Field Trips for Children’s Literature

Title of case study

Field Trips

School/Subject:

School of Critical Studies/ English Literature

Lecturer(s):

Matthew Creasy and co-Lecturer Professor Dimitra Firi

Course:

British Children’s Literature (ENGLIT4092)

Student Level:

Level 4 (SCQF level 10)

Class size:

 

c.30-60 but on field trip c.10-12

Location:

On campus/in person

 

Brief summary

Matthew Creasy was keen to show students the connection between what was learned within the classroom/seminar context and how this could be applied within a working context, specifically how bookshops market books for children. This involved an optional field trip visit to the Waterstones bookshop on Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow. Besides looking at practical examples of book marketing, this visit also included a chance to speak with professionals working within the bookshop and ask questions about their role. The appointed worker gave a talk and then allowed a time for questions.

Matthew began this pre-Covid but saw such a value in it that post-Covid he has conducted an interview with staff members in Waterstones using Zoom and asked them questions prepared by students. These videos are recorded and available on YouTube (links below). Matthew is now working to try and return to the in-person visit.

 

Objectives

My aim was to link this trip with the seminar work being conducted. It looked to place the information learned from these sessions into practice to show students the value of what they were being taught. This specifically involved the marketing of children’s books and shelf displays within the shop.

 

What is done?

Preparation

The field trip was an optional visit for final year undergraduate students within this course and was also offered to Masters Education students who undertook the course on Children’s Literature. While the PGT students were invited, the later seminar focused only on the undergraduate students of that particular course. The method of learning required a large amount of preparation and building a rapport with the booksellers' manager/representative months in advance, who freely gave their time to this activity. The field trip was free of charge, making the only resources necessary the time, relationship building, and the visit itself (an hour to 90 minutes). I created a sign-up sheet for students on Moodle and promoted the value of this trip to them through Moodle and in class, and used previous student feedback to show this value.

Event

Students were expected to meet in front of the bookshop at the required time, instead of commuting together from the university. Inside the bookshop, students were given the opportunity to practically see how major booksellers, like Waterstones, market their books based on their covers – those with only showing spine/full cover/book placed in centre, etc. The event also showed how books are classified based on the definition of ‘children’, linking the abstract idea from the class with real examples. The attending students were expected to come with questions to ask the seller and be polite. Some students got so interested in the talk, that they wanted to arrange further meetings with the bookseller to discuss their ideas.

Post-event seminar

A short time period was dedicated to the trip, where the students who had been to the shop were invited to share their opinions and experiences with those had not been there, so that the whole class could reflect on it. As this was a voluntary trip, the seminar only focused on it for 10-15 minutes. The students who hadn’t been felt engaged, although the visit wasn’t emphasised too much.

 

What works well?

From observation, students were engaged with the speaker and saw a connection between the abstract work carried out in seminars and lectures and how that could be practically transferred to a working environment. This accomplished the objective of the field trip and further aligned with the university’s objective to link classroom materials with real world practice.

The students who had gone on the trip enjoyed themselves and felt like they benefited from it after being asked for verbal feedback.

 

Benefits

Students

Staff
  • Students were very engaged with the field trip, actively engaging with the bookseller and discussing what had been said.
  • Students were also able to pick up specific things they had observed and discuss them during the seminar (policy, logistics, classification of the books)
  • Students testified to being able to make connections between what they were learning in the classroom and real-life working situations.
  • Mention of the success of similar field trips to the archives with students from other English Literature courses taught by myself.
  • The trip was free of charge, making the students more likely to turn up.
  • Strong benefits to connecting classroom discussion to real world events and places (showing how theoretical categories of books translated into bookselling spaces).

 

Challenges            

Students

Staff
  • Requires students to be available and have the time and energy to come along. Difficult to make this compulsory to the course, especially due to commuting and because the trip is not part of the contact hours.
  • The students who went on the field trip are required to give feedback to those who didn’t make it to the class. This can be difficult for them to present.

 

 

 
  • Not knowing how many students will come along and it is difficult to encourage them to attend. Want to ensure that the speaker is not left with only one or two people there and also justify the speaker’s time spent.
  • Hard to control what the bookseller/ speaker says. They can be very keen on talking for long periods of time, which could cause engagement issues for students.
  • Health and safety concerns and risk assessment for having a class outside the classroom. Example: once, a student fainted in the shop. 
  • It can be hard to focus the seminar on this trip if a number of students were unable to attend. Only limited time could be dedicated to the trip. Also, there is a need to lead the seminar so that the students who didn’t/couldn’t attend don’t feel guilty/bad.

 

What did you learn?

Going forward, I would like to further explore the risk management involved in taking students out on field trips due to the incident of the student fainting. I don’t want to underestimate this.

I am also keen to work out other ways to engage students in coming along and asking for feedback on why previous students did not participate in that trip, as these reasons have not been yet identified (not in the class nor in the course evaluation forms). Feedback exercises after the seminar were identified as more appropriate, since course evaluation forms don’t allow for such specific questions. Once those reasons are known, solving them could help with increasing the attendance.  

 

What advice would you give to others?

I would recommend the use of field trips to others. It does require a lot of time and effort during the preparation, but this is worth it given the students’ engagement and the making links between classroom practice and ideas to real life working environments.

 

References

Dr Creasy has videos of the field trip activity during Covid available on YouTube:

 

 

 

Author

Dr Matthew Creasy

 

Guides