Student engagement is seen as critical to success for both learners and HEI’s alike, and has received much attention (Dunne et al. 2017). Having student-cantered approaches are seen as key to this engagement especially when considering those students often seen as ‘hard to reach’ (Dunne et al. 2017). Although by no means a very new concept, student-centred approaches that call upon co-collaboration in the planning and delivery of education is gaining more widespread current use (Sims, Luebson & Guggiari-Peel 2017).
A collaborative pedagogy was used on the BSc Sport Coaching year group for the ‘Research Methods’ module at Level 5. This module, as many others involving research methods, had been blighted by low attendance and poor engagement in the past. Summative and formative assessments were set out by the module leader, alongside a timetabled 4-week ‘introductory; phase of the module. Students were then left to design the delivery and content of the module in collaboration with teaching staff for the remaining year, to enable them to learn and undertake the formative and summative assessments.
The issues and impact of this approach are discussed in this oral presentation under the headings of:
1. When “what students ask for isn’t what they want”
2. Learners’ wants vs. Learners’ needs
3. Learners as consumers
4. Is passive learning ‘OK’?
5. Mezirow’s Transformational Learning in this context.
To conclude, collaborative pedagogical approaches are neither straight forward or meet the wants of many learners. The debate between meeting learners’ wants vs. meeting their needs, is one that has to have greater coverage if we are to use effective pedagogies to transform the educational experiences of our learners.
Key Terms: collaboration; collaborative pedagogy; sport pedagogy; sport coaching; learner needs; learner wants; learner-centred approaches.
• Transformative learning and teaching in physical education and sports pedagogy
