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Peer to peer learning - developing postgraduate teaching, whilst raising awareness of research for undergraduates

Yvette Hutchison
Yvette Hutchison

Jonathan Heron
Jonathan Heron

Translating research into innovative teaching project aims to assist postgraduate research (PGR) students translate their specific research into teaching UGs. This will involve their understanding how to select and structure appropriate aspects of their current research and adapt these for modules already existing in the Theatre and Performance Studies curriculum. It will also suggest ways in which they can both develop and share their research through practice (academic performance lecture, workshop, an immersive experience) which in turn will make the material more accessible and encourage more active and performative participation by learners and teachers.

PGR students will work in pairs to develop their teaching plans and attend each other’s presentations. We will then run a workshop on appropriate peer-to-peer feedback. These processes will facilitate and encourage peer-to-peer learning, while highlighting PG research to UG students, who may not have a strong sense of what postgraduate study means. In this way we hope this project will be a pilot for future years, both to continue this work with future PGR students and to recruit more MA and PhD students.

It will be disseminated beyond the department through a similar workshop run in CADRE, involving our own PGR lead learner, who will be involved in expanding this project to students in the following academic year. We will also offer a workshop at the International Federation for Theatre Research Conference (Stockholm, 13-17 June, 2016) New Scholars Forum in Stockholm in June. Our final report will be a film that documents the process, its successes, weaknesses and failures through which we hope to ‘learn better’.


Dr Yvette Hutchison is a Reader and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies. Apart from her research on theatre in the African context, and how intercultural performance practices are challenged by ongoing postcolonial issues, she is also interested in innovative pedagogy, and particularly in how figurative thinking and embodied learning may assist student engagement with abstract concepts. She is particularly interested in exploring how as a community we can develop innovative postgraduate teaching while creating a greater link between the PG and UG environments in the university.

Dr Jonathan Heron is IATL Principal Teaching Fellow.

Final report

(PDF Document) Inteirm report

(Video clip) Final report (see below)