On writing

Today at the Inclusive Education monthly research meeting Ann-Marie Priest and I talked about our respective experiences as writers. It was a fascinating discussion, particularly from Ann-Marie who is currently finishing a book looking at the experiences of four Australian women writers through the lens of writing as a vocation. While we talked about quite different experiences we each expressed in different ways the need to find a voice that balances the conventions the academic writing with our own ideas, thoughts, style and personal opinions. We each also talked about our inspiration for writing about the topics we do. Both of us acknowledged that writing is a way of making sense of the world around us. For Ann-Marie her personal experiences in various jobs and the quest for a "vocation" or place in the world has drawn her to looking at other women who have wrestled with the same issue in their lives. I could relate to this as I'm still not sure what it is I'm going to do with my life but it has something to do with teaching, communication, exchanging ideas (large and small) with others. I talked about the intersection between personal writing (blogging, twittering) with academic writing and what each offers to the other. Twitter is teaching me to be succinct and clear. Blogging has taught me to write without fear, without the need to obsessively reread, rewrite and redo everything I write over and over. All of these skills continue to have an impact on my "academic writing" in that I am continuing to become aware of the flow of my writing, as well as the expression of ideas with clarity. Probably the key point (for me at least) that Ann-Marie made went something like this: We don't write about something because we fully understand it. We write about something in order to try and make sense of it for ourselves. All writing is personal. As writers we are our most important readers.

Collaboration

Things have been quiet here at the Cultural Studies and Education SIG of late. Recently, after some discussion with another of the Learning and Teaching Education Research Centre Special Interest Groups it was decided that for the rest of 2011 we would collaborate with the good people from the Inclusive Education SIG.

With that in mind, last week I joined in their monthly videoconference where Karen Seary from CQUniversity reported on her visit to Adelaide in April where she attended a forum on dual sector institutions. This was of particular to all of us as CQUniversity has recently been given the green light to go ahead with merger plans with the Central Queensland TAFE. This would make the institution one of the very few in Australia that blends TAFE and University operations. Naturally, there are many implications to be considered and the merger is in its very early stages. Karen had a great deal of interesting material to disseminate. It was interesting that she noted the forum spoke of how most institutions were not dual-sector ready but in preparing they needed to focus on building strong, collaborative relationships. At present there are only five dual sector institutions in Australia - four in Victoria, and one on the Northern Territory. They each have adopted various management and organisational structures and the concept of "transfer shock" was used at the forum to describe the culture shock that the newly blended institution and its people can suffer through - even at the best of times. Despite the fact that TAFEs and Universities can exist side by side it was noted that there is no such thing as a seamless transition from one sector to the other for students. Karen observed how many speakers at the forum discussed the gap in expectations that needed to be filled by providing TAFE to Uni students with tertiary learning skills in order to aid them to succeed.

All this was food for thought for all us who were present and no doubt as time goes on more will be revealed as to how CQUniversity plans to move ahead with its proposed merger. Collaboration it seems, is the word for the week.

MOAR referencing

At the start of every class I pick up my trusty whiteboard marker and write a list of what I will be covering in the lesson. This keeps me on track as well as providing my students with an overview of what they will be learning during the session. Earlier this week, in amongst things like "spelling", "annotated bibligraphy" and "essay structure" I had written "MOAR referencing". Being a fan of the internet lolcats/I can haz cheeseburger phenomenon I felt I was being humorous and witty (particularly since it was getting to the point where my dear students were chock-a-block full of all things referencing - both intext and reference list citation). So it was with comic intent that I chose to spell "more" lolcat style rather than in the "more" academically acceptable way. I assumed that everyone was familiar with lolcats, so imagine my mild surprise when a young man very politely raised his hand and asked me why I had spelled "more" as "moar". Imagine my further surprise when upon further questioning of the class I discovered that they were not indeed either familiar or enamoured with "teh funnee talking kittehs". I had made a rookie mistake, assuming that my students had the same cultural capital and knowledge that I did. I had done the same thing the day before, when (during a session on referencing again) I was befuddled by the confused looks when I kept referring to "n.d.". Finally, I realised that what I assumed was straightforward, everyone-knows-this information ("n.d. stands for "no date") was no such thing. Once I quickly explained it (along with n.p. for no page) we were all set and back on the same page. Do I have a point in regaling you with these anecdotes about my teaching week? Well, sort of - in a very basic way. It's this: as educators, we cannot assume anything of our students. It is very easy to forget that what is easy and self-explanatory to us is foreign, alien and downright confusing to students. As tertiary educators we live and breathe a particular culture that like all cultures has its own practices, jargon and discourses. When we throw a student into that culture, we need to take the time to gradually induct them into our culture. They are strangers in a sometimes very strange land.Of course this is not to say that our students do not arrive in our classrooms without complex and interesting cultures of their own. They do. And it is the capacity we have as educators to find points of connection between these various cultures that can make tertiary education such a rich experience for all concerned.

Celebrating education

Today sees the Graduation ceremony for CQUniversity at the Bundaberg campus. The ceremony is held in the early evening at the Moncrieff Theatre in the centre of town. After my class this morning I had a surprise visitor from one of the graduates. This was a mature age student who completed our STEPS Program a few years ago and has since completed a Bachelor of Property with CQUni. A family man who previously worked in the Building Industry, it was wonderful to see he had finished his degree (mostly via external study). It seemed like yesterday that he was re-entering the wonderful world of education with the STEPS Program and now, just a few short years later, he has a degree. I asked him what he was doing at the moment. Perfectly contented, he told me he was doing some labouring and building work. So one could easily assume that his higher education experience had not really changed him in any way at all. I doubt however that this is the case. Even though he has not found work in the local area in the field of his degree, he is to be commended for completing it while balancing a demanding work and home life. I have no doubt that he will continue to look for work that relates to his study, but in the meantime the completion of a higher education qualification has added value to his family, his local community, and most of all himself. It is tremendously important that we remember that sometimes education is not solely about getting a higher paid job or a promotion. It can also be about less tangible results - setting an example for your children and others around you that it is possible to take on a long term task and persevere - seeing it through to the end. Education in all its forms enriches the culture of our regional communities and those who live in them. For that reason, it should be celebrated, in and of itself.

Back to basics

It's been a fascinating week in terms of the academic writing skills and learning more about the teaching of literacy in schools. As a lecturer in the STEPS program teaching Language and Learning I am often surprised at the basic literacy skills that our students present with. This is not to say that they are bad writers. Often, many of our students have a real flair for expressing themselves in the written form; however, this is hindered by their lack of understanding of the basics of sentence structure, punctuation, grammar etc. Something has been missed somewhere when it is a revelation for students when you explain the difference between "it's" and its. Or sometimes, you see the lightbulbs go off when we go through the difference between their, there and they're, or even very basic things like finding verbs in sentences. Not being in the discipline of education per se, I wonder at how this is taught in the current English curriculum in schools. Is it? Having a conversation with a primary music teacher yesterday, I was quizzing him about the place and priority that schools place on the all important Naplan testing. He was telling me that students in Year 3 are expected to be able to construct some sort of "argument" in their writing. I haven't seen the details of this but I was shocked. Surely, that's a higher level task that can wait until students are a little way past their 8th birthday. Is there a fashion for literacy tasks to be so complex that students can no longer see the trees for the forest? I'm not sure on the answer to any of these questions. What I do believe however, is that there is an absolute need for the foundations and basics of literacy to be in place before moving on to higher order tasks.

I had a similar experience yesterday while I was teaching a student the piano (which is something I do in my spare time). This student has been learning for many years from another teacher so I have only recently taken over her tuition. The first few lessons are a process of me finding out what she knows and doesn't know. We have been spending a fair amount of time in the first weeks fixing problems with rhythm and counting. Once I had explained a couple of different things, she was away and flying with new pieces, rhythm all present and correct. Last week, we began work on the first year theory of music book. This is where students learn note names, note values, ties, slurs, rests etc - in fact, all the basics. At the start of the lesson, the student said she had experienced some trouble with the homework. When we had a look at it, suddenly all her difficulties in playing correctly rhythmically were explained. No one had ever gone through the basic fundamentals of this with her. Or, if they had, they hadn't made sure that she clearly understood it before throwing something more complicated at her. I see a real resonance here with the challenges my own writing students face in class. We must all walk before we can run.It's a cliche but it's true nonetheless. Otherwise, will trip over our apostrophes or our syncopation and that's no good for anyone.

Research Week: Reflection and Transformation

Next week sees Research Week at CQUniversity and no doubt many members of LTERC (and I hope the Cultural Studies and Education Special Interest Group) are taking part in seminars and workshops. While the bulk of the activity takes place on the Rockhampton campus, here in Bundaberg our event is being held on Monday evening April 4 at 6pm. Last year was the inaugural event and a rag bag collection of researchers gave short talks on their research areas. For instance, I talked about television which is my primary area of research and the disicpline in which I gained my PhD.

This year there is more of a collective focus on community engagement. As a lecturer with CQUniversity's preparatory program, the STEPS Program, I decided that this was probably more appropriate to talk about. Last year, another STEPS colleague, Dr Jenny McDougall and I wrote a paper together on the transformative learning aspects of teaching in the STEPS Program. Integral to the STEPS Program is a focus on self-reflection as a practice which helps our students engage with their own thoughts about themselves, education and the learning journey they have embarked upon. Following some informal discussion at a STEPS retreat, Jenny, past colleague Anne Monsour and myself decided that it might be interesting to see just how we, as educators in the STEPS Program, would go if we also engaged in a semi-structured process of self-reflection. The result was an article which has been sent for review. Without repeating the contents of the article in great detail here, what we identified was a number a key assumptions or themes that underscored our work in the program. On Monday evening I decided I will talk about just two of these. The most interesting one for me is the idea that STEPS has a "mandate for transformation". As authors, and educators i the program it is relatively safe to say, that each of us had varying degrees of skepticism about this. In other words, it is expected that students will transform in some way as part of their STEPS experience, and following on from this - if they don't visibly do so, then we, as educators have failed somehow. Clearly, this is not the case. It is simply that for some students the whole notion of transformative learning is extraneous to what they wish to gain from the program. Increasingly students enrol in STEPS for very pragmatic reasons, without the expectation that they will have to go on a soul-searching journey of self discovery. On the other hand, many students do take to the notion of transformation as it is presented in the program and we see the results of this at the program's conclusion. Overall, though whether we want to explicitly label change education can bring to the life of an individual as a "transformation" with its particular connotations is a question on which we were undecided. We did agree however, that we are privileged to work within the STEPS Program. It offers both amazing and challenging opportunities for our own personal and professional growth. And in engaging in our own process of self-reflection we have modelled the practice that we are so insistent will be beneficial for our students.

Welcome to the Cultural Studies and Education SIG

Welcome!
You have made your way to the Cultural Studies and Education Special Interest Group Blog. Cultural Studies and Education is a loosely connected group of researchers who are aligned to CQUniversity's Learning and Teaching Education Research Centre. Formed for little over a year now the idea behind Cultural Studies and Education is to explore both disciplines, as well as the "interdisciplinary connections" which could form between them. Many of our members choose to work on their own research but we also would welcome making connections with other like minded researchers through this forum, or our twitter feed which is @LTERCCSE

Please feel free to follow the CSE on twitter and visit our blog. As we post this will be updated on twitter also.