Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Criminology

Darren Palmer

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030351571
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030351588
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Research in Education
• Index: Social Sciences

This book is the first dedicated collection aimed at examining teaching and learning issues within criminology. This collection of essays identifies how criminological practices are being shaped by larger developments and changes within the field of scholarship on teaching and learning. Changes include an increased university focus on 'good teaching' rankings and the associated emphasis on the professional development of teaching staff in order to shape them. In the past decade government funding for teaching and learning awards, and the move to sector funding on the basis of 'good teaching' outcomes (student satisfaction, completion rates, etc.), have further fostered developments in teaching and learning practices and the associated scholarship. However, criminology lags behind in responding to these changes. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Criminology aims to fill this gap by examining teaching practices in the hope of fostering a new generation of publications dedicated to scholarship on teaching and learning within the field.

© The Author(s) 2020

D. Palmer (ed.)Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Criminologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35158-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. The Five ‘Troubling’ Developments in Criminology

Darren Palmer¹

(1)

Criminology, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC, Australia

Darren Palmer

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Over the past decade Australian criminology has experienced a seismic growth in the number of tertiary courses and the number of students or student load. In 2018 alone three Victorian Universities—Monash, Swinburne and the Australian Catholic University—are undertaking the development of new courses (the first two already offer criminology subjects—individual classes that can be grouped to provide a ‘major’ within a degree such as the Bachelor of Arts). At my own university, we have gone from a criminology ‘major’ introduced in 2005 as part of a broad-based liberal arts degree, to a Bachelor of Criminology and double degrees across the university (Forensic Science, Psychological Science, Law, and IT Security). Enrolments and student loads reflect this growth in courses. To give an example, first year class enrolments a decade ago were less than 150 students but are now around 1500 students. That is just one university, albeit with three campuses and a strong history and reputation in online teaching (The Open University in England were advisers in the early years of Deakin University).

Deakin is by no means the only Australian university to have experienced significant growth over the past decade. While up to date data is not easily obtained and that which is available requires careful interpretation, what we do have is clear: the number of undergraduate and postgraduate students has grown dramatically, and significantly more than the baseline growth in student numbers within the tertiary sector during the past few years of ‘open’ enrolment (i.e. a demand-driven system without a cap on student numbers across the sector, since changed in 2018 with a cap set at university level based on the previous year). But the numerical growth of criminology in the higher education is only part of the story.

To expand this story, this chapter explores Garland’s five ‘troubling’ developments in criminology. Garland (2011) suggest that the institutional development and growth of criminology in recent times may very well lead to the demise of criminology. His argument is that as criminology increasingly becomes a stand-alone ‘discipline’ (he rejects the claims of criminology as a discipline), it is increasingly separated from other disciplines and oriented towards vocational training and practical governmental objectives (both in terms of research and training). He sees particularly strong evidence of this emanating from the US. But to what extent is this true of other countries such as Australia? The first section introduces some selected literature on the development of criminology and scholarship on learning and teaching in criminology (SCOLATIC) and the efforts of the discipline to create learning and teaching ‘standards’. Following this, the chapter addresses Garlands concern about the directions of the institutional development of criminology.

Before proceeding we need a working definition of SCOLATIC. First, this is simply an extension from SCOLAT to include ‘in criminology’. I prefer SCOLAT to the more common SoLT (scholarship of teaching and learning) as it is simply less ‘cluncky’ though note concerns with the rise of ‘unfortunate acronym’ usage (Tight 2018: 68). As Tight (2018) suggests, the focus on scholarship on learning and teaching in the late twentieth century owes much to the work of Boyer (1990, 1998) who identified four domains of scholarship—discovery, integration, application and teaching, the latter now broadened to teaching and learning (Tight 2018, and see Boshier and Huang 2008). Various definitions have followed, though much of it focused on the teaching aspects (see Tight 2018: 63–64), though Trigwell and Shale (2014: 525, cited in Tight 2018: 64) indicate ‘we see the scholarship of teaching as about making trans-parent, for public scrutiny, how learning has been made possible’. But this needs to be about more than the specific teaching and learning practices so as to include ‘scholarship on scholarship’ (e.g. Tight’s own work, 2018, though he returns to the focus on improving learning and teaching and disseminating this, see 2018: 64), and ‘how learning is made possible’ through curriculum development and associated contextual factors. For current purposes I define it as research-based scholarship on any aspects of factors shaping the practices of learning and teaching in criminology and the material artefacts produced within those practices. In this way, SCOLATIC can range from analysis of the impact of broader societal structures on learning and teaching in criminology (e.g. the rise of mass education) through to highly individualistic learning and teaching practices such as single classroom approaches to developing ‘critical thinking’ skills. To be included within SCOLATIC the research must address criminological practices. Otherwise it is simply scholarship on learning and teaching (SCOLAT).

The Institutional Development of Criminology and Learning and Teaching Scholarship

The formative years of the institutional development of criminology owe a lot to ‘crises’. In the United States the 1965 President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice fundamentally shaped the development of criminal justice and criminology courses. The Commission was, as the title to the published executive summary attests, a systematic response to The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (1967). Apart from the research programme established by the commission, it also funded the development of two- and four-year qualifications in Law Enforcement Education Programmes to which “many existing criminal justice and criminology programmes … owe their existence” (Giever 2007: 23). Thus, out of the ‘crisis’ in criminal justice emerged a significant expansion in criminology in the US.

As Mark Finnane has documented, early developments in Australian criminology in the 1960s and 1970s were shaped by developments in the UK and USA and the active agency of key individuals seeking to translate those international experiences into the Australian context (Finnane 1998, 2006, 2008). These experiences and linkages were used to shape an understanding of the need for Australian universities to develop criminology in ways that would avert the crisis in the US (Palmer 2017). Further, the crisis of policing in Queensland in the late 1980s again fostered course development directed towards the need to professionalise policing. As Mahony and Prenzler documented in the mid-1990s (and one of the earlier examples of SCOLATIC), a series of police-related commissions of inquiry that followed the US President’s Commission also highlighted the need for tertiary education in policing in Australia, including the St Johnston (1971) and Neesham (1985) inquiries in Victoria and those that followed in NSW (Lusher 1982). But it was some years later when the seminal Fitzgerald Commission of Inquiry in Queensland sparked a series of educational developments including the shift towards undergraduate degrees for police (Mahony and Prenzler 1996; see also Lewis 1992).

While criminal justice ‘crises’ might form part of the background to the development of criminology and SCOLATIC, there has been much written about the need for community engagement and public education by criminologists, such as the call for ‘public criminology’ (Loader and Sparks 2011) and Bosworth and Hoyle’s (2011) edited collection in search of an answer to their title What is Criminology? Yet in each instance there is little said about what we do in translational spaces between research and teaching and learning: the elucidation of the assumed nexus between research and learning and teaching (the definition of a university). This volume and this introduction seek to engage criminologists (and others) in a different ‘framing’ (Goffman 1959) of the issues: what do we do as practising learning and teaching scholars? How are we and through what means ‘making up’ the broader current and future criminological community?

A partial answer to these questions has already been attempted in two important transatlantic efforts to ‘benchmark’ course content. In the US, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences developed the Minimum Standards for Criminal Justice Education (ACJS n.d.).¹ Though limited in terms of prescription, “a minimum of six content areas must be addressed for university criminal justice baccalaureate degree programs” including: “administration of justice, corrections, criminological theory, law adjudication, law enforcement, and research and analytic methods” (Sorensen et al. 1994: 63).

Developments in Britain have been more detailed following the British Society of Criminology development of Criminology Benchmarks (BSC 2006)² to establish “a threshold standard for an Honours degree in Criminology and a range of related courses” (2006: 2) (in total there were 24 listed course titles, see Appendix 1, 2006: 17). While avoiding prescribing “substantive content” the focus was on establishing graduate “abilities and skills” and “the areas of knowledge which constitute the core of the discipline” (2006: 2). These were bracketed under “major theories”, though they were conceptually grouped into theories—not named—addressing “crime”, “victimisation”, “responses to crime and deviance” and “representations” (2006: 3); “key concepts”; “principles of social research”; “principles of human rights and civil liberties”; “dimensions of social divisions and social diversity”; “construction and influence of representations”, and; “local, national and international contexts” (2006: 3–4). The Benchmarks do “not specify teaching and learning policies or methods” or “modes of assessment” (2006: 4) though it does provide lists of “cognitive abilities and skills” that students are expected to acquire (2006: 6) and “learning resources” (2006: 8). The Benchmarks then provides a Table (2006: 12–16) linking each specified benchmark, divided into “Subject know...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. The Five ‘Troubling’ Developments in Criminology
• 2. Transforming Pedagogy in Criminology
• 3. Learning Behind Prison Bars: University Students and Prisoners’ Experiences of Studying Together
• 4. Teaching Crime Prevention and Community Safety
• 5. Trigger Warnings in Criminology Teaching Contexts: Some Reflections Based on Ten Years of Teaching a Sensitive Topic
• 6. Employer Expectations of Research Skills Provided in Criminology Undergraduate Education
• 7. Meta Review of Recent Scholarship on Learning and Teaching in Criminology (SCOLATIC)
• Back Matter