it acceptable for students to turn up to virtual
lectures dressed in fetish wear? How do you control a teaching space
where people can suddenly materialise, change shape completely or intro-
duce a pet dragon? Artists and designers are renowned for their idiosyn-
cratic dress in real life so perhaps having a fire-breathing alien in your ‘crit’
will not be too much of a distraction. These issues point to the need for an
agreed virtual classroom etiquette to be devised at the start of the
proceedings. Acceptable standards of behaviour within the learning area
need to be discussed and agreed to ensure that appropriate boundaries
are maintained.
This will have particular relevance in the context of the critique. It has
been noted that when online interaction is not moderated it can descend into
flaming and inappropriate comments (Markham 1998, Sproull & Keisler
1986). If critiques in a virtual world are anonymous this behaviour may

transfer however, allowing students to comment on each other’s work

anonymously may lead to a more honest and reflective approach, though
this has yet to be tested. The important issue is that the tutor must be
aware of the impact that negative comments can have on the students’
emotions and sense of self-esteem. It has been shown that when used
effectively virtual environments can offer a nurturing space in which confi-
dence can be built, new relationships can be developed and learning can be
a creative experience. As in the real world criticism, whether from the tutor
or the peer group, needs to be framed constructively and appropriately to
support learning.
Relationships between the real and virtual worlds

The social and immersive aspects of virtual worlds are one of their key
attractions (Pursel & Bailey 2007). The richness of 3D environments seem
to stimulate a more realistic and immersive experience that can enhance
the learning experience. However, the divisions between the real and the
virtual, the authentic and the synthetic are becoming blurred. People can
become lost in virtual worlds and feel more of a sense of presence there
than they do in the real world. In extreme cases some people come to iden-
tify more closely with their avatar or become deeply involved with their
in-world personas to the point where the boundaries between the real and
the virtual become indistinct (Meadows, 2008).
This sense of presence seems to be intensified in 3D worlds although it
has also been noted in purely text-based environments. One of the attrac-
tions of being in the virtual world is the ability to suspend reality and to
control the way in which one is represented. (Markham 1998). For students
in art and design it also provides them with a unique opportunity to
become emotionally engaged with a creative process that transcends the
laws of physics and enables collaboration on a global scale. The ability to
suspend disbelief and to engage in the experience requires one to not ques-
tion the notion of reality. As Markham (1998) noted, to many users of virtual
space “everything that is experienced is real”(p. 20) and in this reality the
student would need to develop a new or different facet of their identity. Tim
Guest (2007) states that; “virtual worlds aren’t just a window into another
world; they become and instinctive extension of the self.” (p. 68). Shelley
Turkle (1995) also raises the notion of the computer as a virtual extension of
the physical self; she identifies the need to question the limits of our
responsibilities in these new environments.
The literature (Sanders 2005, Buscher et al 2001) also debates the
importance of metaphors in virtual worlds where the line is drawn between
real and virtual and whether the virtual world needs real world metaphors
and symbols in order that users are able to situate themselves? Monika
Buscher et al (2001) argue that straightforward reproduction of the real
world environment may not be helpful because it does not take advantage
of the capacities of the virtual environment.
For practitioners in art and design this raises questions about whether it
is appropriate to try and create the traditional studio environment and its
interactions within virtual worlds or whether a completely different approach
should be identified? This is an area the author has identified as requiring a
detailed empirical study.

Clearly there are areas of good practice in art and design teaching that
could easily be transferred to a virtual environment. Educators in art and
design are aiming to develop students who can engage in critical thinking,
and reflection. They are also preparing students to enter a community of
practice. Virtual environments offer opportunities for students to engage in
work-based learning (developing an e-business, putting on an exhibition,
working on a live brief), to work collaboratively to solve problems and man-
age projects, to reflect upon the strengths and weaknesses of their solu-
tions and to engage with practitioners from the wider art and design
community. The technology can facilitate engagement with others on a
national and global level giving students access to experts who might other-
wise be unavailable to them.
Building communities and relationships in virtual space

The actual design of the world may be less important than the nature of the
interactions happening there. A virtual world without people to interact with
is not engaging no matter how realistic or fantastical it may be.
The potential for building communities of art and design in virtual
worlds is vast, the technology supports a wide range of media traditionally
used by artists and designers and enables them to easily create environments
in which to display, share and discuss their work. Virtual environments
offer the opportunity to incorporate the design and functionality of the
environment into the activity. The global accessibility of these environ-
ments creates unique opportunities for cross cultural engagement and
interaction, but also plenty of scope for cultural misunderstanding gener-
ating possibly negative emotions and poor communication. These aspects
need to be considered when designing collaborative learning activities
using this technology. As in any other learning environment the relation-
ships and communities that are formed can be an important aspect of the
learning process. This is reflected in the experiences of Michael Wright
from Otis College of Art and Design who has conducted projects in
Second Life with his digital media students. He found that:
the students found working in teams on a group project a great icebreaker in

getting to know one another. They enjoyed the social interaction from the
class brainstorming to learning to work with each other as avatars in world.
Deeper friendships were developed and a joy of seeing what each one would
come up with in a creative manner. This project could not have been success-
ful without the social interaction and teamwork.
(Wright 2007, online)
The comments from his students describe the power of the environment to
develop positive team working that reflects working practice in the industry.
Having to work in large groups to achieve a common goal was a great way to
prepare us for future work situations. While it was not easy, it did make for a
unique view on producing something as large as what we had to do. In the
end it feels good to be a part of creating something as a group and seeing it
through to the end – Art Lopez.
(Wright 2007, online)

The experiences of Wright, other educators and people working in other

communities point to the potential of virtual worlds to support a wide
range of educational and social activities. Indeed, many people use the
Internet as a support tool seeking advice on medical conditions or as a
release from social isolation brought about by physical or psychological
conditions. For these people virtual communities are an important part of
their lives and provide the kind of support that is lacking in much of mod-
ern society, for example, a group of physically disabled people in Boston,
USA have found a new form of freedom through an avatar named Wilde
Cunningham. This avatar enabled them to make friends, build an online gift
shop and according to their care worker it enriched their lives and made
them more confident in the real world (Jones 2007).
There is great potential for educators to use virtual worlds to engage
with disparate and disadvantaged groups of learners. The interesting thing
about online communities is that we may be alone and isolated in real life
but we can still participate in the new public forum that has been created by
the Internet (Jones 1997) and we can participate in a creative way made
possible by tools that do not require the user to engage in complex script-
ing or necessarily to understand how they work. There are however some
downsides to being in a virtual community, if you spend too long there it is
possible to become isolated from the real world.
Engagement, addiction and flow

There is a great deal of debate about the addictive nature of the Internet in
general and computer games in particular. However, the research to back up
the notion of extensive Internet addiction is somewhat thin. Joinson (2003)
points to a number of flawed studies, where the criteria (e.g. the number of
hours spent on the Internet that qualify you as an addict) have been placed
too low, leading to over-estimates of the number of people affected.
However, there are clearly some cases of extreme addiction. Joinson
(2003) claims that one factor that makes the Internet so attractive is its
ability to provide ‘an escape from everyday problems’ (p. 64) and that
anonymity on the Internet makes it particularly attractive (or addictive).
Users of virtual worlds have been known to spend as long as 80 hours a
week online (Guest 2007).
These same elements that can create problems can be used to advan-
tage in engaging students; immersive environments promote the notion of
“flow” the term coined by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi to describe:
…the state of total engagement. In order to allow users to achieve flow, an

activity should strive to absorb all of their attention, give them control, allow
them to lose self-consciousness and distort time. A person has attained the
flow state when she/he has no conscious awareness of time passing.
(Metros 1999, p. 284)
There is a fine balance between flow and addiction that tutors need to be
aware of however, a certain element of engagement is vital to the learning
process and promotes a “deep approach” to learning (Marton & Saljo 1976).
Educators can utilise the immersive elements of virtual worlds to create
dynamic interactive learning environments but only if they adopt new

pedagogies, simply holding a lecture in Second Life is not going to trans-

form the student experience, though getting them involved in an authentic
learning situation that is emotionally engaging might. Providing students
with the appropriate structure and boundaries to their learning will help to
ensure the appropriate level of engagement, flow without addiction.
Conclusion
A survey of the available literature that has informed this paper found that
virtual worlds are powerful tools that can be used to develop creative
approaches to learning and provide different ways for tutors to interact and
engage with students.
The key questions were
Is the same intensity of emotion generated when students and tutors are inter-
acting with each other’s avatars?
Does the studio approach to teaching translate to a virtual environment?
If the body language and other clues are missing will students still connect
with tutors and have the same emotional responses?
The literature review indicates that emotions in the real world are trans-
ferred to the virtual world. Even when body language and other signifiers
are missing people manage to connect through their avatars and have deep
and meaningful social experiences. This bodes well for the studio method
of teaching, which depends upon an open critical dialogue between tutor
and student. There is no technical reason why this should not be possible
within a virtual environment. However, it seems that in order for this to
happen the tutor may have to work a little harder at building the necessary
levels of trust as without the non-verbal cues there is a greater potential for
confusion and mis-reading of a situation.
In order to engage effectively in these worlds both students and tutors
will need time to experiment and adapt to the environment, to discover the
social norms and to work out how to manoeuvre and express themselves
through their avatars. The nature of the communication can be as rich as
face-to-face communication but this is dependent upon the extent to which
the users are willing to suspend disbelief and immerse themselves in the
environment.
Educators already working in this environment have identified the need
for guidance and structure, as one would expect in real world studios and
classrooms. Students need to know what is expected of them in terms of
behaviour and the activities they need to engage in.
The advantages are that the technology enables people to express them-
selves and to create alternative personas in which they may feel more com-
fortable and engaged. It is an immersive experience that encourages
engagement on the part of the learner and creates opportunities for devel-
oping new kinds of extended communities. In terms of art and design they
offer an environment that supports a wide range of creative media and can
be applied to most disciplines in art and design from architecture to cul-
tural studies, fashion to product design, graphics to film making.
It is clear that there is the need for more empirical research into how
educators and students interact in virtual worlds and how this impacts

upon the educational process. This will increase our understanding of

virtual interactions, help us to gain a deeper understanding of the mediated
learning process, and apply this knowledge in the context of art and design.
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Suggested citation
Gaimster, J. (2008), ‘Reflections on Interactions in virtual worlds and their implication
for learning art and design’, Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education
6: 3, pp. 187–199, doi: 10.1386/adch.6.3.187/1
Contributor details
Dr Julia Gaimster is the Head of eLearning at the London College of Fashion. She
has 20 years experience in fashion education and during that time she has devel-
oped expertise in the use and development of virtual learning environments (VLEs)
and eLearning resources. She gained her Doctorate in Education at Surrey
University in 2004. Her research interests cover the pedagogy of eLearning in art
and design, work based learning and the use of Web2 technologies and virtual
worlds to support learning and teaching in art and design. She has worked on a variety
of eLearning resources including Seeing-drawing and the Textiles Online Resource
Guide. She is currently developing an online resource (Sketchbook) designed to
facilitate cross-disciplinary visual research in art and design. The Art, Design and
Media Subject Centre are sponsoring this project.
Contact: Head of elearning, London College of Fashion, 20 John Princes St, London,
W1G OBJ.
E-mail: j.gaimster@fashion.arts.ac.uk

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ADCHE_6.3_06_art_Lawrie.qxd 4/30/08 9:27 PM Page 201

Graphic design: can it be something

more? Report on research in progress
Samantha Lawrie Auburn University
Abstract Keywords
Human beings constitute an embodied consciousness. Our sensory capacities graphic design
function in a highly integrated manner; our experience of a visual image may in embodiment
fact be tactile, auditory, or some other combination of the five senses. Our most meaning
memorable and meaningful experiences are those that impress multiple sensory language
modes: touch, sound, smell, taste, as well as vision. The process of transforming
these essentially private sensory experiences into forms that can be shared with
others is the essence of communication. Therefore truly effective communication
requires careful attention to the ‘felt’ qualities of an experience; both the physically
and emotionally perceived.
This paper seeks to explore why designers need to become experts in shared
experience rather than simply producers of visual commodities or visual problem-
solvers. Does a client need a new logo to sell more product, or in fact does the
user need a more emotionally satisfying experience to share with others?
Introduction
‘Design involves thought and effort. Design produces results which can be
seen, heard, felt, tasted, and smelled. Design can be experienced …’ (Hollein
1976, p. 12) This quotation is from Hans Hollein’s ‘Concepts for an exhibi-
tion’ in the catalogue for the 1976 ‘MAN transForms’ exhibition that
marked the re-opening of the Cooper-Hewitt as the Smithsonian Institution’s
National Museum of Design. Visualizing the exhibit Hollein writes:
This show will be a show on life and situations of life … The visitor will both
get information but also be brought into a certain mood, a certain receptive-
ness and willingness to experience, associate, transform, think … this has to
be a show which conveys as much through direct experience rather than
explanation.
(1976, p. 13)
The concept, organization and purpose of the ‘MAN transForms’ exhibition

represented a significant departure from popular design shows based on
MOMA’s ‘Good Design’ exhibits (shows which generally featured selected
modern artefacts and consumer goods [Nelson 1976], and obliquely criticized
the cultural trend toward wasteful consumerism and technological malaise
in the United States).
Thirty years later, the trend has become a way of life: consumerism a
form of self-expression and technology a diversion from the real world.

Within my classroom I associate this trend with a constellation of student

behaviour: a preoccupation with computers, i-pods and cell-phones; a lack of
passionate involvement with form, ideas and experiences; and an uncertainty
concerning the purpose of graphic design coupled with a desire to ‘make a
difference’ in the world. I also observe that many students are content to
produce work that, while technically competent, is also cold, bland, dispas-
sionate and shallow.
In George Nelson’s words, the purpose of the ‘MAN transForms’ exhibit
was to involve the visitor in a ‘return to sources, a celebration of the most
basic visual and tactile meanings; a series of metaphors…(a return to) the
world of the poet, mystic, child, seer, philosopher, the world of direct experience’
(1976, p. 7). As a design educator interested in the present day re-visioning
of design, I maintain that the ‘world of direct experience’ deserves consid-
erable exploration.
What is direct experience?

What do Hollein and Nelson mean by ‘direct experience’? Several inferences
may be drawn from their text. First, design can be experienced because it is
embedded within the real, physical, sensible, lived world as a human response
to that world. ‘Whether on a primitive level or on a highly sophisticated one,
design – and designs – evolve very often in a self-generating way, instigated by
demand or desire’ (Hollein 1976, p. 12).
Second, Hollein and Nelson contrast ‘experience’ with terms such as
‘didactic’, ‘explanation’ and ‘information’. This suggests that ‘experience’
carries active and personal as opposed to passive and generic connota-
tions. These connotations are strengthened by an emphasis on the sensi-
ble, physical and tactile nature of the exhibit. Finally, the further qualification
of ‘experience’ as ‘direct’ suggests an experience that is, at least to some
degree, unmediated by cultural and conceptual conditioning and accessible
to all people.
In his book, Phenomenology of Perception, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2007)
develops an extensive theory of direct experience; he describes it as the reci-
procal interaction between the embodied human being and the living world.
The living or ‘life-world’ is ‘the world we count on without paying much
attention, the world of clouds over head and the ground underfoot’ (Abram
1996, p. 40). Our embodied response to this world is ‘our immediately lived
(direct) experience as we live it, prior to all thoughts about it’ (Abram 1996,
p. 40). The mode or means of the interaction is sensory perception.
As I encounter graphic design in the ‘life-world’, both student and pro-
fessional work, I have observed that I am drawn to work that resonates, that
produces within me a sympathetic vibration, a bodily response. This reso-
nance is not generated solely from a functional hierarchy of information, an
eye-catching colour palette or careful typography. There is something more:
something that actively captures my attention, something that pulls me
into ‘a certain mood, a certain receptiveness and willingness to experience,
associate, transform, think’ (Hollein 1976, p. 13). I think this ‘something
more’ is the result of a sensory perception that engages me bodily with the
work prior to any conceptual interpretation of the message, and in fact, that
it is this direct, pre-conceptual experience of the work that opens me to the
possibility of further communication and exchange.
202 Samantha Lawrie

In the classroom?
Why does this ‘something more’ inhabit some designed artefacts but not
others? How does this ‘something more’ get into a design? As a design
educator, how do I help students whose work is technically competent gen-
erate this ‘something more’? This last question has haunted my teaching
for several years, and my attempts to answer it have been many and varied.
Initial efforts focused on my students’ research, analysis and concept devel-
opment; later attempts pushed students away from sketching toward
media exploration as a means to develop ideas and visual vocabulary; more
recent efforts have maintained an emphasis on media and form exploration
while delaying any mention of concept development until late in the design
process, sometimes replacing concept with an emphasis on mood and feel-
ing. In hindsight I see that my intuitive efforts to elicit ‘something more’
from my students have proceeded slowly toward the idea of direct experi-
ence, but it was not until I discovered the ideas of Merleau-Ponty and
others that I had a vocabulary and structure in which to frame the problem.
And while I have not yet answered my questions, I have identified several
stumbling blocks in pursuit of ‘something more’.
The first is the assumption that graphic design is primarily concerned
with the visual. Among the themes Merleau-Ponty develops is the idea that
sensory perception, our direct, pre-conceptual bodily experience, is inher-
ently synaesthetic; the senses, as a rule, overlap, interact and function in
Graphic design: can it be something more? Report on research in progress 203

concert (2007). Any isolation of sensory modality, such as the visual, is the
result of reflective analysis, and as such, is an artificial construct. David
Abram, in his book The Spell of the Sensuous, provides a relevant illustration
of this point:
For reading, as soon as we attend to its sensorial texture, discloses itself as a

profoundly synaesthetic encounter. Our eyes converge upon a visible mark, or
a series of marks, yet what they find there is a sequence not of images but of
sounds, something heard; …the eye and the ear are brought together at the
surface of the text – a new linkage has been forged between seeing and hear-
ing which ensures that a phenomenon apprehended by one sense is instantly
transposed into another.
(1996, p. 124)
And it is likely that we have all encountered texts that have transposed into
touch, taste or smell. According to Abram and Merleau-Ponty we are unable to
recognize the synaesthetic nature of our perception because we have become
estranged from our direct experience (Abram 1996); we have unlearned how to
see, hear and feel (Merleau-Ponty 2007).
A second stumbling block, and perhaps one particular to the environ-
ment in which I teach, is a pre-occupation with concept. The communica-
tion of ideas or concepts is considered the primary function of graphic
design; feelings, emotional or kinesthetic, are considered secondarily; the
contributions of sensory modalities other than the visual are rarely, if ever,
discussed. Yet, according to Merleau-Ponty, our direct, pre-conceptual expe-
rience is, in fact, an experience of communication, of a dynamic exchange
between the perceiving body and an expressive life-world. Abram extends
this idea as he writes:
The disclosure that preverbal perception is already an exchange, and the

recognition that this exchange has its own coherence and articulation, together
(suggest) that perception …is the very soil and support of that more conscious
exchange we call language.
(1996, p. 74)
To be more succinct, percept precedes concept, but our tendency to lin-

guistically or conceptually mediate our experiences of the life-world dulls
our awareness of our sensing body.
The third and most complex stumbling block in pursuit of ‘something
more’ is the increasingly mediated nature of our experiences. The culture
and language shared by any community necessarily structure the commu-
nity members’ sensory contact with the surrounding world, although some
cultures, especially traditional or indigenous cultures, tend to value and
attend to sensory perception and integrate it into their world-view. In con-
trast, our culture favours a mechanistic, scientific, disembodied world-view
that tends to marginalize our sensory contact with the life-world. George
Lakoff and Mark Johnson, professors of linguistics and philosophy respec-
tively, have built upon Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of embodied experi-
ence with recent findings from the cognitive sciences; they trace the
emergence of our disembodied world-view to the ideas of Descartes.
204 Samantha Lawrie

According to Lakoff and Johnson, Descartes reasoned that ‘being able to

think constitutes our essence …that the mind is disembodied; and … there-
fore, that the essence of human beings …has nothing to do with our bodies’
(1999, p. 400). This view, the world-view of the West, forms the basis for
our scientific thinking. Ironically, even as these authors present a scientific
argument in support of an embodied experience, under the influence of
Descartes, our popular culture and educational structures continue to dis-
sociate reason from embodied perception and attenuate the emotional and
aesthetic life in our culture (Lakoff and Johnson 1999).
Educational theorist Elliot Eisner (2002) sheds an interesting light on
the notion of an ‘aesthetic life’ by contrasting the aesthetic with the anaes-
thetic. The anaesthetic is that which ‘suppresses feelings’ and ‘dulls the
senses’. It therefore follows that the aesthetic is that which elicits feeling
and enlivens the senses. The very possibility of an aesthetic life is depen-
dent upon our ability to be moved by an experience; it requires a refinement
of our sensory perception, which in turn enables the cultivation of our imagi-
native and creative abilities.
Eisner (1985) contends that schools tend to emphasize the develop-
ment of a restricted conception of thinking: thinking that is mediated exclu-
sively by words and numbers, although many of the most productive
modes of thought are non-verbal and non-logical. Instead these modes
operate in ‘visual, auditory, metaphoric, and synaesthetic ways, and utilize
forms of conception and expression that far exceed the limits of logically
prescribed criteria or mathematical forms of thinking’ (Eisner 1985, p. 99).
These modes of thought are most aptly accommodated by experiences in
the arts, but go unacknowledged and under-developed because quality arts
education is the exception in US schools. These modes of thought are the
essence of direct experience. For the majority of students that enter our
classrooms these modes of thought are latent at best. Presumably our cur-
riculums serve to develop these modes of thought and these, in turn, provide
access to ‘something more’. However, in my observations, ‘something more’
is set aside as creativity or intuition, while instruction remains within the
objective realms of analysis and technique. Furthermore, as technique becomes
increasingly entangled with technology, and as our students spend more
and more time in front of a computer monitor, the sensorial, reciprocal,
communicative relationship between their embodied selves and the life-
world continues to atrophy.
Now what?
Thus far I have argued that because the senses function synaesthetically,
graphic design is concerned with more than the visual; because embodied,
pre-conceptual experience is a communicative exchange, graphic design is
concerned with more than the conceptual; and because US public educa-
tion does little to develop non-verbal, concrete forms of thinking, graphic
design education at the post-secondary level must be concerned with more
than analysis, technique and technology. Yet the question remains; can
graphic design be something more? I suspect an answer may lie at the
intersection of embodiment, meaning and signification.
Concerning the relation of body and language, Veronica Vasterling (2003)
has observed a shift from a post-structuralist pre-occupation with language

to a phenomenological concern with embodiment. Concurrent with this is a

shift from a post-structuralist view that ‘meaning is generated within lan-
guage…(that signs) do not derive their meaning from the reality we perceive
but from the linguistic context in which they occur’ (Vasterling 2003, p. 207)
to Merleau-Ponty’s view that meaning, including linguistic meaning, is affec-
tively rooted within an embodied experience of the sensory world.
Merleau-Ponty’s theory of embodied meaning is extended concisely in
William Conklin’s synthesis of Lon Fuller’s phenomenology of language.
‘Experience induces meaning’ (Conklin 2006, p. 112). Furthermore, because
meaning provides ‘a point of orientation for ongoing interactive responses’
between people, a ‘pattern of meanings is constituted from communicative
interaction’ (Conklin 2006, p. 109 and p. 111). For Conklin, it follows that it
is these shared meanings that ensure understanding; communication only
has meaning if the person with whom we intend to communicate ‘has
already experienced the meaning in a concrete circumstance’ (Conklin
2006, p. 112). As graphic designers our intention is to communicate mean-
ingfully and to have our meanings understood. To do so, we must under-
stand the meanings already experienced by those with whom we hope to
communicate; we must be able to adopt their perceptual stance; we must
become experts in shared experience.
How might this change our conception of graphic design? For the past
twenty years graphic designers have sought to build a theoretical founda-
tion upon post-structuralist theories of language. This view tends to privi-
lege graphic designers and their clients as producers of texts and therefore
meaning. In contrast, a theory of embodied language privileges the interpreter.
Because the signification of a text ‘cannot be resolved in advance…what mat-
ters is not the intent of the…source…but the interpreter’s meaning at the
point of application …to a concrete context’ (Conklin 2006, p. 117). ‘The
interpreter’s meanings precede the text’ as the shared memories and
expectations of a community that then are read ‘into the text’ (Conklin
2006, p. 118). Conventionally, graphic design in the United States is aligned
with the interests of business, but as experts in shared experience this
alignment would shift toward a focus on balanced communication and
community responsiveness.
As a design educator I am seeking a re-vision of the role of graphic
design and designers within our communities. Graphic designers should
function as facilitators of communication among myriad communities of
people: not only between businesses and consumers, but also between
communities of citizens, governments, scientists, scholars, activists and
other social groups too numerous to list. Through greater attentiveness to
our own direct experience of the living world, we can guide the direct experi-
ence of others. We can aspire to be ‘something more’. Graphic design need
not be merely an adjunct to consumerist lifestyles, but a mediator of balanced
human relationships.
References
Abram, D. (1996), The Spell of the Sensuous, New York: Vintage Books.
Conklin, William, E. (2006), ‘Lon Fuller’s phenomenology of language’, International
Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 19, pp. 93–125.
206 Samantha Lawrie

Eisner, E. (1985), The Educational Imagination: on the Design and Evaluation of School
Programs (2nd ed.), New York: Macmillan Publishing.
Eisner, E. (2002), The Arts and the Creation of Mind, New Haven: Yale University
Press.
Hollein, H. (1976), ‘In the Cooper-Hewitt Museum’, Man transForms, New York:
Smithsonian Institution.
Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1999), Philosophy in the Flesh: the Embodied Mind and its
Challenge to Western Thought, New York: Basic Books.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (2007), Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Smith, C., London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul. (Original work published 1962.)
Nelson, G. (1976), ‘In the Cooper-Hewitt Museum’, Man transForms, New York:
Smithsonian Institution.
Vasterling, Veronica (2003), ‘Body and language: Butler, Merleau-Ponty, and Lyotard
on the speaking embodied subject’, International Journal of Philosophical Studies,
11(2), pp. 205–223.
Suggested citation
Lawrie, S. (2008), ‘Graphic design: can it be something more? Report on research in
progress’, Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education 6: 3, pp. 201–207,
doi: 10.1386/adch.6.3.201/1
Contributor details
Samantha Lawrie is Associate Professor of Graphic Design in the Department of
Industrial Design at Auburn University. Samantha currently teaches courses in
typography, photography and graphic design history for undergraduate graphic
design majors at Auburn University.
Contact: 207 Wallace Center, Department of Industrial Design, Auburn University,
AL 36849, USA.
Email: lawrisa@auburn.edu

ADCHE_6.3_06_art_Lawrie.qxd 5/7/08 11:05 AM Page 208
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Reflections on emotional journeys:

a new perspective for reading fashion
students’ PPD statements
Dr Noam Austerlitz London College of Fashion
Dr Alison James London College of Fashion
Abstract Keywords
This paper introduces work in progress on the presence of the emotions in reflec- Reflection
tive Personal and Professional Development (PPD) statements at the London personal and
College of Fashion. From a basis combining elements of emotional and personal professional
construct theories, it offers an emerging method of reading PPD reflective state- development
ments which differs from current preoccupations with employability in its focus emotions
on narratives of personal improvement and individual emotional journeys. The theory
authors outline a perspective which may be adopted by staff and students alike personal constructs
to identify moments of revelation in learning experiences and the actions that
have accompanied these. Furthermore, they invite consideration as to the way
PPD and critical reflection in a fashion context may differ from other subjects, in
the intensity of personal creative investment and subjectivity.
Introduction
This paper introduces work in progress on the presence of the emotions in
reflective Personal and Professional Development (PPD) statements at the
London College of Fashion. The premise underlying our view of PPD activity
is that by involving students in exploring how they represent themselves and
their world and the reliability of their perceptions, their reflective practices
can be deepened. This research is in its preliminary stages: at present defin-
ing a perspective on the emotions expressed in PPD and a way of analysing
and reading statements that may be useful to researchers, tutors, educators
and students. While our data to date has not been sufficiently analysed to
draw categoric inferences, we are already able to suggest that PPD reflective
statements offer narratives of personal improvement and individual emo-
tional journeys. Using our case study from the London College of Fashion
(LCF) we will show how our emerging method of reading reveals a very dif-
ferent aspect of learning to the skills and employability orientation of other
modes of analysis. Furthermore, it invites consideration as to the way PPD
and critical reflection in a fashion context may differ from other subjects, in
the intensity of personal creative investment and subjectivity.
The creative context for PPD

In recent years, PPD has become a mandatory and explicit part of degree edu-
cation in the United Kingdom, to help students develop critical self-awareness

and understand how they learn and plan for their futures. Across the United
Kingdom universities PPD is diversely referred to, either as synonymous
with Personal Development Planning (PDP), or as a process within which
PDP plays a part. Given the cumbersome nature of shifting between such
similar acronyms, and the fact that at LCF PPD is taken to encompass PDP,
the referent PPD will only be used in this paper for ease of reading. Along
with the diversity of title, opinion is also divided in the tertiary sector as to
what PPD covers, which has implications for how a student will express
themselves in a reflective statement. Conceptions vary from a narrower
model that emphasizes PPD as primarily about getting jobs, to a broader
idea that is about personal identity and life-view as well as skills.
Essential to PPD activities is the ability to reflect, often expressed in
written logs, evaluations or statements. It is argued that critically reflecting,
from concept through process to final production, is an inescapable part of
designing, innovating and making. Through PPD, students can further elab-
orate these reflective practices; by looking inwardly at their personal goals,
values and drives and outwardly at their thoughts about their industry and
life trajectory.
PPD attracts a spectrum of believers and critics; the latter are often
unconvinced that PPD is anything more than form-filling to tick educational
boxes. Our position is that, to be meaningful, PPD must consider the
‘whole person’ in a process of reflection and not simply be a tool for audit-
ing skills. An integral part of this is understanding that the emotions add a
significant dimension to students’ learning experiences. Consequently we
recommend ensuring opportunities to discuss how emotions affect the
decisions learners make and interpretations they place on their own capa-
bilities and self-worth as students and future practitioners. These activities
are ones which go beyond an estimation of what went well or badly and
why. In addition, it is clear from previous studies (e.g. James 2007; Moon
2005) that fundamental to the success of PPD is a shared understanding
among students and tutors as to what critical reflection is, and how to do it
effectively. Equally clear is that many universities do not invest time in
enabling this kind of effectiveness through the teaching of explicit strate-
gies. This lack is something that our work can address.
Conceptual frameworks for interpreting emotional data in

students PPD statements
In order to understand what the deeper meanings within PPD statements
might be, we propose two theoretical standpoints, one emotional and one
relating to Personal Construct Theory (PCT). Both standpoints provide the
basis for our method of critically reading PPD statements, as subsequently
explained.
The emotions are currently well recognized as an inherent part of
human everyday life and as a major factor in the socializing of individuals.
This paper has neither the intention nor the scope to enter into the huge
current debate on the philosophy of what is an emotion; however it will
frame certain basic parameters for enquiry which seem to be particularly
relevant for this discussion. Previous research into the role of the emotions
in design students’ learning (architectural design studio courses in particu-
lar) (Austerlitz, Aravot and Ben-Ze’ev 2002; Austerlitz and Aravot 2007)
210 Dr Noam Austerlitz and Dr Alison James

adopted Ben-Ze’ev’s (2000) approach which stresses that emotions respond

spontaneously to actual or potential changes in personal well-being and that
emotions have a central role in giving meaning to one’s experiences. These
studies found that applying a content analysis methodology identifies domi-
nant emotions (or a sequence of emotions) in student narratives of their stu-
dio learning experience.
Such an approach sees the emotions as a cognitive operational mode
which involves the whole of the human being and can be applied to subjec-
tively appraise information and generate action readiness towards dealing
with information (Frijda 1986). Furthermore since emotions are related to
the most precious human concerns and are required to operate within split
seconds they must therefore obey some kind of pre-structured schemes
(Oatley 1992). These schemes obey a ‘logical’ pattern yet their rationality is dif-
ferent from intellectual rationality (De Sousa 1980). One of these schemes’
operations is to appraise a current personal situation according to previous
standards, expectations and goals (Ortony et al 1988). When a situation is
appraised as fulfilling or exceeding expectations a positive emotional reaction
will be elicited and in other cases one will probably experience a negative emo-
tion. This pattern can be repeatedly detected in reflective PPD statements in
relation to grading and assessment.
With this logic in mind, it is asserted that student emotions are not
untrustworthy, inexplicable behaviours, but a set of reactions which can be
Reflections on emotional journeys: a new perspective for reading fashion … 211

subsequently analysed and interpreted. It is clear from a preliminary exami-

nation of PPD statements that many students articulate a narrative of devel-
opment which is emotionally laden. PPD statements contain emotional
expressions which often mix emotional memories together with later intel-
lectual interpretations. Such emotional expressions may be explicit or
implicit, with emotions suggested by implication or even conveying multiple
contradictory emotions. Investigating the emotional composition of these
statements reveals that very few PPD statements are free from emotions as
even numbness, indifference or neutrality may be said to be affective states.
Following Aaron Ben Ze’ev (2000), Noam Austerlitz et al (2002) have
provided a model to establish the flow of emotions within a record of learn-
ing which can be adapted to analyse PPD statements. It refers to the
A. Dominant emotion which is reported (or emotions)

B. Cause of the emotion (previous expectations, students’ goals, behaviour
of others, issues of identity etc.)
C. Object/focus of concern of the emotional response
D. Reported emotional intensity
E. The way the emotional response evolved
F. Effects on aspects of learning.
These stages are not necessarily chronological and are illustrated in the fol-
lowing extract from a Year 1 Beauty Therapy student, marked up by their letter:
I wrote in my journal the hardest part is removing the make-up (B). I get stressed
out (A,D) trying to do it which therefore ruins my flow (F). I realized that the only
way to overcome my problem was to not panic (C) and keep practising (F) until the
movement becomes natural. I made it easier for myself (E) by breaking each step
down into smaller steps which as a result stuck in my memory better (F). As I began
to remember the steps and the movements my confidence grew immensely (F).
This example shows how the application of an emotional framework to the

reading of a complex episode can reveal two major aspects of learning (in
addition to multiple effects on learning indicated by the letter ‘F’). The
action taken by the learner was in response to both the dominant emotion
(panic/fears) elicited by a practical issue; however, emphasis is often given
to the resolution of the latter, rather than the former. It can be argued that it
was the intensity of the specific emotion which spurred the individual to
overcome a problem, rather than indifference or defeatism. The cause of
the emotion will also have its roots in the ways the student has lived
through and subsequently represented an event to themselves, through the
memory of how it felt. Such memories infiltrate the way a student reviews
their personal and professional identity, thus we suggest that Personal
Construct Theory (PCT) can be useful in understanding the review process
underpinning a student’s PPD statement.
Student statements as evidence of their personal

construct process
PCT posits that humans do not process their knowledge of their world
through their experiences, but rather through their representations of these.

Originally elaborated by the American psychologist George Kelly in 1955,

PCT adopts a scientific approach in enabling individuals to express their
view of their world through their own eyes, and not through the interpreta-
tion of a third party. This mirrors a change in assessment ethos concerning
PPD, from a model where tutors set the parameters for PPD to one in
which the student takes responsibility for identifying what has been mean-
ingful PPD and why. In PCT and PPD, responsibility for interpreting events
and their consequences lies with the student, rather than the expert out-
sider (e.g. counsellor or tutor).
By twinning PCT and PPD, we offer a shift in what is being prioritized in
a reflective statement – not just the things that someone says they can do,
but rather the climate in which they became able to do them and the conse-
quences for self-revelation. Eleven ‘Corollary’ statements explain the different
dimensions of personal constructs and are organized around a fundamental
postulate which argues that ‘a person’s processes are psychologically chan-
nelized by the ways in which he anticipates events’ (Kelly 1992, p. 3). Plank
and Greene (1996, p. 29) describe PCT as elaborating ‘that process of anti-
cipation, perception, comparing the anticipation to reality and feedback’,
which in fact offers a remarkable parallel to the process of PPD.
Anticipation is part of students attempting to define or predict future
outcomes, such as the creation of an accessory or garment, conclusion of a
project or competition success. For example a student on a foundation
degree in Buying and Merchandising expressed anticipation and compari-
son with reality as follows:
My concerns were with the primary research. I was worried that there would be a
lack of support. For my findings, I was surprised at the encouraging response from
consumers but I was disappointed with the negative response from retailers.
Expectation of how things will be, based on memories of prior occurrences

and how they felt, is a dimension within each Corollary and in each emo-
tional experience. It informs the ways representations of events are constructed,
differ from another’s version and are organized into personal hierarchies
(Construction, Individuality and Organization Corollaries). For example, PPD
statements repeatedly reveal one of the most important learning experiences –
that of dealing with dilemmas (often emotionally implicated) or challenges.
Their personal constructions will both pre-empt and reveal how a student
might respond, e.g. in terms of fearfulness of what is to come. Individuals
will construct these responses in the ways that best allow them to develop
their view of the world, while inevitably having limitations on how they can
perceive these events (Choice and Range Corollaries):
At the beginning I felt shy and slightly overwhelmed … I knew I would have to
overcome this as making pitches and addressing large numbers of people would be
an everyday occurrence …
The ways that students represent their reality will also be in relation to
something else, in terms of contrast or opposing concepts (Dichotomy
Corollary). The Experience Corollary also teaches about the validity of each
construct – whether or not a prediction made about a response or experience

has in fact turned out as expected. While individuals naturally and uncon-
sciously revise their constructions with each new experience, capturing
these on paper can make root causes of, and patterns in, situations explicit.
Poor attendance caused one student to write ‘Regret summarizes my feel-
ings’, while others regularly record surprise in finding that an activity which
they expected to be superfluous had in fact been beneficial. The Modulation
and Fragmentation Corollaries allow for the individual to accept or reject
new possibilities in their constructions while also juggling with competing
or potentially incompatible constructions:
I have been set in my ways, with immoveable opinions for years, and have grown
to see that, at such a young age, such stubbornness and a narrow-minded outlook
is completely opposed to the industry I have chosen to work in.
In addition, inconsistent or contradictory emotions in certain constructs

are not necessarily mutually exclusive. For example, a learner may feel
passion for a subject, frustration at their progress, dread at the prospect
of not achieving a desired outcome and the thrill of success in complet-
ing the task. A desire for completion may compete with resentment and
boredom in having to see the mechanics of the process through, and so
on. Finally the Commonality and Sociality Corollaries allow the individual
to demonstrate how his or her representative processes may resemble
those of another or facilitate empathy: ‘I have become a lot more tolerant
of others.’
An understanding of the basic principles of PCT can be helpful in two
ways; as part of an introduction to PPD which enables the learner to under-
stand that their critical reflections will be constituted by their own personal
and cultural history, and, for the reader of their statements, in shedding
light on how the world seems to an individual student, rather than how the
world ‘is’ in the eyes of another.
The case study at LCF

Although the suggested perspective could be employed in any higher edu-
cation course, the authors have a particular interest in PPD students in the
areas of design and related creative practices. In addition to technical com-
petency and a way of thinking that result in workable and innovative solu-
tions, fashion students’ conceptions of self and work are often inextricably
linked.
This interest has led to an examination of PPD statements produced by
students from the London College of Fashion, on courses covering anything
from the design and production of shoes, accessories and garments, cos-
metic formulation, specialist make up, costume, image production of all
kinds to fashion business management. Many modes of study are not tra-
ditionally academic, with a concentration on essays and examinations, but
centre on studio and practical work, with outcomes exhibited statically,
through diverse media and on the catwalk, not just in written assessments.
With work- and industry-related expertise also a priority, PPD can involve a
range of areas. This context is important for the observations which are
starting to emerge from our initial readings of 225 statements collected in
2006–07 and autumn term 2007–08. These came from undergraduate

courses covering fashion journalism, cosmetic science, product design and

development, fashion business management and beauty therapy and
health studies. A further five learning journals from an access course
were also included. Differentiating statements in terms of patterns of
response within subject fields, levels of study and other factors was not
included at this stage in the research. It was clear, however, that produc-
tion of statements was affected by the guidance received from tutors and
their interpretations of what constituted critical reflection. This sample
will be continually added to, and a system of coding elaborated for a future
in-depth analysis of data.
A particular mode of reading has been applied to students’ reflective
PPD statements, recognizing that the statement will have been com-
posed through the filter of the student’s own personal constructs. This
reading prioritizes identification of emotional content, using the ‘A-F’
framework already described as a set of reference points, rather than
‘factual data’ telling the reader how an individual’s IT skills have
improved or their practical capabilities enhanced. Phrases indicating
emotion were highlighted and extracts illustrating the emotional climate
extrapolated from texts. Statements were subsequently situated within
the ‘A-F’ emotional framework and PCT Corollaries, and offered multiple
instances of emotional narratives implicating outcomes and reflections
on development.
Even at this early stage, emotional themes were detected in students’
commentaries, relating to various foci of concerns such as
• Acquiring skills
• Interactions with others (tutors and peers)
• Pace of teaching and learning
• Self-improvement as learners
• Self-mastery and gaining emotional control
• Growth in capability and independence
• Personal maturing and coping with challenges
• Understanding of the profession.
Recurrent in students’ narratives is the emotional rollercoaster, with domi-

nant emotions including: stress, rising from difficulty in coping with a new
way of life and learning; passion for creating; pride in achievements; plea-
sure in learning; frustration at plans thwarted; self-doubt and fear. ‘Nervous,
anxious, scared, I can see my future but it will be hard work getting there.’
Numerous comments on the prospect of a major piece of writing illustrate
that it will be hard work. Standards, expectations and anticipations were
also common and dominant factors linking emotional theory and PCT in
determining both the kind of elicited emotion and its intensity: ‘The thought
of having to complete the dissertation was incredibly overwhelming.’ Of critical
importance to many students is the way in which their confidence has
increased (or not) in the wake of an experience: ‘I was so excited that I really
did finish an English essay and it was truly my idea…I was proud of myself and
felt confident.’
In addition to fearfulness, the new, different or unexpected often pro-
voked surprise, conflict or confusion. These unanticipated responses to

expectations often resulted in a revised view of things, which is in line with

the nature of the Experience Corollary:
Working in a team was far harder than I had initially foreseen. The lack of control
scared me and the constant worry that I might let others down certainly played on
my mind …
Good fortune brought by the unexpected was also noted by a student who
wrote of a new addiction to photography, which they never could have
imagined developing before going to the Lee Miller exhibition. Expectations
are also often overturned:
When I saw the title of this unit on the timetable I thought that it might be a lesson
that would not be important to my learning this term. I thought that it would be
the lesson that nobody went to. I was very mistaken.
Brain freeze. What have I got myself into?
A sense of loss or disquiet can often be hidden within student behaviours

and invisible to tutors, as described by Ariel Peng-chun Kuo:
He is really sad that no tutors really understand his work well, which has an
impact on his understanding of their feedback. He feels too challenged and
pushed during crits and one-to-one tutorials. He keeps nodding without really
learning...although he is listening, he knows he does not understand because
his emotions are garbled. This makes him feel guilty which in turn puts even
more emotional stress on him.
(2007, pp. 50–51)
Using an approach which focuses on emotional references in PPD state-

ments helps to plot some of these disjunctures in communication and the
weight of the internal struggle that the learner – here an international student –
is engaged in. The emotional references in the statements also provide evi-
dence that they are the place where students become aware of things about
themselves (extract 1 below) as opposed to purely summarizing things they
can do (extract 2):
Delivering the presentation was one of my proudest moments as public speaking is

something that fills me with great apprehension…I came off well as my nerves
were visible to no-one but me. I now know that no matter how difficult something
may be, practice, practice and more practice will win the day! (1)
While working on this project I have learnt numerous things. I am now more con-
fident with my IT skills…I have gained a deeper understanding of instrumental
and sensory evaluation techniques. (2)
Both kinds of realization have value, however the first extract demonstrates
an evolving self-awareness which has a specific significance. This final
example contains in a single paragraph the student’s developmental cycle,
expectations, emotions and outcomes:

I was incredibly nervous about doing my end of term presentation towards my

image project. This was my first presentation I had ever done and being in front of
other people was going to be quite daunting. Despite this I went up and did my
presentation and I managed to get everything that I wanted to say out. I had my
notes on cards and I felt calmer after id [sic] started. I was still anxious about get-
ting my feedback the next week, however, when I did receive it was so pleased that
I accomplished some fantastic feedback and a proud grade. I overcame this fear
and it has given me more confidence for any other public speaking which I may
need to do in the future.
PPD statements are often compiled retrospectively, in a time of review; we

suggest, however, that asking students to record their expectations from
the outset, to compare with their actual experience and emotions along the
way, amplifies understanding of progress.
Conclusions and potential benefits

We are developing a method of reading PPD statements which prioritizes
the identification of emotion within the narrative: a framework for under-
standing the root and context for such emotions, and what they have led to.
It can be used by tutors, students and their peers to bring a different per-
spective to PPD reviews. These depend on students defining the terms of
their growth and development. Of fundamental importance to this is
encouraging students to understand what critical reflection is and how to
do it, emphasizing that PPD is more than form-filling. It is an opportunity
for individuals to reflect on their personal educational progress including
their emotional development. Being able to further analyse that reflection
afterwards is an important stage in identifying the critical ‘eureka’
moments, of all sizes and intensities, that demarcate learning. Introducing
students to the basic principles of PCT as a tool within an armoury of criti-
cal and reflective practices can offer a useful mode of self-analysis. Often
associated with repertory grid techniques which can be unwieldy to imple-
ment, PCT can be presented in simpler activities which will mean more to
students than the terminology of science or philosophy.
The many different things that impact on a period of learning and living
are easily forgotten and their significance missed if not noted down. A gen-
uine, honest and thoughtful statement that a student is happy to share is
also a way of keeping communication going between the learner and their
peers/mentors. Retrospective plotting of the emotional trajectories that
students have followed during learning can enable staff and students alike
to understand the triggers for crises or successes, as well as the motivating
factors and variables that affect learning. Similarly, identifying with students
their expectations and standards at the outset of a learning experience and
revisiting these will offer insight into the emotional journey undertaken.
Seeing the emotions which accompany different events or interactions may
also be a part- solution to identifying ways of dealing with such situations in
the future, very much in line with the anticipatory premise of PCT. Positively
identifying the specific value that this activity can bring may also serve to
strengthen the appreciation of PPD within the institution and staff/student
mindset, where it is not always universally accepted or understood.
Collecting such statements or compiling them within the format of a log or

diary can also create a unique store of personal knowledge that the individ-
ual can draw on for all kinds of future uses or considerations.
From a tutor point of view, an insight into the student’s emotional jour-
ney may also provide invaluable data on the ways in which tutors and the
learning experiences they orchestrate can impact on student learning. It is
already accepted that what students learn and what it was intended to teach
them do not always match up; this analysis may serve as a means of clos-
ing the gap (if so desired). The reflective statement is both a dialogue with
the self and also a tool to engender a supportive conversation with staff. We
suggest that applying emotional/PCT analyses of PPD statements could be
a means by which staff can realize that students do often understand where
they are and why better than they are given credit for. Analysing student
anticipation of events and the emotional journey they experience gives a
whole new understanding to the stories that students are telling.
References
Austerlitz, N. and Aravot, I. (2007), ‘Emotions of design students: a new perspec-
tive for the design studio’, in Salama A. and Wilkinson, N. (eds.), Design Studio
Pedagogy: Horizons for the Future, UK: Urban International Press.
Austerlitz, N., Aravot, I., and Ben-Ze’ev, A. (2002), ‘Emotional phenomena and the
student-instructor relationships’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 60, pp. 105–115.
Bannister, D. and Mair, J. M. M. (1968), The Evaluation of Personal Constructs, London
and New York: Academic Press.
Ben-Ze’ev, A. (2000), The Subtlety of Emotions, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
De Sousa, R. (1980), ‘The rationality of emotions’, in Rorty, A. Explaining Emotions,
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Frijda, N. H. (1986), The Emotions, Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University
Press.
James, A. (2007), ‘Reflection revisited: perceptions of reflective practice in fashion
learning and teaching’, Art, Design and Communication in Higher Education, 5(3),
pp. 179–196.
Kelly, G. (1992), The Psychology of Personal Constructs, Clinical Diagnosis and
Psychotherapy Vol. 2, Hove: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group
Moon, J. (2005), ‘We seek it here …a new perspective on the elusive activity of criti-
cal thinking: a theoretical and practical approach’, ESCalate Discussion Series,
http://escalate.ac.uk/2041. Accessed 11 February 2008.
Oatley, K. (1992), Best Laid Schemes: The Psychology of Emotions, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Ortony, A., Clore, G. L., and Collins, A. (1988), The Cognitive Structure of Emotions,
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Peng-chun Kuo, A. (2007), in Lioy, A. (ed.) The Written Stuff: an Anthology of Art
and Design Students’ Stories from a Writing Workshop, London: Area-D publishers,
pp. 41–72
Plank, R. E. and Greene. J. N. (1996), ‘Personal construct psychology and personal
selling performance’, European Journal of Marketing, 30(7), pp. 25–48.
Suggested citation
Austerlitz, N. and James, A. (2008), ‘Reflections on emotional journeys: a new
perspective for reading fashion students’ PPD statements’, Art, Design &

Contributor details
Alison James is Head of Learning and Teaching at the London College of Fashion
and coordinator of the College Pedagogic Research Hub. Her primary research
interests lie in theories of auto/biography, identity and narrative construction in cre-
ative arts education, critical reflection, personal development planning and the
emotions in learning. Her theoretical interest in the life of the individual also
informed her Ph.D. which provided a biographical analysis of the artist Dod Procter
RA. A monograph on Procter was also published in September 2007.
E-mail: a.james@fashion.arts.ac.uk
Noam Austerlitz holds a Ph.D. degree from the Faculty of Architecture and Town
Planning, Technion, I.I.T. (Haifa, Israel). He graduated from the Faculty of
Architecture, Bezalel Academy of Arts, Jerusalem, in 1996 and since then has been a
practising architect. He teaches design in the Faculty of Architecture and Town
Planning in Israel and also has eighteen years of experience of teaching, in varied
educational settings such as: Field Guide in the Israeli nature society; teaching in
guides training courses and teaching yoga. In his academic research Noam is trying
to merge his interest in education and design. Therefore since 1999 he has been
conducting studies into the emotional and social aspects of design education. His
principal areas of research interest are: design theory; pedagogy and design educa-
tion; creativity and innovative thinking; design psychology; emotion research; edu-
cation philosophy; science philosophy and ethnographic research. Noam is
currently Research fellow at the Creative Learning in Practice Centre for Excellence in
Teaching and Learning, (CLIP CETL).
Contact: University of the Arts, Chelsea College of art and Design, 17 John Islip
Street, London, SW1P 4JU.
E-mail: noam06@gmail.com

ADCHE_6.3_07_art_James.qxd 5/7/08 11:10 AM Page 220
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Reviews
Reviews. English language. doi: 10.1386/adch.6.3.221/4. © Intellect Ltd 2008.
Review of the ‘Unspoken Interactions’: exploring the role

of emotions, interactions and embodied knowledge in
practice-based subjects’ symposium – December 2007
University of the Arts, London
Reviewed by Gary Pritchard
In attempting to fully engage in a dialogue around the role of emotions in

learning and teaching, one has to filter vast volumes of historic representa-
tions and personal experience around such a theme. Yet this was what del-
egates at the symposium of ‘Unspoken Interactions’: exploring the role of
emotions, interactions and embodied knowledge in practice-based sub-
jects’, were asked to undertake. It is more Hollywood than Oxford to paint
romantic depictions of emotive soulful teachers reaching out to passion-
hungry students, all to a backdrop of stuffy stoic academia stereotypes. This
timely one-day event sought to cut through both the dogmatic and the
mythical to provoke a dialogue around a range of themes relating to the
emotional component of our learning environments.
The day was framed by an opening address by Dr Noam Austerlitz, vis-
iting research fellow at the CLIP CETL (Creative Learning in Practice Centre
for Excellence in Teaching and Learning) at Chelsea College of Art and
Design. Dr Austerlitz’s research contends that students negotiate their
learning experience via affective interpretations and bodily sensations as
well as traditional intellectual deliberations. He set out his hypothesis by
describing the historic landscape of higher education that has traditionally
elevated a Cartesian rationale, privileging the cognitive elements of knowl-
edge acquisition over ‘softer’, even dubious, notions of human emotion.
This holistic notion of how individuals interpret the world around them pro-
vided a useful foundation for the wide range of lectures, seminars and
workshops that made up the symposium.
Possibly the greatest strength of this event was its genuinely interdisci-
plinary nature. While arts-practice based educational contexts with experi-
ential learning as its pedagogic emphasis formed the core attendance,
colleagues from the business, health and social welfare sectors also pro-
vided a rich contrast to the dialogue. Debates in the discursive sessions I
attended detailed familiar dilemmas such as pressures on personal resources,
concerns around the blurring line between public and personal space of teach-
ers and students, and the shifting complexity of increasingly diverse and
non-traditional student cohorts.
The dialogue reminded me of some of the conflicting advice I got as an
inexperienced teacher embarking on a career working with students. I was

warned to ‘keep a distance’ between my audience and myself, and to pro-

tect my ‘private self’ in order to avoid a messy collision of the contrasting
two worlds I now straddled. While meaningful and well intended, I always
found such advice contrary to my instinct to connect to students using the
full range of who I am, alongside what I know – despite the obvious risks
concerned. The theme of connectivity, in fact, could be seen as the key topic
running right across this event.
Heather Dale in her workshop ‘Using the Relationship in Effective
Teaching’ made explicit her student/teacher relational philosophy in stat-
ing: ‘When I am at my most real, most energetic and most open, then those
groups of students learn best. When I am less giving of myself, my students
learn less well.’ Maybe no surprises there from a senior lecturer in coun-
selling, but Alan Mortiboys, in his workshop on ‘Teaching with Emotional
Intelligence’, also prompted us to consider the teacher/student relationship
by the use of metaphor. Did we view ourselves as gardener to plants, web-
site to surfers or even salesperson to potential buyer? Mortiboys invited us
to consider a wide range of competing pressures on both teacher and
learner that ultimately demands a fluid and reflective approach to the learn-
ing experience. The diverse responses and reactions from the participants
of this workshop only served to highlight the confused and often-competing
span of emotional correlations encountered by teachers attempting to con-
nect with their students.
Another multi-perspective panel presentation saw Ken Ewings, Alison
James and Heather Symonds seek to paint a broad notion of what it means
to be a student in today’s higher education melting pot. Ken Ewings, in his
role as Head of Counselling, Health Advice and Disability, gave a graphic
overview of how students present to his department with a vast range of
issues from personal and social crisis, to stressful in-class teacher relation-
ship breakdowns. Alison James described how her personal and professional
development (PPD) programme is attempting to move past simplistic stu-
dent employability ambitions, to engender a greater emotional engagement
with students by using the programme as a critical self-reflective process.
Heather Symonds then made a compelling plea to see a wider range of cre-
ative possibilities – particularly around the traditional battleground of writ-
ten versus oral traditions of assessing the learning experience of students.
For those of us attempting to hold the tension between encouraging schol-
arly excellence and outstanding creative expression, this proved to be both
provocative and persuasive.
In another fascinating presentation, Olivia Sagan focused on the emo-
tional physical space that makes up our traditional educational habitats
(see paper in this issue on page 173 (will not know until final layout)).
This ambitious session explored the power relationships that are played
out in such spaces, and also its impact on identity formations in both
learner and teacher. As she pointed out, space is never neutral, but always
socially and psychologically constructed. She found much agreement
from this delegate as well as the attending group in identifying art and
design as the natural space for drawing upon emotion to fully explore the
boundaries of its discipline.
As I sought on-the-spot feedback from delegates during the buzz of
the coffee breaks, it seemed there was a general agreement that this
222 Reviews
acknowledgement and exploration of emotion in the learning spaces of

higher education was well overdue. This event marked an important launch-
ing pad from which to encourage more research into this much-neglected
theme. In fact, the only criticism I heard from attendees was that the rich
range of workshops, presentations and plenary sessions were poorly served
by such a short one-day symposium. Perhaps such an important field of
research deserves a full conference to do justice to this exciting and emerg-
ing body of work.
Contributor details
Gary Pritchard is Associate Dean of Newport School of Art, Media & Design,
University of Wales, United Kingdom.
E-mail: gary.pritchard@newport.ac.uk
Teaching with Emotional Intelligence: A Step-by-Step Guide for

Higher and Further Education Professionals,
Alan Mortiboys (2005)
1st edition, London: Rutledge (146 p.),
First ISBN: 978-0415350-88-4, Price: 19.99 GBP (Paperback)
Reviewed by Noam Austerlitz
Our emotions are an elusive issue which we tend to regard as obvious as

birth. They are essential, they happen spontaneously and most of us do not
take a minute to think how they affect our lives or how we might utilize
them.
The book: ‘Teaching with Emotional Intelligence’ by Alan Mortiboys
aims to change this approach towards emotions among higher education
tutors and raise awareness of the positive contribution they can make to
learning.
This is not an easy task, as higher education practice has been seen for
centuries as a process of acquiring knowledge through the intellectual
faculties only. Thus emotions, which have been considered as inferior,
non-rational (immature) behaviour, were often also regarded as an obstacle
to scholarly learning or as a private matter not relevant to the educational
discourse.
Recent decades have witnessed a cultural change towards emotions and
their significance in everyday life. As a result, emotions’ impact on individ-
ual’s experience and social behaviour is beginning to be well acknowledged
as a research subject.
One of the things this research reveals is that people differ in their abilities
to understand emotional situations and react while (their own and others’)
emotions are elicited. Thus cognitive psychology researchers developed theo-
retical ‘Emotional Intelligence’ (EI) models and tests that aimed to provide
a measurement for human mental abilities (Emotional Intelligence
Quotient = EQ) which could not be assessed by traditional IQ tests. The
first theoretical EI model was introduced in an academic paper by Salovey
Reviews 223
and Mayer (1990) but the concept owes its popularity to a book entitled
Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More than IQ, by the journalist
Daniel Goleman (1995). Since then this concept has gained both high
scholarly interest and criticism. However, while researchers are still debat-
ing if EI exists, what its factors are and how to measure it (Matthews et al.
2002), it has already been applied in numerous areas as a basis for work-
shops and books aiming to practically enhance people’s ability to handle
emotional aspects of their life. It has gained popularity throughout the
world, even though its scientific basis is not secured. It is possible that EI
has become such a popular concept because it carries an element of com-
mon sense truth. It may also echo our zeitgeist which acknowledges that in
everyday life people often employ both their emotional and intellectual
capacities to interpret situations and act upon this interpretation. Moreover
the amalgamation of these two words ‘emotion’ and ‘intelligence’ implies
that the dichotomy between intellectual thinking and emotional perception
is a distortion of human experience.
A rationale for this thinking might be that as there are people who are
‘intellectually gifted’ there are also people who are ‘emotionally intelligent’.
It is understandable why such a claim has become popularly accepted, but
until now it has not been adequately verified, nor has it been determined
whether EI is a cognitive-ability or a personality trait. Nevertheless numerous
books have been written during the last twelve years trying to increase people’s
awareness of their emotional life, claiming that it can assist in attaining a vari-
ety of personal goals and enable better social interactions with colleagues,
family and friends. Following books such as Goleman’s (1998) Working with
Emotional Intelligence, or Bar-On & Parker (2000) The Handbook of Emotional
Intelligence: Theory, Development, Assessment, and Application at Home, School,
and in the Workplace, the idea of improving EI abilities has been applied to
almost every area of life such as primary school teaching, achieving career
excellence, organisation management and golf improvement. Such books are
based on the assumption that one can improve emotional intelligence and
learn to apply it by practice; some even suggest that people can learn to man-
age their emotions. Since EI components, such as the ability to identify one’s
own emotions, comprehend others’ non-verbal and verbal emotional expres-
sions etc. are so fundamental to social interactions, it is very likely that devel-
opment in one or more of these areas may have an impact on one’s life. Not
only is it supposed to improve the quality of people’s performance but it may
also affect the way they feel about what they do.
Mortiboys’ book propounds the idea of improving such abilities by
applying these ideas to higher education. In a short introduction about EI
theory he explains its potential to affect teaching and learning. It aims to
‘rescue emotional intelligence from being an extra quality that a minority of
teachers offer to learners’ and asserts that ‘we should give the use of emo-
tional intelligence as much attention as we give to content and method’.
Following this introduction the books brings forward a variety of activities
designed to raise awareness in areas where emotions are involved in higher
education teaching and learning.
Consequently this handbook is not so much a book for reading about EI as
it is a book for practicing EI. It uses the EI concept more as a thought-provoking
title than actually keeping to its original exact meaning. The activities, which
224 Reviews
are well structured and explained in a straightforward language, deal with a

variety of important issues such as: tutors’ (emotional) stances; learners’
expectations; responding to learners’ emotions and many more. Some activ-
ities are focused around exploring the reader’s (presumably a tutor) educa-
tional standpoint and emotional attitude towards teaching. Other activities
are designed to help tutors to define their interactive style with students and
bring awareness to a variety of ways to do that. Following this, the book sug-
gests activities to include the emotional aspect of learning in course design,
such as planning the emotional environment or learning to read students’
emotional behaviour. The book’s activities not only point to areas which
require tutors’ awareness but also provide a way to explore them. For exam-
ple, in the chapter entitled ‘Investigating your practice’, the first activity (8.1)
encourages the reader to recognise what they currently do to read and
respond to learners’ feelings. Thus the following questions are presented:
1. Was I aware of the overall mood of the group at any point during the session?
2. How did I sense that mood?
3. Did I respond to that mood?
4. Was I aware at any time of the feelings of any individual learner?
5. How did I become aware of those feelings?
6. How did I respond to those feelings?
By breaking up the general, at times superficial, concept of EI into compre-

hensible chunks, it enables tutors to undertake issues they regard as relevant
to their teaching. Furthermore, while this book has a clear standpoint towards
the need for students and tutors to recognise each other’s emotions and
address this aspect in their teaching and learning, it avoids advocating a par-
ticular teaching style and allows each reader to locate her/himself. It does
have suggestions for actions which tutors can take to improve emotional
communication in classrooms, yet it is not a ‘how to’ book and it will not
provide a ‘ten step guide to becoming the students’ favourite tutor’.
While at first the chapters’ titles may be seen as almost too obvious
(‘Addressing learner fears’, ‘Listening to your learners’ etc.), how many tutors
really take the time to find out what kind of attention their students need,
what character they wish to present in the classroom and how to improve
their listening skills? Mortiboys gives tutors who might follow the book’s
activities an opportunity to get to know themselves better as teachers and to
become more aware of their emotional behaviour. He also provides a variety
of activities which will make students more aware of their emotions in rela-
tion to learning, therefore supporting and developing them as learners.
As emotions are currently being recognised as a significant aspect of
art, design and communication in higher education, educators in these
fields might start to ask themselves how they can improve their abilities in
this area. Reading this book as an architectural design tutor made me
rethink my habits and look once more in the mirror and ask what kind of
emotional relationship I want to establish with my students.
Teaching with Emotional Intelligence does not address all the issues that
art and design tutors face: the issue of artworks’ exposure; ‘crits’ and criticism;
the one-on-one close interactions with students; collaboration around cre-
ative acts etc.
Reviews 225
Nevertheless it is a good starting point for exploring and developing

awareness of the impact of the emotions on these issues, and ways to build
on this awareness to enhance better communication with students. I am
sure that many art and design tutors will find more than a few relevant
ideas in this book.
References
Bar-On, R. & Parker, J. D. A. (eds) (2000), The Handbook of Emotional Intelligence:
Theory, Development, Assessment, and Application at Home, School, and in the
Workplace, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Goleman, D. (1995), Emotional Intelligence, New York: Bantam Books.
Goleman, D. (1998), Working with Emotional Intelligence, New York: Bantam Books.
Matthews, G., Zeidner, M., & Roberts, R. D. (2002), Emotional Intelligence: Science
and Myth, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Salovey, P. & Mayer, J. D. (1990), “Emotional intelligence”, Imagination, Cognition,
and Personality, 9, pp. 185–211.
Contributor details
E-mail: n.austerlitz@gmail.com
226 Reviews
ADCHE 6.3_index.qxd 5/19/08 5:11 PM Page 227
ADCHE Volume 6 INDEX
Austerlitz, N., & James, A., Reflections on emotional journeys: a new perspective for
reading fashion students’ PPD statements, pp. 209–219.
Chalkley, B., & Verhagen, M., Learning in groups: the student experience in
Postgraduate Diplomas of Fine Art, pp. 117–131.
Eilouti, B., A spatial development of a string processing tool for encoding architectural
design processing, pp. 57–71.
Gaimster, J., Reflections on Interactions in virtual worlds and their implication for
learning art and design, pp. 187–199.
Lawrie, S., Graphic design: can it be something more? Report on research in progress,
pp. 201–207.
Manghani, S., MyResearch.com: speculations on bridging research and teaching in
the arts, pp. 85–98.
Melles, G., Visually mediating knowledge construction in project-based doctoral
design research, pp. 99–111.
Melles, G., Producing fact, affect and identity in architecture critiques – a discourse
analysis of student and faculty discourse interaction, pp. 159–171.
Radclyffe-Thomas, N., Intercultural chameleons or the Chinese way? Chinese students
in Western art and design education, pp. 41–55.
Reid, A., & Solomonides, I., Design students’ experience of engagement and creativity,
pp. 27–39.
Sagan, O., Playgrounds, studios and hiding places: emotional exchange in creative
learning spaces, pp. 173–186.
Shreeve, A., Learning development and study support – an embedded approach
through communities of practice, pp. 11–25.
Sovic, S., Coping with stress: the perspective of international students, pp. 145–158.
ADCHE 6 (3) Index © Intellect Ltd 2008. ISSN 1474-273X 227

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Volume Six Number Three

intellect Journals | Art & Design

9 771474 273009 www.intellectbooks.com

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Volume Six Number Three

intellect Journals | Art & Design

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Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education

Notes for Contributors

Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education Volume 6 Number 3.

Editorial for ADCHE special issue

ADCHE 6 (3) pp. 139–144. © Intellect Ltd 2008. 139

140 Alison Shreeve and Noam Austerlitz

Editorial for ADCHE special issue 141

142 Alison Shreeve and Noam Austerlitz

from emotion and feeling, which were characterized as feminine attributes

Editorial for ADCHE special issue 143

Alison Shreeve is the Director of the HEFCE-funded Creative Learning in Practice

144 Alison Shreeve and Noam Austerlitz

Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education Volume 6 Number 3.

Coping with stress: the perspective of

This contribution explores the impact of stress on teaching and learning

• to assess the extent to which international students integrate and adapt to

The research context

ADCHE 6 (3) pp. 145–158. © Intellect Ltd 2008. 145

concerns the dangers of stereotyping. The students involved in this project

Various studies have already demonstrated that the experiences of stress

146 Silvia Sovic

aspects of the process of adaptation that students have to experience –

Coping with stress: the perspective of international students 147

148 Silvia Sovic

Coping with stress: the perspective of international students 149

The ages of these students, and their previous educational backgrounds,

Figure 1: Age profile of first-year international and home students interviewed.

150 Silvia Sovic

The English system of teaching and learning in arts

The degree of emphasis on independent study, obviously well known to

Coping with stress: the perspective of international students 151

It places particular burdens on those students who have to contend with

152 Silvia Sovic

Interaction with teachers and students

Isolation, in the form of retreat into individual study, is ultimately not an

Coping with stress: the perspective of international students 153

Firstly, it is English. Secondly, UK students don’t understand why Asian stu-

Presentations in class entail similar stresses, again because they may be

The ‘presentation culture’ can also appear alien:

In the teaching of the creative arts, the student’s confidence appears to be

154 Silvia Sovic

Difficulties in understanding a new or foreign grading system are perhaps

Coping with stress: the perspective of international students 155

156 Silvia Sovic

Chung, Y. Barry (1993), ‘The education of international counseling psychology stu-

Coping with stress: the perspective of international students 157

158 Silvia Sovic

Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education Volume 6 Number 3.

Producing fact, affect and identity in

Architecture ‘crits’ as problematic oral genres

ADCHE 6 (3) pp. 159–171. © Intellect Ltd 2008. 159

effect where pithiness may be interpreted as insulting (Blair 2006). Orr

160 Gavin Melles

addition to competent delivery techniques, students must demonstrate