Filling in the blanks: signature pedagogies and their impact on understanding and sharing practice in the form of OERs in the Social Science Curriculum

Richard Pountney and Anna GruszczynskaSheffield Hallam University

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Introduction and background

• The Open Education Resources (OER) movement (2008-) and the release of content for Higher Education (HE)

• The ‘idea of the university’ (McCLean 2006) occupying physical and notional space (Barnett, 2005)

• Curriculum becoming a techno-economic conception as a ‘vehicle for realising taken-for-granted ends’ (Barnett and Coate, 2005)

• The rise of ‘trainability’ and a (second) ‘totally pedagogised society’ in which an ‘ideal knower’ is constituted by the Official Recontextualising Field (ORF) (Bernstein, 2000)

• The construction of curriculum knowledge in HE as social practice that raises key questions about the use and reuse of OER:o What are the cultural and social conditions that underpin it?o What are the epistemological and methodological constraints?o What identities and forms of agency do curriculum practices with OER

construct for teachers and students?2

Evaluating the practice of Opening up Resources for Learning and Teaching

• A regulative discourse for the design of courses in UK HE (QAA Code of Practice, Subject Benchmarks, credit tariffs, course validation and approval etc.)

• Social Science as having a horizontal knowledge structure, segmentally arranged, with weak classification (-C) and strong official framing (+F) and weak unofficial framing (-F) (Bernstein, 1990)

• The potential for an ‘invisible pedagogy’ (-C/-F) in which students (and teachers) do not know the ‘rules of the game’.

• Pedagogic practice as emerging from individual ‘repertoires’ developed over time drawn from a ‘reservoir’ of tacitly agreed techniques (Bernstein, 2000, Bourdieu, 1992). The notion of ‘signature pedagogy’ (Shulman, 2005) as a perspective.

• The articulation of personally held beliefs and their effect on strategies in pedagogic encounters (Schon, 1987), with emphasis in this study on the process of ‘making open’

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Evaluating the practice of Opening up Resources for Learning and Teaching

• A regulative discourse for the design of courses in UK HE (QAA Code of Practice, Subject Benchmarks, credit tariffs, course validation and approval etc.)

• Social Science as having a horizontal knowledge structure, segmentally arranged, with weak classification (-C) and strong official framing (+F) and weak unofficial framing (-F) (Bernstein, 1990)

• The potential for an ‘invisible pedagogy’ (-C/-F) in which students (and teachers) do not know the ‘rules of the game’.

• Pedagogic practice as emerging from individual ‘repertoires’ developed over time drawn from a ‘reservoir’ of tacitly agreed techniques (Bernstein, 2000, Bourdieu, 1992). The notion of ‘signature pedagogy’ (Shulman, 2005) as a perspective.

• The articulation of personally held beliefs and their effect on strategies in pedagogic encounters (Schon, 1987), with emphasis in this study on the process of ‘making open’

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Researching the ‘making open’ process

1. Reflecting and reviewing stage - peer supported review exercise• The activity involved reviewing a sample module from the other partner’s

contributed materials, focusing on issues relevant to OERs and reusability2. Mapping stage• Development activity where project partners created detailed mappings

of their modules, using a provided paper-based mapping proforma3. Case study creation stage• Partners created a case study narrative which documented the process of

“opening up” a selected module and showcased the processes behind repurposing/ material transformation.

• The narratives offered a 'rich description’ of the resource in order to increase the possibility of its re-contextualisation by other users, and to develop further insights into tacit practice.

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Becoming open: to others and to oneself

1. Embodying cultural capital• Materials relied on repertoires of existing practice and were British

culture and politics centric, context based, without captions (cultural colonisation)

2. Subject to housekeeping• The presence of redundant local information (module codes), links to

institutional sources (VLE), and the absence of explicit information (duration of lectures, slide numbers, how content is being used)

3. Implicit design for learning• Module design is unclear, especially how this relates to other

modules and (prior) learning and how this builds as a body of knowledge, practice or skills

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Learning and teaching as social practice involving a pedagogical discourse

• The need for a shared pedagogical rationale to enable the pedagogic conversation to take place. The unsuitability of existing pedagogical frameworks (e.g. Goodyear and Jones, 2004) offering models, characteristics and principles of learning

• ‘learning design and reusability are incompatible. Design requires specificity and specificity prohibits reusability’ (Downes, 2003)

• ‘the transformative educational potential of OER depends on: 1. Improving the quality of learning materials through peer review process; 2. Reaping the benefits of contextualisation, personalisation and localisation ...’ (UNESCO, 2006)

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Empirical work in developing shared and open resources in the curriculum

• How the proposition emerged that this involved a translation at differing levels: in technical terms (as xml); as a ‘wrapped-up’ or packaged curriculum; and as an articulation of the tacit

• How the examination of the 18 modules revealed elements of a signature pedagogy (lecture / seminar / Powerpoint)

• The development of an external language of description (Bernstein 1990) and how this is ‘legitimated’ in terms of autonomy (Maton, 2007) as a cline of collegiality (Pountney, 2012)

Theoretical concept

Degree of emphasis on:

Positional autonomy

Curriculum Content knowledge specified by discipline Pedagogy Teaching of content knowledge based on tradition Assessment Evaluative criteria aligned with teachers’ needs

Relational autonomy

Curriculum Content knowledge specified by educational policy Pedagogy Teaching of content knowledge based on economic and other factors Assessment Evaluative criteria aligned with institutions’ needs

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Cascading Social Science Open Educational Resources

• Part of Phase 2 of the UKOER programme, which expanded the work of pilot phase around the release of OER material.

• Three partners:– Teesside University– University Centre at

Blackburn College– Welsh Federation College

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Project outputs

• Cascade framework: Model of release, discovery and reuse of OERs which can be “cascaded”, that is, taken up and incorporated into new contexts

• Cascade tools: Set of tools which will allow academics to reflect upon their own practice and examine conditions in which their teaching resources can be used/reused and shared

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Creativity for Edupunks at University Centre Blackburn College

• Edupunk - an approach to teaching and learning practices that result from a do it yourself (DIY) attitude

• Wiki-based resource primarily aimed at HE in FE staff with 11 activity-based sessions related to – identifying, locating, releasing and putting OERs into the

curriculum; – understanding the concept of “openness"– issues around student engagement

• "encourages reflection on the research and practice of the working lives of teaching professionals"

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Further work in OER

•Local teachers and pupils, teacher educators and teacher educations students involved in:•sharing and developing good practice in teaching•understanding more about digital literacy•developing guidance on Open Educational Resources for the school sector•addressing issues of digital literacy in the context of professional development•Project outputs will be shared via an open textbook and the "Digital Bloom" installation

• For more information:• Project blog

www.deftoer3.wordpress.com• Twitter @deftoer3• Slideshare

www.slideshare.net/deftoer3

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References• Barnett, R. (2005) Reshaping the University. Maidenhead: Society for Research into Higher

Education/Open University Press• Barnett, R. & Coate, K. (2005) Engaging the curriculum in higher education. Maidenhead: Society for

Research into Higher Education/Open University Press• Bernstein, B. (1990) The structuring of pedagogic discourse. London: Routledge• Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control, and identity: Theory, research, critique (Rev. ed.).

Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.• Bourdieu, P. (1992) Thinking about limits. Theory, Culture & Society 9: 37-49.• Luckett, K. (2009). The relationship between knowledge structure and curriculum: A case study in

sociology. Studies in Higher Education, 34(4), 441–453• Goodyear, P & Jones, C (2004) Pedagogical frameworks for DNER (the Distributed National Electronic

Resource), Deliverable DC1, EDNER Project. Lancaster: Centre for Studies in Advanced Learning Technology, Lancaster University (online at www.cerlim.ac.uk/edner/dissem/dc1.doc)

• Maton, K. (2007). Knowledge-knower structures in intellectual and educational fields. In F. Christie & J. R. Martin (Eds.), Language, knowledge and pedagogy: Functional linguistic and sociological perspectives (pp. 87–108). London: Continuum.

• McClean, M. (2006) Pedagogy and the University. London: Continuum.• Pountney, R. (2012) Constructing the curriculum in Higher Education (in press)• Schön, D.A. (1987) Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass• Shulman, L. (2005) Signature pedagogies in the profession, Daedalus, 134 (3) 52-59

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