‘The language of learning: a study in the re-imagining of teaching excellence from Robbins to Johnson’
Presenters: Maureen Spencer, (School of Law), Heather Clay, (Business School),Catherine Minett-Smith (Business School, University of Bedfordshire)
The symposium will trace shifts in language in both national and institutional higher education policy documents over the five decades since the publication of the Robbins Report. It will demonstrate how such shifts convey to the audience of academics, students and the general public the legitimacy of a changed moral vocabulary.
Outline: The symposium is linked to the strand ‘Review/ unpacking policy’. The presenters argue that an effective unpacking of current policy statements in higher education, particularly the introduction of the TEF, requires a sustained analysis of the impact of language in persuading professionals and public alike to accept the legitimacy of a new direction in student learning. The three papers will draw on the methodology of the intellectual historian Quentin Skinner who examined how in early seventeenth century England a successful merchant would try to legitimate his business activities to the wider world by ‘an attempt …to connect the principles Protestant Christianity with the practices of commercial life’. He gives as an example how the term providence (meaning originally ‘God’s doing’) began to be used to refer to acting with foresight about money, replacing earlier perjorative terms like ‘miserly’. The Green Paper on Teaching Excellence in a similar vein adopts seductively familiar terms such as ‘the best possible value for money for students’. Such language conveys the message that a transactional cost–effective objective is as much the desired norm in higher education as it is for households. The use of everyday language suggests this objective is incontrovertible common sense. This current imagery is in contrast to that of the 1963 Report of the Committee on Higher Education where Robbins justified increased taxation to expand higher education in terms of the ultimate ends of knowledge and culture and making them accessible to a larger number of people.
The symposium falls into three parts. Maureen Spencer will outline the historical evolution of the changing imagery of declared objectives in higher education in official papers over the past fifty years; Cathy Minett-Smith, (Associate Dean, Student Experience, University of Bedfordshire) will report on research into university websites’ use of language to describe the expectations placed on student sin learning enhancement, whether as consumer or as co-developer; Heather Clay will examine the language of the Green Paper in so far as it enhances or obscures an understanding of the meaning of teaching excellence. The papers will be accompanied by a short anthology of extracts from the pertinent documents which will be distributed to symposium participants. They will be invited to assess whether the adoption of differing vernaculars in official discourse is persuasive, whether it helps or hinders in defining teaching excellence and how far it aids rational decision-making.
References:
BIS (2015) Fulfilling our Potential: Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice (Green Paper, Cm 9141). London: BIS
Clay, H. and Minett-Smith, C. (2011) ‘Too focussed to think: the mature students' dilemma’. The International Journal of Adult, Community and Professional Learning, Volume 19, Issue 2, pp.23-32
Committee on Higher Education. Report (1963) (Robbins Report ) Cmnd 2154
Cownie, F. (2000)’ The Importance of Theory in Law Teaching’ 7(3) International Journal of the Legal Profession, 225-38
Crawford, K., Horsley, R.Hagyard, A., Derricott,D.,(2015) Pedagogies of partnership: what works HEA
Schmidt, V. and Thatcher, M. (eds) (2014) Resilient Liberalism in Europe’s Political Economy Cambridge University Press
Shattock, M. (2012) Making Policy in British Higher Education 1945-2011 Open University Press
Skinner, Q. (1974) ‘Some Problems in the Analysis of Political Thought and Action’. 2 Political Theory No 3, 277-303
Spencer, M. (2015) ‘From practical idealism to the ideology of the market: Whitehall, Westminster and higher education 1963-1983’ International Journal of the Legal Profession DOI: 10.1080/09695958.2015.1071258
Watson, D (2008) ‘Universities behaving badly? Higher Education Review,40,3.
Keywords: language, excellence, consumer, common sense
Session learning outcomes: The presenters intend that the presentation findings will impact on the learning and teaching community in two ways. Firstly the research will assist the adoption of greater clarity on the part of academics in the use of language defining excellence. Secondly the outcome will lead to an enhanced awareness of the need to encourage students to be intellectually curious about the power of language to make complex and contested concepts deceptively simple.
