CONTROVERSIAS

The exploration of any social setting is grounded in specific times, places, people, and phenomena, but is ultimately an interpretation on the part of the researcher who crafts the account. I am aware that my interpretation of the lifeworlds of my participants has been informed by my autobiographical and affective history. Ravitch & Riggan (2016) argue that these interpretations are informed by the researcher’s (1) social location, (2)

professional position and (3) life experience, and I will lay out these three areas to show how I play a part in this account. Clarifying my social location will allow me to indicate who I am and how my social and political allegiances have come together to inform my view of the world, and, accordingly, the political position I take in relation to my project; outlining my professional position will make my setting clear; and exploring my life experience will evidence why I sympathise – and empathise – with my post-graduate participants’ lifeworlds in the UK.

[1.14_{] That said, there may be}

personal reasons for researchers’ not wishing to be overt about their connection to their enquiry. For instance, a researcher exploring kleptomania may not wish to admit to a history of shoplifting. I identify with Seidman (2013), who cautions that sharing too much of oneself can distort the relationship between researcher and what is researched.

My social location

I was born in 1971, in Liverpool. This was the period of the post-war consensus, an uneasy reconciliation of labour and capital, when the role of the state was understood to be to work for the good of the nation, before the shift in the 1980s to “partisanship in favour of particular interests" (Hammersley, 1999). It was a troubled time, socially: I remember power cuts, Rhodesia and the Vietnamese Boat People, and being petrified by advice on how to build a fallout shelter out of mattresses. By the 1980s, Liverpool had become marginalised politically by the ideological stance of the Trotskyist city council. It was close to collapse, with the highest level of unemployment in the UK (Owens et al., 1983, in Salt, 1985), and the “managed decline” of the city was proposed. I was fortunate to grow up in an affluent area, but even so, my formative years were spent in a city which challenged and resisted powerful institutions. Taylor & Hicks (2009) argue that “the best doctoral projects usually spring from the personal and political concerns of the

researcher”, and it may be that that this is one of the reasons why a Gramscian neo- Marxist perspective, which ties together social and political problems, appeals to me. To exemplify, in 2.3, I argue that neo-liberalism narratives have transformed universities into marketable – and marketised – corporations, in which

education is a commodity to be bought and students are increasingly viewed and treated as consumers: I

recognise that a large part of my distrust of neo-

liberalism [1.15] stems from my social location.

[1.15_{] Whilst I am not setting out to}

censure neo-liberalism per se, I do wish to set off alarm bells about the impact of the marketisation and managerialism of higher education, and how this leads universities unwittingly, to marginalise some individuals – in this case, Chinese post-graduate students.

My professional position

Education has been central to my life: I have never been anything other than either a student or a teacher. I was lucky enough to attend a good secondary school, and took a BA in French and Portuguese in Manchester. Later I

studied for a Master’s degree in Teaching English as a Second or Other Language (TESOL) at the Institute of Education, University of London. I also hold a Post- graduate Diploma in English Language Teaching, and a

Post-graduate Certificate in Academic Practice [1.16].

As my participants were all post-graduate students, I could empathise well with them, as I know what it is like to be a post-graduate student.

I have taught in a number of different locations and sectors. I worked in a secondary school in Lisbon for a number of years, as well as in a language school there. I have worked as a trainer for initial and in-service language teachers, and continue to work as an examiner for Cambridge Assessment’s Post-graduate Diploma in English Language Teaching. Since 2009, I have worked in a number of universities in the UK. My wide, varied and international teaching experience has given me a good feel for the needs of international students, especially those whose first language is not English.

I currently teach English for Academic Purposes (EAP). EAP falls within the broader field of English Language Teaching (ELT), and is informed by a range of disciplines (pure and applied linguistics, second language acquisition, education studies, cultural studies,

psychology, and neuro- and sociolinguistics, among others), which were in their infancy in the middle of the twentieth century, but which have now matured into serious and robust fields, as has EAP itself (Hedge, 2000). What EAP is, and what its purpose is, means different things to different people. However, a useful working definition is provided by de Chazal (2014:78):

“EAP is concerned with the development of […] “academic literacy” or “academic literacies”. The […] term is intended to convey the diverse set of skills and

[1.16_{] I am mindful that being}

in educational contexts all my life has given me insights into institutions and how educational policy impacts on the experience of individuals, but that it has restricted my knowledge of fields outside education. For instance, I have little

professional knowledge of the worlds of industry, business and finance, and I recognise that my inexperience in those arenas may colour my view of the world.

competences in academic contexts. [EAP] goes considerably beyond language alone, and emphasises academic practice in the disciplines.”

In practice, then, EAP purports to provide university students with an understanding of the practices and conventions typical of undergraduate and/or post-graduate study. This immediately throws up four critically-orientated questions, however. Firstly, what marks a practice out as “typical”? There may be expectations about what university students should be able to do, but these vary from discipline to discipline: what Philosophy students need to do effectively is very different from what is required of Engineering students. Secondly, and crucially, given the nature of my own enquiry, practices which are considered characteristic of the academy in the UK are categorically not so in other parts of the world, and vice versa. This can be even more troublesome for post-graduate students who bring with them a priori beliefs about what university education should be, which may be at odds with those of the new setting: this tension forms a thick strand in this account. Thirdly, political, social and philosophical questions can be asked regarding power and knowledge, such as, “What do we mean when we say ‘English’? What is ‘good’ English”?

Why do linguistic models [1.17_{] of English replicate}

native speaker norms, when most of the English used today is by non-native speakers communicating with

other non-native speakers?” Fourthly, the terms “international” and “non-native speaker” are slippery. As Killick (2015) points out, “international” in UK higher education is not

synonymous with “from another country”: the fees regime is set up so that European Union students (currently) pay the same amount as domestic students, whilst international students pay significantly higher amounts. For universities, “international” is a financial and

economic term, not demographic. From a neo-Marxist perspective, the fact that different fees are charged for the same service is deplorable. Secondly, there is a tendency to conflate the term “international” with “non-native speaker”. However, using the definition given previously there are many “international” students for whom English is a mother tongue (Canadians, Singaporeans, Nigerians and so on), and plenty of home students for whom it is not. There is, therefore, a clear and present need to problematise the internationalisation of higher education since institutions are failing to acknowledge sufficiently the range and variety of academic practices that exist in different locations. In this thesis I refer to EAP in the UK, although EAP is not limited to the UK, and appears in many guises world-wide. There are, as is to be expected, similarities between EAP in the UK and EAP in other native

[1.17_{] Although this research is not}

linguistic in nature, all the participants were all non-native speakers of English, and therefore socio-linguistic issues of this ilk must be considered.

speaker settings (Canada, the US, Ireland), but EAP can also be taught in countries where English is not a native language, either because the language of instruction in higher

education may be English (the Netherlands), or because English is a lingua franca (Nigeria, India), or because the students are studying EAP on a preparatory period in their home country (China, Portugal, Saudi Arabia) before moving to an English-speaking context to study at university.

My own EAP experience is predominantly on programmes for post-graduate students. Such programmes support students in developing their language for Master’s level study in the UK, and usually take place in the year before students embark on their programmes. Intakes tend to be smaller than those for pre-undergraduate students, and therefore tend to be more personal and welcoming. Applicants usually have good undergraduate degrees and are competent users of English, although do not have a sufficiently high language proficiency to allow them direct entry onto a post-graduate programme and so they enrol on these

programmes to raise that level. Students on my programmes have come from a range of countries, although China is by far the largest nationality group represented, followed by other nations in South East Asia (Japan, South Korea), with large clusters of Russian and Saudi Arabian students, and smaller numbers of EU students (from France and Italy in particular). Since they are all graduates, the students tend to have an understanding of the nature of the academy and what it means to be a university student, although the specific expectations of post-graduate study can be challenging (see 2.6). Many also struggle with the expectation to take up the mantle of their academic community and contribute to the body of knowledge. These challenges are unpacked in 2.4 – 2.6.

In the summer of 2016, I was made redundant. Such an occurrence was so far from my mind that it did not even feature as a risk to my project when I submitted my Registration Report in Year 2. It was a shock and an affront, and it made me question my own

professional abilities. Only after the dust had settled did I come to realise that redundancy was less about my performance as a professional and much more about the institution’s approach to educational management, which replaced programme leaders with teaching experience with people with business acumen. I recognise that this event informed the way I write about higher education in 2.3, and that it has given wings to my neo-Marxist and critical transformative pedagogy stances.

My life experience

My life experience has had a significant bearing on the way I approached this project and responded to what it has thrown up. I spent a year of my life in Brazil and then a decade living and working in Portugal. I am therefore alert to the difficulties which being an outsider (see 4.4.2) brings with it. When my students talk of the challenges of living overseas, I can both sympathise and empathise with them. I know all about the ways people respond to you when you are not local. I know of the struggle it can be to

acculturate, the frustrations (and, of course, joys) involved in learning a new language and striking up new intercultural friendships. In Brazil, I spent a year at the Universidade Federal da Paraíba, and therefore have an understanding of the challenges involved in being an international student. Being an outsider gives us insights in to our own home culture and society, thereby increasing self-awareness and self-understanding (Stier, 2006), and living abroad for 11 years equipped me with personal and professional sensitivities which I can draw on as a form of “ethical hermeneutics” (Cole, 2008): like my participants, I have been that outsider, and that experience taught me about myself, and the wider world.