Connecting the academy to the world

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Connecting the academy to the world

• Andy Northedge
• Open University

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The challenge of diversity in the OU

• OU students differ widely in
• aptitude for academic study
• educational background
• cultural background
• nature of interest in the subject
• study goals
• age, income etc.
• Yet OU courses are mass produced.
• How is it possible to meet the needs of all?
• Feedback from two equivalent entry level courses

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Social Sciences Foundation (2)
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Social Sciences Foundation D102
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Health Social Care Foundation (K100)

• Broad 1st year degree course
• Entry to nursing, social work etc.
• Experienced professionals
• Care service users
• General interest
• 6,000 students a year
• Over 60 have less than standard university entry
  qualifications
• Some already have degrees
• How to cater to such diversity of prior
  knowledge, needs, interests?

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Responses of diverse K100 students

• Experienced, senior care professional
• After twenty years working in social care
  recently in management with one of the larger
  national charitable trusts this course has
  enabled me to stand back and re-think many of the
  issues I am confronted with daily I say thanks
  and well-done!
• New entrant to care work
• The whole course has helped me in getting a new
  job as a special needs assistant at a primary
  school I cant believe its nearly coming to an
  end. Its gone so quick.
• General interest student
• Not working in a health or social care
  environment, I found K100 very enjoyable an
  eye-opener. I learned a lot.

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What are these students being taught?

• If a course can meet the needs of
• a senior professional of 20 years experience,
• a newcomer to care work,
• an interested outsider,
• what is the nature of the knowledge imparted?
• Is it information?
• Is it concepts?
• Not primarily either both imply a common
  starting point.
• Are students finding knowledge within themselves?
• Unlikely
• Need some other model of the teaching/learning
  process

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How do we learn?

• When and how did you learn the meaning of the
  term internet?
• Have you finished learning it?
• How do concepts enter our minds and become part
  of our thoughts?
• What keeps them there?
• How do they change and develop?
• How do they stay in step with other peoples
  concepts?
• Need a model which accounts for
• Flexibility and fluidity of knowledge
• Learning happening without noticing

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A sociocultural model

• To be knowledgeable is to be capable of
  participating
• in the specialist discourse
• of a knowledge community.
• (cf. Lave Wenger legitimate peripheral
  participation)
• However, there are differing modes of
  participation in a knowledge community
• Generative v. vicarious
• Central v. peripheral
• Convergent v. variant

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Entering a knowledge community

• As students gain experience of participating in a
  specialist discourse they gradually shift
• from vicarious, peripheral, variant
  participation
• towards generative, central, convergent
  participation
• In so doing they gain increasing
• Intellectual power
• become able to take advantage of the conceptual
  apparatus embedded in the discourse
• Social power
• Become able to function as members of a
  recognised community of experts

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Entering a knowledge community (2)

• It is normal within discourse communities for
  people to participate at multiple levels.
• There isnt a single definitive standard
• Though within any forum (e.g. a journal) there
  are norms
• i.e. there is no definitive level of knowledge
• This why diverse students can effectively
• share in the same basic flow of meaning
• whilst making progress in developing different
  levels of skill in participating.
• A model of learning and teaching
• Participation in the discourse of the knowledge
  community is what produces learning
• Teaching is enabling participation in specialist
  discourse

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The challenge of participating in unfamiliar
discourse

• The Medical/Social Boundary. The boundary
  between the medical and the social is a shifting
  one, constructed in complex ways that reflect
  both institutional and ideological factors.
  (Twigg, 1998)
• (opening of a K100 Reader chapter)
• The meaning depends on both the words and an
  assumed frame of reference
• Newcomers to specialist discourse struggle to
  make sense of specialist utterances
• mainly because they dont have appropriate frames
  of reference within their repertoire
• But they cannot acquire the frames of reference
• because they cannot participate in the discourse
  through which the frames are made manifest

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The importance of framing

• 3 kinds of primitive (easy) meaning (Bruner,
  1996)
• Intersubjective Meaning framed by a direct,
  active relationship
• Actional Meaning framed by events, intentions,
  interventions
• Normative Meaning framed by tradition and social
  milieu
• Contrast with propositional meaning (abstract,
  formal)
• Meaning framed by assumptions, logical rules,
  models
• You hear the utterance
• But its very hard to perceive the frame
• Teachers role
• to lend capacity to frame meanings which
  students cant yet frame independently.

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Lending capacity to frame meaningStep 1.
Creating intersubjectivity
Jim and Marianne are a couple. They met in a drug
rehabilitation centre They became star pupils
of the centre, both trying to outdo each other in
getting clean. They took up sports and
participated in running the centre ...The
quality of Jim and Mariannes lives deteriorated
after a few years They found making friends who
were not their old junkie friends was very
difficult and they became socially isolated...
Activity 1 You first heard about Jim and Marianne
simply as drug addicts. Has reading more about
them changed your view of them? How do you
think this kind of information might influence a
health workers view of their needs? Would health
workers be likely to have this information? How
might they get it?
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Step 2 Leading an excursion from familiar
discourse into specialist

• A question such as
• How do you think knowing their story might
  influence a health workers view of Js Ms
  needs?
• is intelligible within everyday discourse
• But, we shift into care discourse as we ask
• What information about them is collected?
• What is recorded? Where? In what form?
• Should this information be confidential?
• Who should have access to it? In which agencies?
• Gradually, frame of reference becomes more
  specialised, though the thread of meaning is
  maintained.
• However, an excursion needs a sense of direction.

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Constructing a plot Act 1

• 1st instalment of Jim and Marianne story
• Activity 1
• Student writes notes about feelings towards the
  two
• Speculates about reactions of health
  professionals
• Then text questions morality of allocating
  resource
• quotes a receptionist about a doctors
  obligations
• Doctors account of patient who repeatedly calls
  him out at unreasonable hours moral dilemmas
  presented
• Activity 2
• Student makes notes about the doctors
  obligations
• Text discusses moral issues and legal
  entitlements
• Activity 3
• Imagine being on a health authority choosing
  between spending on drug rehab unit, or acute
  psychiatric care beds.

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Act 2

• Unfortunately, her father proved right. Jim and
  Marianne, not used to having cash in hand, spent
  most of it on heroin and were evicted. They found
  a place to sleep in an old shed Jims chest
  started to play up again and Mariannes leg
  ulcers took a turn for the worse...
• Plot develops new themes
• What is primary care?
• Patients rights
• Impact of geography, attitude and resources

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Act 3

• Jim had a stroke, which affected his speech and
  many functions Marianne was no luckier. During a
  particularly problematic injecting session, while
  tired and anxious about Jim, she punctured her
  left femoral artery. This thrombosed and she was
  rushed to hospital, where it was decided to
  amputate her right leg at thigh level
• Jim and Marianne
• entered hospital with the label substance
  abusers
• but left in a new category people with impaired
  mobility
• transition from
• marginal to social care services
• to physically disabled and entitled to community
  care
• Discussion of the medical/social boundary
• NB. broad ranging discussion
• but ongoing intersubjectivity achieved by careful
  control of continuity and difficulty level

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Developing teaching narratives

• The teacher as playwright/storyteller
• Develops plot
• themes, events, balance, message
• so as to encounter significant elements within
  specialist discourse
• Ensures flow of storyline
• thrust (purposive framing)
• continuity of meaning (continuity of framing)
• NB. a student-focused but teacher led model
• Very different from teacher as facilitator
• NOT open-ended
• NOT allowing students to
• direct the plot
• disrupt storyline
• Nevertheless teacher supports student in
  participating in the discourse

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Assignments enabling participation

• First Assignment
• Write an essay of between 500 and 800 words.
• Why can it be difficult to decide whether or not
  a person is an informal carer and does it matter?
  Base your answer on the case of someone you know,
  or have read about.
• K100 Unit 1 Caring a family affair
• Section 1.2 What is an informal carer?
• Complicating factors
• interdependence
• duration and frequency
• labelling
• networks

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Three key roles of the teacher

• 1. Lending capacity to frame meanings
• Creating conditions of intersubjectivity
• Leading excursions from familiar discourse into
  specialist, while sustaining intersubjectivity
  through storyline
• 2. Planning trips from familiar discourse into
  specialist
• To encounter a range of topics, debates, voices
  (plot)
• 3. Coaching in speaking the discourse
• Set appropriate assignments (little and often)
• Provide the other side of the dialogue
• Model the discourse
• Help reframe utterances in terms of specialist
  discourse
• All 3 depend on teachers expertise as a member
  of the knowledge community and speaker of its
  discourses.

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Teaching for diversity (1)

• Must create and sustain an appropriate discursive
  environment
• Identify an appropriate target knowledge
  community
• (whose discourse will be of value and accessible)
• Create an intermediate level of discourse
• (i.e. not just journal and academic book)
• Supply diverse voices
• (not a continuous expert monologue)
• Maintain a stable discursive environment
• (beware of discontinuities and shifts ?
• framing evaporates.)

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Teaching for diversity (2)

• Support diverse modes and levels of participation
• Vicarious participation
• (Student hears how meanings are framed)
• Work with diverse source texts
• Diverse case studies
• Group discussion (listener mode)
• Talks by teacher, audio-visual materials
• Generative participation
• (Student learns to frame and express own
  meanings)
• Emphasise note taking
• Group discussion structured to foster
  participation
• Writing little and often
• Feedback from a discourse speaker

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Teaching for diversity (3)

• Assess appropriately
• If diverse students are participating at their
  own levels outcomes from the course will be
  different
• Assessment has to allow for this
• Set tasks through which all students can express
  their current level of participation
• Assess for quality of meaning making, within the
  appropriate discursive frame
• (not just making required points)
• NB. This is not dropping of standards but a
  maximising of educational outcomes
• Support development of students identity within
  the knowledge community

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Teaching for diversity summary

• Create and maintain an appropriate discursive
  environment
• Provide plenty of support in tackling the
  challenge of meaning
• Support multiple levels of participation
• Assessment which supports participation
• Support development of identity as a member of
  the discourse community.
• ? ? ?

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References

• Bruner, J. S. (1996). Frames for thinking ways
  of making meaning. Modes of Thought explorations
  in culture and cognition. D. Olson and N.
  Torrance. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
• Lave, J. and E. Wenger (1991). Situated Learning
  Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge,
  Cambridge University Press
• Northedge, A. (2002). Organizing Excursions into
  Specialist Discourse Communities a sociocultural
  account of university teaching. Learning for Life
  in the 21st Century. G. Wells and G. Claxton.
  Oxford, Blackwells 252-264.
• Northedge, A. (2003). "Rethinking Teaching in the
  Context of Diversity." Teaching in Higher
  Education 8(1) 17-32
• Northedge, A. (2003). "Enabling Participation in
  Academic Discourse." Teaching in Higher Education
  8(2) 169-180.