Andrew Johnson Faculty of Arts, Academic Language and Learning Unit, Monash University Andrew'Johnso

1
Andrew JohnsonFaculty of Arts, Academic Language
and Learning Unit, Monash UniversityAndrew.Johnso
n_at_arts.monash.edu.au

• Calling ALL in Arts

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Some background questions
Re-grouping Academic Language and Learning in
Arts, following decentralisation
academic or general?
faculty or centre?
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The survey

• September October 2007
• 10 questions
• 25 respondents
• 21 responses per question average.
• surveymonkey.com
• Click Here to take survey

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Survey focused on

• Institutional situation
• Type / nature of teaching
• Particular student issues?
• Research / theoretical approaches
• Challenges / future plans

5
ALL and Arts

• special affinities?
• content / form distinction?
• A paradox

The paradox (ALL educators and Arts/Humanities
educators generally agree that language and
thought are interdependent, but in practice,
faculty lecturers still treat student writing as
merely a mechanical problem, or expect students
can already write (and need remediation if they
make mistakes).
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Results Institutional situation

• 4 faculty based units
• At least 25 ALL educators with Arts focus?
• Corresponded with AALL units / centres data,
  2007.
• _______________________________
• Faculty processes (committees etc.)
• 41 56 had participated
• Collaboration with Fac. Staff
• 84 collaborated on teaching
• 50 collaborated on research projects

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Results type of teaching

• General academic skills classes sometimes
  (58)
• Individual consultations frequently
  (36)
• Drop-in sometimes (58.3)
• Integrated teaching sometimes (66.7)
• Credit subjects Never (78.3)
• __________________________________________________
  _____
• 1 exclusively individual
• 1 exclusively credit subjects
• 6 never drop ins
• 3 never integrated teaching

8
Results teaching / students

• ESB sometimes (50)
• NESB mostly (34.8)
• IS sometimes (41.7)
• PG Coursework - sometimes (45.5)
• HDR sometimes (52.2)
• _________________________________________________
• 1 exclusively ESB / 1 exclusively NESB
• 0 - never IS or NESB
• 6 - never PG coursework or HDR
• 4 - exclusively IS
• 4 exclusively HDR

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Comparative data

• commencing OS students in Society and Culture,
  2006
• 8,625 of 79,412 (total)
• commencing OS students in Management and
  Commerce 52,090 of 106,307 (total)
• Source DEST - 2006 Full Year student data, 2007

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Results teaching / discipline areas

• Applied linguistics
• Visual art
• Communications
• Sociology
• Community / international devt
• Anthropology
• History
• Politics
• Reasons
• particular expertise of ALL educator
• Particular discourse difficulties
• Large IS / NESB enrolment.

11
Results research and theory

• Included in research quantum?
• 58 Yes
• Within research strengths?
• 71 No
• Supported by internal funding?
• 79 No
• Supported by external funding?
• 83 No
• ________________________________________
• 4 - involved in formal supervision of HDR.

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Results research areas and approaches
13
challenges
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Future development
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ALL and the Humanities?

• Shared assumptions?
• Shared goals?
• Shared problems?

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A post-intellectual environment?

• Intellectuals are working in increasingly
  narrow and pre-determined fields of activity,
  where the results of their labour are understood
  purely in the terms defined by a system of
  commodity exchange.
• (Simon Cooper, Post Intellectuality
  Universities and the Knowledge Industry, 2002)

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Missing the big questions?

• Universities have embraced a research driven
  ideal that has squeezed the question of lifes
  meaning from the curriculum, limiting the range
  of questions teachers feel they have the right
  and authority to teach. And this has badly
  weakened the humanities.
• (Anthony Kronman, Educations End, 2007)

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As ALL educators in Arts, how should we respond
to these larger debates?Are ALL eds merely in
a supporting role, dealing with the problems
on the ground, a stop-gap?Or, do ALL eds
have a role in re-imagining, re-invigorating
education in the Arts and Humanities?