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Research Association (BERA) have also produced a comprehensive guidance document around the ethics of educational research (2018). While wider ranging in scope, it does also encompass more localised practitioner research, and follows similar principles of respect for all involved. However, whilst comprehensive in areas to consider and principles to follow, it works on the assumption that those engaged in this type of research are epistemologically social scientists, and that their local ethics approval committee will also be accustomed to consideration of ethics from this standpoint. As Martin (2013) points out, this is not necessarily the case for those involved in SoTL, where their Faculty ethics committee may be more accustomed to consideration of, for example, medical ethical research principles.

      Within SoTL and BERA’s guidance, the main focus for potential benefit and harm is on the students as research participants. However, once a project extends beyond the researcher’s own classroom, it is also necessary to pay attention to the potential benefit and harm to colleagues and an institution. As a colleague, it is important to consider the impact different relationships might have on the data gathered, and that comments from peer participants may be more unguarded than with an unknown researcher. In addressing an issue that is potentially problematic for many colleagues, a SoTL project is likely to result in some data that is difficult to report whilst remaining collegial and supportive. Here, I would argue, it is necessary to carefully follow the second of BERA’s principles, that a researcher ‘should respect the privacy, autonomy, diversity, values and dignity of individuals, groups and communities’ (BERA, 2018: 4).

      Most importantly, the ethical goal of any SoTL project, as with any other form of research, is ‘to maximise benefit and minimise harm’ for all involved. Within my own project, I always strove to work towards these principles. All participants were volunteers and were fully informed of the aims and purpose of the project. Written consent was obtained for use of all non-public documents (for example student work; class materials and assessments) as well as for the use of interview transcripts. On occasion, participants asked for certain comments to be ‘off the record’; this request has been respected at all times. Finally, the interactions I had with participants were approached as opportunities for benefit to all, maintaining a sense of investigator-participant reciprocity.

      There were multiple occasions, however, when I needed to wrestle with my conscience and question where my own ethics lay. It quickly became clear that my investigation was not benign; that there were a range of tensions and emotions at play. There were conflicts around whether my actions might harm students in protecting staff or vice versa. I hope I have navigated these tensions with sensitivity and given a representative voice to competing perspectives without causing undue harm in the process.

      My journey into scholarship

      I have provided this background context to situate myself within the wider UK higher education landscape. As an EAP practitioner, ‘operating on the edge of academia’ (Ding & Bruce, 2017), there is no one clear route into ‘the academy’, and scholarship or practitioner research, at least in terms of going public, has not ranked highly in the commitments of most practitioners to date. Reasons for this are myriad, but largely connected to teaching workload; qualifications; precarity and structural conditions (see Ding & Bruce, 2017; Hadley, 2015 for further discussion).

      My own route into scholarship perhaps exemplifies this position, and maps onto the changing landscape of UK HE in terms of measures of teaching and excellence as outlined above.

      I became an EAP practitioner in 2000, during the first real boom phase in international student recruitment to UK HEIs. I was recruited because of my qualifications and experience as an English language teacher, having worked for a number of years in private language schools in a variety of countries. These qualifications are typical of those requested for entry into teaching EAP – a Diploma in English Language Teaching (DELTA) – with little or no focus on EAP specifically. I was initially employed on an hourly paid contract. In order to qualify for a more permanent position, I studied for a post-graduate degree in language teaching. However, there was, and remains, no requirement to demonstrate expertise or understanding of EAP specifically. There is an assumption that this is something that is developed ‘on the job’ (see Ding & Campion, 2016; Campion, 2016).

      Beyond completion of my Masters degree, my scholarship was desk based in terms of reading the research of others around the teaching and learning of EAP, and then attempting to apply this research to my own classroom practice. As my Centre grew in size, I was asked to take on programme leadership responsibilities, so was able to expand my understanding of EAP beyond my own classroom. From there I also developed an interest in supporting others in their own professional learning. Other than a few presentations at one-day conferences, the impact of my scholarship was internal and was largely entered into in order to prevent a personal feeling of becoming stale and stuck in the cycle of four-term, year-round teaching (Bond, 2017a).

      In general, then, my journey into scholarship is the result of volunteering to take up new opportunities in order to prevent boredom, but without expecting to be successful. It is, in fact, one of constant surprise and of permanent imposter syndrome – of not feeling I was worthy or intellectually capable of being accepted or taken seriously within an academic context. This is both personal but also structural – as an EAP practitioner, there is very little precedence for being accepted by the wider academy. In fact, the mythology around not being able to gain access is close to doctrine. As John Swales wrote recently:

      Of course, we rarely have the time and the opportunity to be true ethnographers of researchers, disciplines or departments; perhaps the only people in our field with that kind of luxury would be those engaging in doctoral-level research or those fortunate enough to have generous sabbatical leave arrangements. (Swales, 2019: 11)

      The suggestion here being that this is true of almost nobody in the field.

      It was therefore by accident rather than design that I found myself in a position of being afforded the luxury described by Swales. The project within this book is the result of applying for the first round of fellowship support within the newly established Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence. The most difficult question in the interview was ‘how will doing this project impact on the next five years of your career?’ This was almost impossible to answer as there was no parallel to measure against. By applying to take on this project, I found myself placed in the position of being an ‘accidental scholar’ with no real research training within any epistemological or ontological paradigm and, as an EAP practitioner, no real firmly agreed knowledge base upon which to build my project. The accidental nature of my scholarship is important to bear in mind as it defined, indeed dictated, the exploratory nature of the process I engaged in. It also explains the lack of one clear theory within which my work is located. Rather I became magpie like, borrowing theories from the disciplines I had contact with and through the discussions I had with students and colleagues, selecting when I felt resonance. My work was, and remains, incredibly ‘messy’ (Law, 2004). However, over time, I have begun to see my understanding as fitting broadly within a Critical Realist paradigm where there are no specific methods and the philosophy of which ‘justifies methodological pluralism’ (Porpora, 2015: 64). Both Critical Realism, SoTL and the broadly ethnographic approach I took demand that the reality of a local context is studied and that a voice is given to the participants involved. SoTL is generally understood as localised learning, aimed at development within that context. However, it is also a social movement aimed at transforming higher education when individuals talk about new things in new ways and others pay attention and learn from these stories, applying whatever they find as relevant to their own contexts.

The Project

      Given my very clear identity as an EAP teacher and latterly scholar, as opposed to researcher, I preferred to frame my questions as ‘project’ questions rather than research questions. This connected to my sense that the investigation was one of reflexive, exploratory praxis. I was not aiming to find answers or solutions to problems, but rather to ‘work towards understanding’ (Allwright & Hanks, 2009) that would enhance my own student education practice. I began with the belief that this understanding may or may not lead to concrete recommendations beyond my own specific teaching context; if it did, the project would develop into a form of Action Research

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