Education Commons^™

Re-Integrating Academic Development And Academic Language And Learning: A Call To Reason, Alisa Percy

Alisa Percy, PhD

This paper argues for the re-integration of academic development (AD) and a academic language and learning (ALL) practitioners in Australian higher education. This argument is made as universities aim to develop internationally recognised, inter-disciplinary and standards-based curricula against the backdrop of international comparative education (e.g., Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development), the Australian Qualifications Framework and a quality emphasis on English language standards (e.g., Tertiary Education Quality and Assessment Agency). Drawing on Rowland's argument that professional life in the academy has become fragmented across five fault lines ([2002]. Overcoming fragmentation in professional life: The challenge for academic development. Higher Education …

A Critical Turn In Higher Education Research: Turning The Critical Lens On The Academic Language And Learning Educator, Alisa Percy

Alisa Percy, PhD

This paper suggests that historical ontology, as one form of reflexive critique, is an instructive research design for making sense of the political and historical constitution of the Academic Language and Learning (ALL) educator in Australian higher education. The ALL educator in this paper refers to those practitioners in the field of ALL, whose ethical agency has largely been taken for granted since their slow and uneven emergence in the latter half of the twentieth century. Using the lens of governmentality, genealogical design and archaeological method, the historical ontology proposed in this paper demonstrates how the ethical remit of the …

Making Histories: Developing An Oral History Of All In Australia, Alisa Percy, Bronwyn James, Tim Beaumont, Reem Al-Mahmood

Alisa Percy, PhD

How might our present understandings of our professional identities, our struggles, our achievements and our capacities for agency be better understood through the memories and accounts of those who championed our emergence? What might oral accounts of the emergence of our field offer beyond what can be gathered from its existing literature? Indeed, why look at the history of a professional field at all?

This session approaches such questions by reporting on oral accounts of the emergence and evolution of ALL in Australia. As we note some of the insights and lived experiences of those engaged in the formative years …

Learning Content / Teaching Language, Emily Purser, Alisa Percy

Alisa Percy, PhD

English language teaching in universities is shaped in complex ways by the internationalization of higher education, student mobility and technological development. Within and around English medium universities, educational programs have to respond to changing national, institutional and departmental level understandings of students’ learning needs. In Australia, lecturers across the academic disciplines face, in classrooms and online, a high proportion of students who enter into disciplinary studies before they are quite proficient in the language of instruction – and institutions are required to demonstrate to the national education quality and standards agency (TEQSA) that they are helping international students to develop …

Reconnecting Language And Learning: Re-Integrating Academic And Language/Learning Development, Alisa Percy

Alisa Percy, PhD

This presentation is concerned with the connection between academic development and language and learning development practitioners in Australian higher education. In 2002, Rowland argued that academic development could work as a ‘re-integrating force’ (p54) to bring a sense of coherence to professional life in the academy that had become fragmented across five fault-lines: the purpose of higher education, the relationship between students and teachers, the relationship between teachers and managers, the tension between teaching and research, and the fragmentation of knowledge. In this presentation, I propose a sixth fault line; that is, the pedagogical fracture between language and learning, which …

Editorial: Social Inclusion--Are We There Yet?, Kimberley Mcmahon Coleman, Alisa Percy, Bronwyn James

Alisa Percy, PhD

This special edition of the Journal of Academic Language and Learning arose out of a Forum titled Critical Discussions about Social Inclusion held at the University of Wollongong, Australia in June 2011. It was organised by academic language and learning educators from five different universities: Ingrid Wijeyewardene from the University of New England, Helen Drury from the University of Sydney, Caroline San Miguel from the University of Technology Sydney, Stephen Milnes from the Australian National University, and ourselves from the University of Wollongong. Initially funded by a grant from the Association for Academic Language and Learning, this funding was later …

Exploring Student Engagement For Generation Y : A Pilot In Environmental Economics, Ann Hodgkinson, Alisa Percy

Alisa Percy, PhD

This paper reports on a pilot study involving the redesign of a third year Economics subject according to principles of engagement as they relate to the discursive Generation Y subject. The study involved a review of the literature, redesign of the subject to a blended learning format and evaluation of the design.