RAPPORT
Issue 5 (August 2020)
expect to fail). One student was
‘concerned over their ability to continue,
based on their current performance on the
course’ (Portfolio 23, CS 2), extrapolating
from initial module scores to generalise
about their overall academic ability to
study at this level. Another student
interprets a capped grade to be the result
of ‘a lack of fairness in the grading
system’ (Portfolio 9, CS 3). The
explanations for the failure are different
but in both cases there is a sense that
these failing grades are high stakes and
challenge the students’ ability to progress
on the course and at a deeper level their
identity as students.
One tutor remarked on the tension at the
outset of the tutorial, the emotional tenor
of the conversation and how fast
everyone is talking: the student in this
tutorial explains; ‘it's just like you know
what to put for the points, but you just
seem to…I just like I'll be writing about
whatever and I just list it’ (Portfolio 5, CS
1). The tutor interprets this as a lack of
confidence and articulacy, one that
diminishes the significance of the issue
that the student has come to seek support
with.
This fits with accounts of tutorials as
"emotionally charged interactions" (Trees
et al., 2009: 398), where the student
experiences tension around
acknowledging criticism and at the same
time wants to mitigate the impact of this
criticism. Shvidko points out that face-toface
encounters such as tutorials or
writing conferences, while pedagogically
valuable, are ‘not emotionally neutral’
(2018: 20).
A number of writers (Ivanic, 1998;
Gourlay, 2009; Gibbs, 2014) have made
explicit the connection between transition
to university and the potential identity
threat involved in transformational
learning. In his essay on fear and anxiety
as enemies of learning, Gibbs (2014)
cites one of Carl Rogers’ 10 Principles of
Learning:
‘Learning which involves a change in
self-organization—in the perception
of oneself—is threatening and tends
to be resisted’ (Rogers 1969).
Similarly, Gourlay maintains:
‘the transition into the new university
environment inherently and 'normally'
involves an emotional process of
change which may be destabilizing
and challenging in terms of student
sense of identity’ (2009: 183).
Gibbs saw that learning that was
threatening to the self could prevent
people from perceiving and thinking
openly. If failure, actual or predicted, is
acknowledged as threatening and
anxiety-inducing then tutors need to pay
attention to the emotional impact of failure
to mitigate this sense of threat in order to
allow learning to proceed. In these tutorial
accounts we see the tutor act as a key
means to help the student manage this
identity-threatening environment.
Gibbs (again drawing on Rogers,1969)
lists three ways of reducing threat in an
educational context:
• a warm and supportive emotional
environment;
• neutral acceptance of people’s views
rather than aggressive challenges;
• removal of summative judgements in
formal assessment.
Similarly, Shvidko remarks on the
affiliative interactional resources tutors
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