HERAG Think Tank 2016

1. HERAG Think Tank 2016 Creating inclusive learning and teaching communities: reflection and practice Academic reading, writing & knowledge: developing inclusive assessment Dr Victoria Odeniyi

2. The shape of the workshop • Introduction to research project • Discuss data and learning outcomes • Group feedback • Tentative conclusions/implications • Questions/comments

3. Overview of the ethnographic study

5. The ‘non-traditional’ university student ‘Non-traditional students can be described as those students from social groups previously excluded from Higher Education which include ‘working class and Black students, and students older than eighteen at the start of their course’ (Lillis 1999, p.127).

6. Academic literacy/literacies • Reading, writing and knowledge making • ‘All knowledge exists in a social context’ (Keita 2014 p.7) • Lillis (2013) adds that an ideological position on academic literacy where ‘issues of power, identity, participation and access are central to writing practices and as such need to be taken account of in exploring what writing is and does’ (Lillis, 2013, p.13).

7. The participants Somalia Liberia Kenya Congo Tanzania Rwanda Source: Google.co.uk

8. Competing discourses and the Personal Development Plan: ‘The PDP’ 1. What might inclusive models of writing look like? 2. Are there different types of knowledge? Are they equally valid? 3. How can we assess students’ knowledge and prior learning? 4. What might inclusive assessment criteria look like?

9. Examining the data 1. Lecturer seemed to verbalise own frustrations rather than offer help or assurance [’the great PDP’] 2. There seem to be consequences of not being heard [for students like Mary] 3.Tensions between high stakes summative assessments and formative reflective learning 4. Potential tensions between knowledge and skills outcomes

10. Examining the data 5. There does not seem to be adequate guidance on how to ‘do’ reflective thinking and writing 6. Problem framed in terms of ‘individual pathology’ (Giroux 2001, p.107) 7.Reflective models of writing seems to have been applied to a course which interrogates social policy [Pedagogic grafting] 8.Emerging ‘hybrid genres (Ellis and Lazar, 2010)

11. ‘Epistemological racism’? Knowledge making practices which appear to work against black students specifically have been referred to as ‘epistemological racism’ (Cooper and Morrell 2014, p.180). New and different curriculum spaces are needed.