Creating Psychological Safety for Group Crits

Brief description of session and activities

“[P]utting your pictures up on the wall involves a lot of trust, like sharing your personal history.” (Bochner, 2006)

Showing and sharing work in group critiques can be exposing and provoke fear and anxiety for students. It requires a degree of self belief, psychological resilience, a sense of belonging as well as an understanding of the basic skills of critiques.

Lack of familiarity with critiques as a teaching and learning method and difficulties in establishing and maintaining the core conditions for emotional and psychological safety can result in loss of confidence, loss of motivation, avoidance/non attendance, isolation and consequently, fewer opportunities for acquiring skills needed for successful progression.

Openness and willingness to take risks in group critiques can, however, be developed and maintained within course groups. A sense of trust and safety enables students to engage with their peers to create and develop a supportive forum to share ideas/work and to give and receive feedback.

This workshop focuses on establishing a sense of emotional and psychological safety within groups to facilitate participation in group critiques and draws on the experience of the counselling service and teaching staff in supporting students to use group critiques as a teaching and learning tool.

How will students be involved in the session?

A “crib-sheet” resource for students will be produced for this workshop.