Roles, Rights and Responsibilities:
Negotiating Relationships
25 - 27 November 2009, Jury's Inn Hotel, Birmingham

Talking Circles

Each day during the conference a series of talking circles have been scheduled. The aim is to encourage an open and inclusive format for discussion and the sharing of ideas. These are an alternative to the traditional plenary sessions and will allow time for ideas to build over the period of the conference. Talking circles give people an opportunity to interact around the key ideas of the conference away from the formalities of the plenary, paper, workshop and panel sessions. They are places for the cross-fertilisation of ideas, where cycles of conversation are begun, relationships formed and networks are developed.

It is hoped that the talking circles will provide a space for discussion for staff and students from diverse backgrounds and disciplines. They do not need to conclude in definitive answers (and we expect them to raise more questions) but will we hope feed into your work and the work of C-SAP over the coming year.

How Do They Work?

The Talking Circles meet for 1 hour sessions during the conference, and the outcomes of each Talking Circle are reported back to the whole conference in the final plenary session by the group facilitator. They are grouped around each of the conference streams and focus on the specific areas of interest represented by each stream. The following are questions/themes that may help in thinking around the topic areas.

Talking Circles Questions

We welcome papers that address the following themes:

Roles - facilitator Peter Kerr, University of Birmingham

1. How have the goal-posts shifted from past models of pedagogical practice?
2. Is it possible to reach a shared understanding of what constitutes good pedagogical practice in the contemporary academic environment?
3. Is it realistically possible to successfully balance ‘excellence’ in both our teaching and research?
4. What types of institutional obstacle stand in our way of reaching beyond past models?

Rights & Responsibilities - facilitator Cath Lambert, Warwick University

1. Are ‘rights’ and ‘responsibilities’ best conceived as general or context specific?
2. Might the discourse of ‘rights and responsibilities’ do more harm than good? Might there be others which are more productive in the context of HE?
3. What kinds of pedagogy, curricula and learning environments promote different kinds of ‘rights’ and ‘responsibilities’? Who has the right and the responsibility to define ‘rights’ and ‘responsibilities’ in relation to HE?

Notes from this circle

* Please note these are summaries of discussion points and not necessarily the comments of the facilitator or C-SAP *

First day - Wednesday, 25 November 2009

Issues that came up immediately as being of concern to the circle members were:

• The ‘rights’ of students to be taught be ‘proper teachers’ (i.e. not phd students, etc.)
• The burdens on teachers associated with audit and who is left to define’ good’ teaching.
• The ‘contractual’ aspect of rights and responsibilities.

We discussed, at some length, the pervasive notion of the student as ‘consumer’ and acknowledged that  there are many types of consumer. A small business treats its ‘customers’ very differently from a large impersonal one, and customers in term may behave quite differently and have different expectations. IF the student is a consumer, what kind of consumer are they?

Also what is the definition of commodity – ‘skills’, ‘teaching’, ‘a degree’?

It was noted that teaching is RELATIONAL – an interpersonal relationship, and that one of the roles of HE is as an agent of socialization.  How students are socialized by their university experience – including how much (or little) respect they show for those they work with, the environment etc, is critical.
We discussed critically the neoliberal context and the language and rhetoric of consumerism as managerial but filtering down into daily practices as study packs etc. Along side thins there has been a growth in quasi-academic roles: people who manages the processes.
Promises – for example that students will get a (good) job following a degree at such and such a university – are made on ‘our’ behalf and then ‘we’ are held to account. This takes us back to the notion of contracts.  As some institutions there is already clear evidence of such contractual arrangements.
Throughout, we were mindful of not over gerenalising or talking in the abstract, bearing in mind differential practices and cultures across the sector – for diverse students and for employees of universities.

Second day - Thursday, 26 November 2009

The discussion began with the difficulties of managing workload, expectation and feelings of failure at an individual level: feelings brought to the fore by our discussions around rights and responsibilities and the pressure on educators to deliver as well as try to mitigate the damaging trends of managerial practice. There was a strong articulation in the group of responsibilities towards students from lecturers/ teachers. This came with a feeling, for some of being expected to be ‘super mum’, to take on board initiative after initiative and respond to new and emergent rights and responsibilities resulting in a kind of manic multi-tasking.

Relationships - facilitator Mark Turin, University of Cambridge

1. When rights and responsibilities between students and teachers change, what impact does this have on our relationships?
2. How do greater student choice and personalised study options affect the student-staff relationship?
3. How are academic relationships controlled, steered or mediated by funding councils and HE policy changes?
4. As scholars and students of social sciences, how should we manage the relationship between our field of knowledge and the wider public?
5. With the growth of online learning communities, what do we as social scientists have to say about the quality of increasingly digital Relationships?

Notes from this circle

* Please note these are summaries of discussion points and not necessarily the comments of the facilitator or C-SAP *

First day - Wednesday, 25 November 2009

These daunting questions need to be concretised in specific examples and questions Online learning can very demanding of time, it is not a one-stop-shop Through online learning, students can enter into discussions with each other without their teachers, this can be pleasantly anti-hierarchical and actually allow more time for the tutors to enter into face-to-face relationships For students, there can be an unexpected greater sense of relationship with a tutor/teacher through online forums, as some students feel more comfortable and have better access to online networks and feel intimidated by meeting with tutors in person Facebook raises interesting questions: can / should the student be able to add their teacher as a friend?

Some students may find the online relationship easier to handle than face to face time. Others do not, so it remains hard to speak for all There is danger of digital overload, teachers who are exhausted by the screen find some energy from face to face contact and personal communication with students As a consequence of digital and online learning environments, we are never really off duty, and we have unlimited liability and access Students are not necessarily digital natives, see Open Educational Resources at C-SAP BlackBoard has its own email system, which can be useful and more controllable than conventional email Some tutors suggested that they become friends with their students on Facebook only after graduation For many students, email is very 1990s and already old technology VLEs can actually be less work, as students start answering questions for each other, removing some of the responsibility and stress from the tutor Despite all the technology available, or perhaps because of it, students are increasingly aware that the best and most rewarding relationships are personal and face to face Information can be transferred and transmitted online, but inspiration can only come from personal contact in face to face meetings We must be careful to not jump straight from being cyber-optimists to being cyber-pessimists We must also recognise and inform university managers that the online learning route is an expensive one: digital technology is not cheap and needs to be maintained, migrated, etc There has been a move in terminology from e-learning to blended learning Who is doing the learning about the learning?

Do undergrads and grad students have different levels, tiers or rules of access to their teachers in the digital domain? How should time spent online communicating and working with students be counted, allocated and costed? Students are not just buying knowledge but also developing it In Higher Vision, there is a statement about students not simply being passive consumers and the need to find ways to measure engagement, beyond simple physical presence or attendance Much of what is being proposed and discussed has been the bread and butter of the Open University for years These days, being a learner and student is just one part of a person's multivalent and distributed portfolio The Open University has developed a great deal of curriculum and content over the years, but it's model works in a very different way We must also be careful not to idealise the Open University The 'student experience' is a fiction, as there are many student experiences, and brands and strap-lines that universities use do not reflect the diversity As social scientists ,we must be users and spectators in technologies and the ways that relationships are changing

Second day - Thursday, 26 November 2009

New professionals are neither conventional academics not support staff Looking at new professionals can help us understand changing relationships, as they reflect new models and capacities taking shape The change in occupational structures is having an impact on relationships A lot of academic work remains unseen We need a better understanding of how people work at home versus how they work at work In some contexts, teaching and learning professionals resemble contract researchers Teaching fellows often end up doing much the same work as lecturers, but with no time for research The managerialism of teaching can be ruthless: a double discourse with a public face that we need research and teaching, but still research is that which advances careers There is a need to protect staff as teaching fellows are marking time There is a need for an equivalent career and promotion track for teaching staff who are committed to advancing the skills in teaching and learning Publication last February of a survey of 19,000 academics showed that cynicism on the importance of teaching for promotion was highest among the youngest academics Bringing in and securing one's own funding can be a very strong place to be, even permanent staff can be made redundant, and when on soft money, one is accountable to people outside the institution Soft money can diffuse traditional disciplinary patronage hierarchies Perhaps the new professionals who are as yet not disenchanted simply undisciplined?

The vocation of new professionals can be entirely aligned with the policy agenda, this can add a level of comfort Public engagement and impact can be easier for people on soft money as they may have been doing it for some time already The research agenda has focussed on student learning and the student experience, and what role the teacher can play in that The student experience is perceived to be an inversion of power relationships, even though it is the students who invest the teachers with authority and power Students belong to the institution, not the teacher Part of the perception of stress that lecturers feel has to do with the complaints procedure - dissatisfaction on the part of the student with a grade or mark can rebound on the teacher as the student's only recourse is to complain and assert that the supervision was inadequate Appreciative inquiry is a methodology with a focus on what is going well and working Sometimes the feedback that one writes on a student's work is not so much to be read by the student but rather for the external examiner How can we separate the feedback from the grade? Can we think of a way of feeding forward rather than feeding back?

Would feed forward be possible with 200 students, or is such personalised engagement predicated on small class sizes? As feedback criteria become more formalised and standardised, the quality and depth of feedback will likely diminish Tutors need to flag up that that they are giving is feedback when given to their students.

Third day - Friday, 27 November 2009

Our discussions have focussed on the undergraduate experience and relationship, but how does it change when we bring in other kinds of students into the discussion? The student experience can be very diverse, depending on age, location and institution Graduate students can experience the worst of both worlds: lying in between categories with the benefits of neither We must explore ways of embedding students in their disciplines while they are undergraduates Perhaps this can be done by building them into a community of practice, and giving them the sense that they graduate as a 'criminologist' (for example) not just having studied it

Mature students may bring considerable professional experience to their subjects and studies, and this must be acknowledged The UK lies in between the US and EU in terms of its teaching and funding styles, which has an impact on the kinds of relationships we have Masters students are sometimes perceived to be cash cows for HEIs, which has an impact on the quality and the expectation of the kinds of relationships that they have with their tutors Individuals seek out their own journey through opportunities, and as tutors we need to help them break down the silo approach to knowledge A schism can develop between students who stay in the same institution for their graduate studies and those who leave/come in from outside While inertia can tie people to places (better the devil you know than....), it can be hard to recast oneself in a different role once one has been through the system as an undergrad and stays there for an MA or PhD The biggest difference in leaving school and going to college/uni is independent study, which to some students can feel like a euphemism for 'there are no answers anymore' A peer-mentoring experiment at Nottingham Trent has 2nd year sociology students mentoring 1st year students UCL has also explored mentoring for its international students