Making Language Visible in the University - Bee Bond New Perspectives on Language and Education

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of structure, identity and agency, considering the power structures and their impact on the social, cultural and intellectual spheres through a Critical Realist lens. In this way I hope to establish a symbiotic relationship between practice and theory that provides explanatory power rather than working to frame evidence within one theoretical framework and then suggest the implications for practice.

      By making this project public, I am aiming to meet Shulman’s definition of scholarship of learning and teaching that we

      develop a scholarship of teaching when our work as teachers becomes public, peer-reviewed and critiqued. And exchanged with members of our professional communities so they, in turn, can build on our work. (Shulman, 2000: 49)

      While the project I draw on for this book was on a larger scale than many other scholarship of teaching and learning projects, which tend to focus on questions local to an individual practitioner’s teaching, I am not making any claims that the experiences I outline or conclusions I draw here are fully generalisable beyond the participants and situations involved. However, I do hope that readers will be able to relate to and recognise similar experiences and patterns within their own educational context, and then make slightly better-informed decisions as to what to do in their own teaching and learning practices and that these local experiences will have global resonance. I also hope that those involved in curricular and policy decisions might also be able to draw some value from the heuristic for a language embedded curriculum that I propose (see Figure 1 here and discussed in detail in Chapter 7). This heuristic also provides some organisational logic for the rest of the book.

      Figure 1 A heuristic for a language connected curriculum

       Organisation of the Book

      This book is primarily for EAP practitioners. However, it is also aimed at others who work in Higher Education and have an interest in teaching and supporting international students. As it focuses on the taught post-graduate curriculum within the United Kingdom, it will be of most obvious relevance to those working within this context and teaching that level of students. However, my intention is that many of the questions raised and issues discussed will resonate with and can be applied to those teaching in other contexts and at other levels of study. At the end of most chapters, as part of the conclusion, I include a short summary that draws out the ‘practical lessons learned’ from the ground covered within each chapter. My final chapter also focuses on recommendations for policy and practice development at both institutional and local level. These, I suggest, are where EAP practice should position itself and work with university leadership to effect real change to teaching and learning in Higher Education.

      The introduction to this book defines the conceptual and contextual parameters around which the rest of the book is built – considering what is meant by inclusive education and internationalisation in Higher Education, and how the work of English for Academic Purposes currently sits within this context. I then aim to provide a purposeful progression from specific to general; local to global throughout the rest of the book. In this way my own contextualised project becomes relevant to wider Higher Education practices.

      Chapter 1 should be of interest to those who are developing their own scholarship project. As Ding and Bruce (2017) have already argued, scholarship is key to establishing a more equal status for EAP within the academy. In this Chapter I describe my own accidental and messy journey into the Scholarship of Learning and Teaching (SoTL), positioning myself and my work within a developing definition of SoTL. I focus on the complex ethical considerations that a SoTL project requires as well as the professional difficulties and benefits and institutional gains that arise from SoTL work. The methodological process is also described, positioning the project and the participants within a Critical Realist paradigm of methodological pluralism (Porpora, 2015).

      The following four chapters provide a rich and complex portrait of the interweaving factors and themes that rhizomatically or interconnectedly create the experience of those involved in learning and teaching on a taught post-graduate programme. Each section begins with a brief focus on an (eclectic) theoretical theme, which then provides the basis for analysis of the data, practice and literature in order to demonstrate how they are consecutively interconnected and disparate. Building on expressions of identity, agency, temporality and trust, I consider how language is then perceived, understood, learned and taught as part of the curriculum, drawing on a range of theories and concepts to describe a structure that is undergoing elaboration as a diversified population interact within it.

      In Chapter 6 I move towards a focus on English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and the role that EAP practitioners currently, and possibly could, play in supporting a more language aware TPG curriculum.

      In Chapter 7 I present a heuristic that draws together the rhizomatic threads and can be used when considering where language might impact on the TPG experience for all those involved.

      Finally, I suggest that it is only through strategic change and institutional policy that is then supported in practice that the required change to conceptions of language within the content curriculum can take place. I outline the various aspects of policy that need to be considered and make some suggestions for developing local practice in order to enable the development of a more inclusive, language-connected curriculum. It is here that EAP practitioners really need to begin to move beyond their teaching centres and establish networks and spheres of influence; in this way they will go further towards ‘shortening the gap between what (EAP) is and what ought to be’ (Ding, 2016: 13)

      Introduction: Contextualising the Problem, Defining Terms

      In this Chapter I aim to provide a contextual backdrop to main the focus of this book, that is how language and disciplinary knowledge are perceived as intersecting and disconnecting within a taught postgraduate curriculum and how EAP practitioners can work, therefore, to make language more visible across the University. I outline in broad terms the concepts and global themes of inclusion, internationalisation and English for Academic Purposes, considering how they interplay across the Higher Education landscape and create the structural conditions and backdrop that led to the key issues I aim to address. In doing this I explicitly and deliberately position the local and contextualised scholarship project and findings within a much broader, global conversation that is relevant not only for Higher Education institutions within the ‘inner circle’ countries but for all institutions that have ‘internationalisation’ as part of their core strategy, particularly when part of this strategy demands elements of English as a medium of instruction.

      Macro level discourse around finances and student recruitment have a direct effect on the micro level of the classroom. It is here that the real impact of a university’s internationalisation policy is felt, as teachers and students need to learn, but often fail, to work together across and between cultures, languages and educational backgrounds. This book, then, aims to address the questions raised by this need in terms of student education, focusing on the nexus of language, disciplinary content and knowledge communication specifically at taught post-graduate (TPG) level. In doing so, I touch on key issues of internationalisation, inclusion and of teaching excellence in Higher Education.

      I position language as central to all three concepts and argue that the teaching and learning of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) can be both a driver of and a solution to many of the questions arising from both internationalisation and inclusion agendas. In doing this, then, it is necessary to outline and problematise the label ‘international student’ and consider what issues are highlighted through working with these students, and whether they are any different to those raised by working with other student demographics. The drive for internationalisation should not be considered in isolation of a wider shift in approaches to higher education, and who should and does have access. The growth of an international student body (itself nothing new) has coincided with the push for access for all and an emphasis on social justice and inclusion. I therefore also consider internationalisation within a framework of inclusive education, outlining the current state of the debate here. It is this context we must begin with.

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