This week I focused on refining the questionnaires, one for students and one for technical staff and visiting practitioners, which will help me understand how photographic studio terminology is learned, used, and sometimes misunderstood.
Both questionnaires were designed to gather specific insights:
The staff questionnaire explores observed challenges, levels of student confidence, and the types of support technicians feel would be beneficial.
Following the ethical requirements, each includes an embedded Participant Information Sheet, a clear consent statement, and no identifiable data are collected. All responses remain fully anonymous.
As part of the preparation, I contacted the MA Fashion Photography course leader to request permission to attend an upcoming session and allocate 10 minutes for students to complete the questionnaire. I also sent a group email to all technical staff explaining the project and inviting them to participate.
Screenshot: Email to PaulScreenshot: Email to staff
At my first *proper* tutorial with Andrew, it became clear that I was approaching my action research project from a wrong lens. I had jumped straight into thinking about solutions, specifically the glossary app, without fully understanding the problem. I had assumed the app was the answer before I had properly interrogated what the question actually is.
One thing Andrew pointed out, which immediately resonated and made me realise something true about my own approach, was that I seemed to be working from a place of certainty rather than curiosity. In other words: I was acting as though I already knew what students struggled with and what they needed, even though I had not formally asked them. This was an important moment of self-awareness. It made me recognise how easy it is, as a practitioner, to rely on instinct, repetition, and experience – especially when I spend so much time teaching in the studio and seeing students’ reactions in real time.
But Andrew’s comment made me realise that my understanding is still partial. I see what students do in workshops, but not necessarily what they feel, what they assume, or what they fear they don’t know. I see the visible challenges, not the invisible ones.
This insight is pushing me to ask a more profound question: “What don’t I know?”
This question completely reframes my approach. Instead of starting with a proposed solution, I now need to put my focus on the students themselves. What they experience. What they understand. What they struggle with. What they wish they had. And just as importantly: what I might be misinterpreting or overlooking.
I already know from teaching the MA Fashion Photography that students arrive with widely different levels of photographic knowledge. They come from different cultural, educational, and linguistic backgrounds. Yes, I have observed a language barrier (especially between native and second-language English speakers) and I do recognise that this may only be one layer of the issue. Some students may not know technical terminology simply because they have never been exposed to studio practice before. Others may feel embarrassed to ask questions. Some may use different terminology from their home countries. Some may feel overwhelmed by fast-paced workshop environments.
But (and this is the key point) I do not know this for certain until I ask them.
How can I engage students who know a lot alongside those who know very little?
How can I understand what students already know before assuming what they don’t?
How can I meaningfully uncover the silent, hidden, or unspoken gaps in confidence?
How can I create space for students to tell me what they need, instead of me deciding it for them?
I had been thinking too far ahead, my solution-focused mindset skipped over the most crucial step: understanding the problem from multiple perspectives. Once I truly understand this, the right form of intervention—digital or not—will become clearer.
This encourages me to take a step back, sit in the uncertainty, and begin again from a position of curiosity. This shift opens up space for a more honest, inclusive, and reflective enquiry – one that starts with students’ realities rather than my projections.
I cannot support students effectively unless I first understand them, and unless I also critically reflect on what I don’t yet know about their learning needs.
Reframing the project this way is fundamentally reshaping my direction. The research now begins with enquiry, listening, and discovery and not with a predetermined outcome.
The true purpose of action research: to learn before acting!
“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.
And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.”
– Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Department of Defense Briefing, 12 Feb 2002
Intervention Proposal: Inclusive Toolkit for Photography Workshops
My role as a specialist technician in photography at LCF involves delivering varied workshops—from analogue and darkroom to digital, studio, and post-production. In my intervention, I aim to develop a toolkit to embed inclusive practice into the structure and culture of technical learning within my workshops and my team. This study will focus on improving access and engagement for students with diverse needs, identities, and learning styles.
The practice of professional photography, especially within the fashion industry, assumes physical ability, sometimes neurotypical processing, and prior familiarity with technical language or equipment. These assumptions can create barriers for disabled, neurodivergent, multilingual, or otherwise marginalised students. My aim is to shift from reactive accommodation to proactive, inclusive design – something I have been thinking about quite a lot recently, and I’m up for the challenge of exploring avenues and solutions to better my practice, with the hope of implementing it in my technical department.
This intervention will take the form of an Inclusive Teaching Toolkit. I will be looking into:
Flexible task adaptations for technical processes.
Revising asynchronous materials to be screen-reader friendly and available in multiple formats.
Access reflection prompts embedded in pre-briefs.
Diversifying my reference list, centring underrepresented photographers and artists.
Optional, inclusive crit formats; and finally
Developing a short workshop or discussion session – exploring how access, identity, and belief shape photographic practice.
I plan to pilot these changes in at least one workshop (to be confirmed) and collect informal student feedback to refine the toolkit. The aim is to create something sustainable, shareable, and adaptable across different technical contexts.
My approach is grounded in critical pedagogy and a belief that access must be designed into the learning environment – not added as a response, but embedded as a shared responsibility. The goal isn’t to redesign the curriculum overnight, but to take small, intentional steps that can shift how inclusion is understood and embedded in technical learning.
* “Toolkit” refers to the modular, adaptable nature of these resources – designed for ongoing development, use, and co-creation in technical teaching.
