Familiarity Breeds Contentment Sarah Cant

1
Familiarity Breeds ContentmentSarah Cant Peter
Watts - 14th October 2009

• Enabling student transitions into HE through
  taking a holistic approach to level IV delivery

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Changing Students, Changing Contexts

• Sector-wide
• Massification of HE / increase in
  non-traditional students
• Falling school roll drives recruitment of more
  mature / international students
• Changes in the nature of secondary education
  (Elander et al 2009)
• Engagement in paid work to support study (Jones
  et al 2004)
• Post-1992 in particular?
• Lower grades on entry
• Recruitment through clearing
• Students less informed about / committed to /
  prepared for study (Biggs 1999, Crozier 2008))
• Economically deprived (Crawford et al 2008)
• More local students, still living at home
• Need to teach more students with fewer resources
• Modularisation

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Changing Students, Changing Contexts

• Such factors lead to
• mismatch between capabilities / expectations /
  aspirations on entry and HE actualities
• diversity of capabilities / expectations /
  aspirations on entry
• NB non-traditional is a homogenising concept!
  (Hockings et al 2008)
• fragmented HE experience
• serious challenges to academic and social
  integration
• an HE level IV experience very different from our
  own!
• Re-evaluation of what is reasonable to expect
  from students?
• Re-evaluation of the academic role?
• Particular issues and / or experiences
  in your discipline / at
  your institutions??

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Transitions into HE and the Sociological
Imagination

• Tinto Learning Communities
• Learning involves shared experiences, shared
  knowledge creation, shared responsibilities
• Wenger Communities of Practice
• Learning moving from peripheral to central
  participation in the CoP
• Key insight learning is socially situated and as
  such social factors are key to successful
  transitions
• Implication that HEIs need to create
  circumstances in which LCs / CoPs are likely to
  emerge

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Transitions into HE and the Sociological
Imagination

• Nicol, Yorke Longden, Harvey etc. also draw on
  sociological ideas through concern with e.g.
• academic integration (re formal and normative
  demands of the institution)
• social integration (re developing good social
  relations with peers and staff)
• Transitions also involve acquisition of tacit,
  embedded, practical competencies practical
  consciousnesses?
• Practical and discursive consciousnesses
  (following Giddens, following Schutz)
• To excel in HE you need to develop a discursive
  consciousness...
• But to engage in HE in the first place you need
  to have the right practical consciousness
• Traditional students came with this, new
  students do not?

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Bourdieu

• Distinction (1984), Outline of a Theory of
  Practice (1977), Homo Academicus (1990)
• Habitus
• an habitual disposition to think, act, feel,
  respond, know, learn etc. in given ways a way
  of being
• acquired through early socialisation
• shaped by socio-economic / cultural factors
• largely non-reflexive (e.g. both a consciousness
  and an embodied state it is taken for granted
  / second-nature)
• bestows forms of capital not only economic
  but cultural (knowledge / values), social
  (networks), symbolic (prestige), physical
  (bearing)

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Bourdieu

• Field
• A territory of social practice (such as
  education)
• Shaped by historically culturally contingent
  values power relations
• Defines, constrains, values devalues certain
  actions dispositions
• i.e certain Habituses fit certain Fields
• The Traditional University a Field requiring
  a middle class Habitus
• Mechanism of social reproduction
• Having the right habitus helps you navigate HE
• Having the wrong one can be a criterion for
  exclusion / failure for judging good and
  bad students?
• Universities have their own institutional
  habituses
• Diane Reay

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What makes a good student?

• Perseverance / longer term view
• Valuing of learning for its own sake
• Independence
• Analytical / critical insight
• Appropriate etiquette / deference
• Competence with elaborated code
• Asking appropriate questions
• ...many University students especially in
  their first year struggle with the simple task
  of asking appropriate questions
  (Handley et al 2007)

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Whos Obama?

• Inappropriate Habitus ask out loud, in class gt
  loss of status
• Appropriate Habitus keep this lack of knowledge
  to yourself know how to find out about it later
• How do we respond?
• Opens questions about tutor role?

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What makes a good tutor?

• Views on your own experiences of being tutored at
  university?
• What should the contemporary tutor role
  encompass? What should it not encompass?

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Transitions into HE and the Sociological
Imagination

• Sociology of professions
• Experts in modernity hold and mete out valuable,
  esoteric knowledge they write, they lecture,
  you listen!
• Traditional authority (Weber)
• Epistemology internal to the discipline
• Recipients are deferent and grateful!
• Use of arcane language etc. establishes and
  reproduces social distance fits with
• Ideological function of university to reproduce
  social distinction?

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Transitions into HE and the Sociological
Imagination

• Sociology of Consumerism
• Massification / marketisation of HE
• Response to late-modern capitalism flexible
  specialisation
• Epistemologies / expertise subject to external
  factors demand in the market, from the State
  etc.
• Knowledge becomes to a degree public and
  contested / contestable changes relation of the
  lay public to knowledge performativity
• Tutor becomes service provider, delivery becomes
  as important as the product
• Tutors performance judged on retention, degree
  profiles of students rather than expertise per se
• Ideological function produce good workers /
  consumers?

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Transitions into HE and the Sociological
Imagination

• Bauman the role of intellectuals
• In late-modern world neither model is
  appropriate expert as legislator untenable,
  student as pure consumer problematic (Higgins
  2002)
• Expert must become interpreter
• ...the ordinary competence of otherwise
  knowledgeable members cannot cope without
  assistance... - therefore
• ...experts, armed with specialist knowledge...,
  working within specialist arenas, are still
  necessary for engaging with / transmission of
  knowledge, but
• Interpretation must make the interpreted
  knowledge sensible to those who are not
  inside... (199222)

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Transitions into HE and the Sociological
Imagination

• Bauman the role of intellectuals
• The interpreter role
• ...consists of translating statements, made
  within one communally based tradition, so they
  can understood within the system of knowledge
  based on another tradition ... this strategy is
  aimed at facilitating communication between
  autonomous (sovereign) participants. This
  involves maintaining... the delicate balance
  between the two conversing traditions necessary
  for the message to be both undistorted (regarding
  the meaning invested by the sender) and
  understood (by the recipient) (19875)

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What is to be done?

• A quick note about Bolt-on academic skills
  interventions - they
• are deficit models?
• fail to recognise that academic, social and
  cultural factors are intertwined?
• absolve academics of responsibility?
• alienate weaker students from their learning
  community?
• fail to recognise the dynamic, socially mediated
  nature of the HE context?

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Three premisses

• Learning is socially situated- social and
  academic integration should be the focus of level
  IV provision, equal with content delivery
• Mismatch between habitus of many non-traditional
  students and academic field - beyond social and
  academic integration, there is also a need for
  cultural integration?
• Re-evaluate the role of tutor and the student-
  integration rather than assimilation implies
  movement on both sides

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What we did

• Three premisses
• Learning is socially situated
• Mismatch between habitus of many non-traditional
  students and academic field social, academic
  cultural integration
• Re-evaluate the role of tutor and the student
• What we didnt do (but might have)
• Rely heavily on virtual resources (e.g.
  Develop Me at Bradford)
• Isolate weak students for supplementary
  instruction
• Provide separate basic skills courses
• Establish student fora independent of teaching
  sessions / staff
• Where did we start?

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Characteristics of the Sociology Social Science
Programme at CCCU

• Fairly large cohort (70-80 students)
• Demographics - approximately 1/3 mature
  students 1/5 from low participation
  neighbourhoods 1/7 bottom quartile
• Recruiting rather than selecting
• Mean A level points on entry 12 (c/w 14 for
  post 1992 Universities / 19 for Old Universities)
• Wide range of knowledge of / interest in the
  subject
• Wide range of combination subjects
• Approximately 1/5 single honours 1/3 joint
  just under 1/2 bias away from Sociology
• Wide range in terms of both academic ability and
  study skills (appropriateness and quality)
• Lowest HEFCE (Band D) funding per student

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Holistic level IV delivery

• Interventions
• Welcoming activities key purpose less to
  transfer information than to generate rapport
  between students / students and staff
• Cohort monitoring proactive, early warning
  system
• Year long induction embedded in programme
  delivery
• Regular, early low stakes assessment and
  feedback the portfolio (BIBB1)
• Distinctive teaching style team-teaching,
  orientated to building trust relationships, front
  loading of staffing resources
• Integrated individual and peer study

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Holistic level IV delivery

• Reconfiguring the field Tiered learning
• A response to disparate student base, wide
  variety of levels of interest, ability,
  aspirations
• Many students dont understand the need to read,
  and / or know what or how to read.
• Sociology involves challenging theory no
  dumbing down here!!
• Theory sessions have linked exercises on the VLE,
  each with 3-4 tiers of increasingly difficulty
• tiers 1-2 covered the basics, higher tiers
  afforded more in-depth engagement if the
  student chooses

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Holistic level IV delivery

• Reconfiguring the field Tiered learning
• Exercises make explicit the conceptual steps
  otherwise implicit in an academic habitus
• Deliberate handholding regarding the process
  but not the content of theory e.g. through
  signalling appropriate questions to ask,
  highlighting technical uses of common words etc.
• Do some background reading on hysteria so that
  you are clear in your mind of the difference
  between the commonsense way we use the term
  today, and the more technical way it was used by
  19C medicine
• There are some other examples in your delegate
  pack

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Holistic level IV delivery

• Reconfiguring the field Tiered learning
• Students attempt the exercises before the
  sessions
• Students hear the lecture which recapitulates the
  material from the exercises
• Students peer-review and rework the exercises in
  class
• Students can revisit the exercises after class
  even some time after (consolidation weeks)
• Finally completed exercises comprise part of the
  portfolio submission
• Opportunity to move from periphery to centre, at
  students pace
• The intention behind this initiative was to
  create a more focussed and structured learning
  experience for students, without compromising the
  self-reliance and independent learning ability
  that characterises University education (Cant
  Watts 2007)

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Holistic level IV delivery

• Reconfiguring the field Tiered learning
• They have helped me to structure what sort of
  reading would be best to use so that I could
  understand. Also ... if the tiers have been
  done, I go into the lecture with an
  understanding, and it helps me understand the
  lectures in more depth
• They are useful as structured pointers to
  develop understanding ... it was quite difficult
  to attempt them before the lecture ... and after
  the lecture I had more understanding.
• The tiered learning I felt worked well in that
  it gave me ideas and the confidence to do my own
  reading and research as I tended to use it as a
  guideline for my own readings

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Holistic level IV delivery

• Reconfiguring the field
  Peer Assisted Learning (PAL)
• PAL fosters cross level peer support
• Five main aims to help students
• Adjust quickly to university life
• Acquire a clear view of course direction and
  expectations
• Develop independent learning and study skills
• Enhance understanding of subject matter through
  collaborative group discussion
• Prepare better for assessed work in
  examinations

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Holistic level IV delivery

• Reconfiguring the field PAL
• PAL is NOT
• Teaching by students the PAL leaders role is
  not to impart subject knowledge
• A means to reduce lecturer / student contact
• A means to provide remedial support for weak
  students
• A bolt on

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Holistic level IV delivery

• Reconfiguring the field PAL provided
• an alternative, potentially less threatening,
  point of access to staff
• social bridges between levels IV V, and a sense
  of belonging for new students
• opportunities for both level IV students and PAL
  leaders to practice both the subject and
  independent learning
• which foster tacit skills / knowledges /
  competencies associated with HE, but not on
  formal curriculum

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Holistic level IV delivery

• Reconfiguring the field - PDP / personal tutoring
• University policy on PDP We see the link between
  PDP and the role of the tutor as a key strategy
  for engaging students and staff in recognising
  and meeting the changing needs of students and
  accessing appropriate resources and support.
  CCCU PDP Policy Document.

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Holistic level IV delivery

• Reconfiguring the field - PDP / personal tutoring
• Formally introduced end of term 1, but groundwork
  laid in portfolio
• Students asked
• to reflect over Christmas on feedback from
  assignments / expectations and realities of
  University life / approaches to learning etc.
• To write this up briefly (1 side of A4)
• Each student allocated to a PDP tutor model was
  face-to-face personal tutorials, not VLE mediated
• Students contacted (vigorously!) to set up PDP
  tutorials immediately on their return for the
  Lent term
• Significant investment of staff time /
  effort

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Holistic level IV delivery

• Reconfiguring the field - PDP / personal tutoring
• Made student voice audible in a new way
• Got to know students who would not normally be
  visible to tutors
• Facilitated a holistic appreciation of the
  students life world and how it impacted on their
  academic performance
• Challenged our expectations and forced us to
  reflect on our own practice

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Holistic level IV delivery

• Life Outside University
• Working hours
• Social Responsibilities
• Some serious social / material difficulties
• Life Inside the University
• Perceived overload (6 modules)
• Concentrated timetables
• Isolation / hoodlum friends

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Holistic level IV delivery

• Schism between taken for granted assumptions of
  staff and students normal students admitted to
  -
• Never setting foot in the library
• Taking a (literally!) last minute approach
• Taking a pragmatic / instrumental / fragmented
  approach
• Relying on pre-undergraduate learning skills
  (spidergrams!!)
• Having a short concentration span
• Not knowing how to read or reflect
• Needing and expecting structure
• Needing and expecting external motivation
• Cutting and pasting from the web
• Being bewildered by referencing (not how, but
  why?)
• Being not bored, but petrified!
• Being embarrassed about their lack of skills

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Holistic level IV delivery

• I started off quite dubious
• I felt there was a barrier between students and
  lecturers
• Although they said I could go and see them about
  problems, I didnt, I thought they were just
  saying it
• a great way of being able to interact with the
  tutors and being able to look at what youre
  doing...
• ...look at your work personally
• Its good to learn about what youre doing
  wrong
• It changed the rest of the year for me
• much more confident
• I realised I could actually do what Im asking
  myself to do

Amy and Joe Students from Level IV of the
Sociology Social Science Programme
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Holistic level IV delivery

• PDP Enabled students
• To reflect on their progress (but they needed a
  lot of help!)
• To recognise and enhance their existing
  capacities
• To recognise their limitations / confusions
• To develop a positive approach to learning
• To begin to articulate and manage their personal
  goals
• To recognise the value of PDP!

• I started off quite dubious
• I felt there was a barrier between students and
  lecturers
• Although they said I could go and see them about
  problems, I didnt, I thought they were just
  saying it
• a great way of being able to interact with the
  tutors and being able to look at what youre
  doing...
• ...look at your work personally
• Its good to learn about what youre doing
  wrong
• It changed the rest of the year for me
• much more confident
• I realised I could actually do what Im asking
  myself to do

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Holistic level IV delivery

• PDP enabled the programme team
• To provide targeted support
• To appreciate the changing educational contexts
  from which our students come
• To appreciate the diverse predispositions
  (habituses) the students possess on entry
• To realise that a lot of our taken for granted
  assumptions are (sometimes) misplaced
• Not all students knew how to reflect
  independently a fairly major hurdle for PDP!
• What staff see as deviant learning behaviour is
  not shared by many students
• To recognise the social distance between tutors
  and the students we can be frightening!
• In short, to review the tutor role, in order to
  meet the changing needs of students

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Sociology Social Science First Year
Party!
Icebreakers
Trip to Margate (2010)
PAL
Peer assessment
Group work
PDP
Portfolio assessment
Personal Tutor
Front-loading
Tiered-learning
Subject based study skills interventions
Team Teaching
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Did it work?

• Hard data
• Attrition rates
• 2005 22
• 2006 24
• 2007 (new first year provision introduced) 7.6
• 2008...

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Did it work?
The support is there for me and I am aware of
that
I like how we have two lecturers supports
understanding

• Hearing students voices
• Evaluations

I found that the assessment techniques helped me
discover my weak points and improve my skill
Very lively and exciting double act which kept
my attention
I found that there was a lot to take in, but I
found having the weekly task helped to manage my
time rather than leaving it all to the last week
Found there was plenty of clear, structured
support for this course
I thought the use of the portfolio for
assessment a good tool for ensuring understanding
of all the concepts / theorists covered rather
than just concentrating on one facet to pass an
exam
really good they chased up absences as they said
they would in the beginning
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Did it work?

• Hearing students voices
• Evaluations
• Real, live students!
• Questions or comments?
• Augustine House