My Action Research Project is titled ‘Testing the Efficacy of Student Self-Assessments in Learning Journeys’. This project tests the efficacy of a Teaching and Learning project I piloted in 2024 in a unit I teach to BA 2nd years on creative magazine writing at LCC. I chose this project because it was something I had already been working on and I was curious to test its efficacy and develop it further.
Originally, I played around with creating a project based around decolonising our teaching practice as that is something I am keenly interested in. However, a (POC) colleague in my department also did a project on the same topic the previous year through the PgCert (and did it really well!). I was afraid of subconsciously copying their work and/or not creating a unique contribution. And to be frank, I resist the urge to be pigeonholed as another POC solely focused on decolonising. Thus, I chose the self-assessment project instead.
In opposition, at first I was a bit confused about whether the chosen project meets the social, racial and climate justice aims of the ARP Unit and PgCert course. While I have been actively engaged in those arenas throughout the PgCert and otherwise in my research and work, I think I began labelling and boxing-up identities – even intersectional (Crenshaw 1991) ones – across social and racial lines. Therefore, it wasn’t immediately apparent to me that my project was driven by a socially engaged objective too. It took some chats with my tutor Carys and tutorial group to understand that empowering students – diverse students, from different backgrounds – in their learning journeys is a socially motivated aim too. Alongside, the project enables the lecturer to understand what our students’ diverse learning needs are and how we can address them in our teaching.
In my research on this topic, I came across the concept of constructivism. Examining the work of key figures in constructivism such as Piaget, Dewey, and Perry, Carlson and Blanchard (2024, p 2) state that:
‘a constructivist approach to education relies heavily on learners and educators taking an active role within education to construct, and at times co-construct, learning through powerful experiences with active discovery, collaboration, and assimilation of new knowledge with previously lived experiences.’
Carlson and Blanchard thus highlight collaboration between the educator and the learner and empowering the learner. Allen (2022 p 3) echoes this and states that constructivism finds its roots within the work of Freire:
‘Freire (1970) believed education and learning are inseparable from the learner’s realities and life context. He emphasized that educators and learners should be transformed together through mutual learning and discovery (Freire, 1970).’
Carlson and Blanchard go on to discuss Young (2008) and state that solely relying on the curriculum can further inequities in society; that criticality and reflection are needed to assess how that curriculum knowledge has been acquired/developed in the first place and what our symbolic relationship is with that particular world. Thus, Carlson and Blanchard emphasise prioritising the diverse learning needs of the students instead of textbook teaching. These considerations are needed because of the power imbalance in the classroom. Carlson and Blanchard (2024, p 8) discuss Fritzgerald (2020) and state:
‘To support students in a positive learning environment, the power dynamics within the classroom must shift to be empowering and more inclusive for students. In Fritzgerald’s text (2020), he proposes updates to the Codes of Honor that juxtapose Delpit’s Codes of Power (as cited in Fritzgerald 2020), to include: “recognizing that power structures exist,” “acknowledge the purposeful intent and action of abolishing the limitations of the power structure,” “empowering each member of the learning community daily,” “invite members of the learning community into positions of authority, power, and decision making,” and “create opportunities for member to make powerful decisions that govern their outcomes” (p. 7).’
Thus, power imbalances between teacher/student and also within the student body itself – for instance, if a student is a home/international student, if a student’s first language is English or not, if a student has had the opportunities/privilege to study art before – need addressing in order to work towards an inclusive classroom.
With limited teaching time and resources, classroom teaching is often aimed at the median – not the student who is most or least confident about the subject. My project enables me to learn what different areas my students feel less confident about so that I can emphasise those within the class. These different areas could be related to what knowledge the students have been exposed to before due to privilege/opportunities, what skills the students have had a chance to develop before, and also students’ sociocultural backgrounds and lived experiences.
Moreover, in this project, I asked the students to set objectives for themselves, so they could feel empowered to work towards them through the unit. These objectives were personal and driven by the student and not myself – thus reducing competition between themselves and having the students focus on their own learning needs and journeys.
The project also gave me an opportunity to have 1-on-1 conversations with the students where I spoke directly to them about their learning needs over email, thus making them feel seen (example of the text I customised for each student in the report is given below).
Another objective of this project has been to reframe how students engage with the learning outcomes (LOs) of a unit. The criteria I created for the Skills and Knowledge Mapping surveys were mapped against the LOs of the unit. Thus, I got the students to rate their own confidence regarding the LOs of the unit in the first and last classes (with a self-reflection midway touchpoint through a worksheet – an example is shared in this blog post). By creating a radar chart (which I learnt how to do from an article by Murray [2019]) comparing the two self-assessments, the students could see their own growth through the unit and feel more confident regarding the LOs and unit assessment. On a practical standpoint, this would help students perform better in assessments and also improve UAL’s NSS and PTES scores, especially as in my programme I have seen students misunderstand how ‘intellectual stimulation’ is applicable to an arts/vocational programme, leading to lower NSS, CSS and PTES scores.
My ultimate goal is to develop this self-assessment project into a university-wide practice. As I was doing this project on a small scale with a class of only 8 students, it was easier to manually create reports for each. Of course, in larger classrooms, this would be difficult for the lecturer to do on their own and some digital tool would be needed to create the radar charts and optimise the process.
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Example report sent by email to student at the end of the self-assessment project:
Hi XYZ,
Thanks for filling in the second survey. Below is the visual representation of your own assessment of your growth through this Unit. The blue denotes how you rated your skills and knowledge on the first day of class and the yellow denotes how you rate them now. The farther out from the centre, the higher your confidence (7 being the maximum).
As you can see, you’ve grown a lot in confidence through these 10 weeks! It’s heartening to see your confidence jump so highly among all the different criteria. I realise your confidence score for pitching is a bit lower than others, but that should grow too with Monday’s guest talk on pitching to magazines – that’s the dedicated session on pitching in this Unit. So, I hope you celebrate your growth and that you will keep this growing confidence going into the rest of the second year and the third year and further build upon your skills and knowledge. Remember: reading and writing are your best friends in this area.
I’ll be around even after this Unit to chat about any ideas and pieces you’re working on, if you ever want to fix a chat with me.
Here are your text-box comment reflections on what can help you continue your growth – something for you to keep in mind as you work ahead:
Q: What skill or knowledge area have you improved upon the most through this Unit? Does it match your goal at the start of the Unit (refer to the Skills and Knowledge Mapping 1) and/or the mid-point worksheet?
A: My confidence in sharing my work and my knowledge of different creative writing theories. My goal at the start of the unit was ‘Coming up with new ideas and improving my confidence when it comes to sharing my work with others’ and I feel as though I have worked on and improved this
Q: What can you do or continue doing to improve your creative magazine writing skills and knowledge?
A: Work on reflecting on my work critically and generating new ideas to write about
Q: What would you do differently if you could retake this Unit? Is that something you can apply in future units?
A: I would maybe try to write a piece for each of the writing forms rather than a select few so I could improve my skills and knowledge in them
References
Allen, A (2022) ‘An Introduction to Constructivism: Its Theoretical Roots and Impact on Contemporary Education’, Journal of Learning Design and Leadership, 1(1). Available at: https://ldljournal.web.illinois.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Andrew-Allen-Constructivism_JLDL_Vol1Issue1September2022.pdf (Accessed 2 January 2026).
Carlson, K and Blanchard, D (2024) ‘Restructuring Power Dynamics within a Classroom: A Phenomenological Qualitative Study’, The Interactive Journal of Global Leadership and Learning, 3(2). Available at: https://red.mnstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1050&context=ijgll (Accessed 21 January 2026).
Crenshaw, K (1991) ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color’, Stanford Law Review, 43(6), pp 1241–99. JSTOR. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039. (Accessed 7 January 2026).
Freire, P (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The Continuum International Publishing Group, Inc.
Fritzgerald, A (2020) Antiracism and Universal Design for Learning. Wakefield, Massachusetts: CAST, Inc. Available at: https://nelson.northampton.ac.uk/discovery/fulldisplay/alma991001848236907361/44NORTH_INST:44NORTH_INST (Accessed 21 January 2026).
Murray, A (2019) ‘How to Create a Radar Chart in Excel’, How-To Geek. Available at: https://www.howtogeek.com/402016/how-to-create-a-radar-chart-in-excel/ (Accessed 29 September 2025).
UAL (nd) ‘What and how we teach’. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/about-ual/climate-action-plan/what-and-how-we-teach (Accessed 7 January 2026).
Young, M (2008) ‘From constructivism to realism in the sociology of the curriculum’, Review of Research in Education, 32(1), pp 1–28. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/0091732X07308969?__cf_chl_rt_tk=.YvVcZL3XvY7l7KJ3rwhZ_z8uAflpY0hreDjMawTtnI-1769003976-1.0.1.1-xr_wwXDlENZVqrpERjK.a3C40CLtGWDBrPfyWDWZ6nM (Accessed 21 January 2026).