The opportunity to define an individual development project as part of the course was highlighted by the students as the most important outcome, leading to the greatest changes.

However, the students’ perceived outcomes of the course appeared to depend on whether they found the addressed topics relevant to their individual needs. Simply hearing about practice-related topics in lectures or talking about strategies was insufficient; they had to be tested in practice to have an impact.

This feedback may be seen as confirming a culture of individualised specialisation (Perkins, 2013). The lack of perceived relevance in hearing about other students’ practising could be seen as a lack of shared understanding and identification among them (Bandura, 1997). However, some found it beneficial to hear about other students’ practising, not necessarily because they found other students’ approaches directly applicable but because learning about the variation in the student group appeared to validate individual differences and, thus, acknowledged diversity.

S1 and S2 both expressed low learning outcomes from group engagement but explained this experience by positioning themselves at different ends of a hierarchy: S1 felt too inexperienced to contribute, whereas S2 felt too experienced to benefit. This may be seen as an internalisation of the hierarchical learning culture identified in some research (Perkins, 2013). Thus, the degree of individual achievement or experience determines an individual’s status or “place” within a social group and may hinder peer identification with students with a different status.