SAKE – Subject and Knowledge Exchange
This article explores whether SAKE workshops run by students are a good way to learn practical skills while getting to know each other as individuals
Workshops are co-created by student and tutor and scheduled at strategic points throughout the academic year. The workshops should involve a low-tech existing skill that the student can teach to their peers under the support and guidance of the tutor. The tutors role is to facilitate the student leading the session “to ‘empower’ not impede” through the power shift and trust between student and tutor. These workshops are not intended to replace expertise of the tutor, but to enhance a creative curriculum.
Through interaction, students present themselves and become known to each other as individuals, thus promoting an inclusive learning environment with equality at its core (Hall,1996; Gillborn, 1992).
Within the handknit rotation I run I am keen for students to integrate better with each other, and I wonder if SAKE could be a way to do this. Students with some prior handknit knowledge could be strategically placed amongst less competent knitters to help them learn the basic stitches as an initial way to start mixing with new people on their course.
More structured student led SAKE workshops could work for various handcrafts that could be planned in throughout the academic year. Again allowing for students to mix and meet other students from the course of 80 who they haven’t gotten to meet properly.
The outcomes from the workshops in the article were positive
Atkinson’s support of a curriculum that is‘grounded in the encounter of learning’ rather than ‘representation’ (2011, p.114) was reflected when one student focus group contained much discussion of the positive effects of peer group learning, outliningthat peer learning brought people together, developed a sense of community and built ‘positive communications’ (Wild, 2013)
After acknowledging the complex nature of a ‘White researcher investigating inequality in education’ in her closing reflections, Wild goes on to state “As a tutor, I am not comfortable using terms such as ‘BAME’ or ‘White’ to describe students who I see as individuals, opposed to categories. Such terms are wanting…” I find this to be a completely ignorant statement, which I was surprised to find in a current academic piece of writing, flagging the wilful blindness with which this research was conducted, and this leaves me wondering where else this is going on in our current education systems and curriculums.
