Summary and Practical Lessons Learned for SoTL
2 Tracing a Student Journey: The Stories of Mai and Lin
Chapter Summary
3 The Taught Post-Graduate Curriculum
What is a Curriculum?
What is the Purpose of a Taught Post-Graduate Programme? Who is it For?
Changing Identities
Temporality
The Importance of Trust and Emotion
Making Agential Decisions
Chapter Summary and Practical Lessons Learned: TPG Education
4 Language and the Academic Curriculum
Language and Content Knowledge
Language and Assessment Practices
Language and Pedagogy
Chapter Summary and Practical Lessons Learned: Focusing on Language in Content Teaching
Language and Cultural Capital
Language and Social Capital
Language as a Threshold Concept
Language as Tacit Knowledge
Chapter Summary and Practical Lessons Learned: A Language Connected Curriculum
6 The Place of English for Academic Purposes
Teacher or Academic?
(Denial of) Agency
Developing Confidence
Time Limitations
The Knowledge Base of EAP
Chapter Summary and Practical Lessons Learned: A Re-positioning
7 Language Across the Curriculum
Bridging the Content/Language Divide: A Heuristic
Collaboration and Co-construction
Developing Pedagogical Content Knowledge
Chapter Summary and Recommendations
Policy and Strategy
Approaches and Practices for Teaching and Learning Within an English-Speaking Environment
Conclusions
Afterword: The Engaged Scholar
Acknowledgements
There are many people and places that have contributed to and supported me in writing this book in a number of ways. By listing the places and organisations, I hope the people who are an integral part of each of them will recognise the part they played in helping me to complete this project. So, I would like to thank: the Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence (LITE) for the opportunity of time and space to conduct the project discussed within this book; the Language Centre and BALEAP for providing me with a community that is both supportive and challenging; Bradford Synchronised Ice Skating Academy for the much needed escape!
There are, though, some key people to whom I would like to give specific acknowledgment. Crucially, thank you to all of those who gave me their time, thoughts and experiences by participating in my project. I hope I have represented you all fairly. Alex Ding has listened patiently, mentored wisely, given constructive feedback and useful insights as well as providing ideas, including titles when I got stuck! Melinda Whong’s leadership created the space, push and confidence I needed to get started. I would also like to thank Ian Bruce and Cynthia White for their advice, support and feedback throughout.
My final thanks are for my family. Denise, my mum, is the best critical friend I could ask for, and my dad, Michael, has listened patiently throughout. My husband and children, Harry, Fred and Edie have tried very hard to be interested but generally cannot really see the point. In this way all three of them have shown great love while maintaining my sense of perspective. Thank you!
Preface
This book focuses on the nexus of language, disciplinary content and knowledge communication specifically at taught post-graduate (TPG) or Masters level. It aims to consider this nexus from the perspective of the multiple actors who are enmeshed in the consequences of the economic, cultural and ideological forces of Higher Education’s current push for internationalisation. In addressing this interplay, I suggest the need for a greater synergy between language and content experts. I also suggest that change needs to be implemented through policy rather than on an ad hoc basis by individual teachers and that this involves a change to institutional educational and academic cultures. Therefore, it is a call to action for English for Academic 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 emerged as the result of a scholarship project that was funded by the Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence (LITE). The focus of the project was around exploring the significant roles language plays in shaping discipline specific knowledge and understanding. The specific ‘research’ question then became: How do taught postgraduate tutors and students experience the intersection of language and disciplinary knowledge communication. What impact does this have on their identity?
As an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) practitioner ‘operating on the edge of Academia’ (Ding & Bruce, 2017) the time and space to engage in scholarship around teaching and learning afforded by a Fellowship in LITE was an unprecedented opportunity. It enabled me to investigate questions that had troubled both myself and my colleagues for several years and to move from a place of guessing and knowing experientially
