BA Education, Leadership and Culture

This unit provides students with a wide range of practical tools, strategies and hacks designed to help them settle into university life and succeed in their studies. It demystifies what lecturers expect from students and how to get the most out of being a student. But it also goes beyond these important questions of study skills (reading, writing and referencing, for instance), placing them in the broader context of how students can develop as individuals, and look after their own wellbeing, at what can be a stressful (as well as an exciting) time for many people transitioning into university. The unit also introduces students to critical ways of thinking about universities, by situating what happens within higher education in the context of broader social, economic and political forces. Students will thus come away with tools not only to succeed at university, but to question the terms of university success too.

• Introduce students to a range of studying, learning and writing strategies from which they can choose when developing their own approach to their studies
• Introduce students to university life including the opportunities offered both within their course and in the broader university
• Introduce students to critical approaches to the university and knowledge production
• Develop students’ advanced academic skills of critical analysis and theorisation 
  Encourage students to reflect on their educational experiences both before and during university

The module is a study skills unit designed to acclimatise first-semester, first-year students into university life. Beyond this, it aims to model some of the more advanced academic skills required of higher education, and the social sciences in particular (critical thinking, theory-building, contextualisation of personal experience) by encouraging students to reflect critically on the expectations universities have, the power structures within them, and their students’ development as ‘good university subjects’. Thus there are three levels to the module, each nested within the next:

1. Study skills. This is the traditional element of the module. Students will learn strategies around, for instance, reading, note-taking, assessments, building arguments and referencing. They will be encouraged to reflect on their own strengths (and the strengths they would like to develop), and to adopt strategies that work for them.

2. Study skills and the self. We will expand our understanding of study skills to help students think through what type of person they would like to become through university study. This means going beyond a focus on strategies and techniques to think more holistically about, for instance: developing professional integrity; personal, collective and digital wellbeing strategies; career development; and becoming a member of the university community. Speakers from central services such as My Learning Essentials, the Careers Service, the Disability Advisory and Support Service and the Counselling and Mental Health Service will be invited to help facilitate some sessions (if there is capacity within those services to do so).

3. Study skills and society. This element goes further still, using the tools of social science to question the individualist self-development narrative promoted by conventional study skills courses. It asks sociological questions about what type of subject ‘the university’ ‘wants’ us to become (why does ‘the university’ ‘want’ us to be employable, for example?), and how far that resonates with our own values. The advanced critical reflections students are asked to do therefore reflect the critical thinking we ask to see in their assessments (and the irony of this will be discussed here too).

Each week’s content will incorporate all three aspects. For instance, our week on referencing will cover the practicalities of referencing styles (study skills), the importance of integrity in writing in the context of ChatGPT (self), and critical work on unequal citation practices and what we can do about them (society). Similarly, in the week on time management we will look at project management techniques (study skills), questions about why we procrastinate (self), and the idea of a division between clock time, Chronos, and experienced time, Kairos (society).

Care will be taken to integrate the module within the broader context of the semester’s work; for instance, a week on communication and presentations will take place a few weeks before students’ first presentation on a substantive module. 
 

Learning will take place over eleven teaching weeks in semester 1 (academic weeks 2-6 and 8-13, allowing for reading week). We will meet for one two-hour workshop each week, although if numbers grow in the future this may be split into lecture-seminar format.  

The standard SEED VLE template will be used. In addition to standard use of the VLE, it will also serve as a one-stop shop for students to find links to a range of relevant central services (such as My Learning Essentials and Careers).

• Distinguish between different learning strategies and make decisions about which ones work for them
• Describe and evaluate a range of critical theories as they relate to the university and the production of knowledge
• Apply critical theoretical ideas to their own experiences in education
• Assess the strengths and weaknesses of academic texts

• Critically evaluate the value of a range of academic and non-academic sources and make decisions about their usefulness in different contexts
• Search for relevant academic and non-academic sources
• Reflect on their own learning, strengths and weaknesses, and devise strategies to improve

• Store and organise academic sources using reference management software and decide which type to use or whether to use any
• Devise flexible time management strategies 

• Demonstrate awareness of different strategies to maintain personal and collective wellbeing
• Reflect on different careers and pathways to achieving them 
• Reflect on the importance of professional integrity inside and outside educational settings

Journal Article Review - 1000 words at 35% Weighting

Learning Log - 2000 words at 65% Weighting

Online via Turnitin

Back, L. (2016) Academic Diary: Or Why Higher Education Still Matters. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Biesta, G. J. (2015) Beyond Learning: Democratic Education for a Human Future. Abingdon: Routledge.
Biesta, G. J. (2015) The Beautiful Risk of Education. Abingdon: Routledge.
Bottomley, J. (2019) Critical Thinking Skills for your Education Degree. St Albans: Critical Publishing.
Burns, T. and Sinfield, S. (2016) Essential Study Skills : The Complete Guide to Success at University (4th edition). London: Sage.
Burton, S., (2015) The monstrous ‘white theory boy’: symbolic capital, pedagogy and the politics of knowledge. Sociological Research Online 20(3): 167-77.
Chatfield, T. (2018) Critical Thinking: Your Guide to Effective Argument, Successful Analysis and Independent Study. Los Angeles : Sage.
Chong, D. Y. K. and McArthur, J. (2021) Assessment for learning in a Confucian-influenced culture: beyond the summative/formative binary. Teaching in Higher Education 1-17.
Cottrell, S. (2017) Critical Thinking Skills: Effective Analysis, Argument and Reflection (3rd edition). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Cottrell, S. (2019) The Study Skills Handbook (5th edition). London: Red Globe Press.
Craswell, G. and Poore, M. (2012) Writing for Academic Success (2nd edition). Los Angeles: Sage.
Greetham, B. (2013) How to Write Better Essays (3rd edition). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Harris, S. R. (2022) How to Critique Journal Articles in the Social Sciences. Long Grove: Waveland Press.
Komljenovic, J., Ashwin, P., Mcarthur, J., and Rosewell, K. (2018) To be or not to be consumers: the imperfect alignment of English higher education marketization policy and the narratives of first year university students. In Centre for Global Higher Education papers: 18. 
Lamott, A. (1995) Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York: Anchor.
McArthur, J. (2011) Reconsidering the social and economic purposes of higher education. Higher Education Research and Development 30(6): 737-49.
McArthur, J. (2014). The learning-feedback-assessment triumvirate: reconsidering failure in pursuit of social justice. In Advances and Innovations in University Assessment and Feedback: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Dai Hounsell, eds Kreber, C. et al. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (173-194).
Menand, L., Reitter, P. and Wellmon, C. (eds.) (2017) The Rise of the Research University: A Sourcebook. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wellmon, C. (2015) Organizing Enlightenment: Information Overload and the Invention of the Modern Research University. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Wellmon, C. and Piper, A. (2017) Publication, power, and patronage: on inequality and academic publishing. Critical Inquiry, 44(1).