Introduction and Context
I am currently working as a Support Technician on BA Hair, Makeup, and Prosthetics for Performance, working specifically on the hair and wig-making pathway. I no longer teach any formal lessons and I do not have any influence or access to assessing student’s work, which means I interact with students in a mostly informal way, and spend the majority of my time guiding them through their making.
As a previous and slightly recent (2019) graduate, I have a unique viewpoint of the student experience and have noticed parallels in my experience on the course and my experience as an educator. I can remember being a student and being taught incredibly finnicky, detail-oriented skills and struggling to be able to pick them up from just demos and verbal instruction. I feel this puts me in a unique position to build on a stock of physical samples of wig-making skills so that students have multiple different methods of learning – I’m seeing the “other side” of learning and can now see what I perceive to be gaps and missed opportunities to use alternate methods of teaching.
Additionally, as a neurodiverse person, I can now view miscommunications and gaps in my learning from my undergrad learning experience as further evidence that visual examples of mistakes can be crucial to ensuring methods and techniques are thoroughly explained.
As my role is student facing and specialised in a specific technical skill, I am one of the people that students come to when in need of assistance with making their projects, meaning that it’s incredibly important that I can not only identify but also cross any barriers the student may have, like a learning or language difference.
For the last few years, I have noticed that we have a large gap in knowledge retention of wig-knotting and wig-making skills. I believe this is due to the low number of dedicated lessons to the craft, combined with an overload of other skills that the students also need to learn. As a result of this realisation, I have been slowly making physical samples of different knotting skills and collecting a stock of what I like to call “bad examples”.
Currently I use samples of work I made as a student as examples of what a first attempt looks like, and as a visual aid to explain what can go wrong and to help students understand the “why”. These samples include full wigs I have wefted and knotted, including the first knotting I ever did, my first few attempts at hand-weaving wefts, and my first few wig foundations. These samples are kept with my current knotting samples which are a learning resource of different knotting techniques, and when placed next to each other are explicit examples of my growth as a maker.
I would like to create a more solid, robust, and accessible resource for students so that they do not need to come find me to see the samples, allowing them to grow their agency and independence within their making. My current idea is a “glossary” or index of terms and common issues or problems, paired with photos of examples that can be left in classrooms or handed out to students, alongside physical, tactile samples of work for them to touch and inspect.
Inclusive Learning
At UAL, we have a very diverse student group – The UAL Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Annual Report shows that 39% of students are from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (B.A.M.E.) groups, and in total, 18% of students have declared themselves as disabled. These statistics show that even within the singular course that I work on, there will most likely be barriers that some students will have to face to be able to access a fair education.
It’s important to recognise that international students and students who speak English as a second or additional language will individually be at different points in their English comprehension skills, and so accessibility will need to reflect that. As Nikki Ashcraft states (2006), “classroom language, both written and spoken, needs to be made as comprehensible to students as possible for content learning and language learning to reinforce each other.” Because the broad spectrum of language abilities that current and potential students may possess can vary wildly within the individual, I feel a glossary of wig-making skill specific terminology accompanied by visual images will be incredibly helpful. This not only helps students with language barriers, but also students who have different preferred ways of learning.
There is also a cultural aspect to consider when viewing language barriers, specifically with the emotional toll of being an international student and how educational styles vary across the globe. I have personally noticed that students from other countries who don’t speak English as a native language can experience shame and embarrassment over their language barriers. The social pressures of attending university in a western country with a student base that is majoritively white and British can impact a student’s ability to attend lessons and feel confident in asking for help from teachers and staff (Hu, 2024). It is very important to me that by creating a glossary that students can access independently, they potentially can forgo some of the social shame and pressure that they may feel from having to approach someone in person.
Additionally, considering neurodiverse students leads me to the same conclusion. Neurodiversity can have a large effect on a person’s ability to learn in a traditionally structured institution, such as a university, making it imperative that not just lessons but learning resources are adapted to accommodate differences in processing, communication, and concentration (Azuka, et al, 2024).
Reflection and Action
After learning more about the barriers that students may face when learning an intricate physical skill, it is becoming more and more apparent that I need to focus on making less of a physical sample book, and more of a digitally accessible glossary or index with both written and visual definitions and examples. Feedback from peers was primarily focused on making the learning resource as accessible as possible, and the most effective way to do that is to make it digitally on a UAL based websites like Moodle and SharePoint. Students can not only access it without needing any permissions, but can also ulitise accessibility tools like immersive readers, colour and font changes, and translators. It was also brought up to me that I will need to think about how students will be made aware of the resource. My solution is visual signage in the classrooms, and email reminders to the students of their existence, specifically when they are having wig-making based lessons.
Having a glossary of technical wig-making terms should help alleviate the issues mentioned above, in the introduction. Not only will it pair with lessons, but it will also remain available to students throughout the duration of their course, hopefully building individual confidence in their abilities and practices.
Evaluation and Conclusion
Throughout the course of designing this intervention, I have learned not only a great deal about the theory behind inclusive teaching, but also about what I personally value in my own teaching practice. Putting the students first and attempting to “meet them where they are at” instead of forcing them to “come to me” is something that I have always subconsciously done. I assume this is a direct result of my experience as a student at this university, but now I have a much deeper and well-rounded understanding of how that can help my students learn. I am also now more conscious of the language that I use when I verbally instruct students, and how that can inadvertently create barriers in real time, and how it is incredibly important to make sure that I offer options, like writing things down, searching for images, or even making drawings.
My only real goal as an educator is to give my students confidence. I want them to feel confident in themselves and their abilities as well as instill independence as they become professional practitioners. This would be evidenced by students in their final years needing less individual tutorials and feeling strong enough in their skills to make their own informed decisions. The creation of a glossary as a learning resource for wig-making would allow students to not have to always rely on me – directly improving their independence and control of their own educations.
Ashcraft, N. (2006). Overcoming language barriers in content-area instruction. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: Gulf Perspectives, 3(1), pp.20-30.
Azuka, C.V., Wei, C.R., Ikechukwu, U.L. and Nwachukwu, E.L. (2024). Inclusive instructional design for neurodiverse learners. Current Perspectives in Educational Research, 7(1), pp.56-67.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (2025). Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Annual Report 2024. University of the Arts London.
Harris, J.A., Harris, I.M. and Diamond, M.E., 2001. The topography of tactile learning in humans. Journal of Neuroscience, 21(3), pp.1056-1061.
Hu, M. (2024). International students’ feeling of shame in the higher education: An intersectional analysis of their racialised, gendered and classed experiences in the UK universities. Sociology, 14(1), pp.69-89.
Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D. and Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological science in the public interest, 9(3), pp.105-119.
Verenikina, I., 2008. Scaffolding and learning: Its role in nurturing new learners.
