Academic language and learning practice: Reflections on what, how and why

Workshop for new to Academic Language and Learning (ALL) colleagues

Bronwyn JamesUniversity of Wollongong

Workshop objectives

• identify the ways in which we ‘do’ academic language and learning and what drives these particular ways of working (the makeup of student cohorts, contextual enablers and constraints, theoretical framings, history, our own views of who we are professionally and our roles in the university ...)

• identify differences and similarities in the ways in which we work in our individual institutional settings

• reflect critically on the ways in which we work/ ‘do’ academic language and learning teaching/practice

Workshop Plan

• Introductions• Why focus on practice?

– Theorising practice.– Lillis’ article– Towards a more critical scholarship of ALL practice ‘mapping the field in multiple ways that allow its diversity to be

deployed knowingly in the ongoing re-invention of the academy’ (Lee and McWilliam, 2008,p.76)

• Talking/writing about practice– Individual and pair work– Group discussion

• Publication?

Why focus on Practice?

• Database of ALL practice

• Identity work/disciplinarity work?‘mapping the field in multiple ways’

Lee, A., & McWilliam, E. (2008). What game are we in? Living with academic development International Journal of Academic Development, 13(1), 67-77.

• Common Practices – Individual consultation – Subject integrated/embedded ALL work

ALL practice – simply what we do or a diverse and complex field …?

• Practices involve:– Actors– Actions– Settings– Tools and artefacts– Rules– Roles– Relationships (Lee and Boud,2009, p. 15)

Boud, D. and Lee, A.(Eds) (2009). Framing doctoral education as practice. Changing practices of doctoral education. London and New York, Routledge

ALL practice – social, mediated dynamic, changing

Always social in the sense of being part of and contributing to a wider social array of practices and values about what and who counts/makes

sense

Mediated by local and global contexts (our individual

workplaces, current HE agendas- quality assurance, standards, English language proficiency

statements and policy, changing mix of student cohorts …)

What comes to be seen as a ‘legitimate’ ALL practice – ‘what

makes sense’ at any one moment in HE

(James, 2011)

‘to work towards opening up a design

space built on academic literacies critique’

‘offer a brief overview of the different approaches to student

academic writing in higher education in the UK, the

conceptualisations of language implicit in them and their

relationship to the broader institutional goals of higher

education’

‘call for dialogue rather than monologue or

dialectic to be at the centre of an academic

literacies stance’

Why Lillis?Lillis, T. (2003). Student writing as ‘Academic Literacies’: Drawing on Bakhtin to move from

critique to design. Language and Education 17(3), 192-207.

Lillis,2003, pp192-193

Can you use this table?

Lillisp.194

One of multiple ways of mapping ALL practice

Talking/writing about practice

Use the table and the practice DB form to write a description of one of your practices– Individual consultations– Integrated embedded work

Talking/writing about practice

Pair up and ask each of about what you have written:– Is there more to write?– Is this an innovative practice?– Would you describe this practice differently if you were

using it as an exemplar of your teaching excellence?– Would you describe it differently if you were using it as

an exemplar of the teaching research nexus?– Would you describe it differently if you were

representing it to a university committee (promotions etc …)?

Talking/writing about practice

Change the student cohort

- What changes on the PDF?- What changes in the table?

How would you represent what you do?

• Where would you place your practice on the table?

• Does it easily fit here or is it more hybrid or fluid?• What would you change and keep in Lillis’ table-

are there other things to be considered here?• What are the ‘official discources’ operating in

your institution/national context- can you name them in some way?

• How do these discourses impact your practice?

Reflections on this workshop

• What did you get from this workshop?• Would you describe your work in different or

similar ways now?– Why?– Publication?