Skip to main content

“Let’s talk midwifery@UWE”: Development of cross-institutional collaborative learning events - NET2017 Conference

The midwifery pre-registration programme at UWE aims to equip graduates to provide evidence informed inclusive and individualised woman-centred care which Phipps (2003) argues requires enhanced cognitive ability and epistemology. Therefore the programme aims to offer a transformative learning experience facilitating students to achieve self-authorship enabling them to engage in critical thinking and reflection complex problem solving and mature decision making (Baxter-Magolda 2007). To realise this curriculum pedagogy is predicated upon how students should learn rather than what they should know (Fraser et al. 1998) and on facilitating a tangible connection with women on a conceptual or emotional level (Clinchy et al. 1985). 

A core curriculum theme to support self-authorship and correspondingly evidence based practice and lifelong learning is the development of “students as researchers”. Promoting. Increasing opportunities for students to engage within research processes and share research outcomes continues to gain prominence within the UK higher education sector (Spronken-Smith et al 2013). Yet traditionally the focus of student-led research tends toward the production of an independent final year project (Healey and Jenkins 2009) with most students falling short of student-led research dissemination (Spronken-Smith et al 2013). The UWE midwifery programme challenges traditional approaches by offering students structured progressive opportunities to practice and develop research and knowledge dissemination skills by using enquiry based learning as a central pedagogy. Time and support is given to nurture students as researchers assisting them to formulate questions locate critique produce and disseminate collaborative enquiry-led research within their immediate peer group on a weekly basis. However currently there is no mechanism for students to test theories formulated from enquiry research to a wider audience. Therefore the research cycle has been extended to include the dissemination of enquiry-led research to service users and wider health and research communities using social media. This medium provides accessible social informal routes for dissemination of undergraduate research (Spronken-Smith et al 2013) potentially beyond UK borders whilst concurrently increasing student engagement enhancing learning (Mysko and Delgaty 2015) and developing cross-institutional technology-based communities of enquiry.

d1st6s3_teresa_shalofsky_jo_jones.pdf
13/09/2017
d1st6s3_teresa_shalofsky_jo_jones.pdf View Document

The materials published on this page were originally created by the Higher Education Academy.