Dr Sally Ashton-Hay

Writing centres in the US tradition are rare in Australia and Scotland, but writing is supported and taught in most universities, often in combination with a wider focus on learning and language, which is reflected in the most common names for this work with students: Academic Language and Learning (ALL) in Australia and Learning Development (LD) in Scotland. Compared to traditional academic disciplines the teaching and support of students' academic language and learning is a relatively young field, characterised by great diversity of institutional structures and pedagogic practice, just as writing centres are in Latin America.

In this presentation we will present two projects that have allowed us to gain deeper insights into these structures and practices and have provided us with a powerful tool to reflect on where we as educators are, where we want to go, and how we can shape the way our work on writing and learning develops in the future.

From 1993 to 2015 the Association for Academic Language and Learning (AALL) created and maintained a database of ALL centres/units at 39 Australian universities. This was then updated and expanded to 42 universities through another survey project in 2021. The comparison of the previous and updated databases offers valuable insight into how universities resource and support academic language and learning across Australia. The challenges encountered in navigating the current university environment, as well as recent findings, are useful to inform policy makers, administrators and professional educators providing academic language and learning support in universities. Inspired by the benefits of the ALL database, ScotHELD (Scottish Higher Education Learning Developers) created a similar database in 2022-3, including data about teaching practice to gain an overview of both structures and pedagogy in the field. This presentation will present the databases created in Australia and Scotland and the procedures used to create them, before outlining the benefits they offer to those who teach academic writing, language and learning in each country.

The roles of Academic Language and Learning (ALL) staff are expanding across the university sector in Australia. Duties include generic workshop delivery, one-to-one advising, and resource development as well as curricula development with embedded academic skills, design of rubrics, professional development for staff, team teaching assignment-specific workshops, and creating videos and recorded resources for online learning environments. Thus, universities seek to recruit ALL staff with a wide range of skills, experience and qualifications to fit such a diverse, expanding role. The widening scope of work of ALL staff means that a re-articulation of an ALL identity is needed. This study investigates the minimum professional requirements (MPRs) required in ALL recruitment, the training of ALL staff and the preferred pedagogy when advising individual students. A questionnaire was distributed electronically to Managers of Academic Skills Centres across 39 universities in Australia, with a 72% response rate. The Managers were selected given their direct decision-making in ALL recruitment and training. Results of the study indicated that a significant proportion of ALL units exist centrally, with some working in consultation with cross-disciplinary professionals, including Educational Designers and Librarians. Despite this, the range of responsibilities and skills required of ALL staff was extensive. Barthel’s (2013) benchmarking reveals the range of the work carried out by ALL staff in Australia but not the experience or qualifications required. Cameron et al (2005) and Moore (2012) noted a preference for ALL staff with teaching qualifications and/or experience. Our study broadly confirmed this but also highlighted a range of preferred qualifications and experience. These ‘preferred’ qualifications (such as a PhD) and ‘preferred’ experience (such as one-to-one advising) indicate a transition for ALL from a niche field to one which is much more broadly based. A field where MPRs are less clearly defined than in other areas of student support (Careers Advising, for example) and a field presenting significant challenges for ALL managers seeking to identify suitable candidates with a complex combination of qualifications and experience. It is also interesting to note that many managers indicated the need to train staff post recruitment (in areas such as e-learning). In addition, managers highlighted the importance of using peer-to-peer modelling and shadowing of developmental teaching and advising approaches when training new ALL staff. The study also explored preferred pedagogy when ALL staff teach and consult one-to-one. Chanock (2007) noted this ten years ago and a literature review reveals little subsequent investigation around this important question except for Moore (2012) who found ALL staff working with students to co-construct knowledge. Thus, a gap remains regarding the articulation of advising pedagogy. This research into the current MPRs and preferred pedagogies of Australian University ALL centres provides a thought-provoking context around shared standards, expectations and responsibilities in the ALL field. The snapshot provided by this study serves as a benchmark to inform our understanding of the current ALL identity and how our positions are changing in the current higher education climate.

The provision of online academic language and learning support is seldom researched despite a current move to disaggregate or unbundle university services (Mcfarlane, 2010; Wiley & Hilton, 2009). Current practice at SCU involves academic support via university in-house Academic Skills in the Centre for Teaching and Learning offering face-to-face and online academic support during business hours as well as an outsourced online tutoring service after hours to provide a complement of ‘anywhere, anytime’ (Geddes, 2004) academic support for busy students with family responsibilities, employment and those completing off-campus study. The SCU demographic comprises equity groups with higher percentages than the sector averages (McAuley, 2016). The project aimed to investigate the ‘Ask a Question’ email review service provided by Academic Skills with a view to improve the service through a better understanding of the types of questions students ask, the ways students use the university’s online academic language and learning support as well as the ways students misuse online academic support. Academic Skills staff were surveyed regarding the challenges encountered in responding to online student questions and the provision of digitised academic support. ‘Ask a Question’ is mainly used for assignment reviews and managed by Academic Skills staff in the Centre for Teaching and Learning. Students upload files such as an assignment draft, the assessment task and marking criteria for review and feedback within 72 hours. A corpus analysis (Anthony, 2016) of 600 student questions in Session 1 and 2 2016 revealed ten categories of student queries in addition to the frequencies of these questions. Academic Skills staff responded to a short survey on the challenges of meeting the needs of online learning support for a diverse student demographic. The study findings revealed that students most desired general feedback and reassurance about being on track for an assessment and secondly, referencing assistance. Staff identified time constraints as a key challenge and responding to unrealistic expectations and repeat requests for assistance from some students as typical examples of misuse. One unanticipated finding revealed some student dissatisfaction with generic feedback from the outsourced after-hours online tutoring service and consequently returned to Academic Skills for in-depth comprehensive unit-based feedback which the students considered more helpful. Further research needs to clarify the feedback differences between generic outsourced online services and in-house unit-based online academic support services provided for students. Recommendations include extending staff/student consultation time, limiting repeat appointment availability and clearer marketing and differentiation of the academic support services provided as well as the complementarities to support productive and purposeful learning.

Recent educational reforms have been gaining increasing attention across Europe, particularly for the creation of powerful learning environments (Buchberger, 2001; Gerjets & Hesse, 2005; Lesgold, 2004; Palincsar & Herrenkohl, 2002; Van Petegem, De Loght, & Shortridge, 2003) based on constructivist educational theory. Most of these innovations are responses to raising educational standards and creating more engaged, active learners. Powerful learning environments aim to improve the quality of learning experiences by creating more active, student-centered classrooms in schools and universities, particularly through the use of technology. The notion of 'powerful' is emphasized in contrast to 'weak' learning environments where students are mainly required to digest or memorize facts. This constitutes contrasting views of education depending on whether students are required to respond, engage and participate in their learning experiences or remain passive and inactive as in more traditional behaviorist learning situations. Such contrasting views of education are one of the reasons for the increased interest in what powerful learning environments have to offer and what they mean in terms of educational reform.

Drama is highly regarded as an effective and valuable teaching strategy because of its unique ability to engage reflective, constructivist and active learning in the classroom as well as enhancing oral skills development (Di Pietro, 1987; Via, 1976; Heathcote cited in Wagner, 1976; Mezirow, 1990; Schon, 1991; Donato and McCormick, 1994; Lukinsky, 1990; Miccoli, 2003). As teachers, we often search for effective ways to improve our classes, motivate the students that we teach and appeal to a range of learning styles. This paper will discuss some of the benefits of using drama as a teaching strategy, its power to engage all learning styles and offer some practical classroom teaching activities which incorporate various learning styles in English as a foreign or second language. Teachers are encouraged to try some of these strategies and provide a more active and engaging learning experience for students in the classroom.

This paper examines the various roles of culture in language teaching with the aim of increasing awareness for English teachers. Graves (2001) claims that culture is receiving increasing attention; Hymes (1972) views it as communicative competence; Larsen-Freeman (2001) as a fifth skill in addition to reading, writing, speaking and listening; and Kramsch (1993) as not just a fifth skill or even an aspect of communicative competence but the underlying dimension of all one knows and does. Regardless of how we perceive culture, the importance of culture in English Language Teaching has never been more important. Raising awareness of aspects of culture such as various pronunciations, translatable and untranslatable words, approaches to culture, who should teach culture, strategies for teaching language and culture, as well as several innovations and new studies involving culture and ELT will be discussed here.

This paper explores and highlights some of the strategies used to challenge, encourage and support the communicative learning process for two large classes of Turkish learners in their third and fourth years of the English Language and Literature Department at a large university in eastern Turkey. Many of these students are expected to become English teachers in the future. The learning strategies cover a range of areas including cognitive reading strategies, rigorous learning standards, learning styles and multiple intelligences, meaningful content and building cultural knowledge in order to assist learners in realizing their full potential. These strategies may be adaptable to other contexts and inspire teachers to teach what matters most in their own classrooms.