with the student participants, although the bulk of the data used for analysis was provided by the individuals listed here, the field notes I took throughout the investigation included commentary and observations based on interactions with a wider range of staff across the three sites as well as the wider institution. The intention of the project was not to highlight the experiences, approach and attitudes of individuals but to aim to create a nuanced picture of the ‘norm circles’ developed within each Case Study, where a norm circle ‘consists of a group of people who are committed to endorsing and enforcing a particular norm’ and they have ‘the causal power to produce a tendency in individuals to follow standardised practices’ (Elder-Vass, 2012 in Ding, 2016: 12). This is only possible to do by drawing from a range of data sources.
Chapter Summary and Practical Lessons Learned for SoTL
In this chapter I have provided an overview of the external influences on the development of this book, ones that are influencing Higher Education globally. This includes the movement towards evidence informed teaching and learning in Higher Education through scholarship. I considered the ethical implications of engaging in any SoTL project, and how this might impact both positively and negatively on both student and teacher participants as well as the wider institution. I also connected SoTL to the metrics involved in measuring teaching excellence and suggested that this can act as a push for institutions to support those who wish to engage with scholarship more formally, but also highlighted that with this push comes the need for specific support around developing expertise in SoTL methods and processes – giving my own case as an example.
The second half of the chapter then provided details of the scholarship project itself, positioning the researcher within the project, outlining the methodology, data collection and analysis methods as well as providing descriptions of the different sites of study and the participants involved. I end with key points of learning that can be taken from this chapter, and questions that readers, particularly EAP practitioners, might wish to consider for their own scholarship projects.
• You are investigating your own practice, much of which is likely to have developed through experience. You are therefore likely to experience a personal resistance to theory and theorising around your practice. My own approach was to be a magpie; to use a range of theories to explain different phenomena. It is necessary to engage with theory, but it is possible to begin with practice and look outward rather than to fix on a theoretical framework from the outset.
• SoTL itself is still under-defined and unclear. Use this to your advantage. Be part of the definition.
• Work on questions that are relevant to you, for the benefit of your context and your students.
• Collaborate. Draw on the expertise of others. If you have identified an issue that resonates with you, you will be amazed at the buy in you get from others.
• EAP teachers (and others) who often have a lower status within HEIs can, through SoTL and collaborations, make it clear that you have something to offer that others are not able to provide. It is, as Ding and Bruce (2017) have already argued, through SoTL that you are able to find your own academic authority and become a central part of a university’s endeavour to improve student education.
• SoTL is an investment and commitment, and therefore requires investment and commitment on a personal level (as well as preferably from an institution). It is personal and the commitment is therefore emotional as well as intellectual. This is in equal amounts draining and incredibly rewarding.
2 Tracing a Student Journey: The Stories of Mai and Lin
In telling the stories of two students, Mai and Lin, I hope to create ‘red thread’ narratives of two student participants that weave through the rest of the thematic data presented in following chapters. In presenting this data, I try to use the students’ own words as much as possible whilst providing my own understanding and interpretation of the background and context that created their own particular circumstances. I have chosen, from the many students I spoke to, to highlight the stories of Mai and Lin for a number of reasons.
Firstly, there are clear external parallels between their journeys. Both students were female and from mainland China. Neither had travelled outside China prior to the commencement of their studies in the UK. Both had only recently completed their undergraduate degree in China but had done some volunteer work within their chosen fields – Mai as a teacher within her discipline and Lin producing marketing materials for her province’s internal tourism campaign. Both students attended a pre-sessional in the EAP unit prior to beginning their TPG programme, needing to do so in order to meet the language requirement of their academic programme because they had not met the overall 6.5 in IELTS requirement stipulated by their School’s admissions policy.
The second reason for choosing these two students are the differences between them, the most obvious one being that they were studying in different Schools and different disciplines. While I am not suggesting that these two individuals can represent the experience of all students, or even all International or Chinese students in these different sites, their stories do highlight some of the conflicting tensions and possibilities that surround approaches to teaching and learning in an increasingly diverse higher education landscape. I have attempted to represent both students as unique individuals while drawing on key elements of their stories that represent the tensions within the internationalised higher education system. Remaining conscious of the ‘danger of a single story’ (Adichie, 2009), I have attempted to consider the story of the students’ journeys from multiple perspectives, questioning motives, reasons and outcomes. I am confident that readers will recognise and be able to draw parallels between these stories and the stories of students they have encountered in their own teaching contexts. I begin with Mai’s story.
Mai
Mai’s story highlights the complex tensions involved in one individual student’s situation as they struggle, and ultimately fail, to meet the expected academic and communication standards of their taught post-graduate academic programme. Through her story I hope to show that this failure cannot be attributed to one incident, to one breakdown in support systems, to a language deficit, a culture or educational system in isolation, or even to luck. Rather, each student experiences, succeeds or fails as a result of a unique and nuanced combination of factors. We need to consider these factors holistically; by breaking them down and trying to fix one aspect that we identify as being broken, we inevitably shift a problem onto a new or different area.
Mai began studying at my institution in January 2016. She arrived with a relatively low IELTS score, 5.0 overall, and had chosen to study in the United Kingdom for a year in order to develop her academic English via a longer pre-sessional programme rather than stay in China and continue to take repeated IELTS tests. She had had an offer to join her chosen TPG programme in the previous academic year which she had chosen to defer, I assume because she had not met the language requirement within the offer. She studied in the EAP teaching unit over three 10-week terms. At the end of each term, she submitted assessments and took part in tests which would allow her to progress to the next level of pre-sessional study. These assessments were intended to provide formative feedback to students that would enable them to learn and apply this learning as they moved onto the following terms of study, but also to provide an indication of their current language proficiency. The criteria used for the language element of the assessment was carefully mapped against both the CEFR and IELTS as these are the current most widely accepted units of measurement for language proficiency in the UK. Criteria also focused on the extent to which a student was able to fulfil the literacy and communication requirements of a specific academic task.
Mai struggled at each assessment point and progressed to the next level of pre-sessional with clear and strong warnings that she would find the following term difficult and may want to reconsider her choices and options for
