Keith Hughes’ main teaching
and research interests lie
in the fields of African
American writing and the
Black Atlantic. Forthcoming
publications include a chapter
on ‘Walter Mosley, Socratic
Method and the Black Atlantic’,
which will appear in Finding
a Way Home: A Critical
Assessment of Walter Mosley’s
Fiction, eds. Owen E. Brady
and Derek C. Maus
(University of Mississippi, 2008).
It is now a year since I was appointed as the English Subject Centre’s Liaison Officer for Scotland; this first year has been challenging and rewarding, with many lessons learned along the way. One of the challenges has been to identify key issues in the subject area in Scotland, and to try to devise ways in which the English Subject Centre can help teachers and students in the English subject area here. This brief article is by way of an introduction to some of the ongoing and future work of the English Subject Centre in Scotland.
Three Scottish-specific areas which we are very keen to develop resources and community interaction in are: (i) the research-teaching nexus, (ii) curriculum design and delivery where joint strands of English and Scottish Literature meet (iii) Highers and their relationship to both A Levels and to university study.
To begin with, the subject of research-teaching linkages. As a current Scottish Enhancement Theme is interested in ‘enhancing graduate attributes through research-teaching linkages’, the English Subject Centre felt it would be useful to engage with this from our subject-angle. As teachers in a subject discipline which requires – we would hope! – a level of self-reflexiveness from its students about their own work, surely we too need to welcome the need to pay attention to the ways our teaching practice and our research methods are devised, and particularly the ways in which they interrelate. A one-day event was held in Edinburgh on precisely this theme, and the report can be found on p.41. This is one area of the Scotland-dedicated webpages which I will be looking to add to substantially over the coming year as there are more and more useful materials being published in the field.
The second area around which I am keen to focus future English Subject Centre work is that of curriculum design for early years – i.e. years 1 and 2 – where joint strands of English and Scottish Literature are offered. The four-year undergraduate degree programme here in Scotland has great scope for offering students a relatively deep understanding of the relationships between the two ‘national’ literatures. As a model for an interesting way of breaking through narrowly ‘national’ notions of literature, the dual focus offered in many Scottish universities is worth looking at closely. The title of a 1998 book on on the genesis of English studies, edited by Robert Crawford of University of St Andrews, gives an idea of the subversive possibilities of teaching across notional nations boundaries: The Scottish Invention of English Literature. The theoretical and practical possibilities and problems of the dual-literature provision is an area where I hope to make some strides in the year ahead, with a possible colloquium in early summer 2009 at a Scottish university.
The third area which we will be looking to focus on – with materials coming onto our website soon – is the slightly less esoteric subject of Highers. The aim is to serve two principal purposes: first, helping higher education teachers in Scotland – many of whom will themselves not have passed through the Scottish schooling system – understand the variety of texts which first-year Scottish-educated students may have engaged with at school and, secondly, helping colleagues in England, Northern Ireland and Wales, to understand what a Higher is and what students from Scottish schools with this qualification will bring with them to university. The demographic profile of each university in Scotland is of course unique; but all will have a mix of Scottish-educated and other students. We need to recognise – particularly in light of the curriculum design issues mentioned above – the meaning of this difference in terms of the incoming students’ previous exposure to certain texts.
An aside: While waiting to be interviewed for this post last year, I flicked through an English Subject Centre study on A Level English texts, to calm my nerves. One part of the study was an uncluttered listing of ‘texts set for English Literature 2007’: out of around 170 set texts, there were two Scottish writers represented, Scott and Duffy. No Burns, no Lochhead, no Kelman, no Gibbon, no Smollett, no Kay, no Stevenson or Hogg ... So, a student schooled in England will turn up at a Scottish university with almost no knowledge of the literary tradition which will – most probably – form at least a major part of their first two years of study. However, a Scottish-schooled student going to an English university is very unlikely to have had no contact at all with Keats, Austen, Dickens, Barker, Auden, Orwell etc. So, the focus on Highers will, almost necessarily, lead to subsequent discussions on what is being taught at A Level – and the contrast between both school and university in Scotland and other parts of the UK. As with all English Subject Centre work, the aim here will be to bring the community together to discuss these issues, to look at the potential benefits and disadvantages which accrue to both students and teachers from these discrepancies/diversities.
As a way of accessing our work in the three fields mentioned above, and more, the English Subject Centre’s website offers a perfect way in. While I am currently engaged in developing materials on the dedicated Scottish pages, there are already plenty of materials on the website generally, which necessarily feed into the Scottish angle. The developments we have planned for the Scottish pages, will look to serve three key functions: (i) to provide information of ongoing developments in the Subject Centre’s work, and further afield (ii) to encourage and enable discussion across the discipline in areas of pedagogical and subject-specific interest and (iii) to promote and facilitate progress in the teaching and study of English, through such things as development in e-learning and sharing of ideas for teaching.
Above all, I see our work in Scotland as community-centred work. That is to say, we are looking to develop a relationship of partners among lecturers, students, researchers – and of course each of us usually at least two of these three! These relationships involve departmental-level contact and engagement, direct work with university teachers, the crucial partnerships with other subject centres (ie those representing other disciplines), the Higher Education Academy for Scotland, and others. As a relatively new recruit of the English Subject Centre, I feel that the exciting developments in English at higher education level – for example, the new joint-degree offered at Napier University in English and Publishing – can lie at the heart of much of our work. The new degrees/departments/universities etc can offer the wider community both a freshness of outlook and can draw on the established higher education English community for important support in matters of collegiate bonding, research-time and so on. The English Subject Centre aims to play a role in helping forge new bonds across the sector.
In common with much of the UK higher education and further education sectors, one of the most exciting, but also potentially difficult, developments that we in Scotland are currently engaging with is the massive growth in recruitment for Creative Writing programmes, and the interesting challenges this throws up for the discipline as a whole. The supposed divide between the study of ‘Creative Writing’ and the study of ‘literature’ – with the almost inevitable adoption of hierarchical views on the relative academic rigour of the two disciplines – is beginning to give way to a fruitful symbiosis in which creative writing teachers are becoming integral members of departments, offering courses which look to cross the literature-creative divide. Indeed, the development of PhD programmes in Creative Writing might prove to be in some ways the most fundamental shift, carrying the imprimatur of ‘research’ as it does. Another, perhaps unforeseen, result of the closer linkage between Creative Writing and literary study is that means of student assessment are themselves being altered by this engagement. The notion of there being other ‘genres’ of assessable writing other than the essay is an emergent issue. As you can see, we in the English subject field – in Scotland or elsewhere – have plenty of issues on our plates at the moment.
One final thought. Without doubt, the growth in e-learning potentialities is helping to break down the seemingly invisible barriers that often exist between not only English, but all of the traditional ‘humanities’, and the scientific disciplines. The growth in e-learning tools and approaches, fostered by university-level demands and the efforts of umbrella bodies such as JISC, is both a challenge and an opportunity for those who work in the English subject area. Scotland’s relatively small, so relatively concentrated higher education sector, could be well-placed to engage with the agenda and drive it forward. The English Subject Centre funds and supports work in the areas of e-learning, and I will be attempting to negotiate my own steep learning curve over the next year in this area, and will welcome fellow travellers. I have had great support throughout my first year from colleagues at the English Subject Centre, and I hope I can successfully bring some of that supportive-ethos to our future work in Scotland.
Quick Guide to Highers and Advanced Highers
For those wishing to enter higher education in Scotland, the school-pathway would usually involve Highers and/or Advanced Highers. Highers are (normally) taken in school year 5, and Advanced Highers in year 6 or at college. Some Scottish universities will allow students with Advanced Highers to enter directly into year 2 of the degree programme. Visit the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) website for more details.
The SQA has also produced a number of case studies on students entering directly into university (including Oxford and Cambridge) through the Advanced Highers route (www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/13813.html)
