Interpreting academic tribal languages: initial challenges and emerging strategies in managing a multidisciplinary cohort on postgraduate programmes in third level learning and teaching
Anne Murphy, Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), Ireland
Paper presented at SCUTREA, 33rd annual conference, University of Wales, Bangor,
1-3 July, 2003
Introduction and context
The postgraduate programmes which are the subject of this paper were developed as a result of recommendations from a Review Team Report on the DIT to the Higher Education Authority in 1996. That report included the following recommendation in relation to provision of quality teaching in the Institute:
The development of strategies in teaching, learning and assessment should be a matter of urgency, together with relevant staff development policies and practices: it should be demonstrated that innovation in teaching and learning is as valued as research achievement in terms of recognition and personal advancement.
Consequently, in 1999 a Learning and Teaching Centre was set up under the Directorate of Academic Affairs offering a suite of postgraduate courses at certificate, diploma and masters levels, as well as non-accredited short courses, workshops and consultancy services to academic staff. It was envisaged that initially the demand for the postgraduate courses would come from newly-appointed academic staff and from support staff with a training role.
A qualification in third level teaching is not obligatory for academic staff in Irish higher education, so motivation to register on such a programme would have to be related to professional development plans at individual level, or from encouragement at School level to raise the academic qualifications profile of staff.
The initial cohort of student was, surprisingly, primarily composed of experienced, self-motivated individuals with a keen interest in innovative pedagogies and applied research. Subsequent cohorts were a mix of self-motivated staff, staff whose promotion was contingent on a masters qualification, and newly appointed staff. A three year cycle of delivery will be completed in Autumn 2003 with the first masters in third level learning and teaching to be awarded in Ireland.
This paper seeks to outline some of the key experiences related to language and terminology which challenged us as teaching staff on these programmes to date. As we move through the cycle of delivery we have become increasingly aware of our own different understandings of ‘standard’ education language and how those differences are forcing us to begin to name, perhaps in different language, exactly what we mean by the terms we use, and to unpack the nuances of those terms. Differences in understandings among our students have forced us to invent, and re-invent, strategies to accommodate and extend such understandings while respecting the rights of each student within the integrity of his/her body of disciplinary knowledge.
Profile of programme participants
The ‘tribes’ and ‘territories’ of each of our three cohorts to date have varied, requiring a varied response each time. The first cohort was composed of relatively experienced lecturers, most with postgraduate qualifications already, some with masters and one with a doctorate. Only one had any formal qualification in education or teaching. One third of the group was directly involved in apprenticeship training, with the remainder in business/management, culinary arts/hospitality, pure science/applied social science/health science, and visual/media arts, and languages.
The second cohort drew half its membership from performing/media/visual arts, one third from culinary arts/hospitality, and the remainder from health sciences, business and engineering. Again several had masters qualifications in their own discipline area.
The third cohort was double the size of the previous cohorts, and had almost half its membership drawn from engineering apprenticeship training, many of whom are now obliged to achieve masters level qualifications. The next highest representation was from the pure sciences, followed by business, visual arts, human sciences, culinary arts and library services and information technology.
The range of disciplines outlined broadly reflects the institute as whole. We are relatively new, constituted under acts of parliament in 1992 and 1994, essentially an amalgamation of six colleges, the oldest of which dates back to the 1880s, with most of the remaining colleges established in the 1890s and the early decades of the twentieth century. Each college came to the DIT with its traditions, territories and tribes both with regard to teaching practices and to granting of awards. There had always been a strong tradition in the original colleges of craft training, links with industry, part-time provision and fostering of young musical talent. Additionally, the management of the colleges was traditionally publicly accountable with a strong commitment to egalitarianism and support for civic society. Melding this disparate set of received cultures and sets of disciplinary knowledge into a six faculty unit which looks and acts like a modern university has presented many challenges, not least of which is the challenge of arriving at ‘a formula of words’ in all documentation which gives ‘parity of esteem’ to the many inherited traditions of learning and teaching.
Is there a hymn-sheet?
As academics working on the postgraduate programmes with our students/colleagues we have been forced into an acute awareness of our own tribal preferences and territorial boundaries. None of us are graduates of the DIT and three of the six key staff are from outside the state. So we are strangers here!
In terms of the language we use, there is a conscious effort to be inclusive. The validation documents for our programmes were carefully crafted to represent a respect for existing values and practices, while specifically committing us to pedagogical approaches which emphasise reflective practice, experiential learning, group project work, problem-based learning, and individual research. In practice there has been faithful adherence to these commitments as the programmes unfolded. The strategy of teaching in the modes listed above have proved to be generally successful, with students encouraged to critically evaluate the underpinning theory of each approach relative to their own practice. A team teaching approach predominates the certificate year so as to generate maximum exposure to the disciplinary knowledge, pedagogical approaches and technical expertise of the staff.
So where is the discord?
Among the teaching staff variations on themes are emerging more loudly with each new intake. Initially there was little time or opportunity for divergence on the broad issues, but now the nuances of meanings and consequent styles of management of the learning situations are becoming more obvious. This is in no little part due to the need to respond rapidly to the changing profile of the students’ academic territories and tribal expectations. Our challenge is basically about the continuous construction of epistemology in a universal context where flux is constant and disciplinary certainty no longer a given, as well as a local context of a new institution generating its own broad educational cultural identity and individual faculty cultures. Articulating this postmodern condition in appropriately constant language for our cross-faculty students is proving somewhat problematic. Encouraging students to arrive very quickly at the point where they can position themselves definitively in this scenario is even more problematic.
For the purpose of this paper, I will address only three of the most current nuances of terminology and meaning which are indicative of some of the language problems we face, namely ‘reflective practice’, ‘personal philosophy’ and ‘competence’, and in the discussion attempt to indicate how we are seeking to find safe places for staff and students to maintain their own academic and professional integrity throughout their experiences with us.
‘Reflective’ or ‘reflexive’ practice?
The initial module on our postgraduate certificate involves the preparation of reflective portfolios of practice. The model used is greatly influenced by international practice, and the ‘tribal’ culture reflects broadly the philosophical and psychological stance of the humanist/constructivist school.
The model drew liberally on Kolb (1984), Lyons (1998), and Schon (1987). The general underpinning theory for the model is based on the belief that active-reflective approaches to learning and teaching can straddle any perceived conflict, or polarisation, of cultures between the pure sciences and the humanistic/artistic without falling into the trap of oversimplification or engagement in inter-discipline power struggles. Dividing the epistemological issues from the political in the reflective exercise was a struggle for some students, and staff continuously revised management of workshop sessions to address and process emerging issues related to the role of the social in constructing the epistemological. For some students, particularly from the sciences and engineering, the term ‘critical analysis’ rather than ‘reflection’ was a useful one in delineating the boundary between a perceived ‘confessional’ approach of the applied human sciences and their preference from the background of their own empirical cultures.
But have we moved to a model of reflexive practice, or praxis, as outlined by Carr & Kemmis (2002) of informed action which, by reflection on its character and consequences, reflexively changes the knowledge-base which informs it? Perhaps our term ‘reflection’ at the initial stages of the programmes is more likely to produce craft or technical knowledge which is not self-consciously aimed at changing existing frameworks of traditions or expectations within which they operate. Some programme participants may choose to operate within this meaning. But, a few participants in the later stages of the programmes, have not only begun their own paradigm shift but have continued to contribute to furthering radical action in their own Schools and Faculties related to curriculum design, and to learning and teaching strategies. How sustainable their impact will be on the broad landscape of their tribes and territories is impossible to forecast just now.
Whose philosophy?
We required our students to engage with, and to articulate, their personal philosophies throughout the three stages of the programme. The portfolio stage involves initial exploration of personal values regarding education and the profession of teaching. Again the question of boundaries arises. For some disciplines the notion of using the self as a standard of unsupported measurement is so foreign as to be unacceptable. For others a quasi-psychoanalytical approach to generating a personal philosophy gives a freedom unbounded by received disciplinary knowledge and traditional paradigms.
Among the academic staff advising on personal philosophy statements, frequent debates ensue about mission statements, institutional valuing of different knowledge sources, cultural norms, strategic positioning, and ‘best practice’. However, these debates seldom yield more than an affirmation of positions.
On the later stages of the programmes students are encouraged to make sorties into enemy epistemological territory, to map other landscapes, to report their experiences, to debate what new knowledge might mean for their own ontology. For most this is an exciting adventure. For some it is unsettling and over-challenging to the extent of their seeking refuge in home territory with a determination to stay safely there in the future. Some become temporarily estranged from their own tribe with the risk of eventual rejection by the collective.
One strategy we devised to minimise ‘philosophy/theory terminology stress’ throughout the programme was to encourage students to generate, individually or collectively, a glossary of terms where the nuances of meanings among the various disciplines represented in the cohorts could be explored, discussed and made generally available as a learning resource through WebCT. This proved to be particularly effective in the research methods module where the language used in approaches to research in education settings may be wholly unfamiliar in the student’s own discipline context.
Another approach was to encourage students to map the development of ideas related to knowledge, learning and teaching through narrative, through matrices, through timelines, through experiential drama. For some students the security of these approaches de-personalised the learning process to a zone of comfort where they could locate their professional practice, and that of their colleagues, without any perceived inappropriate intrusion into their cognitive and/or emotional space.
Becoming competent or becoming critical?
The meaning of the term ‘competence’ is currently being hotly debated in education circles in Ireland, not least because it figures hugely in the proposed framework of qualifications grid of levels produced by the National Qualifications Authority of Ireland (NQAI) in the past year.
In that grid of ten levels the following are the dimensions of competence appropriate to our postgraduate programmes:
Level 8:
Competence – context
Use advanced skills to conduct research, or advanced technical or professional activity, accepting accountability for all related decision making; transfer and apply diagnostic and creative skills in a range of contexts
Competence – role
Act effectively under guidance in a peer relationship with qualified practitioners; lead multiple, complex and heterogeneous groups
Competence – learning to learn
Learn to act in variable and unfamiliar learning contexts; learn to manage learning tasks independently, professionally and ethically
Competence – insight
Express a comprehensive, internalised, personal world view manifesting solidarity with others.
Level 9
Competence - context
Act in a wide and often unpredictable variety of professional levels and ill-defined contexts
Competence – role
Take significant responsibility for the work of individuals and groups; lead and initiate activity
Competence – learning to learn
Learn to self-evaluate and take responsibility for continuing academic professional development
Competence – insight
Scrutinise and reflect on social norms and relationships and act to change them.
The competence dimensions in the grid are accompanied by ‘knowledge’, ‘know-how’ and ‘skills’ dimensions of breadth, kind, range and selectivity.
The NQAI meanings do not sit comfortably with definitions of competence used by our students, for instance, in assessment in art and design where ‘competent’ indicates a level of technical skill without evidence of creativity. Nor does it fit comfortably into traditions of craft apprenticeship training where ‘competent’ indicates achievement of a licence to practice.
While the debate about definitions and levels ensues there is less time to analyse the impact of this language on how we view ‘academic competence’ or ‘operational competence’ especially in terms of a possible ‘slide to perfomativity’ in higher education staff training as suggested by Barnett (1997, 2000). We are perhaps in the lucky position in Ireland of still remaining less instrumental than the U.K seems to be with regard to control of curricula, and less power-focused in terms of our educational discourses. Our challenge here is to prevent such discourses from being captured and led off in any one particular direction to the detriment of others.