Professor Jane Spiro

This book introduces and compares three ways of thinking about higher education cultures: through a ‘big c’ approach which includes assumptions about collective experiences and generalises cultures; intercultural competence which identifies personal skills and qualities that enable the individual to reflect on and revisit their own assumptions, and cultural pragmatics which uncovers systems and conventions underlying interactions.  A view is taken that these latter two are critical to support students as global citizens and academic travellers, and that the idea of international needs to be recentred to include everyone engaged in study with others.  The book draws on the Crossing Study Borders project which forms the research base of this book, and includes 24 stories of learners and teachers changing academic cultures. Whilst these stories represent a variety of people, places and study levels, they have two factors in common: all describe stories of discomfort - moments of cultural surprise or collision; and all view these cultural contexts as first encounters through fresh eyes.  The chapter advocates noticing as a way of pre-empting, responding to or repairing these moments of discomfort. 

This book presents case studies of five schools engaged in radical change in order to engage with children’s home languages and cultures in a more multilingual and inclusive way. Located around the globe, from Hawaii to Kenya, the case studies are informed by both researchers and professionals on the ground. While the schools in question are each anchored in a unique context and situation, they also have a common mission to see language diversity as a resource, and a responsibility to embrace all the languages of their pupils. The authors offer a rich resource for education professionals and policymakers, including not only theoretical insights but useful practical tips. This innovative volume will be a helpful resource for educational professionals interested in following a path of multilingualism as well as students and scholars of second language acquisition, heritage languages and cultures and multilingual educational policy. -- Provided by publisher.

This chapter tracks the journey from teacher to materials writer, exploring the challenges, compromises and co-creation in making the leap from one to the other. The chapter explores some of the issues that confront the materials writer in a changing world, including the role of printed materials, the impact of digital media, and potential conflicts between teaching and publication. Multiple ‘real-world’ materials writing scenarios are shared to illustrate the challenges and compromises of developing professionalism in this shifting landscape. A notion of ‘informed preparedness’ is suggested as a way of navigating these challenges to arrive at principled and worthwhile materials. 

Studies into doctoral writing suggest the challenges for students entering a new and often alien writing culture (Leith 2006; French 2020).  Discourse analysis offers the opportunity to make these conventions transparent by unravelling the mechanisms and structures of disciplinary texts, such as the role of moves (Hyland 1998) or the visibility of the author (Lillis 1999). Whilst discourse awareness provides rich opportunities for writing development, its impact on learners merits further attention. This chapter explores an approach to writing development for 9 cohorts of doctoral students between 2011- 2019. It tracks the way writers acquire the authority of a new doctoral voice through discourse awareness, enabling them to develop as writers and peer reviewer. The paper suggests that a scaffolded discourse appreciation can help to bridge the transition to the new doctoral writer, enabling students to reposition themselves as co-creators and participants in their target writing community.

This article suggests teachers move through stages of alienation, social acculturation, and ownership as they become research writers. This view is verified by 50 teachers who perceived research writing as less authentic than professional writing. This article describes a writing programme scaffolding the writing leap from alienation to ownership.

As writers move between poetry and writing in and for their subject disciplines, it is interesting to ask whether the adaptations they make are mainly ones of language and discourse or whether they reflect something fundamental about the selves they are revealing. This chapter considers the way these writers adapt their message as they cross from one community to the other and the different aspects of themselves they choose to express with each audience. As each writer shares aspects of their writing history, people can able to ask why, how, and at what personal or professional cost they traverse the two writing worlds and what is lost or gained in translation between the two. The chapter addresses the links between discourse-level choices and core identity as a writer by sharing the reflective testimonies of seventeen writers who are both poets and academic writers across multiple subject disciplines, including history, social studies, lexicography, botany, creative arts, technology, and English literature.