Could do Better? Exploring the Potential of the Patchwork Text as a Liberating Assessment Process for Health and Social Care Leadership Education

Abstract

AbstractThis paper presents a critical account of some of the tensions inherent in designing appropriate assessment activities for health and social care students within a challenging wider context. Within the confines of two of the most increasingly scrutinised sectors – health and social care and higher education – this piece explores how employers' needs of reducing the amount of time employees spend on ‘off-site’ development might have to be counterbalanced with learner expectations of enhanced contact time and meaningful engagement. A case study example is presented in which an undergraduate leadership programme – aimed primarily at health and social care professionals with supervisory and/or managerial experience – turns these tensions into something more positive by using a ‘meta’ patchwork text approach to leadership development. The authors will argue that the patchwork text (as introduced by Scoggins & Winter 1999) – in which small episodes of learning are placed into a wider context by learners...