Abstract
Just as undergraduates need to develop critical capacities, so as to scrutinise and justify beliefs, decisions and actions (Barnett, 1997), higher education teachers need to consider critically their own assumptions about and orientations towards teaching (Gow and Kember, 1993). These are often unexamined and unchallenged, so teachers can remain unaware of implications for students’ learning (Mezirow, 1990; Larrivee, 2000). Regarding subject disciplinary literacy development, relevant assumptions concern several important challenges: the complexity and opaqueness of disciplinary reading and writing practices (Lea and Street, 1998; Meyer and Land, 2003; Haggis, 2003; Gourlay, 2009); issues concerning engagement and assumed student deficits (Mann, 2001; Haggis, 2003; 2006); and the potentially alienating environment, norms, values and practices of higher education (Mann, 2001; Haggis, 2006; Bryson and Hand, 2007). This paper discusses these challenges and reports on a small-scale study investigating the context of students’ reading and writing difficulties at a London-based, Russell Group university. Methods included analysis of data from interviews with academics and student discussion groups, and from teaching observations. The findings suggest that the teaching orientations of learning facilitation and knowledge transmission, and their links to different learning approaches and outcomes, continue to shape many undergraduates’ experience, for better or worse.The paper contributes to understanding these links using Self-Determination Theory (Ryan and Deci, 2000). Accordingly, teaching oriented towards learning facilitation, but not knowledge transmission, fosters students’ feelings of competence, autonomy and relatedness, assisting internalisation of externally regulated behaviours, and increasing preparedness for engaged, self-directed learning (Niemiec and Ryan, 2009).
Highlights
Teaching on undergraduate degree programmes should reveal to students their subject discipline’s ways of knowing the world and solving its problems
In this paper I argue that while a lot of higher education teaching is concerned with revealing knowledge, not enough is done to build the competences and motivation needed by students to reveal that knowledge for themselves, and for engaging with their subject discipline’s reading and writing practices
The findings appeared to reflect the above literature, which emphasised the challenging nature of undergraduates’ reading and writing development: its complexities; students having to get to grips with these, often with insufficient support, in an alien environment; the need for familiarisation with both discourse practices and people; and potential motivation issues if psychological needs are not met
Summary
Teaching on undergraduate degree programmes should reveal to students their subject discipline’s ways of knowing the world and solving its problems. A greater challenge is to build students’ capacities for inquiry, reading and writing in the discipline, which allow them to discover, unpack and apply knowledge critically in new contexts, for new purposes (Barnett, 1997; Lea and Street, 1998; Haggis, 2003; Wingate, 2015). It is challenging because these practices, their underpinning epistemological foundations and the sociocultural conditions in which students have to learn them, are likely to be alien for students (Mann, 2001, Haggis, 2006; Bryson and Hand, 2007). The paper highlights the need for higher education teachers to reflect critically on their teaching assumptions and practice, and to be supported in this
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