PP0554 - Mending the Gap: Collaborative Learning with Service Users

You will attend a series of lectures which will introduce you to key themes around professional and service user/client identities, the way narratives can be used to oppress or empower, the growth of collective advocacy movements, and the importance of meaningful service user involvement in service development. In seminars and workshops you will collaboratively work towards the production of an assessed piece of creative work expressive of the shared understanding and relationships developed over the course of the module. These sessions are supported by the eLP where you can review key ideas from lectures, and contribute to online discussions. The online reading list will provide guidance as to key texts to support your learning.

Module tutors will use online resources /eLP to provide support materials. Tutors will support student/service-user/client-led seminars and workshops for the development of project ideas. Formative feedback will be provided during seminars and workshops as your project ideas take shape, and summative feedback will be provided following the final exhibition/display of your work. Opportunities will be provided for you to develop a sense of participation in a developing network of gap mending projects involving a number of European higher education institutions and user-led organisations. Contact details for all tutors for this module are available in the module handbook and via the eLP.

All modules at Northumbria include a range of reading materials that students are expected to engage with. The reading list for this module can be found at: http://readinglists.northumbria.ac.uk
(Reading List service online guide for academic staff this containing contact details for the Reading List team – http://library.northumbria.ac.uk/readinglists)

Knowledge & Understanding:
1. You will be able to express understanding of ways in which structures of inequality are reproduced in everyday relations between professionals and service users and to identify ways of addressing these
2. You will be able to critically evaluate media representations of marginalised social groups

Intellectual / Professional skills & abilities:
3. You will develop enhanced professional skills by engaging collaboratively with people from out with the academic sphere

Personal Values Attributes (Global / Cultural awareness, Ethics, Curiosity) (PVA):
4. You will develop an understanding of the value of collaborative work and of respectful listening to the voices, experiences and perspectives of devalued social groups

Formative Assessment: Peer and tutor feedback on mid-point group presentation of project proposals

Summative assessment 1 (40%):

Group presentation of creative work expressive of the shared understanding and relationships developed over the course of the module (e.g. poster/short play/collection of poems/song/newsletter/recital)

(LO 1,2,3,4)

Summative assessment 2 (60%):

You will individually produce a 1000 word reflective diary about ways in which you have learned and developed personally as a result of this collaborative process

(LO 1,2,4)

N/A

N/A

Working collaboratively, you will begin to reflect upon the way that gaps in knowledge and experience between professionals and service users/clients have been used to explain and justify unequal power relations. You will explore the ways in which narratives and representations are formed and circulate in everyday life in order to create stereotyped expectations and assumptions about different groups within society, and begin to identify ways of overcoming these. You will critically reflect on your own value base in relation to participation and collaboration with people with whom you have until now perhaps had limited contact and upon the implications of this learning experience for your own future professional practice.