Making Language Visible in the University

English for Academic Purposes and Internationalisation

Bee Bond

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781788929288
• eBook ISBN: 9781788929318
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Adult Education

This book focuses on the nexus of language, disciplinary content and knowledge communication against the background of the economic, cultural and ideological forces of Higher Education's current push for internationalisation. It suggests the need for a greater synergy between language and content experts and argues that change needs to be implemented through policy rather than on an ad-hoc basis by individual teachers. It is a call to action for English for Academic Purposes practitioners to find a way out of the silo of their own centres and work to assert influence over the wider context in which they work. The book begins and ends in the practice of teaching, with a focus throughout on understanding the barriers and enablers to that practice within a particular context.

1 The Accidental Scholar

While not the primary focus of this book, I feel it is necessary to outline my own position in relation to the investigation I undertook, and the context within which it took place. This is, in part, to acknowledge the contextualised and subjective nature of the study. As a participant as well as investigator in an ethnographic study this needs to be highlighted and recognised (Street, 1995: 51) whilst maintaining its relevance beyond the local. I also hope to provide some insights into the messy process of scholarship of learning and teaching, how it fits into the wider Higher Education landscape in the United Kingdom and to encourage other EAP practitioners who are considering or developing their own scholarship profiles.

The scholarship of learning and teaching has only recently become a focus of strategic attention, at least in the United Kingdom, in line, as I discuss later, with a greater focus on teaching as well as research excellence. This can be evidenced by the growth of centres for teaching excellence across the sector. These can take the form of either being centrally funded and cross-disciplinary or arranged around specific disciplinary concerns. For the increasing number of academic staff who are employed on teaching as opposed to research contracts engaging with this form of scholarship can be viewed as both an institutional expectation and a route to promotion. However, there can also be an assumption that those involved in the scholarship of learning and teaching in Higher Education will already know how to meet this expectation and that they have the skills required to undertake investigations that will provide insights into and enhance student education in an ethical, purposeful and rigorous manner. There is often little acknowledgement that for some, the move from disciplinary research into the scholarship of learning and teaching requires a complete epistemological shift and a different set of skills and dispositions, whilst others, employed for their professional practitioner expertise, have undergone little previous research training at all (Geertsema, 2016). For many of us, this move into scholarship is unplanned and accidental. In this chapter, I share my own rather haphazard journey into new territory in the hope that it might shed some light on the process for others who find themselves ‘accidental scholars’.

I begin this chapter by defining the scholarship of learning and teaching as distinct from (educational) research and placing it in the current context of the need to provide metrics and quantify teaching excellence in HE. This contextualisation adds explanatory power to my own personal journey, which is key to the development and trajectory of this book. I then provide an outline of how the project that is the main focus of this book developed in terms of methodology, data collection and analysis and how I worked to both theorise this process whilst working to maintain practical relevance throughout.

The Scholarship of Learning and Teaching

The Scholarship of Learning and Teaching (henceforth SoTL) movement began in the United States and its origins are widely attributed to the work of Ernst Boyer (Fanghanel et al., 2015). While SoTL remains ‘a relatively ill-defined concept’ (Fanghanel et al., 2015: 6), there are points of agreement as to what SoTL should involve. Shulman’s (2000) suggestion that scholarship should be made public and open to critique is now widely accepted and has since been built upon by Felten (2013) who suggests a 5-point framework for SoTL as ‘inquiry focussed on student learning; grounded in context; methodologically sound; conducted in partnership with students; appropriately public’. Essentially, SoTL is the ‘systematic study of teaching and learning, using established or validated criteria of scholarship, to understand how teaching (beliefs, behaviours, attitudes and values) can maximise learning, and/or develop a more accurate understanding of learning, resulting in products that are publicly shared for critique and use by an appropriate community’ (Potter & Kustra, 2011: 2). While this is the ‘norm’, it is also possible to view SoTL as going beyond this instrumentally narrow relationship to teaching and learning, where teaching is viewed as the cause, leaving an effect on students4. Here, SoTL becomes a reflexive examination of our own beliefs and practices in a way that ‘enables students’ voices and perspectives to be fully integrated into not only in problem solving scholarship but also wider educational discussions concerning ideas, theory, values and purposes’ (Ding, 2016: 15–16).

SoTL is alternatively referred to as pedagogical research and is largely seen as specific to those who work in Higher Education. It is distinct from, yet a branch of, educational research. The key differences being that educational research is conducted by those specifically research trained within the epistemological paradigms of educational research; it is often viewed as research on or about a particular area of inquiry. Those entering a SoTL ‘community of practice’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991) do so from a wide range of disciplinary epistemologies and are required to both maintain this particular perspective and cross the ‘tribal’ boundaries of disciplines (Becher & Trowler, 2001) to develop scholarship projects that can be accepted as a worthwhile contribution to teaching and learning inquiry; it is generally viewed as being research for a specific group or community. By doing so, scholars open themselves up to the question posed by Kanuka (2011 in Fanghanel et al., 2015: 9): ‘Notwithstanding such small-scale efforts [i.e. inquiry on and for practice] may make contributions to one’s practices – but when they are made public, is this enough to be considered a scholarly contribution?’ In their SoTL Manifesto, Ding et al. (2018) argue that SoTL should be about impact, including ‘impact on people, policies and practices (assessments, concepts of syllabi and curricula, communities, community engagement, leadership, mentoring)’. By having impact beyond the individual teaching and learning context, they go on to suggest that ‘scholarship has the potential to enable language educators to actively shape their educational contexts rather than be shaped by circumstance, others and powerful ideologies and structures’ (2018: 58–59). This, I suggest, is the guiding principle of this book and should be a key guiding principle for all EAP scholarship and practice.

What counts as SoTL methods of inquiry is still an area for debate, and the lines between a pedagogical approach and a means of inquiry into teaching and learning can, at times, become blurred. SoTL is also tied in with continuous professional development, or learning (CPD/ CPL) (Geertsema, 2016). SoTL should take place within disciplinary contexts but can also be used to cross disciplinary boundaries, encourage educational development across disciplines and faculties and work to change institutional practices. Viewed in this way, that EAP practitioners should engage in SoTL seems obvious. There has been long standing consideration in language teaching research around how/whether practitioners engage in research (Borg, 2009, 2013; Hanks, 2019; Smith & Rebolledo, 2018), with a focus on Action Research, Exploratory Practice or Exploratory Action Research (for more comprehensive discussion of these areas of language practitioner research see, inter alia, Burns, 2010; Allwright & Hanks, 2009; Smith & Rebolledo, 2018, respectively) . The imperative for language teachers to do this remains unclear throughout much of this literature, other than a sense that it is desirable and could, in the case of Exploratory Practice, enhance ‘quality of life’ (Hanks, 2017). For those working as EAP practitioners in Higher Education, the imperative goes beyond this because ‘by withholding contributions to scholarship we are potentially limiting our own agency, limiting our ability to influence structural change and accepting of changes and practices defined and decided by others’ (Ding, 2016: 12). SoTL in EAP, while more ambiguous in terms of methodology, becomes an ‘attempt to shorten the gap between what is and what ought to be’ (Ding, 2016: 13), i.e. moving EAP practice from a liminal, marginal position to one with academic status and a central place within the academy.

In their review of SoTL literature for the HEA, Faghanel et al. (2015) outline the different contractual status with which people working in academic departments now find themselves. Within this, they suggest that there is an increasingly clear split between those on research focused contracts, with a requirement to submit to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and those on teaching only, or teaching and scholarship, contracts. One of the aims of SoTL is to redress the perceived imbalance in status between teaching and research in HE institutions, providing public evidence of excellence in learning and teaching and thus enabling those on teaching contracts to be rewarded and recognised in equal measure with those on more research focused contracts. This has now been extended to institutional level with the introduction of the TEF.

The Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), introduced in 2016 aimed to place teaching in HE on a par with research. In the first round of TEF submissions, evidence was required at an institutional level only, with HEIs being able to create their own narrative around excellence in teaching and learning. Evidence of engagement in the scholarship of teaching and learning, or pedagogical research, was a key part of many institutions’ submission. As Fanghanel et al. suggest (2015: 10):

SoTL has been utilised as:

• a means of demonstrating excellence with a view to raising the status of teaching in relation to that of research;

• a framework to evidence excellence in teaching and learning and assess teaching quality;

• a tool to develop academics and teaching practice.

In this way, SoTL is no longer only a movement of engaged practitioners moving towards evidence based teaching practices, working to legitimise, to share and go public with their investigations and do so in a rigorous and systematic manner. SoTL is now being used as evidence for individual promotion and also for evidence of institutional excellence.

There are, therefore, instrumental and external pushes for staff to engage with SoTL; UK HEIs are increasingly setting targets around how many of their teaching staff should have achieved Fellowship status through Advance HE, one requirement of which is engagement with SoTL literature and practice, and promotion criteria have been developed to encourage a route through student education and pedagogical research. Therefore, a number of academic teaching staff may find themselves being pushed into SoTL with little intrinsic motivation and understanding around how SoTL can feed into their student education practice and little sense of purpose or direction. Without this understanding, the usual considerations, particularly around ethics, that would take place when undertaking disciplinary research can sometimes be lost through a sense that SoTL is less rigorous, more personal and a part of ‘normal’ teaching practice.

The ethics of SoTL

The ethics of SoTL, as with SoTL itself, remain undefined and a somewhat grey area. By attempting to define itself as different to traditional research, and separate from Educational Research, it is tempting for scholars to proceed without the same rigorous consideration for ethics as is now required before conducting research. This is exacerbated because many SoTL projects are localised and, by definition, should be part of normal teaching and learning practices. However, as MacLean and Poole argue: ‘Teachers who act also as scholars of teaching and learning in the practice of their discipline must consider the ethics of their dual roles in situations in which their students are also their subjects of research’ (MacLean & Poole, 2010: 1).

Most exploration of the ethics of SoTL has focused on this dual role in relation to students. Martin (2013) emphasises the need to consider students as ‘human subjects’. In the same article, Martin reproduces a statement of ethics for SoTL created and presented by Gurung et al. at the 2007 ISSOTL conference in Sydney, Australia. In this they outline three major principles. These are:

• Respect for Persons: Students (the research participants) should be treated with autonomy and must be free to decide whether or not to participate in a research study unless archival data are being used or if results are not to be presented publicly.

• Beneficence: Instructors (researchers) must recognise the need to ‘maximise possible benefits and minimise possible harm’.

• Justice: Students (research participants) should be the people who most benefit from the research. It would be unethical to research a particular group in excess if that group is not the group that will benefit from the knowledge generated through the research.

(Gurung et al., 2007 in Martin, 2013: 62–63).

The British Educational Research Association (BERA) have also produced a comprehensive guidance document around the ethics of educational research (2018). While wider ranging in scope, it does also encompass more localised practitioner research, and follows similar principles of respect for all involved. However, whilst comprehensive in areas to consider and principles to follow, it works on the assumption that those engaged in this type of research are epistemologically social scientists, and that their local ethics approval committee will also be accustomed to consideration of ethics from this standpoint. As Martin (2013) points out, this is not necessarily the case for those involved in SoTL, where their Faculty ethics committee may be more accustomed to consideration of, for example, medical ethical research principles.

Within SoTL and BERA’s guidance, the main focus for potential benefit and harm is on the students as research participants. However, once a project extends beyond the researcher’s own classroom, it is also necessary to pay attention to the potential benefit and harm to colleagues and an institution. As a colleague, it is important to consider the impact different relationships might have on the data gathered, and that comments from peer participants may be more unguarded than with an unknown researcher. In addressing an issue that is potentially problematic for many colleagues, a SoTL project is likely to result in some data that is difficult to report whilst remaining collegial and supportive. Here, I would argue, it is necessary to carefully follow the second of BERA’s principles, that a researcher ‘should respect the privacy, autonomy, diversity, values and dignity of individuals, groups and communities’ (BERA, 2018: 4).

Most importantly, the ethical goal of any SoTL project, as with any other form of research, is ‘to maximise benefit and minimise harm’ for all involved. Within my own project, I always strove to work towards these principles. All participants were volunteers and were fully informed of the aims and purpose of the project. Written consent was obtained for use of all non-public documents (for example student work; class materials and assessments) as well as for the use of interview transcripts. On occasion, participants asked for certain comments to be ‘off the record’; this request has been respected at all times. Finally, the interactions I had with participants were approached as opportunities for benefit to all, maintaining a sense of investigator-participant reciprocity.

There were multiple occasions, however, when I needed to wrestle with my conscience and question where my own ethics lay. It quickly became clear that my investigation was not benign; that there were a range of tensions and emotions at play. There were conflicts around whether my actions might harm students in protecting staff or vice versa. I hope I have navigated these tensions with sensitivity and given a representative voice to competing perspectives without causing undue harm in the process.

My journey into scholarship

I have provided this background context to situate myself within the wider UK higher education landscape. As an EAP practitioner, ‘operating on the edge of academia’ (Ding & Bruce, 2017), there is no one clear route into ‘the academy’, and scholarship or practitioner research, at least in terms of going public, has not ranked highly in the commitments of most practitioners to date. Reasons for this are myriad, but largely connected to teaching workload; qualifications; precarity and structural conditions (see Ding & Bruce, 2017; Hadley, 2015 for further discussion).

My own route into scholarship perhaps exemplifies this position, and maps onto the changing landscape of UK HE in terms of measures of teaching and excellence as outlined above.

I became an EAP practitioner in 2000, during the first real boom phase in international student recruitment to UK HEIs. I was recruited because of my qualifications and experience as an English language teacher, having worked for a number of years in private language schools in a variety of countries. These qualifications are typical of those requested for entry into teaching EAP – a Diploma in English Language Teaching (DELTA) – with little or no focus on EAP specifically. I was initially employed on an hourly paid contract. In order to qualify for a more permanent position, I studied for a post-graduate degree in language teaching. However, there was, and remains, no requirement to demonstrate expertise or understanding of EAP specifically. There is an assumption that this is something that is developed ‘on the job’ (see Ding & Campion, 2016; Campion, 2016).

Beyond completion of my Masters degree, my scholarship was desk based in terms of reading the research of others around the teaching and learning of EAP, and then attempting to apply this research to my own classroom practice. As my Centre grew in size, I was asked to take on programme leadership responsibilities, so was able to expand my understanding of EAP beyond my own classroom. From there I also developed an interest in supporting others in their own professional learning. Other than a few presentations at one-day conferences, the impact of my scholarship was internal and was largely entered into in order to prevent a personal feeling of becoming stale and stuck in the cycle of four-term, year-round teaching (Bond, 2017a).

In general, then, my journey into scholarship is the result of volunteering to take up new opportunities in order to prevent boredom, but without expecting to be successful. It is, in fact, one of constant surprise and of permanent imposter syndrome – of not feeling I was worthy or intellectually capable of being accepted or taken seriously within an academic context. This is both personal but also stru...

Table of contents

• Frontcover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction: Contextualising the Problem, Defining Terms
• 1 The Accidental Scholar
• 2 Tracing a Student Journey: The Stories of Mai and Lin
• 3 The Taught Post-Graduate Curriculum
• 4 Language and the Academic Curriculum
• 5 Language and Academic Norms
• 6 The Place of English for Academic Purposes
• 7 Language Across the Curriculum
• 8 Implications
• Afterword: The Engaged Scholar
• References