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Bottom-Up Course Design and Evaluation in
Undergraduate Applied Social Anthropology
Robin Wilson
The aim is to use participant observation, university feedback documents, semistructured and structured interviews, workshop discussion data and questionnaire
data to reflect upon undergraduate course design for applied anthropology insofar as
it might be improved to develop student awareness of the skills required to become a
professional anthropologist.
Description
Although social anthropology is a fieldwork-based discipline, the undergraduate learning
experience is predominantly text-based. The funding application was made in order to undertake
project work set out by the requirements of the Postgraduate Certificate of Teaching and
Learning in Higher Education (PGCert) aimed at newly appointed academic staff at the University
of Durham, to create teaching portfolios, write essays and do research into teaching.
Case study
Although social anthropology is a fieldwork-based discipline, the undergraduate learning
experience is predominantly text-based. The aim is to use participant observation, university
feedback documents, semi-structured and structured interviews, workshop discussion data and
questionnaire data to reflect upon undergraduate course design for applied anthropology insofar
as it might be improved to develop student awareness of the skills required to become a
professional anthropologist. The funding application was made in order to undertake project work
set out by the requirements of the Postgraduate Certificate of Teaching and Learning in Higher
Education (PGCert) aimed at newly appointed academic staff at the University of Durham, to
create teaching portfolios, write essays and do research into teaching.
The central requirement of the PGCert is to draw a model of teaching learning and assessment
from one's own teaching experience, which in order to do I took on tutoring and lecturing in the
anthropology department where I am a post-doctoral researcher. The aim of the PGCert is to
examine and (where possible) improve a course for which one is responsible. In 2001 when this
research began, changing student expectations of university learning in anthropology were unclear.
Data did not exist about students' backgrounds, prior experiences or future aspirations and
debates were taking place in the UK academic literature about the uncertainty of student
recruitment, academic identity politics and professional status for the graduates of the universities.
It has been the central aim of this research to investigate a practical application of the idea that
better understanding of student aspirations can facilitate a better alignment of undergraduate
courses to student requirements while still conveying core disciplinary concepts. In particular, I am
interested in the potentially transformative process of going beyond text-based learning via
practical problem-based course components and the variability in the adoption or not of an
anthropological identity at the completion of a three year course of study.
There seems to be no consensuses as to the role of higher education but the following statements
give us some idea of the conflicting pressures on university teachers to redesign courses to meet
new and changing expectations. On one hand, definitions deal with designing learning
environments which promote higher order cognitive abilities:
"The development of students' intellectual and imaginative powers; their understanding and
judgement; their problem solving skills; their ability to communicate; their ability to see
relationships within what they have learned and to perceive their field of study in a broader
perspective. It must aim to stimulate an enquiring analytical and creative approach, encouraging
independent judgement and critical self-awareness." UK Council for Academia 2002
On the other hand, less idealistic observers focus on the political and practical way in which
others, including many students and politicians might view HE:
"There is a very credible economics literature which suggests that higher education may be no
more than a screening device which allows employers to identify the more able potential
employees from the rest. Thus, graduates' wages are higher because they are inherently more
productive, for example because they work harder or have more innate ability, but not because
they are better educated. If this is the case then the current system of HE may simply be providing
employers with a privately cheap, but socially expensive (i.e. wasteful), screening system." Maskell
and Robinson, 2001
Both extracts summarise the respective stances of idealist liberal education and pragmatic costbenefit economic analysis of the sector. Arguments supporting an adherence of an admixture of
these two viewpoints within the undergraduate body suggest that courses need to be tailored
carefully between the Scylla of disengaged academe and the Charybdis of managerialist general
skills training.
At the time of the application, the Institute for Learning and Teaching (ILT) and Learning and
Teaching Support Network (LTSN) (now replaced by 2004 Higher Education Academy (HEA)
replaces) offered membership and accredited PGCert courses which place the new teacher in
higher education in an idealistic world. Here one can design one's own course and assessment
profile reflexively according to variations in student engagement of both the content (subject
matter) and the context (aspects of their course environment) of learning. By being aware of
variation exhibited by our own students it is intended that we reflect on the development of our
own teaching practice. Such reflective practice constitutes a vital part of what is referred to as
‘student-centred teaching' insofar as it helps the new teacher to develop not simply a mental
model of ‘teaching', but of ‘learning and teaching'. In practice, having undertaken this course of
research it became apparent that most of the findings were impossible to put into practice given
the reasonable but limited discretion, trust and self-determination shown to part-time teaching
staff. Although it is difficult to discuss student learning without addressing the problems faced by
TAs in their teaching, this project focuses on using the data drawn from successive cohorts of
students to suggest modifications to an applied anthropology course that would better facilitate
the adoption of an anthropological identity.
This C-SAP funded project seeks to redesign the current Change and Development module in
social anthropology at Durham (a) to strengthen and communicate the agenda of applied
fieldwork, (b) to enhance student awareness of and actual employability, and (c) to advance
current teaching strategy through practical involvement of undergraduate learning in community
and international "development" issues. The course has been redesigned so that anthropologists
who are currently employed in the field of development can act as the source of primary
ethnographic data for undergraduates taking the module to connect secondary literature and grey
material with first hand accounts of the development project that they have chosen to study as a
part of their course. The research proposed to link students with practitioners, incorporate
student material into course design and to inform students of current debates within the discipline
involving professionalisation and application of anthropology outside of academe.