French GCSE
Entries down 0.51% from 2011
Male entries up 0.4%
Female entries down 0.51%
% grade C and above down from 72.5% to 71.7%
Spanish GCSE
Entries up 9.76% from 2011
Male entries up 10.27%
Female entries up 9.97%
% grade C and above down from 74.9% to 74.0%
German GCSE
entries down 5.49% from 2011
Male entries down 4.53%
Female entries down 6.33%
% grade C and above down from 75.8% to 75.6%
I have been thinking of writing this post for some time. I’m still not convinced of the wisdom of writing it, but I have been suffering from depression for some time and been taking anti-depressants for the past year. Most of the time I am able to cope, but occasionally I enter periods of what I can only describe as deep darkness. Those who know me or follow my blog will know that that work has been difficult over the past couple of years. The closure of the subject centres, being re-interviewed for my job, and having my hours reduced have taken their toll, but my struggles with depression pre-date these events. I’ve told very few people about my struggles. I think I’m actually quite good at hiding my depression. The medication I am taking is actually for anxiety rather than depression – my doctor even said to me “I don’t think you’re depressed”.
I am fortunate to have a very loving wife and family as I go through this process. I am grateful for my job and enjoy my work. As far as I know I am performing well at work. I have been keeping very busy and am working on some interesting projects. I am fortunate to work with really nice people. I have a strong Christian faith. Working four days a week has enabled me to set up my open access research website and take on some freelance work, which has been very enjoyable. It all sounds very nice and it is, but as anyone who has suffered from depression knows none of these things guarantee good mental health, and many face depression without any help.
There seems to be a lot of talk about depression on the radio and TV at the moment. I’m not sure whether this is due to the recession, heightened awareness of the condition or whether it is just heightened awareness on my own part. I’m not sure what the consequences of ‘coming out’ will be, but I feel that it is time to stop hiding what I am going through.
Today’s Daily Telegraph has an article under the headline “More pupils pushed on to 'Mickey Mouse' qualifications ”. Anxiety about league tables is leading schools to enter pupils for GCSE exams in less rigorous ‘Micky Mouse’ subjects rather than the more vigorous traditional disciplines. Schools have been found to be offering courses in cake decorating, warehouse work and stonewalling (I presume they mean making walls out of stone rather than obstructing their future work colleagues). One of the commenters on the article has noted that the actual percentages taking these courses are actually very small, but the raw numbers look quite large.
Firstly, I’ve never been comfortable with term “Mickey Mouse” course. The title of a qualification and the topic say nothing of the academic, intellectual or practical rigour involved in being successful in the course. There is no intrinsic reason why a course on dry stonewalling is less useful, valuable or intellectually challenging than a course in Ancient Greek.
Secondly, it is useful to remember that traditional disciplines were once, in modern parlance ‘Mickey Mouse’ subjects. In 1888 Professor Sealey, a historian at the University of Cambridge, suggested that the study of contemporary French literature could be as intellectually demanding as – shock horror— the study of Latin. It was 1907 before Oxford University offered a degree in modern languages. Perhaps in 100-years’ time the Telegraph journalists will see Media Studies as a traditional discipline.
Thirdly, and this is nub of argument, articles such as the one in today’s Telegraph, are based on the underlying assumption that all children need to be taught exactly the same curriculum and that any deviation from this ideal curriculum fails our children. Successive education secretaries of all political persuasions have sought to make sure that all pupils can meet some target or another; we only have to think about the recent debates about the amount of time pupils should spend doing Physical Education, and what sort of PE that should be. I don’t know how many hours per day or week pupils should be doing of different subjects but I am starting to suspect it exceeds the amount of time that they actually spend in school. I’ve never quite got the bottom to why, if all these targets are so important why academies and free schools are exempt from them. Both Michael Gove and his Labour predecessors acknowledge that different pupils need a different sort of education, albeit in a very perverse way.
Just as we mustn’t judge a book by its cover we shouldn’t judge a course by its title. For me, a course in putting up shelves or painting a room wouldn’t have gone amiss.
Big changes are happening in higher education this year and it's not just fees. Attending 'Thriving in an uncertain world' on 13 September is a must for heads of university language, linguistics and area studies departments or anyone who has any leadership role in these subjects.
The workshop will cover the following
I've just moved my site to a new host and some bits and pieces have gone missing. I'll be putting everything back together in the next day or so.
Fees of up to £9000 at English universities may have dominated the news headlines in recent times but it is not the only big change in UK higher education scheduled for autumn 2012.
Background
As 
part of my Fellowship of the Staff and Educational Development Association I have to write an annual review of what I have been doing and what I’ve learnt and what I plan to do for the future. We are then alloated 'triads' of other fellows and we will comment on each other's reports. I wanted to do something a bit different year as we don't have to submit as a written report. I couldn't think how I might do it differently, so I decided to make my report public, crowdsource my professional development I suppose.
Angst
This year has been the most challenging of my career so far. Last year the Higher Education Academy took the decision to withdraw funding from its 24 subject centres. The decision focused my mind somewhat. What had we achieved as a team in the lifetime of the subject centre? Where were we going to go from here? More crucially what had I achieved in the eight years I had been part of the team? Where was I going?
Subject centres, LLAS at least, was very much a we organisation. This was great on one level, but I had found it increasingly difficult to distinguish myself from subject centre. I have also learnt a lot about how people see subject centre staff, and I don’t always like it. In 2010 I wrote a short piece for the Teaching in Higher Education about the identity of subject centre staff in the educational development community. The anonymous referee was adamant that subject centre academic coordinators are essentially administrators though one or two do some good pedagogic work (we need adminstrators of course, but I sensed very negative undertones in the reviewer's use of the word). I wanted to raise awareness about the job I did and somebody seemed to be suggesting that I had misinterpreted my own job. The reviewer said that he/she was a member of a subject centre advisory board—my first response was that I hoped they weren’t on our advisory board. I have always wanted to be taken seriously as an academic. I'm not sure that I am.
As the 2010-11 academic year drew to a close my angst increased. Our director did some good work in persuading the powers at be in Southampton that it was worth keeping LLAS work going as an independent unit—another opportunity though painful reflection was involved too. Who were we? Could we continue as we were? (How) would we have to change? The team, which had grown through Routes into Languages and Links into Languages would have to be much smaller. We had to reapply for our jobs. I was fortunate in this process, but lost a day of week of hours. We still had some funding from the HEA, but we needed to start charging for the sorts of activity which used to be free or low cost. And we had to start getting the funding in to keep going.
What have I done this year? What have I learnt?
The LLAS work
One of the challenges with the subject centre goings on has not been the changes which have taken place, but the continuity. As usual I organised and participated in workshops for Heads of Department, a workshop for new academic staff and a workshop on sustainable development in the humanities. I have received funding from the British Academy to produce an online statistics books for humanities students under the Academy’s Languages and Quantitative Skills Programme. I have long been dissatisfied with statistics textbooks. In my opinion they explain too little and assume that the reader will take concepts such as the normal distribution as an article of faith. The book uses the sorts of examples that humanities students will use such as historical and population data. I hope that by providing a more verbal resonating approach the book will help students (and academics) who find quantitative data difficult to deal with.
I edited two further editions of Debut: the undergraduate journal of languages, linguistics and area studies. In the latest issue my editorial reflects on the concept of publishing undergraduate research, how good it needs to be and how undergraduates journals help students to complete the research cycle. I am also part of LLAS’s EU-funded Sharing Practice in Enhancing and Assuring Quality(SPEAQ) project which, in my view at least, seeks to allow students and academics to reclaim ‘quality’ for themselves. I often feel that the term ‘quality’ has become increasingly associated with ‘tick-box’ approach to teaching which has little, if anything to do with the learning experience. We have developed a workshop to enable students, lecturers and quality managers to come together to reflect on the concept of quality.It has been interesting to learn about the experiences of academics from other countries who are our partners in the project.
I also headed up the organisation of the main LLAS biennial conference, the first of the post-HEA era. This year it was called 'Language Futures' and was held in Edinburgh.
Islamic Studies
One of
my first tasks of the 2011-12 academic year was to provide maternity cover for my colleague Lisa who was coordinating the HEA’s Islamic Studies Network. As a non-expert in the field I knew this would be challenging, but with the closure of the subject centres most team members left the project too. Lisa was kind enough to draw up a plan of what had been done and what needed to be done. My main task was to begin the post-Islamic Studies Network (funding is about to end) sustainability plan. I drew up the consultation questionnaire over the Christmas period and we received over 50 responses. Now that Lisa is back this work is her capable hands and it looks likely some sort of scholarly association for Islamic Studies will be formed in the near future. I was fortunate to be able to draw on the wisdom and enthusiasm of the Advisory Board members.
Other University of Southampton work
I have been part of the Uni
versity of Southampton’s participation in Green Academy, a scheme run by the Higher Education Academy to support institutions in embedding sustainability in the curriculum and overall life of the institution. One of the key achievements of our participation is that we have secured funding for full time programme assistant who is working on embedding sustainability into the CORE (curriculum, operations, research, experience) of the University of Southampton.
I will also be involved in teaching on a new Southampton-wide module: Sustainability in the Local and Global Environment. As in previous years I have also contributed sessions on employability and writing book reviews to the Faculty of Humanities Doctoral Training Programme.
The entrepreneurial John
I have used my 'non-working' time to develop skills in new areas. I have developed a website in Drupal called yazikopen a portal for open access research into learning and teaching modern languages. This has been a steep learning curve on the technical side of things as I do not have a background in web development. I am pleased that the website is functional, but I would like to work out ways to grow the website and see if there is any way enabling the website to generate revenue to cover its costs. I have also been being doing some freelance work and hope to develop further in this area.
Hope (Future plans)
At LLAS I am again organising a workshop for Heads of Department which will focus on the growing sources of public information about teaching in higher education (e.g. National Student Survey, Key Information Set etc.). I will also be putting in bids for various projects. I would like to continue development of the yazikopen website and will look for further freelancing opportunities.
I also hope to have a say in the open access debate. If true open access is to become a reality universities have a greater role to play in academic publishing.
Today marked a new era in UK higher education. Nothing to do with tuition fees, the Research Evaluation Framework (REF), league tables or funding. The University of Birmingham showed what must be an unprecedented step of leadership. They advertised a job as an Honorary (i.e. unpaid) Research Assistant. Working as an unpaid research assistant at the University of Birmingham includes perks such as a desk in the Psychology department, a library card and a refund for the petrol you use driving around in your own car to conduct the research. Although Birmingham eventually withdrew the advertisement, the dam has been breached. Despite the moral and legal issues involved it is only a matter of time before another university advertises similar positions.
The tragedy of the Birmingham advert is that there would have been no shortage of applicants. This time ten years ago I sat my PhD viva. I had spent most of the previous nine months doing a data entry job, despondent that seven years of university had not yielded the rewards I had hoped for. I was tempted to offer my services free to a nearby university to get some more teaching experience or research experience, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. My guess is that there are early career academics out there that not only thought the same thing, but actually offered their services. I also suspect that some universities that have accepted these offers. As it happens my career has been a really interesting one, albeit very different from the one I expected to have. Things were tough then; now they are even harder. Talented PhD graduates and not so recent PhD graduates, world experts in their field doing any work which will pay, spending their evening writing books and articles, hoping not for the dream academic job, but any academic job. They would happily join a university as an unpaid research assistant just to get a foot in the door.
As an undergraduate I regarded academia as a higher calling. A university was a place where the highest moral and ethical standards were upheld. I saw universities as fair places, where ideas were exchanged freely and frankly and where people progressed in the careers because they were good people doing their teaching and research to the best of their abilities and being rewarded on the merits of their achievements.
I have few complaints in life but enough has happened in the past fifteen years or so to disabuse myself of any such notion. But I have always clung to the view that universities were somehow different to the banks, multinational corporations, the City. Today the University of Birmingham led us into a new era.
Last minute preparations are underway for next week's conference in Edinburgh: Language Futures: Languages in Higher Education conference 2012.
I will be faciliating an interactive workshop as part of our EU-funded SPEAQ (Sharing Practice in Enhancing and Assuring Quality) project along with my colleagues Alison Dickens and Laurence Georgin where we will be exploring how good quality teaching is understood by lecturers, students and quality managers.
My colleague Angela Gallagher Brett will be chairing a sessions on the Routes into Languages programme. Kate Borthwick will be presenting about FAVOR (Finding a Voice through Open Resources- a poject aimed mainly at part-time teachers) and about Open lives which is digitising research resources documenting the migration experiences of Spanish emigrés for open access.
Twitter hash tag: #llasconf2012
I’ve been thinking a lot about student engagement since my trip to Nottingham a couple of weeks ago. The theme of that conference was ‘student engagement’ and my task was to speak about the National Student Survey. During the course of the discussion a student opined that student engagement is often seen as synonymous with doing surveys of students. And as I often hear students are getting all surveyed out.
The news that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given over $1 million to Clemson University to research “‘Galvanic’ bracelets that measure student engagement” is responded to with incredulity by Valerie Strauss in her blog for the Washington Post. Clemson University’s website describes the project thus:
Purpose: to conduct a pilot study to measure student engagement physiologically with Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) bracelets, which will determine the feasibility and utility of using such devices more broadly to help students and teachers.
According to Wikipedia (a source I only use for find out things I don’t know anything about), Galvanisitc Skin Response (GSR) is also known as skin conductance:
Skin conductance, also known as galvanic skin response (GSR), electrodermal response (EDR), psychogalvanic reflex (PGR), skin conductance response (SCR) or skin conductance level (SCL), is a method of measuring the electrical conductance of the skin, which varies with its moisture level. This is of interest because the sweat glands are controlled by the sympathetic nervous system,so skin conductance is used as an indication of psychological or physiological arousal. There has been a long history of electrodermal activity research, most of it dealing with spontaneous fluctuations or reactions to stimuli.
Whilst I share Strauss’s scepticism (despite my total ignorance of this field of study), this project brings in another dimension to debates about measuring student engagement. Is there a ‘Brave New World’ in which teacher evaluation instruments will be replaced with student sweat analysis? Will the perception of scientific objectivity appeal to policy makers?