Mapping my Action Research 

I am basing my Action Research Project on the intervention I undertook for the Inclusive Practices Unit. I therefore see my ARP starting with a fresh round of reflections on that intervention. Following that, I will go through steps 1–5 as set out with the Action Research Cycle (based on McNiff and Whitehead 2009). Considering some changes and expansions I want to make to the intervention, I decided to consider my ARP cycle as part of an Action Research Spiral (Kemmis and McTaggart, 2000, cited in Koshy et al., 2010) which starts with the IP intervention.

IP Intervention: ‘Hairy Drawing’ workshop

For the IP unit, I designed a collective drawing workshop which was building on similar workshops my teaching partner Roland Reemaa and I had previously carried out in a few different teaching contexts, e.g. with undergraduate architecture students at CSM, as well as master students from Delft Technical University. I carried the IP intervention out in the autumn of f the academic year 24/25 in the same teaching context where I’ve chosen to act for ARP—the vertical design studio (2nd and 3rd year architecture students) we run at CSM Spatial Practices. The collective drawing workshop is based on the concept of ‘Hairy Drawings’ (East, 2009), which I further developed into a collective drawing method that is applicable to an undergraduate teaching context.

For the IP unit, I had identified individualistic practices in architecture and architectural education to contribute to two social justice issues: (1) they discourage practitioners from engaging with the diversity of the people they design spaces for; (2) in university context, these practices hinder students’ engagement with the diverse lived experiences of their studio peers. Thus, the aims of the intervention were: (1) to share knowledge and varied perspectives on the site that everyone develops an architecture project for; (2) to build stronger relationships within the group of students, and to encourage collaborations and critical friendships beyond the workshop. A full description and reflection on the workshop is included in the following post: https://certifyinglaura.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2025/01/21/intervention-reflection-hairy-drawing-ws/

Reflections on the intervention

I reflected on the IP intervention independently, as well as with my co-tutor Roland Reemaa, and decided to undertake some changes for my ARP.

What I missed in the IP process:

1. Although I got some feedback, I missed a deliberate reflection from the students on the method;
2. A reflection from students on how they had or hadn’t taken the knowledge from the collaborative excercise further into their individual projects; 
3. Students considering their positionality more deliberately; 

For ARP, I therefore decided to:

1. Gather and analyse data more deliberately, e.g. by interpreting the drawings together with the students, as well as by myself. I also decided to interview a focus group of students.
2. See the workshop as a part of a holistic site research cycle, i.e. expand the period I consider the impact of the intervention. This includes the laying of the groundwork for the collective drawing workshop as part of my ARP, as well as interpreting as data the individual work students undertake after the workshop. 

With my co-tutor Roland Reemaa, we discussed the day of the workshop itself. We thought the following things had worked well: 

1. A simple technical task at the start (preparing base drawings in groups);
2. Giving prompts for what to draw;
3. Time constraints (no time to overthink or to be too precious about the graphics; to incentivise simultaneous drawing by several people);
4. Collective discussion in the end (to give the work value and to hear each other voices across smaller groups); 
5. Not asking groups to “finish” drawings in their own time, i.e. focusing on process rather than outcome;

With the changed scope I wanted to implement as part of my ARP, we decided on some changes together with Roland: 

1. to give them a pre-task at the collective site vist with the aim tp encourage taking field notes as an instrument of discovery (Webb and Webb, 1932, cited in Tjora, 2006, p. 429);
2. to give them a quick creative task to be carried out in pairs with the aim to get them thinking about the site through their own, and someone else’s perspective;

Ethical Action Plan

Writing the Ethical Action Plan helped me to set my focus, and the tutorial and feedback session with my tutor Mallika were helpful for narrowing down the scope of the project and for creating a deliberate list of evaluation methods. Although Mallika warned me that I might end up with too much data if I consider the collective drawing workshop as part of a longer site research cycle that consists of several actions, I couldn’t resist doing just that, as it felt important to me that I get to analyse how students take what they learn as part of the workshop further into other tasks and ultimately their design project.

Bibliography:

[1] McNiff, J., & Whitehead, J. (2009). Doing and writing action research. SAGE.

[2] Koshy, E., Koshy, V., & Waterman, H. (2011). What is action research?. In What is action research? (pp. 1-24). SAGE Publications Ltd, https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446288696.n1

[3] Tjora, A.H. (2006). Writing Small Discoveries: An Exploration of Fresh Observers’ Observations. London: Sage Publications. 

[4] East (2009).Expressing Interest. London: East, pp 147–150.