Considering the relationship between the curriculum and the teaching of it

Curriculum, as pointed out in Chapter Four’s discussion of Law, is not the specific focus of this study, but it is difficult to talk meaningfully about pedagogy without giving some consideration to the way in which the curriculum has been designed, as well as to some of the possible enablements and constraints of the curriculum for the teaching of it. This section thus briefly discusses the curriculum of this course, drawing mainly on the lecturers’ own opinions and experiences of this.

A key consideration in analysing the relationship between curriculum and pedagogy is the ‘discursive gap’ (Bernstein 2000: 30), in terms of Bernstein’s Pedagogic Device discussed in Chapter Two, between the field of recontextualisation where curricula are developed through the selection and recontextualisation of relevant knowledge from the field of production, and the field of reproduction, where these curricula are taught and assessed. In many academic departments in universities, lecturers themselves write the curricula they teach, and select and recontextualise the knowledge that students within the discipline need to know in particular courses or modules in order to progress according to the logic or structure of the discipline. These are not necessarily personal or individual choices, but are rather informed by the logics of the discipline within both the field of production and the field of recontextualisation (Bernstein 2000).

There is perhaps, in these cases, less of an obvious gap between the curriculum as it is intended to be taught and the curriculum as it is taught, because the course developer and lecturer is the same person. The lecturer can navigate the teaching of the course differently if they have also immersed themselves in the process of selecting and recontextualising the knowledge that will be taught, and also how it will be sequenced, paced and evaluated. However, in some cases, as with Political Studies in this case study, courses or modules are developed and even managed or coordinated by academics who do not then teach and assess students taking the module or course. The two Political Studies lecturers did not write their own curricula for each half of this introductory course. They were both teaching courses designed by colleagues and Frank in particular, who taught the second half on International Relations, spoke about the difficulty of doing this. He commented that ‘it’s slightly different when you have somebody being the co- ordinator and then teaching. It’s almost sort of someone building the car and says “OK, drive it well or, you know, find your own route to your destination”’ (Frank, interview, May 2013). Thus, there is a larger potential discursive gap in this case study because the intentions of the curriculum writer and those of the lecturer may be different, and the lecturer may enact unforeseen changes to the intended curriculum.

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Another aspect of curriculum’s relationship to teaching worth analysing briefly here pertains to framing, in particular how the curriculum is paced and sequenced in terms of how it is written and intended, and how it is actually paced and sequenced when it is enacted (Bernstein 2000). Again, there is a gap between the intended and enacted curriculum – between the curriculum and the teaching of it – and this gap can be articulated or bridged in different ways depending on the relationship between the lecturer and curriculum writer if these are two different people, and also taking the students and the range of possible teaching and learning environments into account. Both lecturers made some adjustments to the pacing and sequencing of their curricula as needed, judged on their impression of how students were grasping the material or responding to their teaching. They both felt encouraged to do this by the coordinators, but there was still a course outline and set of topics that needed to be taught in each part of the course. Mike commented that:

I think there was a synergy between the co-ordinator of the module and me teaching it in a sense that we started, um, with “What is Politics?” But week one I could sense that the students had a different understanding of what Politics is all about…I had to jump some of the weekly preparations and go straight to Galbraith because that was the core of POL131 and reading Galbraith myself for the first time I knew that I would not cover it within a week so I had to ensure that at least I have two weeks… (Mike, interview, March 2013). In Frank’s case the change was more in terms of the relational aspects of the classroom environment, and the organisation of the lectures to allow for changes to the pacing through bringing in different elements:

…mine [part of the course] is a bit more challenging because it’s theory…it’s all, you know, it’s historical stuff so you have to be very creative. And, so what I did was…for example one, um, Friday…I split, um, the lecture into three components. I did a clip which I think they enjoyed, the video clips of summaries of stuff…then I had, sort of a theory bit which I taught and then I would have a discussion at the end. …So, um, I tried to scaffold the content in that sense (Frank, interview, May 2013)

There were thus different ways in which these two lecturers recontextualised the intended curricula in terms of their own approach to teaching it, seen in the ways in which they paced and sequenced their parts of the course in response to students’ reactions to the teaching itself, but more importantly to the theory that was being taught, and its various applications to different problems and practical or contextual examples.

The approach to teaching on both halves of the course was looser and seemed less organised than the approach observed in the Law case study, and while both lecturers seemed interested

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in what they were teaching, for example Mike commented that ‘politics…I think that’s very much in my blood’ (Mike, interview, March 2013), neither of them seemed to be deeply immersed in the knowledge they were teaching. Both spoke about needing to spend time trying to get to grips with the ‘material’ themselves. When asked about what he would change if he could teach the course again, Frank commented that ‘I think the course design was fine. I think, um, maybe just me being a little bit more familiar with it and you know, um, thinking it through a bit longer’ (Mike, interview, May 2013). Mike, when asked the same question commented that ‘…it was a challenge for me because [the coordinator] gave me the course material and the slides that she used last year, so in as much as she packaged the material, I had to package the slides because I am the one teaching the material’ (Mike, interview, March 2013). Perhaps this sense I had of looseness and the lecturers having a less in-depth knowing of the relevant knowledge is partly because they did not develop the curriculum as well. There could be a necessary link between conceptual depth in terms of a lecturer's understanding of their course and how the pieces fit together and their role in the development of the course itself and the engagement with the knowledge that this process requires.

In terms of orienting the curriculum and the teaching towards a profession or vocation, unlike a professional discipline such as Law, there is no particular profession or vocation that these students are being prepared for. This discipline is, in Bernstein’s (2000) terms, a singular, and therefore there is no need to orient the curriculum or the teaching of it towards a particular profession or vocation. In the sense that there is a political ‘profession’ out there for students to aspire to, Mike made a few references to ‘political analysts’ when students were getting into discussion groups in class, for example telling them: ‘we are political analysts now, we are going to analyse this issue’ (Mike, field notes, 2013). But these references were made more in terms of getting students to play a more analytical or critical role in class discussions rather than pointing to a particular field and set of practices that go along with that field. Thus, in terms of the curriculum, the discipline faces inwards onto itself and not outwards as well towards a professional body (Barnett 2006). This does affect the teaching, and also the way in which disciplinary knowledge is conceived of in pegagogic approaches; this point will be further explored in section 2.3.

What was interesting in relation to orienting students to further learning or practice through the design of the curriculum, the knowledge included and considering how to teach it, was the perspective both lecturers brought to this course gained from teaching second-year courses as well, and also writing the curricula for these courses. Both talked about having a reflective approach in terms of the kinds of ‘skills knowledge’ they know students need to do well in second year, and in terms of the ‘building blocks’ that need to be in place in terms of theoretical

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knowledge. Frank, in his interview, indicated that he uses his own experiences as a student when he thinks about designing curricula and pedagogy in terms of embedding necessary skills:

…when I’m developing courses and course material… I’m looking at students, I’m thinking “Listen here, what did I use to be able to get me through first year, second year, third year? What kind of skill set did I need?” And then I try to embed that. So it’s not sort of a prescriptive thing but rather, you know, what do they need to do well in this thing? What tools do they need? Well they need to read, summarise, um, critically analyse, they need to substantiate their argument, they need to, um, read a bit deeper than what is given them (Frank, interview, May 2013).

Mike noted that he looks for connections in terms of the theoretical knowledge between what he teaches in both first and second year now that he has taught both first semester modules:

Mike: I think with POL131…it's more of an introductory module, right, because we cover, what is Politics and then we look at gender-related issues, and then we look at social movements, then we look at …the State, at the composition of the State –

R27_{: power}

Mike: power, yes. So, so those components for me, I think they are good building blocks because I also teach 211. So at 211 level I – that’s where I am in a position to say “okay we’ve covered this at first year level, now how do I bring it in such a way that it, it, it now requires an in-depth analysis?” …I managed to instil that sense of continuity, you know – I think that continuity is very key (Mike, interview, March 2013).

So, while there is no obvious orientation in the curriculum or teaching towards a particular field, there is a sense of building some kind of ‘continuity’ between the years of study in the Political Studies degree programme, and the links come both in terms of the skills students need to have to work with the knowledge, as well as the disciplinary knowledge itself.

Both of these lecturers focused on students, in talking about how they approach their teaching in particular, and this ‘student-centredness’ was a strong theme that emerged in this case study. This is explored in more detail in the next section.