Linking teaching and research in disciplines and departments

This paper supports the effective links between teaching and discipline-based research in disciplinary communities and in academic departments. It is authored by Alan Jenkins, Mick Healey and Roger Zetter

From foreigners to citizens : conceptualising students' entry into disciplinary communities of practice

CITATION: Young, G. & Kotze, A. 2009. From foreigners to citizens : conceptualising students' entry into disciplinary communities of practice. Akroterion, 54:125-139, doi:10.7445/54-0-31.The original publication is available at http://akroterion.journals.ac.zaThe discipline of Classics, like most other disciplines in Higher Education contexts, faces numerous challenges related to changed national and international expectations. This article argues that in order to meet these challenges the discipline needs to reflect on its activities and teaching practices in a structured and deliberate way. Such reflection can be facilitated by theoretical frameworks designed in education research. We present one such framework, the “Communities of practice” as designed by Wenger (1998) and show how the framework can be employed, at a theoretical level, to conceptualise the challenges facing the discipline as well as to enhance teaching practices in an undergraduate Greek class, through an institutionally supported project. By applying this framework educators can assist students both in preparing for their careers as well as in engaging with their studies.http://akroterion.journals.ac.za/pub/article/view/31Publisher's versio

On inter- or transdisciplinarity: inherent handicaps and some solutions?

We live in the aftermath of extreme specialization in scientific branches and witness the revival of integration. Also, our image and credentials in society have sometimes dropped, whether we like it or not. The main reason is that society has to cope with complex problems and does not accept partial, e.g. technocratic, solutions from specialists for problems that require a broader scope, a more balanced decision-making process rooted in the desire to create sustainable solutions. Together with the division of science in disciplines and sub-disciplines the organization of visions on reality (in paradigms), research activities (programs) and researchers (in disciplinary communities) seem to have become conservative in its own. Centripetal forces dominate. Reasons are bureaucratic sluggishness and territorial behaviour, the prestige of specialists among colleagues and in the public opinion, psychological characteristics of researchers and the amount of time, money, energy needed for interdisciplinary ventures. Last but not least: integration is less easy than sometimes thought. It requires more abilities than analytical brightness and relies heavily on other skills and knowledge. New theories, concepts and methods are required. Some elaboration is given below, as well as suggestions to overcome or minimize some of the handicap

Software Citation Implementation Challenges

The main output of the FORCE11 Software Citation working group (https://www.force11.org/group/software-citation-working-group) was a paper on software citation principles (https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.86) published in September 2016. This paper laid out a set of six high-level principles for software citation (importance, credit and attribution, unique identification, persistence, accessibility, and specificity) and discussed how they could be used to implement software citation in the scholarly community. In a series of talks and other activities, we have promoted software citation using these increasingly accepted principles. At the time the initial paper was published, we also provided guidance and examples on how to make software citable, though we now realize there are unresolved problems with that guidance. The purpose of this document is to provide an explanation of current issues impacting scholarly attribution of research software, organize updated implementation guidance, and identify where best practices and solutions are still needed

Making sense of doctoral training reforms in the social sciences:

Educational reforms are increasingly driven by political and economic forces beyond the university. In this paper I describe how the policy initiatives of the United Kingdom’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) have steadily reshaped the length, content and structure of doctoral education in the social sciences. This history of the Council’s willingness to respond to national and international policy concerns about the doctorate dates back to the early years of the Thatcher Government in the 1980s. As well as redefining the doctoral student experience, this interventionist policy environment potentially challenges the institutional autonomy of academics and others involved in educational development. In this article I explore the implications of this for doctoral training provision, and for the meaning of educational development itself. I end by pointing to the possibilities for policy ‘activism’ in responding to these changes

From Grammatical to Global: The WAC/Writing Center Connection

In a 1999 essay reporting a synoptic history of writing center theory and practice, Elizabeth Boquet honestly laments her feelings of boredom with writing center scholarship up to that time. Since, it seems, everything has been said and done, she asks the pointed question: “What is being left out of our discussions on teaching writing by our failure to account for the work of the writing center in a critically intellectual manner?” (479). She goes on to suggest that newer, fresher stories wait to be told: “Other stories can be brought to light, stories which write the developments of the contemporary writing center in theoretically sophisticated ways, stories that consider the critical capacities of networking, of linking writing centers with WAC programs, of placing peer tutors in classrooms” (479). If we look to scholarship (stories) on the WAC/writing center connection we will find that strong interdisciplinary connections between writing centers, writing classrooms, and the university at large already exist. In order for these more theoretically sophisticated stories to be told to their fullest dramatic potential, however, WAC/writing center connections need to continue to be investigated, researched, and reported on.University Writing Cente

Searching Data: A Review of Observational Data Retrieval Practices in Selected Disciplines

A cross-disciplinary examination of the user behaviours involved in seeking and evaluating data is surprisingly absent from the research data discussion. This review explores the data retrieval literature to identify commonalities in how users search for and evaluate observational research data. Two analytical frameworks rooted in information retrieval and science technology studies are used to identify key similarities in practices as a first step toward developing a model describing data retrieval