What will students get for £9,000? We all need to think about it.

April 13, 2011Uncategorizedjohn

£9,000 a year for what? Languages and area studies under the new fees regime in England, 20 May, London

Most universities have declared that they will be charging the full £9,000 p.a. fee. Quite rightly students are asking what they will get for their £9,000—the argument that this fee is merely compensating for cuts in university funding is not going to go down too well. Students often say they would expect more contact time with staff (they say this now), but what sort of contact time? And what about the year abroad—how do we sell a four year course which may or may not incur an extra year of fees? These are questions which all university staff need to think very hard about.

This discussion-based workshop will focus on the possible implications for the new fees for students and potential students of languages and area studies.

Further details online at www.llas.ac.uk/events

"Still learning" because I'm still learning

April 11, 2011Uncategorizedjohn

For some time now I have been trying to come up with an appropriate sub-heading for my website. For now I have gone with "still learning" because I am still learning.

Transition to university in modern languages

April 11, 2011languages, school, transition to HEresearchjohn

The article Angela and I wrote together has now been published in Arts and Humanities in Higher Education.

The full reference:

Angela Gallagher-Brett and John Canning, “Disciplinary disjunctures in the transition from secondary school to higher education study of modern foreign languages,” Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 10, no. 2 (April 1, 2011): 171 -188.

Modifying the Discover American Studies CD

April 5, 2011American Studies, youtubejohn

It was always the intention that the Discover American Studies CD could be modified. Academics and others involved in student recuitment could add in their own slides, delete slides, add logos etc. in order to promote their own American Studies courses.

However, in practice you do need to be able to find the files in the first place to be able to modify them. Today I set up a youtube account and made a video using BB Flashback Express recorder (a screen recorder which is available for free download) in order to show how to access the powerpoint files so they can be modified.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEg3YUQrJz4&hl=en&fs=1]

Was the 2011 census piloted?

April 1, 20112011 UK Census, questionnaire design2011 censusjohn

One-year old Elijah refused to give a coherent answer to the national identity question. He was also vague about his religious beliefs. I put him down as speaking English even though he does not say very much. Noting this on my facebook page, I discovered that other parents had similar problems. To the question "Where were you living twelve months ago" one friend claimed to have written, on behalf of his six month old son, "In my mother's womb".

Why write book reviews?

March 25, 2011book reviews, Canadabook reviewsjohn

For three years running now I have run a session for our postgraduates on writing book reviews. I have written quite a few for the British Journal of Canadian Studies and am about to begin to write my first one for Innovations in Education and Teaching International. When I started to think about how I might approach the session with the postgraduates I was surprised at how little discussion there is on how to write good book reviews, or if indeed we should even spend our time doing them.

As the status of publications go a book review is pretty insignificant. I don’t list them on my CV or on this website. I make it clear to postgraduates that book reviews are not perceived to be as ‘good’ as peer-reviewed journal articles, books, book chapters etc. Over on the Chronicle of Higher Education forums there are those who regard the appearance of book reviews on a CV as ‘padding’, even for more junior members of the academic community. In their view claiming a book review as an actual publication is along the lines of listing blog posts, tweets and postings to internet fora on your CV.

So, why do I do book reviews?

1. Keeping up with Canada. These days all my research is in the field of higher education teaching and learning, but by writing book reviews I can motivate myself to keep my interests in Canadian matters going.

2. The challenge of summarising. Summarising and evaluating a book in 500 words is a challenge. I have just submitted a review of Quebec and the Heritage of Franco-America, which contains six essays plus an introduction from one of the editors. In this case I have just about managed to address each chapter individually, but books with 10, 15 or more contributors are much harder to write about in 500 words.

3. A sense of providing a service to the academic community. I would like to think people actually read my reviews and find them helpful, but in all honesty no-one has ever mentioned anything I’ve written in a book review.

4. To increase the size of my book collection! I like having lots of books. My wife is less keen though. We have two big bookcases in our front room and many of the shelves contain two rows of books. My Canadian book collection takes up a couple of shelves and it is nice (for me) to add to this section.
If you are teaching a session on book my materials are available for open sharing in Humbox.

Other sources I have found online include:

Roger Shiner (adapted from Susan Swan), ‘Nine ways of looking at a critic’, Toronto Globe and Mail 30th November 1996. E23)

How to write a book review (Los Angeles Valley College)

National Student Survey

March 22, 2011languages, LLAS, National Student SurveyNational Student Surveyjohn

I have written a short article about using the National Student Survey (NSS) for the latest edition of the LLAS magazine Liaison.

I am also overseeing some projects on the NSS. I have developed an A0 dialogue sheet which can be downloaded from my humbox page.

Speak to the future- what I want for my children

March 8, 2011languageslanguagesjohn

I don't know what my two sons will go onto to do when they grow up, but whatever it is languages will always be useful to them. Therefore I not only back the Speak to the Future campaign in my professional capacity, but also as a parent. I want my sons not only to study languages, but to have sufficient competence to be able to work in at least one language other than English.

My own school languages experiences ended at GCSE. Although I enjoyed studying French and Russian up to the age of 16, I decided to take other subjects at A-level. I could go on forever about my belief that the English education system narrows too much after the age of 16, but as a postgraduate student I picked up my French again at the University of Bristol's School of Continuing Education. Although I made substantial progress, I am aware that I am well short of being able to describe myself as 'fluent'. Nevertheless I have been pleased that I have been able to hold conservations with French-speakers- being complimented by a shop assistant when shopping in Paris is amongst the highlights.

For my own children I want more- in fact I demand more. By the age of 16 I want them to be able to do more than ask directions, book a hotel room or express opinions about the advantages and disadvantages of hitch-hiking. The Speak to the future campaign is one which has ambitions of all our young people. It is languages and other subjects, not languages verses other subjects.

The five key aims of the campaign are:

Every language valued as an asset
This will encourage policy makers and citizens to recognise that the many languages used in the homes of UK citizens are a valuable resource for social cohesion and economic success.

A coherent experience of languages for all children in primary school
This will introduce the learning of other languages and cultures as well as develop a better understanding of how the child’s own languages work.

A basic working knowledge of at least two languages including English for every child leaving secondary school
This will equip every school leaver to live and work in a global society where confidence in learning and using other languages is a major advantage.

Every graduate qualified in a second language
This will prepare future leaders in business, the professions, voluntary organisations, education and research to thrive and communicate confidently in complex global societies.

An increase in the number of highly qualified linguists
This will fulfil the growing need for language professionals, especially English speaking interpreters and translators, and for teachers and researchers specialising in languages and cultures.

Speak to the Future

Life after subject centres

February 14, 2011HEA, subject centresHEA, subject centresjohn

I have an unstated objective to write something for my blog at least once a week. Preferably that something should be fairly interesting. Now I realise that two weeks has past since I wrote anything at all.

Not that nothing is happening. In subject centres there is a lot happening. We face an uncertain future as the HEA withdraws our funding. Whatever I am doing on 1 August 2011 won’t be what I am doing now.

In 2010 I had an article published in the Points for Departure section of Teaching in Higher Education. The Invisible Developers: Academic Coordinators in the UK Subject Centre Network sought to draw attention to what I saw as the neglect of subject centre staff in narratives about educational development in the UK. With the impending closure of subject centres the whole point of the article is largely redundant. Even when I wrote that article at the end of 2009 I had imagined a bright future for subject centres, a (relatively) inexpensive alternative to sporadic rounds of short term project funding.

What next? I don’t know, but in a few years time some report or other will recommend a UK-wide network of discipline-based centres to support teaching and learning on a national basis.

What is different about pedagogic research? Perhaps nothing.

January 31, 2011researchresearchjohn

Just read Bruce Macfalane's article in the latest edition of Teaching in Higher Education. His opening paragraph gets to the heart of his argument, so I will quote it in full:

There is an increasing tendency for research to be divided into two types: ‘subjectbased’ research and ‘pedagogic’ research. Subject-based research is serious, scholarly and well-respected stuff. It is published in prestigious subject-based journals. This kind of research is what counts in the assessment of research quality in countries like the UK, Australia and New Zealand. Then there is ‘pedagogic’ research. This is where academics from various disciplines do research about their own teaching, that of others or focus on the way students learn. Sometimes, ‘research about learning and teaching’ is the phrase used to distinguish this type of scholarly endeavour from everything else in academic life. But apparently, unlike subject-based research, ‘pedagogic’ research is not ‘proper’ research (p.127).

I liked this article and can't really find anything to disagree with. I have long wondered what makes Boyer's Scholarship of Teaching and Learning a somewhat different type of scholarship to his other three scholarships --moreover why have so many pedagogic researcher accepted this? Why is pedagogic research seen as somehow second rate? Why is it seen as easier? Like most people who have done pedagogic research I have also done non-pedagogic research (or 'proper' research) as some might call it. Both use social science research methods. Neither is intrinsically more difficult or more scholarly than the other.

Reference

Bruce Macfarlane, “Prizes, pedagogic research and teaching professors: lowering the status of teaching and learning through bifurcation,” Teaching in Higher Education 16, no. 1 (2011): 127-130