‘Teaching’ or ‘support’? The poisoned chalice of the role of Students’ Skills Centres

Barkas, Linda Anne

doi:10.1080/0309877x.2011.558889

Cited by 10 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…This change has resulted in a heavily complex and contested discourse surrounding what constitutes appropriate 'graduate knowledge ' and 'skill development' (see, inter alia, Ainley 2000;Barkas 2011b;Brown and Carasso 2013). Throughout these developments over the past few decades, the value of a higher education as a private good has changed to an economic commodity in a fluctuating market, which has resulted in the creation of unintended divisions in higher education in terms of efficiency, diversity and quality (Brown and Carusso 2013).…”

Section: Section One: Background and Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tinker, tailor, policy-maker: can the UK government’s teaching excellence framework deliver its objectives?

Barkas

Scott

Poppitt

et al. 2017

Journal of Further and Higher Education

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is a Senior Lecturer in Business Management, Programme Leader and Centre Leader for Transnational Education Partners at the University of Sunderland. Linda worked in administration and senior management in the public and private sectors before a career change into FE and HE where she has gained over thirty years experience of teaching, supervision and research. Her research interests are in issues in widening participation, academic literacy and 2 learning and teaching. She is currently collaborating with colleagues on research into students' research skills.

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Section: Section One: Background and Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tinker, tailor, policy-maker: can the UK government’s teaching excellence framework deliver its objectives?

Barkas

Scott

Poppitt

et al. 2017

Journal of Further and Higher Education

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“…To research into SoTL, without also being institutionally tied to a discipline, leads to a complex relationship with how to be academic. Whilst some have labelled this a 'poisoned chalice' (Barkas, 2011), we suggest that the in-between nature of ALL and, thus, SoTL academic work, situated as it is outside of the dominant institutional paradigm, leads to an unusual and, as yet, un-named academic identity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Being chimaera: a monstrous identity for SoTL academics

Bennett

Hobson

Jones

et al. 2015

Higher Education Research & Development

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Lurking on the fringes of university culture are academic identities that do not fit into the usual disciplinary communities. Aiming to explore the experience of 'being academic' when not linked directly to a discipline, this paper examines the stories of a diverse group of SoTL scholars who work in a centralised multi-campus academic skills support centre in an Australian university. Framed as group auto-ethnography, the paper inquires into the everyday experience of these academics through narrative analysis of multiple first-person accounts and makes apparent the monstrousness of deaffiliated academic identities. Despite diverse disciplinary backgrounds, the author-participants found that they now shared a tripartite academic identity formed through the negotiation of three roles: the teacher, the disciplinarian, and the educational researcher. Using the chimaera, a mythical threeheaded monster as an organising metaphor, this paper aims to provide agency and visibility for often under-represented and unacknowledged academic identities.

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“…As a result, universities across the country have dedicated AL interventions aimed at assisting students to master the academic litercy requirements of higher educaiton. Much of the literature agrees that AL interventions should ideally be interwoven with content subjects (for example Winberg, Wright, Wyrley-Birch and Jacobs, 2013;Black & Yasukawa, 2013;Barkas, 2011;Wingate, 2006;Lehmann & Gillman, 1998; also see Section 3.1). However, due to a variety of factors such as limited human resources and timetable constraints (see, for example, Wingate, 2006), in reality, many AL interventions found in South African universities could be considered "bolt-on" courses (Wingate, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to Wingate (2006:457), this refers to providing learning support by means of "extra-curricular 'study skills courses, often offered in dedicated learning support centres". One disadvantage of such bolt-on courses is that students often do not transfer what they learn in their AL courses to content subjects (Barkas, 2011;Hosking, Mhlauli & Berhe, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Creating “transdisciplinary spaces” for a real-world scenario: A practical teaching collaboration

Fouche¹,

Corbett²,

Immelman³

2021

J. Lang. Teach.

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A lack of transfer of academic literacy competencies was identified by academic literacy and Statistics lecturers involved in an extended programme course. This paper reports on one attempt at a workable collaborative solution to this challenge. The collaborative attempt is situated within the academic literacies framework, and is described. Thereafter, student feedback as well as critical self-reflections from participating lecturers are qualitatively analysed in an interpretative framework, to determine how key stakeholders experienced the collaborative intervention. The collaborative attempt was found to be valuable in more effectively achieving the outcomes of both courses, and in helping students see the relevance of academic literacy in content subjects – this is in line with an academic literacies frameworkwhich holds that academic literacy cannot be divorced from the contexts in which it is practiced. The primary factors that led to a successful collaboration were a willingness of all partners to participate in the project and regular communication between collaborators.Main problems encountered revolved around miscommunication between lecturers and students, and an insufficiently detailed timetable that resulted in pressure at certain stages. Keywords: Teaching collaboration, academic literacy, academic writing, English for specific purposes, project work

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‘Teaching’ or ‘support’? The poisoned chalice of the role of Students’ Skills Centres

Cited by 10 publications

References 38 publications

Tinker, tailor, policy-maker: can the UK government’s teaching excellence framework deliver its objectives?

Tinker, tailor, policy-maker: can the UK government’s teaching excellence framework deliver its objectives?

Being chimaera: a monstrous identity for SoTL academics

Creating “transdisciplinary spaces” for a real-world scenario: A practical teaching collaboration

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