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Carole Sedgwick CALPIU conference 2012

"Small is beautiful": an investigation of literacy practices of MA thesis writing in two different national locations in Europe. Carole Sedgwick CALPIU conference 2012. Bologna Accord (June 1999). Common system of ‘ easily readable and comparable degrees ’

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Carole Sedgwick CALPIU conference 2012

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  1. "Small is beautiful":an investigation of literacy practices of MA thesis writing in two differentnational locations in Europe Carole Sedgwick CALPIU conference 2012

  2. Bologna Accord (June 1999) • Common system of ‘easily readable and comparable degrees’ • 2 main cycles: undergraduate and graduate • common system of credits • European co-operation in quality assurance

  3. MA English studies thesis • Hungary • Italy

  4. New Literacy Studies Literacy practices: ‘… not just what people do with literacy, but what they make of what they do, the values they place on it and the ideologies that surround it.’ (Baynham, 1995: 1)

  5. Research questions 1.What are the literacy practices of writing an MA thesis on the two English studies programmes? 2. What similarities and differences in practices can be identified across the two programmes?

  6. Research questions 3. How do these practices relate to the social contexts of the programmes? 4. How do academic literacy practices on these two programmes relate to notions of ‘readable and comparable’ degrees?

  7. Qualitative inquiry: ethnographic perpective • ‘Real world’ settings • Purposive sampling: ‘rich’ data, multiple sources, multiple perspectives • Participant rather than researcher directed

  8. Data collection Interviews: students, supervisors and assessors Documentation: graded theses + drafts, written feedback, course descriptions, criteria for assessment Observation: field notes

  9. English literature

  10. Variation in practices • Theoretical • Topic-based • Ideological

  11. Social Contexts • Local: relationships, courses, research, institutional regulations • Global: real and imagined, known, partially-known, ‘international’/Anglophone publication • National: identities, political, economic, social histories

  12. Top-down approaches: European qualifications framework • Cumulative • Empirical research • Transferable skills and competences • Communicated transparently ‘Readable’ and ‘comparable’ degrees

  13. Lack of co-operation with the reforms • Adopting the system, not changing the culture, Westernization of systems externally imposed by administrators (Kovtun and Stick (2009), Tomusk (2008), Wex (2007) • Conflict between national interpretations and Bologna Requirements (Westerjden, 2003) and second ENQA survey (2008)

  14. ‘Readable’ and ‘comparable’ degrees Bottom-up approaches • Transnational collaboration: joint degrees, projects, exchanges • Local research repositories

  15. Conclusion • To focus on the text alone: ‘is like coming upon the scene of a party after it is over and everyone has gone home, being left to imagine from the remnants what the party must have been like’ (Brandt 1990, cited in Prior, 1998:28)

  16. Conclusion ‘Small is beautiful’ Carole Sedgwick Email: c.sedgwick@roehampton.ac.uk

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