Beyond ‘study skills’ Steve Rooney

Workshop themes The limitations of traditional conceptions of ‘generic study skills’ Introducing ‘academic literacy practices’ – in theory and practice LLI’s framework for integrating support for students’ academic skills and literacy practices Discussing case studies and developments developing writing

Starting points (1) ‘It is healthy to remind ourselves how daunting and complex the conventions of academic writing look to first-year college students, even to most undergraduates, as they practice what seems, at first, a set of secret handshakes and esoteric codes, requiring arcane passwords and goofy stances... And it is salutary to remind ourselves about these complexities of college writing when we begin discussions about writing development.’ (Sommers, 2008) ‘…it is important to view such confusion not as an individual student phenomenon but as indicative of a dominant practice in HE, which I am calling here the ‘institutional practices of mystery.’’ (Lillis, 2001)

Starting points (2) ‘Interventions and approaches to improve retention and success should as far as possible be embedded into mainstream provision to ensure all students participate and benefit from them.’ (Summary Report, 2012) ‘There is a growing body of evidence to support an inclusive approach to academic development… A Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) for Higher Education review of transition suggests that the discussion should move beyond perceptions of student deficit to one of enhancement’ (Hill, Tinker and Catterall, 2010)

Starting points (3) ‘…an understanding of learning that moves beyond looking only at changes in people’s thought processes, to seeing learning as becoming able to participate in particular social practices. Learning is understood to be embedded in other forms of social participation, and therefore provision that helps people engage in social participation is likely to be of more use than provision that aims to equip people with decontextualised skills.’ (Tusting & Barton, 2003)

‘study skills’ .v. ‘academic literacy practices’

Academic literacies ‘Learning in higher education involves adapting to new ways of knowing: new ways of understanding, interpreting and organising knowledge. Academic literacy practices - reading and writing within disciplines -constitute central processes through which students learn new subjects and develop their knowledge about new areas of study. A practices approach to literacy takes account of the cultural and contextual component of writing and reading practices, and this in turn has important implications for an understanding of student learning… …The study skills approach has assumed that literacy is a set of atomised skills which students have to learn and which are then transferable to other contexts. The focus is on attempts to 'fix' problems with student learning, which are treated as a kind of pathology.’ Lea and Street (1998)

Traditional ‘study skills’ approaches Disciplinary knowledge/ course content Traditional ‘study skills’ approaches Transferable across disciplines Disciplinary knowledge/ course content Study skills (e.g. ‘essay writing’) Disciplinary knowledge/ course content Isolated and isolatable

Disciplinary knowledge/course content ‘integrated literacy practices’ approaches Literacy practices Writing genres and text-types Discipline-specific discursive practices, conventions, norms etc. more or less generic or transferable depending on nature of practices and local contexts

‘Generic essay-writing courses may develop certain techniques such as structuring the essay, building paragraphs, or referencing conventions. But what students really need to understand… is the academic discourse of the discipline (Northedge, 2003) and the underlying epistemology. They have to understand the discipline’s conventions of constructing knowledge (Lea and Street, 1998)’ (Wingate, 2007)

Developing literacy practices: the centrality experiential learning ‘Through writing, and opportunities to practice writing, students learn not only to recognise the conventions used in the disciplines they are studying, but also, more fundamentally, they learn how these conventions reveal and contribute to creating the epistemological orientation and knowledge-making practices at play in the disciplinary fields they are beginning to inhabit themselves.’ (Harrington, 2011)

Developing literacy practices: the limitations of ‘guidance’ ‘…much advice in Study Skill texts/guidelines and tutor comments not only uses wordings to denote conventions as if they were transparently meaningful but works with the metaphor of language itself as ideally transparent. Consider, for example, the following exhortations: state clearly, spell it out, be explicit, express your ideas clearly, say exactly what you mean. If we explore further just one of these exhortations we can see that, whilst working with a notion of language as ideally transparent, such wordings are anything but transparent and indeed mean different things across a range of contexts.’ (Lillis & Turner, 2001)

Developing literacy practices: the value of dialogue and discussion ‘Facilitating students internalisation of disciplinary standards... is about much more than the provision of explicit assessment criteria and clear guidelines about what tutors want to see in students’ written work… Instead, there is a need to create opportunities for students to engage with the criteria and guidelines, in dialogue with their tutors and each other – and themselves – in order to construct and internalise their own understandings of the criteria, and of what counts as achieving them at different standards of performance, within the context of their academic subjects.’ (Harrington, 2011) Source: https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/resources/HEA_Framework_for_partnership_in_learning_and_teaching.pdf

Developing a framework for integration Support for developing students’ learning is presented as an integral component of the curriculum. Practical support for students’ academic development is built around opportunities for experiential learning, and is firmly situated within the specific disciplinary contexts in which students’ learning takes place. At least some of the assessed activities students are asked to complete on their course(s) provide opportunities for reflection, discussion and dialogue around expectations, criteria, conventions, progress etc. The ‘resident expertise’ of current students - whose experiences and insights possess a unique validity – is drawn on in order to support the learning development of peers.

Looking at case studies. Consider… …any questions you might have or observations you would like to make …what you envisage to be the potential strengths or limitations/risks of the approaches set out … if you could envisage similar or adapted approaches working in your own teaching context

References Lea, MR & Street, BV (1998) Student writing in higher education: An academic literacies approach. Studies in Higher Education, 23(2), 157-172 Lillis, T (2001) Student Writing: Access, Regulation, Desire. London: Routledge   Lillis, T & Turner, J (2001) Student Writing in Higher Education: Contemporary confusion, traditional concerns. Teaching in Higher Education, 6(1), 57-68 Harrington, K (2011) The Role of Assessment in “Writing in the Disciplines”. In Deane, M and O’Neill, P, eds. Writing in the Disciplines. Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan, 48-62 Hill, P, Tinker, A, and Caterall, S (2010) ‘From deficiency to development: the evolution of academic skills provision at one UK university, Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, 2, February, 1-19. Sommers, N (2008) The Call of Research: A Longitudinal View of Writing Development. College Composition and Communication, 60(1), 152–164 Thomas, L (2012) What Works? Student Retention & Success (Final Report). Available at: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/what-works-retention Tusting, T & Barton, D (2003) Models of adult learning: a literature review. Leicester: NIACE Wingate, U & London, C (2007) A Framework for Transition : Supporting “Learning to Learn” in Higher Education. Higher Education Quarterly 61(3), 391–405