Gina Wisker is Director
of the Centre for Learning
and Teaching (CLT) at the
University of Brighton
and a lecturer in English
and Women’s Studies.
She has worked in
educational development
since the early
1980s, specialising in
postgraduate student learning
and supervisory
practices. In English,
she specialises in women’s
and postcolonial writing.
Recent books include Key
Concepts in Postcolonial
Literature (2007).
Maria Antoniou was Senior
Research Fellow at the CLT
until 2008. Her publications include ‘What
can academic writers learn
from creative writers?
Developing guidance and
support for lecturer
s in higher education’,
(with J. Moriarty, Teaching
in Higher Education, 2008).
Stuart Cameron is a Research
Officer at the CLT.
He works with CLT and other
colleagues on research into
learning and teaching in
higher education.
‘How is English conceptualised as a discipline and how does this, or should this, feed into the ways it is delivered and developed in universities?’ This was the question asked, in 2007, by the University of Brighton’s Centre for Learning and Teaching (CLT). Semi-structured interviews with English lecturers and student focus groups revealed how they saw English as a discipline, how it is taught at Brighton and how its delivery is organised now and might be in the future. Supported by a grant from the English Subject Centre, we set out to document the development of a new discipline identity of English at Brighton and to map the institutional and disciplinary traditions which led to its current state.
The impetus for this research project was a transitional moment for English at the University of Brighton, which provided a rare opportunity to explore these questions. The history of English at Brighton saw it first established within the School of Education as part of a teaching degree, and later as part of joint honours degrees and interdisciplinary courses in three other schools. In 2006, a Steering Group was set up to guide and inform the strategic development of English at the university. The Group is progressing plans to integrate English across three of the four schools where it is taught, with the aim of promoting a clear identity for the subject, more coherent course structures,and a strong community of students and staff sharing and developing understandings about the nature of the subject, its epistemology, its threshold concepts, its worldviews and its practice. We saw this as a golden opportunity to research the subject’s identity.
English as a discipline
The broader context for our research is the increasingly diverse and interdisciplinary nature of English in UK universities, attributed partly to the increasingly central role of literary theory (Eaglestone, 2000a). Is this breadth and plurality a problem? Cartmell and North (2000) argue that ‘the very fact that so many English departments are in the process of restructuring their curricula may itself suggest a neurosis about what constitutes “standards”‘. Childs (2005: 33) talks about the ’importance of English developing a better narrative about itself’, and, Eaglestone (2000b: 7) draws attention to the ’inherent conflict and incommensurability between many of the different strands that make up English’, and argues that ‘there is no “metalanguage” of criticism, no one strand that explains and justifies all the other strands’.
But Eaglestone goes on to argue that we should not worry about this ‘lack of a core’, the way that ‘English has become so plural, so ”undisciplinary”. Eaglestone compares English to a thread made up of many overlapping fibres: ‘Being made of different fibres may make it hard – or impossible – to write critical guides for the whole subject, but it does make it a much stronger subject, institutionally speaking, not least because it makes it more open to change’ (8). The way lecturers at Brighton talked about English reflected this broad definition, an English with very permeable boundaries.
I’m not a great respecter of discipline boundaries. I think they are there to be broken down (Lecturer 3).
Some lecturers expressed excitement at the possibilities for developing teaching and research relationships with colleagues in other schools and discipline areas and developing new approaches to the study of ’English’. But lecturers who teach English in Education state that inescapable boundaries exist around their courses because of the requirements of external agencies and strategies such as Ofsted guidelines and the National Curriculum, and the need for standardisation in the training of English teachers. And one lecturer implied that having too broad a definition of English sometimes causes problems by introducing conflicting and competing ideas and interests:
… there are lots of sorts of subjects dancing round the edge of English, which maybe causes more trouble because it’s quite difficult to get people working in harmony together with the same vision, and, in fact, I don’t think people have the same vision in our department. But, at the moment, things are … going quite smoothly, but people definitely have different interests in what they would perceive as English (Lecturer 1).
However, the majority of lecturers we spoke to in the Schools of Languages and Education do conceptualise English as being, in essence, a focus on the study of texts – written and otherwise – and on the study of language, with both text and language seen as socially located.
… it’s about language as a social process …language acquisition, the process of becoming interactive and the importance of ... [students making] connections between themselves as language users, readers, writers and speakers … (Lecturer 10).
In the School of Historical and Critical Studies, English, especially the study of literary and other texts, is taught as one element of two interdisciplinary courses. Despite not seeing or teaching ‘English’ as a discrete discipline, lecturers broadly shared a similar definition of English to other lecturers in the university, but with more emphasis on the benefits of interdisciplinarity for the study of texts:
I find working in an interdisciplinary way incredibly energising and interesting … it opens up so many new doors … (Lecturer 8).
Threshold concepts
To help reveal the shape of this ‘fuzzy’, ‘undisciplinary’ subject, as it is taught at Brighton, we drew upon the theory of threshold concepts introduced by Meyer and Land (2003). Meyer and Land explain threshold concepts as critical points when students make ‘learning leaps’, when they move their work beyond descriptive fact-finding, to conceptual levels of understanding. These ‘aha’ moments, or ‘new ways of seeing’, represent ‘leaps of faith’ beyond their comfort zones when students acquire new perspectives on the subject and their own work. Thus, they experience conceptual paradigm shifts regarding their studies and themselves. Drawing on evidence from several subjects, Meyer and Land consider threshold concepts to be:
•
‘transformative’ – leading to significant, and probably irreversible, shifts in perception
•
‘integrative’ – exposing previously hidden interrelatedness of something
•
‘bounded’ – bordering into new conceptual areas
•
‘troublesome’ – conceptually difficult, counter-intuitive or alien
In our research, we asked lecturers if they knew what was meant by threshold concepts and explained our view of them as ‘key concepts which must be recognised and overcome by students in order to progress in the subject and on their course; places where ”learning leaps” take place, or where the ”penny drops“; ideas which change the way students look at the subject and inform their reading and work afterwards'. The idea seemed to chime with their experiences and to be thought-provoking:
It’s not a concept itself that I have thought of directly, but when you put it to me like that it really did set me thinking about the key moment or the key ideas (Lecturer 8).
We gathered particularly rich data on this area of the research. Many of the lecturers we spoke to spent considerable time explaining the multiple threshold concepts on their courses:
… they have to get to grips with the theory of ideology because it’s the absolutely core concept that helps them to theorise the relationship between literature and society (Lecturer 11).
… language is central to identity and culture …because language is so tied up with making sense of life and making sense of experience, then they need to understand the diversity of human experience (Lecturer 10).
Other threshold concepts they identified included the social context and construction of texts and language; intertextuality; the reading process and critical literacy; representation and signification; enquiry and research and the engaged learner.
Lecturers also testified to the transformative effects of threshold crossing; for instance, one heard a student describe the impact of learning critical literacy:
... she said, ‘It’s really funny, I watch TV in a different way now‘ (Lecturer 6).
However, the majority of lecturers discussed the problems students had with grasping these threshold ideas, and especially in making the transition from A Level to university level conceptualisation.
… what they tended to focus on was what they’d done at A Level ... So they tended to tell me what Joseph Conrad or, you know, Dan Brown did … What they didn’t do was engage with the conceptual landscape, ie the concept of intertextuality (Lecturer 7).
English at Brighton: strengths, weaknesses and the future
The lecturers we interviewed praised the diverse and interdisciplinary nature of English at Brighton, and noted the enthusiasm of their colleagues and of students. Some praised the pedagogically sound and innovative practices resulting from having roots in the School of Education, while others regretted the traditional lack of emphasis on research:
I’m conscious of pedagogy when I’m teaching literature. ... I think that’s the plus of having Education people teach literature, hopefully it’s more interesting and not just some boring old fart standing up there and talking all the time. I try to make it interactive and I’m conscious of their learning outcomes (Lecturer 7).
Research, ha! ... [we] have such a high teaching workload that we have very, very limited opportunity to research … (Lecturer 10).
The coupling of English with other disciplines in joint degrees was identified as a strength at Brighton, although some suggested that current organisation and delivery of joint degrees, and communication between the various schools and lecturers, could be improved.
... the fact that English is always with half another subject is a good thing, because it gets synergies from those other subjects … actually, it is going to give English a particular strength here because it is always in dialogue with those other subjects, and I think that relates to the development (Lecturer 5).
I think the downside is that the students often don’t see a great deal of connectiveness between the subjects they’re doing English with … I think they get a sense that it’s almost a different kind of protocol, different approaches to the nature of higher educational study … (Lecturer 6).
Concerning future plans for English at Brighton, there was a notable lack of agreement among the lecturers. A few expressed a desire for a single base or department for English, particularly for English literature. Lecturers in the School of Historical and Critical Studies, which is located on a different site from the other schools where English is taught, were keen to preserve their interdisciplinary way of working and to discuss ways in which they could work with other schools more.
What the students said
The students we interviewed said they mostly enjoyed their English courses, appreciating the opportunities for personal engagement, creativity, reading and learning about diverse social and personal experiences, and developing critical reading skills.
… before I started the degree I’d read a book and go, “That’s a nice book”. But now I kind of look in-between the lines and think about it, and I do that more with situations in real life (Group 1).
But they found the relationship between the two halves of their joint degrees difficult and confusing, in both epistemological and practical terms. Students taking English with Sociology perceived a lack of co-ordination between staff and systems on the two sides of their course. And they were particularly aware of, and uncomfortable with, the different pedagogic cultures of the two disciplines:
… English is [about] my open feeling and interpretation. [They] always encourage us to write and form our own ideas and bring in our interpretations … [while in Sociology] it’s much more kind of a lecture, “Sit down and listen while we tell you the theory”, and you go off and read about it kind of thing (Group 2).
These students would like to work in a more interdisciplinary way, blending the two disciplines by, for example, discussing literature in a sociological context.
Student A: I don’t know if there’s been a lot of work which really looks at like a sociological perspective of a novel … or if there is then we haven’t been shown it
Student B: Yeah, I think it would be better to have the module that combines that
A: Yeah
B: Because they keep saying, “oh there’s combined modules” but really no …
A: They’re just Sociology with a little bit of English tagged on or English with a little bit of Sociology tagged on, kind of thing … I think it must be difficult as well because there doesn’t seem to be that many teachers that have shown they can do both sides equally, and I think if we had a teacher that could teach both sides, had the same knowledge in Sociology as they do in English, we’d get, I don’t know, just maybe it would work … (Group 2).
All students in the focus groups said they enjoyed opportunities to bring themselves and their own opinions to their studies. They praised lecturers who were open to students’ opinions and were critical of a minority of lecturers who, they felt, rejected or derided students’ personal views. They enjoyed Creative Writing because it encourages personal engagement and develops their critical thinking and writing skills, and would have liked to do more of it.
Reflections
Debates about the state of English studies have been common since its inception. Our small scale, local study is intended to be useful to others considering the conceptualisation of the subject as it develops in the face of debates about interdisciplinarity, discipline boundaries and identities, and beyond that into personal development planning, what used to be called ‘graduate skills’, and employability.
Many of the issues which lecturers and students from the University of Brighton have highlighted could be seen as common throughout the sector: issues of engaging students with threshold concepts and ways of engaging both their critical conceptual and their emotional and creative responses; issues about the transition from pre-university study to university study and the tensions between multi- and interdisciplinarity and the development of an English research culture. Others, to do with specific subject combinations and the ways in which the subject is taught, are specific to the University of Brighton, but while this provides local insights, it might also provoke thoughts about the diversity of disciplinary culture between different universities.
English is certainly undergoing a moment of transformation at Brighton, in which some are reflecting their sense of liminality, a troublesome moment which brings the experience of studying the subject into a new perspective. We think many of our findings are significant for the English subject sector as a whole: the need for a coherent identity for the subject; an enhancement of the student experience in terms of identity, location and social learning; a focus on both epistemology – the knowledge creation and basis of the subject – and ontology – the identity of the subject and the identity of those studying and teaching it.
We would urge colleagues in other institutions to undertake similar studies, particularly where changes in the configuration of English teaching are afoot. Our findings drew on a relatively small sample – 11 members of staff and 10 students – and so were not necessarily representative of the staff and student body as a whole. It would have been desirable to include all staff and students, perhaps using an online survey. If repeating the study, we would also probably try and engage lecturers and students more in the development of the project, to ensure they had more ownership of it. This might mean developing an action research project, with concrete proposals to address some of the issues raised as an output. As it was, though, the findings have already been useful in informing discussion on the development of the subject.
The full Connotations and Conjunctions report is available on the Subject Centre website in the project archive.
References
Cartmell, D. and North, J., 2000. ‘The way forward for English studies’, CCUE News, 13.
Childs, B., 2000. ‘What is an English curriculum?‘, CCUE News, 13.
Eaglestone, R., 2000. Doing English, London and New York: Routledge.
Eaglestone, R., 2000. ‘Undoing English’, CCUE News, 13.
Meyer, J.H.F. and Land, R., 2003. ‘Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: Linkages to ways of thinking and practising within the disciplines‘, in C. Rust, Improving Student Learning: Improving Student Learning Theory and Practice – Ten Years On. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development.
