IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

This thesis provides an interesting starting point not only for discussion, but also for future research. The multi-site nature of the case study has produced an overview o f teaching practices, policies, and perceptions in New Zealand university English departments, as well as providing information on the PhD programme and on English academics ' (both full- and part-time) attitudes towards teaching and the PhD. It has successfully combined quantitative survey information with qualitative interview and focus group material, as well as historical and official documentation and literature. And it has raised a number of important issues which warrant further development in the future.

One omission from this study was the lack of a student voice - a voice drowned out at the best of times by the clamouring of academics, administrators and politicians, and disregarded by me in this study, mainly for reasons of time, accessibility and expense. It would be interesting to adapt the questionnaire to a student audience and follow up such a survey with interviews and focus groups in order to draw comparisons and contrasts with the findings in this study.

Such focus groups would probably benefit from the presence of a facilitator, other than

the researcher, as mentioned in Section 3 .4.2. Without a facilitator, a number of risks

present themselves, including the introduction of personal biases, and the possibility that all group members will not participate equally. These problems did not arise in the focus groups for this study, although participants did initially tend to address their comments

to me rather than to each other, thus restricting the flow of discussion. This soon rectified itself, however, and by the end of all three sessions discussion participants were interacting. Indeed, at all three groups, participants took time to tell me afterwards that they were grateful for the opportunity to sit down and talk about teaching with their colleagues in an unthreatening, supportive environment, where no decision-making or consensus was necessary. The organisation of the focus groups involved considerable time and effort from both me and the participants. But they proved extremely valuable, and if students are to be surveyed, focus groups must form part of the process.

The process of getting English academics to agree on a time and place for a focus group was at times like herding cats, but my efforts to secure the participation of the six HoDs in personal interviews bring to mind less flattering similes. Two HoDs acquiesced as willingly as a cat being scratched behind her ears, but the others ran behind the washing machine and were only enticed out with placatory promises of the warm spot by the fire-place, or scared out with the introduction of the big tom-cat supervisor. One HoD

remains firmly ensconced in the laundry, and I wonder what more I could have done to

entice him out.

The reluctance of some HoDs could be attributed to an unfamiliarity with or dislike of the proposed research methods, an unwillingness to submit to any form of scrutiny, and/or a disregard for the importance of the issues at hand. Or maybe they were simply too busy. As one HoD wrote, "I really don't want to answer yet another long questionnaire, let alone in consultation with my colleagues who are constitutionally incapable of agreeing on anything". Attitudes like this are hard to overcome, and, in retrospect, there is probably very little I could have done, short of eliminating departments with reluctant HoDs from the study, to increase participation from HoDs. I would certainly like to have interviewed all of the HoDs, however, as well as many other staff.

As Hoinville, Jowell and associates ( 1 989) say, "a group discussion with eight people lasting between one and two hours will not produce nearly as much detailed information as eight separate interviews" but "group discussions are quicker and cheaper to organise" (p. 1 3). Time and expense restricted the number of interviews in this project, and more would certainly have been desirable, especially on issues arising from focus

groups and the questionnaire. I would like to have interviewed some part-time staff, as well as the following:

• A recent PhD graduate (i.e., one who graduated in the last five years) from a UK university now working in New Zealand

• A recent PhD graduate from a New Zealand university working in New Zealand • Staff members who graduated with PhDs from North American, UK and New

Zealand universities more than twenty years ago, and are now working in New Zealand

• Staff members who have worked in both the New Zealand and North American and/or UK systems

• Students

• University administrators.

Should someone consider undertaking a similar project in another discipline or subject area they would do well to consider the inclusion of interviews with the groups and individuals listed above. It would be interesting if such a proj ect could be devoted to another discipline or subject area. This would produce interesting results for comparison with English. B ecause so little has been written on the teaching of English in universities, the concentration on this particular discipline is important, but it also represents one of the major limitations of this thesis. Time, money, experience, and resources restricted me to one discipline, when a comparison with one or more other academic subjects would almost certainly have proved revealing.

The exclusive focus on teaching presents another limitation, in that I run the risk of perpetuating the standard binaries - teaching and research, teaching and learning, teachers and learners, full-timers and part-timers - which belie the fluidity and malleability of an academic ' s role. Hopefully, my continual reference to Boyer's multi­ faceted notion of scholarship and my echoes of his call for a reconceptualisation of the academic's role have moved some way towards bridging these binaries and enveloping them in a wider notion of scholarship. It would be interesting for someone in the future to undertake a phenomenographic study of English academics' attitudes towards scholarship.

Finally, a fuller study of archival documents, memoirs, and historical texts would help generate a better understanding of traditional notions of scholarship in English. By understanding where they have come from, "English people" can learn to better appreciate what they are. And this self-reflexivity may in turn bring about a reconceptualisation of their role for the future.