Analysing Teaching and Learning at the

Universities of Technology

Chrissie BougheyRhodes University

In 2008

• HEQC had passed midpoint of first cycle of institutional audits

• Research commissioned to learn from audit cycle

• Research on T&L particularly important given first cohort analysis produced in RSA (Scott et al, 2007)

First cohort analysis

• Students admitted to system in 2000• Only one in five graduated in regulation time• 29% attrition for first time entering students• 56% left system without ever graduating• Worst affected were black South Africans

The research

• What is going wrong in T&L?• Has QA had any effect at all?• QA data to be given to researcher

Institutional audits in RSA

• Based on definition of quality as fitness for and of purpose

• Set of criteria defining quality at institutional level

• Institution develops portfolio evaluating itself against criteria

• Audit panel attempts to validate institution’s own conclusions in audit visit

• Audit panel produces report

The data

For each institution• An self evaluation portfolio• An institutional profile (prepared by HEQC)• An audit report

The research

• A methodological framework?• A theoretical framework?

A jolt at the movies As I watched the Tom Berenger character in Hector Babenco’s At Play in the Fields of the Lord flying in his aircraft over the vulnerable forests of Amazonia, familiar feelings of sorrow and helplessness swept over me. It was, however, at another point in the movie that I unexpectedly found myself pierced to the quick by a spear of radical doubt. At this particular moment, a Protestant missionary says of the local Indians: ‘They are a meek and stupid people.’ To which his more self-critical colleague replies, ‘Does that mean they will inherit the earth?’To my surprise, the English Proficiency Test which I had set for incoming students at the beginning of the year suddenly flashed into my mind like a mirror without mercy. In the dark of the cinema, I sat accused. What was I doing to those students? Before scrutinizing their flaws any further, perhaps I needed to take the beam (nay, the forests) out of my own eye first.’ (Volbrecht, 2002:1)

At play in the fields of the flawed . . .

• Education/teaching/learning are social constructs not ‘natural’

• Some forms of education (Western, northern, masculine, teacher-centred) privileged over others

• This privileging advantages some and disadvantages others

A contemporary example of flawing

• Research identified approaches to learning (deep, surface, strategic)

• These approaches emerged from social contexts• Over time, the construct of approach has

shifted to learning and the learner• We ‘name’ our students as ‘surface learners’

and pathologise them as we do so (Haggis, 2003)

Methodological framework

Needed to• Account for cultural (or value and belief) systems

underpinning all that is done as T&L• Account for structure (social group, gender,

language . . .)• Encompass ontology (the ‘what’ of knowing) as

well as epistemology (the ‘how’)• Take into account Luckett’s (2007) critique of

audit methodology as ‘flat’

Bhaskar’s critical realism

Empirical Experiences and observations

Actual Events

Real Structures and mechanisms

Bhaskar’s critical realismEmpirical

(Observations & Experiences)

Self Evaluation PortfolioAudit Report

Actual(Events)

Institutional Profile

Real(Structures and mechanisms) ANALYSIS

Archer’s social realism

REAL Culture Structure Agency

Value & belief system

Social class, GenderLanguage, Institutional structures

VCDVCsDeansHoDsProgramme Co-ordinators T&L Centres . . .

Meta theory & substative theory

• Bhaskar/Archer ‘meta-theory’ – underlabourer

• Substantive theory needed to make sense of and critique

The pile of books beside Terry’s bed . . .

For many years, having read books like Susan George’s How the other half dies – the real reasons for world hunger (1979) and Walter Rodney’s How Europe underdeveloped Africa (1972), as well as ecological critiques like Andre Gorz’s Ecology as Politics (1980) and Rudolf Bahro’s Socialism and Survival (1982), I have felt ambivalent about progress or modernization. As a schoolteacher my doubts about the value of Western schooling were fed by the books of John Holt, A. S. Neill and Ivan Illich, among others. Alice Miller’s more recent critique of ‘poisonous pedagogy’ (1987) and ‘theories that resist emotions and conceal the truth’ (1980, 189) has added grist to that mill. . .

The pile of books beside my bed . . .

• Pierre Bourdieu• Brian Street• James Paul Gee• Basil Bernstein• Karl Maton . . .

The analysis

• Four UoTs audited at time of research• CUT• DUT• TUT• VUT

Research Design

• Each institution analysed as a single case• Cross case analysis using a number of lens

(institutional type, location, historical status, language of instruction . . . )

• Analysis of five ‘research intensives’ completed in 2009

The analysis

• The technikon legacy• Institutional legacy• Conceptualisations of T&L• WIL• Language/literacy• The students

The technikon legacy

• Culture of compliance with national policy statements, institutional management

• Teaching as delivery• Heavy work loads• ‘academics in stable institutions with strong academic

identities located in strong disciplines or regions’ are better able to resist change which they perceive as detrimental to the disciplines from whence they draw their primary identities’

• Implications for the shift to University of Technology?

Institutional legacies

• ‘Diverse institutional culture and ethos’• Variations in sites of delivery

Conceptualisations of T&L

• Focus on applied knowledge• What does this mean for ‘reinterpretation’ of theoretical

knowledge in context• Compliance with OBE• Introduction of new pedagogies e.g. PBL• What does this mean for conceptual coherence

(Bernstein, Maton, Muller)?• Focus on reflective practice – reflection on what?• Where T&L work is being done, at the ‘soft’ end of a

continuum ranging from pedagogy to curriculum

WIL

• Collapse or crumbling of Advisory Boards• Employers reluctant to take students• WIL critical if we acknowledge nature of

applied knowledge

Language/literacy

• Language shifts from Afrikaans to English• Competence of staff?• Competence of students?• Students’ language development addressed in

Communication Courses with ‘stale’ curricula (Vongo, 2006)

• What are the literacies of the UoT? Are they ‘academic’ (Wright, 2008)

The students . . .

• All UoTs in study commit themselves to ‘upliftment’

• Students constructed as ‘autonomous other’• What does it mean to ‘know’ in the Humanities, in

SET (Maton)?• How do students ‘know’ technology?• Student development overwhelmingly in old

academic support models• Where ‘AD’ does exist, confronts ASP

At play in fields of the flawed?

I began this paper with an image of Tom Berenger flying over the jungle of Amazonia . . . I must say that the stresses of AD work have driven me close to a desire to bail out of high technology as the Tom Berenger character did when he parachuted into the arms of his ancestors. . . Fortunately, I haven’t reached that level of desperation yet and so, in the playful spirit that helped me to survive the academic writing process at this late stage of the year, I’m bringing this paper aeroplane in to land right here and now. Are you receiving me? Over.

a luta continua . . .