Transforming Education Through Innovation: Celebrating Excellence at Bournemouth University’s Annual Conference

Editors: Roushan, G.

Conference: FLIE Learning and Teaching Conference

Dates: 7 July 2025

Journal: Transforming Education Through Innovation: Celebrating Excellence at Bournemouth University’s Annual Conference

ISBN: 9 781858 993461

Abstract:

Lights, Camera, Inclusion? Exploring Student Role Perception and Belonging in the University Television Studio This pecha kucha presentation explores the extent to which the university television studio functions as an inclusive learning space. It looks at student experiences of simulated industry roles and how they reflect broader dynamics of identity, capital, and belonging. Drawing on Bourdieu’s conceptual toolkit, the study investigates how students’ cultural, social, and symbolic capital influences their role selection and performance in a higher education first year television production unit. The research employs a mixed-methods approach. An initial questionnaire begins to capture students’ perceptions of studio roles and is analysed using Exploratory Factor Analysis to map the emergent learner-defined “field” of the university studio. A second phase uses an innovative qualitative method called VR elicitation where students are re-immersed in 360-degree video recordings of their own studio rehearsals using virtual reality headsets. While viewing, they narrate their thoughts and feelings, offering insight into how they navigate studio hierarchies, confidence, and a sense of fit or exclusion. Preliminary findings suggest that students often avoid leadership roles not due to lack of competence, but because they do not see themselves as a ‘fit’ for visible positions of authority. This reflects internalised hierarchies that mirror professional industry structures, potentially perpetuating inequalities within a space designed to prepare students for diverse creative careers. In the presetentation I will argue that studio-based learning can replicate exclusions unless educators actively surface and challenge symbolic violence and structural assumptions. By focussing on student voice – literally, through VR elicitation – this research offers new perspectives on inclusivity in vocational film and media education. It contributes to ongoing debates around employability, creative pedagogy, and the role of critical reflexivity in supporting more equitable participation in the screen industries.

Source: Manual