Coventry University: E-Journals
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Collaborative Learning as a Leadership Tool: The Institutional Work of Writing Center Directors
No full textWriting center directors have to face complex leadership tasks, but often do not have a background in management or administration studies. This study asks how they accomplish this demanding effort. Following a grounded theory approach, 16 writing centers in the USA were visited and expert interviews with the center directors were carried out. In bringing together the emerging concepts of the empirical work with the theoretical framework of the study of institutional work, this article shows that writing center directors transfer the pedagogy of writing centers to their leadership tasks. They use a stance of collaborative learning to deal with the challenges in their everyday work and to institutionalize their writing centers
‘It’s Hard to Define Good Writing, but I Recognise it when I See it’: Can Consensus-Based Assessment Evaluate the Teaching of Writing?
Get PDFIn a Higher Education environment where evidence-based practice and accountability are highly valued, most writing practitioners will be familiar with direct requests or less tangible pressures to demonstrate that their teaching has a positive impact on students’ writing skills. Although such evaluations are not devoid of risk and the need for them is contested, it can be argued that it is better to engage with them, as this can avoid the danger of overly simplistic forms of measurements being imposed. The current paper engages with this question by proposing the conceptual basis for a new measurement tool. Based on Amabile’s Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT), developed to assess creativity, the tool develops the idea of consensual assessment of writing as a methodology that can provide robust data through systematic measurement. At the same time, I argue consensual assessment reflects the evaluation of writing in real life situations more closely than many of the methodologies for writing assessment used in other contexts, primarily large scale tests. As such, it would allow writing practitioners to go beyond ethnographic methods, or self- reporting, in order to obtain greater insight into the ways in which their teaching helps change students’ actual writing, without sacrificing the complexity of writing as social interaction, which is fundamental to an academic literacies approach
On the Privatisation of Academic Writing Development: A Post-EATAW 2017 Provocation
Get PDFAll across continental Europe and the United Kingdom, academic writing teaching or development is slowly becoming part and parcel of existing institutional frameworks intended to enhance student writing and professional research communication. While more and more universities are investing in such infrastructures of support internally, a relatively new phenomenon is also consolidating: the steady rise of privatised, for-profit writing development businesses that draw their client base from academic institutions. Prompted by EATAW 2017, the conference organised at Royal Holloway, University of London, this think piece raises some fundamental questions regarding the privatisation of academic writing development and invites colleagues to consider its assumptions, emergence and implications in their local, higher education contexts
Challenges in the Commencement of Consultant Surgical Practice: A Study of Threshold Concepts in Junior Cardiothoracic Surgeons
Get PDFThe transition from trainee to consultant cardiothoracic surgeon may be challenging. Curricula for cardiothoracic surgical training and for the professional development of cardiothoracic surgeons need to address the issues in transition that are the most difficult. This research used threshold concepts to identify the areas within this transition that are the most problematic. Semi-structured, in-depth, face-to-face, individual interviews were conducted with 13 junior cardiothoracic surgeons (in practice for ten years or less) who were purposively recruited. Transcripts were generated from the interviews and subjected to thematic analysis. Data was independently analysed by three researchers. Problematic areas in the transition to consultant practice included: (1) taking ultimate responsibility for patient care including clinical judgment, decision-making and unsupervised operating; (2) designing a career; (3) navigating new work environments; (4) managing relationships with colleagues, trainees and other team members; (5) managing technical challenges; (6) managing the previously unseen or unexpected; and (7) coping with adverse events. Uncertainty associated with each of these challenges was the most prominent threshold concept. Successfully addressing some or all of these problematic areas resulted in (8) change as a person or surgeon that positively influenced each individual’s sense of worth and identity as a cardiothoracic surgeon. Despite the completion of surgical education and training, time and the passing of the Fellowship examination, significant challenges remain for individuals commencing cardiothoracic surgical practice. There exist further curricular opportunities for the education of senior trainees and for the professional development of junior consultant surgeons to assist in the negotiation of these challenges
Betwixt and Between: A Pilot Study Exploring the Experiences of Clinical Educators Teaching in a Dispersed Model of Entry-Level Physiotherapy Curriculum
Get PDFEducation of the future healthcare workforce has long been a partnership between university and healthcare sectors, with students learning under the shared guidance of academics and clinicians. Traditionally, academics have taught in the classroom and clinicians have engaged students at the patient bedside. Using a phenomenologically-oriented approach, this pilot project explored the experiences of clinicians who team-taught a theoretical subject in a classroom environment. Purposeful sampling of physiotherapy staff within a metropolitan healthcare organisation was used. Six clinicians were recruited and, prior to teaching, completed a blended educational program about higher education teaching and learning. The clinicians taught classes of twenty students within new classroom spaces co-located at the healthcare organisation, with curricula provided by the university. Two semi-structured interviews were conducted with each clinician at the beginning and end of the allocated teaching period. Transcripts from the semi-structured interviews were analysed and four themes emerged. First, physiotherapists initially identified as clinicians not teachers, but their perceptions later broadened. Second, the intention of teaching was patient-focused. Third, the balancing of multiple roles resulted in challenges for the clinicians; and fourth, the experience involved new immersion in digital media. This work explores a different form of educator role – likened to a pracademic – and supports the need for considered approaches to teaching and links between theory/education and practice to meet the demands of modern healthcare and university learning
Epistemic Markers in NS and NNS Academic Writing
Get PDFThe use of epistemic markers – words and phrases employed to show differing degrees of certainty and hesitation – is an important element of academic writing. Previous research has suggested that this is an area in which non-native speakers (NNS) struggle. Studies have indicated that NNS are prone to making overly strong statements and exhibit less range and sophistication in the devices that they do employ than native speakers (NS). However, there have as yet been few studies examining the use of such language by advanced NNS students in university academic writing. This corpus-based study examines the ways in which NS and advanced NNS students use epistemic markers in university academic writing. Two corpora totalling 31 659 words were formed from the discussion and conclusion sections of a written university assignment and analyzed for use of epistemic markers. The results indicate that though both groups employ the language at comparable rates and display similar levels of commitment in their writing, these NNS writers display some features of epistemic marker use found to be generally characteristic of other NNS writers
Academic Writing: Anxiety, Confusion and the Affective Domain: Why Should Subject Lecturers Acknowledge the Social and Emotional Aspects of Writing Development Processes?
Get PDFAfter working in Further Education (FE) and Higher Education (HE) in the United Kingdom for over thirty years, and completing a doctoral thesis on the subject of lecturers’ perceptions of academic writing in HE (French 2014), it became very clear to me that many students and lecturers (although that is a subject of another paper) experience the processes of producing academic writing in very physical and emotional ways. In this paper, I will be discussing how my students often articulated the intensity and emotional nature of their academic writing experiences using words like ‘fear’, ‘frustration’, ‘outrage’, ‘exhaustion’ and ‘yearning’. This emotion and strength of feeling drew me to consider the relationship between the development of a positive writing identity and the affective domain. Subsequently, in my practice as a tutor in HE, I incorporated the affective domain into my work and seek here to stimulate debate with subject lecturers about how important emotions, even negative emotions like confusion and anxiety, can be to the development of a positive academic writing identity for students. The paper argues that, by using the affective domain as a pedagogic springboard, subject lecturers can formulate more collaborative, supportive and emotionally sensitive communities of writing practice
Developing Measures of Placement Quality in Allied Health, Dentistry, Medicine, and Pharmacy
Get PDFAs placement numbers expand, there is a concern that the quality of student experience and learning may diminish. Furthermore, there is a paucity of evidence for evaluation and quality improvement in clinical health placements and there have been few studies undertaken to assess quality. Valid and reliable measures of placement quality are needed to provide an evidence-base to guide decisions about the most efficient and effective placement models in health. A two-phase mixed methods design, using a modified Delphi process, focus groups, and surveys, developed and tested items to measure placement quality. Thematic analysis, descriptive statistics, and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) were used to analyse the data. Twenty-three participants took part in the Phase 1 stakeholder focus groups, and 150 useable surveys were returned by 161 who took part in Phase 2 to test validity and reliability of the student survey items. Results show broad agreement on the features of a quality clinical placement across allied health dentistry, medicine, and pharmacy professions. The student survey was found to be a valid and reliable measure of placement quality, with the EFA showing one component accounting for 58.5% of the variance in the survey data. The findings offer a framework and approach that others can adopt to measure placement quality in their setting. The measures may be adaptable to contexts outside health
Translingual Academic Writing at Internationalised Universities: Learning From Scholars
Get PDFDue to the internationalisation of universities and the globalisation of academic cultures, academic writing is influenced by several writing traditions, heterogeneous reader expectations, as well as internal and external multilingualism. The programme MultiConText (Multilingual Writing in Academic Contexts) at the International Writing Centre at Göttingen University offers a pedagogical approach which deals with these aspects and aims at fostering writing skills for international, multilingual contexts. Writing workshops within the programme target students of all faculties, especially students of international study programmes. The pedagogical approach takes into account Canagarajah’s (2013) idea of translingual practice and the concept of language repertoires (Busch 2017), encouraging students to use all available language codes as a resource in writing. In order to strengthen this approach’s foundation, interviews with scholars working in international research teams were conducted. These interviews focused on the strategies scholars use when writing for publication, especially those for writing in multilingual contexts. Results from the interviews were adapted for classroom use to show students a variety of possibilities to deal with multilingualism in writing. This article makes a suggestion as to how theoretical concepts of multilingualism may be investigated in interviews and how they might be put into practice in writing assignments