Dr Marina Orsini-Jones m.orsini@coventry.ac.uk

1. Through the looking glass: An action-research and threshold-concept-informed approach to research in languages and linguistics Dr Marina Orsini-Jones m.orsini@coventry.ac.uk VI Conference 'When philologists think outside the box: practical ideas for innovation and research’

2. Threshold concepts (educational transactional inquiry) – theoretical standpoint/educational ‘filter’ Participatory action research – methodology of choice E-learning – ‘scaffolding tools’ to maximise social collaboration amongst students and staff and enhance students’ digital literacies to help them to ‘read the world’ (and read ‘between the words’ and lines) Textuality in linguistics – subject specific stance + Belief: inquiry-based/task-based learning and constructionism are painful to implement but work – STUDENT INVOLVEMENT UNDERPINNING CURRICULAR DEVELOPMENTS Ingredients: Marina’s ‘educational cookbook’

3. problem-focused, context-specific and future-oriented research relationship in which those involved are participants in the change process Researching HOW? Action Research (Lewin 1946)

4. Schön 1983 Reflection that is both in-action and on-action (and collaborative, staffandstudents)

5. It is research WITH rather than research ON. McNiff (1988:4-6) A

6. Reconnaissance Planning Acting Observing Reflecting Re-planning (and cycle starts again) Figure 1: The action research cycle, after Kemmis and McTaggart, 1988:14 and 2005.

7. Cousin (2009:209-211) Researching HOW 2? Threshold Concepts = Transactional Curriculum Inquiry: Partnership (Cousin 2009) Subject specialists The scene of difficulty Educationalists Students

8. A threshold concept may be seen as a crossing of boundaries into new conceptual space where things formerly not within view are perceived, much like a portal opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something. Successfully negotiating a threshold concept allows the learner to access a transformed way of thinking and practising and fresh modes of reasoning and explanation. Without access to these new understandings, perceptions, discourses and conceptual terrain, the learner finds it difficult to progress within a particular field of study. As a consequence of comprehending a threshold concept there may thus be a transformed internal view of subject matter, subject landscape, or even world view. Context (Meyer and Land 2003, 2005 and 2006)

9. the learners will often find it problematic Troublesome

10. once understood, its potential effect on student learning and behaviour is to occasion a significant shift in the perception of a subject Transformative

11. it exposes the previously hidden interrelatedness of concepts that were not previously seen as linked Integrative

12. the change of perspective occasioned by acquisition of a threshold concept is unlikely to be forgotten Irreversible

13. any conceptual space will have frontiers, bordering with thresholds into new conceptual areas Bounded

14. Addresses the concern of why certain students ‘get stuck’ at particular points in the curriculum whilst others grasp concepts with comparative ease. Certain concepts appear to be particularly ‘troublesome’ to students A threshold concept:

15. ‘Becoming a linguist’ ‘Becoming a researcher/scholar in linguistics’ ‘Becoming a global citizen’ ‘Becoming a teacher’ Learning as an act of identity formation – Davies 2006

16. Definition of troublesomeness Think of a concept you found (you are finding) troublesome when studying What made (makes) it troublesome? Researching what? Discuss for three minutes in your group

17. Economics – ‘opportunity cost, price, elasticity’ Transport design – ‘spatiality’ Mathematics – ‘complex numbers’ Biology, Psychology - ‘evolution’ Politics – ‘the state, civil society’ Medical studies – ‘pain’ Nursing – ‘care’ Physics – ‘gravity’ Education – ‘metareflection’ Online Intercultural Learning – ‘netiquette’ (cyberpragmatics) Language Learning and Teaching – ‘autonomy’ ‘communicative competence’ Examples

18. I understood it in class, it was when we went away, and I just seemed to have completely forgotten everything that we did on it, and I think that was when I struggled because when we were sat in here, we’d obviously got help if we had questions, but I did grasp the concept of breaking it down, but when it came to applying it to the project (...) I couldn’t. I understood the lectures and everything that we did on it but couldn’t actually apply it, I think that was the difficulty Liminality and elusive nature of troublesome knowledge

19. Identification of the thresholds within a subject: staff and student perspectives. Creating learning activities designed to “scaffold” or support students to acquire concepts. Whilst students may have feeling of exhilaration brought about by acquiring a concept, they might equality experience a sense of loss or stress. Implications for teaching

20. A problematic issue is identified (reconnaissance stage); Change is planned collaboratively (staff and students) to address the issue; The change process is implemented – ‘acted out’; All agents involved in the change process reflect upon its outcomes, both while it is happening and at the end of the first phase of implementation; Actions are taken to re-plan the changes and the second phase of the action-research cycle starts (McNiff, 1988). Application of threshold-concept-informed curricular action research (student-centred)

22. Construct a viable research design plan for a dissertation; ·Apply their understanding of qualitative and quantitative methods in the research design; ·Retrieve, analyse and evaluate materials from a number of different sources for both academic and professional purposes; and ·Present their research plan to tutor/peers both orally and as a PebblePAD webfolio, reflect upon the feedback received and comment on their peers’ plans. (Module Information Directory) Action research and curricular change 1Module: Research Methods and Approaches (10/120 credits) linked to Dissertation in the final year (30/120 credits) – learning outcomes, students should, by the end of the module, be able to:

23. The idea for this project came about while I was a student on module 289ENL Career and Project Planning. I noticed that many of my peers found the module challenging. The aim of the module was twofold: firstly, to prepare us for undertaking our dissertation project and secondly, to engage us with personal development planning. It was emphasised to us that the skills we were developing academically would be transferable to skills necessary in a professional context. However, not only was the concept of researching and writing a dissertation a daunting prospect for most students, many also struggled to see the existence of any link between the world of academia and the world of work. Seeing the curriculum ‘through the looking glass’ of your students’ eyes: Lee 2012:3

24. 3 cohorts of second year undergraduate students majoring in English – total of 180 students between 19 and 45 years of age. Students involved

25. E-portfolio PebblePad chosen as the e-platform to be used by students to share and discuss their ‘research artifacts’ and to engage in research ‘metareflection’ Need to engage in reflection to tackle troublesome knowledge based upon findings from previous cycles of related threshold concepts studies: in order to help students to cross threshold concepts it is necessary to devise student-centred activities that allow them to engage both in individual and collective reflection on the troublesome knowledge encountered. The overcoming of ‘stumbling blocks’ will be greatly helped by the opening up of a dialogue between students and tutors and amongst students themselves and by activities that foster this dialogue, as well as by encouraging students to engage in ‘metareflection’ on the difficulties encountered’ (Orsini-Jones 2008:220) Role of technology

26. Sample screen-shot extract (with permission)the presentation webfolio

27. Students post formative research ‘action plans’ to either the Gateway or the tutor – deliberate choice to cater for individual student needs weekly Students post summative - assessed - ‘action plan’ to the shared ‘gateway’ after having delivered the presentation with a reflection on the feedback obtained from tutor and peers Evidence of transformation from student to scholar from first to last action plan in the students’ ‘research discourse’ Use of research action plans within the e-portfolio PebblePad to stimulate the development of research skills

29. The evaluation of this curricular intervention is based upon both qualitative and quantitative data: the observation of the assessed individual presentations; the marks obtained by students for the two cw tasks (individual presentation of their reseach webfolio and their draft project plans); the reflective action plans that students wrote and posted in PebblePAD before and after their presentations; the supervisions carried out with each student in preparation for the submission of the final version of their research plan; the semi-structured interviews carried out with a self-selected group of final-year students in November 2008; the feedback provided by students in module evaluation questionnaires (50% returns) the feedback provided by the 3 colleagues who moderated the task; the feedback provided by the students’ representatives at Course Consultative Committees, a forum for students to comment on their course to their lecturers. Data

30. Qualitative Quantitative Discourse analysis Primary sources/Secondary sources Literature/Literature review Literature/literacy/literary Epistemological issues emerging

31. Visualise themselves as researchers Become critical Become independent Engage with ‘real’ reading around their chosen subject Resistance to engage to academic digital literacies (clash of learning spaces) Ontological issues emerging - some student unable to:

32. The trouble with the ‘conceptual leap’

33. The Hallidayan framework of systemic functional linguistics analysis was chosen to investigate the linguistic choices made by students. This enabled me to discover both explicit and implicit expressions of the understanding of the links between their academic and professional progress and identify any employability-related problematic articulation. Lee 2

34. The aim of this was to attempt to identify troublesome knowledge and a possible learning threshold for students. This study also discusses whether there is a specific ‘underlying’ or ‘epistemic game’ - a way of understanding and knowing (Perkins 2006:42), which students need to know in order to make the successful transition between university and full-time graduate employment. Lee 3

35. 168 students’ reflective reports (58,035 words) Analysed with WMatrix Linguistic choices analysed via SFL Corpus

36. The presentation was a critical incident for many students. It could be argued that this was due to a lack of confidence in formally presenting the dissertation plan as it required an ontological shift from being a student to believing in themselves as researchers. This could be a learning threshold and it not only has to be crossed, it has to be seen by the student in the first place (Land et al. 2005). Perhaps the tacit knowledge that students need to have is knowledge of the workplace - it would be interesting to see whether students who have worked display a stronger awareness of the links between academic and professional skills. It could be argued that the skills required for the presentation represent part of the underlying epistemic game: that students need to envision themselves not as students but as researchers and by the same token ‘see’ a future (i.e. professional, employed) ‘version’ of themselves through the portal’ (Land 2012), in order to make the successful transition from the world of academia to the world of work. Results (see also Orsini-Jones 2013)

37. An undergraduate student (Rebecca Lund) took part in one of the research cycles relating to troublesome grammar knowledge (2007-2008) She became so interested in understanding why her peers found grammar troublesome that she decided to become a ‘student mentor’ in 2008-2009 and set up ‘grammar support groups’ for students finding the rank scale troublesome In her final year she implemented a curricular intervention for first year volunteers and replicated (on a smaller scale) the research carried out by staff, which became her final year dissertation Staff are implementing curricular change driven by her findings and her discussion relating to the threshold concept under discussion Her discussion of the issues was subsequently used by another student who became the ‘grammar mentor’ in 2010-2011 Case study 2: A Student’s journey from student to researcher (Orsini-Jones et.al. 2010a)

38. Developing intercultural competences for global citizenship Case study of curricular intervention 3

39. Introduction to Studying English and Languages at University • The aims of this module, which is the first in a series of three, are to prepare students for academic study at degree level by discussing and practising academic writing, group project work, digital and presentation skills. • The module will enhance students’ awareness of how these academic skills can develop into professional competencies and also provide information on how to maximise their university experience for future graduate employment.The module will also introduce students to intercultural international communication to foster the development of the graduate competence of global citizenship (MID, 2014).

40. Assessment of IC • 50% per cent of the assessment of the module consisted in the collaborative design of the intercultural digital learning object with peers in Mexico (25% of the mark) and in the face-to-face group presentation of said object at CU (25% of the mark).

41. The trouble with OIL (or telecollaboration) Through Online Intercultural Learning (OIL) students have to reflect on their own identity representation and question their ideas of the ‘Other’. Coming into contact with other cultures can cause students discomfort and bring into view knowledge that can be “alien in terms of the identity of the learner” (Orsini-Jones 2011, p.18). Sample: collaboration and product creation; (sample 2); (sample 3)

42. The trouble with OIL: Web 2.0 Digital Literacies Gap • Lack of online interactional competences • Inability to distinguish online genres in intercultural communication • Lack of netiquette awareness both in their native language and/or in the target language studied (if applicable)

43. Coventry University’s mission statement: ‘The Global Graduate’ “We aspire to be a dynamic, global, enterprising university. We will work in partnership with externalorganisations through our research and engage our students as partners in a community of learning.” Able to value cultural difference

44. Action Research Phases in MexCo (1) • Phase 1: Pilot, ‘organic’ growth, informal, not integrated into the curriculum (dedicated Moodle area with basic forums and basic information) analysed by an ‘expert student’ – MA in ELT (April-Aug 2012), interviews and questionnaires administered in both Mexico and UK. Discourse analysis of exchanges. • Phase 2: addressing themes of interest that emerged in phase 1 and curricular integration (development of intercultural task based on UG’s students’ ‘organic’ exchanges’) Sept. Jan. 2012-2013. ‘Expert student researcher’ involved in analysing data. Focus groups, questionnaires and individual interviews with students in both Mexico and the UK

45. Project’s Action Research Phases (2) MexCo • Phase 3: collection and analysis of new data, classification of data via Nvivo and design of new environment to address issues that have emerged with more ‘expert students’ + design of tailor-made e-materials and e-tivities (Salmon) + tasks that were re-tested by new groups of students in October - November 2013. Students supported by ‘expert students’ from the year before who also created dedicated e-guides on YouTube (e.g. Prezi; Mahara) and/or on paper (for Blogger). Discourse analysis of exchanges. • Phase 4: focus group interviews, questionnaires, re-design of Moodle environment to address students’ needs and wants and repeat of assessed collaborative digital object design (e.g. moving to a ‘tiled’ outlook in Moodle) • Samples (with cross-fertilisation between MexCo and Ariadna) :collaboration and product creation; (sample 2); (sample 3)

46. Telecollaboration through the ‘looking glass’ of our expert students’ perspectives to identify troublesome knowledge

47. Tips from an effective intercultural communicator Overall, I think what helped me maintain discussions was: • bearing in mind that I was communicating with people whose first language wasn’t English • bearing in mind that the point of going on the MexCo forums was to talk to people • having an interest in learning about other cultures • having an interest in grammar and helping people with it • remembering that I was, informally, an ambassador for both CU and the UK, which meant I aimed to be polite and friendly towards other participants (our stress)

48. Impact (curricular adjustments following the latest cycle of AR in 2013-2014) see Orsini-Jones et. al. in press. • Changes to the VLE’s interface • Design of netiquette activities for seminars • Design of lectures on netiquette • Integration of ‘expert students’ into the module as mentors

49. Can you think of an AR intervention you would like to/could carry out? 15 Mins • One person per group to report

50. Any questions?