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personal notes taken after critical incidents, to enable the development of thought processes or as an aide memoire.

      The majority of my field notes were taken during the period leading up to, during and directly after the summer EAP pre-sessional programme that took place during the period of data collection. This was when I was most directly involved as a participant as well as an observer. Immersed as I was in interactions that directly addressed the questions I was hoping to explore, the daily interactions with students and teachers all held potential meaning. Taking notes enabled me as much as possible to view events and conversations from a different perspective, making the familiar strange and allowing myself to create the critical distance needed to begin to view the data as an outsider.

      Beyond the summer, the notes taken became more erratic, and centred on critical incidents or more personal thoughts as I reviewed data previously collected.

      My notes were generally divided between a detailed description of the conversation or event, with a column for my own thoughts and interpretations, allowing me to work to distinguish between the two.

      Other documentation

      This documentation is more difficult to quantify. It is also not as clearly visible in the emerging themes of the project. However, the information collected through these documents served to add ‘thickness’ to the analysis, as they served to support or deny themes arising from other sources. I made use of formal records of meetings in connection to teaching and student education, for example Student–Staff Forum minutes, weekly staff meeting minutes as well as less formal documents such as personal emails. Under this category, I also include public documentation such as website pages; student facing Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) documents as well as student assessed writing, feedback and other learning and teaching materials

Data Analysis

      The data collection process was not structured in phases and relied on having open access to the Schools and participants. This access was less available in one (the STEM) site than in the other two, so analysis and the conclusions drawn here need to be viewed more cautiously.

      The initial and main focus for analysis was the transcripts and notes from interviews and focus groups. It is hoped that the depth of information collected overall counterbalances, to some extent, the potential for a skewing of the data provided by participants who may or may not have had their own agenda in volunteering to participate. There were a few moments during interview when a subject requested what they said to be ‘off the record’; this suggests that there was a genuine openness and willingness to provide honest responses to the questions posed throughout, but with a clear sense of the audience the research was likely to reach.

      A good deal of reflexivity is required on the part of the investigator in order to find themes and develop an understanding of what the data collected can reveal about how those involved in teaching and learning understand the role language plays in their lives without asserting my own pre-conceived or previous-experience-based assumptions. The framework used for analysis was emergent, building on the usual models for ethnographic and case study research of allowing themes to emerge from the data through repeated reading, scrutiny and annotation. I initially attempted to use a template analysis (King, 2004). As the focus of the project was on teaching and learning, and also EAP I created a template that attempted to overlap the HEA’s UKPSF (2011) with the BALEAP TEAP Competencies (2014), both of which outline professional competencies for teaching in HE, including required values, knowledge and areas of activity. This template clearly would not work for data provided by students, so for this I looked at the ‘graduate attributes’ as outlined by my institution and attempted to map threads onto this. However, working with multiple templates prevented any consideration of where teachers and learners intersected and shared experiences and I found I was trying to force threads into the template where they didn’t really fit. This process was not wasted time though as the notes I made highlighted other more visible themes arising inductively from the data in the manner similar to that suggested by grounded theorists (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). I was strongly influenced by Academic Literacies as a theoretical framework (Lea & Street, 1998; Street, 1995) as threads that focused on socialisation, induction and resistance emerged. While the focus for analysis remained connected to language use, it became impossible to ignore data that gathered together quite strongly around other more socio-political, cultural and institutional issues relating to teaching and learning at TPG level. It is here that I found I needed to move beyond an EAP knowledge base and explore wider sociological concepts. Thus, different thematic layers become visible. Crucially, the dynamic interplay of the different elements of the HE context emerged as having a human impact on individuals in terms of their identity, sense of agency, sense of trust in their institutions and its structures and processes, and on their concept of time and time availability. Here again, I believe there is strong resonance with the experiences of others in other institutions, not only in the United Kingdom but across the globe.

Contexts

      The institution

      The research that forms the basis of this book took place in one UK Higher Education institution. The institution is a Russell Group University, so is research intensive and traditionally has been heavily research focused. It also positions itself as striving for excellence in student education, and as placing equal value on this as on research. Mid-way through the data collection period of this project, the University received a ‘Gold’ award in the first iteration of the TEF in 2017.

      The University is large and diverse, with around 38,000 students studying across five different Faculties. More than 7000 of these students are classed as international. The majority of these international students study at TPG level.

      The three specific sites chosen for the case studies were chosen to reflect some of the diversity that exists in provision, approach and student population across the institution.

      The site of Case Study 1

      Site one was the EAP teaching unit. This is a teaching unit; the academic members of staff are on teaching and scholarship contracts, with no remit around research and no requirement to submit to the REF (Research Excellence Framework). It is, however, structurally a part of a larger academic School rather than being housed in a service unit, thus teaching staff are on ‘academic’ pathway contracts rather than academic related or professional/managerial.

      In comparison to similar units in other HEIs, this EAP unit is large, employing around 60 full-time teachers year round and recruiting between 60 and 100 extra teachers for the summer pre-sessional teaching period. Teaching takes place over the whole year; for most this is divided into four 10-week terms although some teaching is also semester based. Most (but not all) of the teaching undertaken by the unit is either on presessional programmes that run throughout the academic year as well as in the summer, or on insessional programmes, where students already on their programme of academic study are provided with extra language development classes. All of the students taught by staff from this unit are from outside the United Kingdom and have English as an additional language (EAL)5. The summer is the busiest period of the year; in the summer of 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 the unit taught 1030, 1188, 1959 and 2500 students respectively.

      During the early period of data collection for this project, the unit was developing and then delivering a new suite of summer pre-sessional programmes that moved teaching away from English for General Academic Purposes (EGAP) where students studied together regardless of disciplinary interest towards a range of English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP), where different programmes were developed in collaboration with academic Schools in order to better prepare students for their future disciplinary language and discourse. Most of the student participant volunteers were recruited from two of these disciplinefocused pre-sessionals.

      The site of Case Study 2

      Site two was the AHC School. As with most Schools in this kind of institution, academics who work in this School are on a range of contracts, some who are focused only on research, some with the requirement to conduct research as well as teach, others on teaching and scholarship contracts.

      For the purposes of this study, it is important to note that at the time of

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