1. WHO ARE LEARNING DEVELOPERS? John Hilsdon, Plymouth University, UK PEDRIO WITH PLYMOUTH 2016

2. A doctoral study: 2012 onwards  Exploring the significance of the field of practice ‘Learning Development’ in UK higher education:  How do those involved in Learning Development in the UK (practitioners, students, academics and others) describe its practices and purposes, and what do their experiences and perceptions of Learning Development indicate about UK Higher Education?

3. Research Orientation:  Utilising Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2010) as a key tool for categorising and interrogating data: a way to identify and critique aspects of social relations, professional roles and power operating through language in use.  A social study - concern with the relationships between structural changes at macro level and educational practices on the part of academics, managers, LDers and students in HE.  Interest in the extent to which LD exemplifies some of the contradictions and social struggles arising in and through HE in the UK as a result of both the ‘massification’ of the sector in the latter part of the 20th century, and its increasing commercialisation in the early 21st Century; both trends developing in the context of neo- liberal socio-political and economic conditions globally.

4. Reisigl &Wodak’s 5 “heuristic questions”  1.How are persons, objects, phenomena/events, processes and actions named and referred to linguistically?  2.What characteristics, qualities and features are attributed to social actors, objects, phenomena/events and processes?  3.What arguments are employed in the discourse in question?  4.From what perspectives are these nominations, attributions and arguments expressed?  5.Are the respective utterances articulated overtly; are they intensified or mitigated?” (2009: 93)

5. 5 discourse functions Nomination Predication Argumentation Perspectivization Intensification / mitigation

6. Positioning and the naming of names  Study Skills Advisor  Study Support Tutor  Academic Skills Advisor  Learning Skills Advisor  Effective Learning Tutor See https://aldinheprofdev.wordpress.com/sharing- experience/https://aldinheprofdev.wordpress.com/sharing- experience/ Practitioner preference  Job: Learning Developer; Field: Learning Development

7. LD role and titles: example 1  S1: There is something problematic about the terminology; when I say Learning Development, colleagues say "oh you mean study support".  I tend to talk of being a writing tutor working on academic writing because that is a concrete practice colleagues can understand that takes the focus away from a conceptualisation of my work as remedial.

8. Nomination:  This utterance offers an example of how practitioners who identify with the term LD continue to struggle to establish that particular phrase in contrast to former, alternative terms which describe practices seen as ‘remedial’, such as phrases stressing the word ‘support’. Or more recent management inspired / performance oriented titles such as “effective learning advisor”

9. Perspectivisation  In terms of perspective, S1 positions herself here as in a professional role that the ‘colleagues’ to whom she refers either need help to understand, and/or may be misinformed about its nature. Later in the interview, S1 states that “It’s a constant challenge to define what we’re doing,” again indicating that the nature and legitimacy of LD work is under question, and suggesting something of a siege mentality on the part of practitioners because of their occupying such a contested area.

10. Argumentation  S1 indicates the history of argumentation in the construction of a discourse of LD (by implication here rather than explicitly) that work to engage students in higher education practices such as academic writing is ‘concrete’ (suggesting tangible and legitimate). The force of argument here relates to the legitimacy of LD practices themselves, and the corresponding legitimacy of the presence in universities of those students (from ‘WP’ backgrounds; ‘international’ students) for whom such support is helpful.

11. LD role and titles: example 2  S2: I don’t mind being called a study skills tutor – it’s doesn’t necessarily imply a deficit model – what matters is making transparent the forms and practices of HE so students can act powerfully in what is for them an exclusionary arena.

12. Predication  S2 attributes to her students the characteristic of being (traditionally) excluded from higher education. The implication is that she works only or mostly with students from such backgrounds, indicating a primary constituency for LD work (that some might challenge).

13. Argumentation  The argument she develops here echoes that of an academic literacies approach (e.g. Lillis, 2003) that HE practices are not self-evident to students from such backgrounds and; furthermore that awareness of the rules and conventions of these practices is an essential underpinning for powerful, agentive behaviour.

14. Perspectivisation  The perspective she adopts suggests the position of advocate for the students in their pursuit of successful participation in HE – implying an anti- elitist and pro-democratic, universalist view of higher education (Barnett, 2014) as an arena wherein social power can be developed through identities of participation and transformation. socially

15. Intensification  S2s statement of her indifference to being called a study skills tutor, and her assertion that it does not necessarily imply a deficit model for her practice acts to intensify her point with respect the importance of the work, and “what matters” i.e. her perspective is of one whose allegiance is primarily to the students and to what LD work can help them to achieve socially

16. References  Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press Polity  Fairclough, N. (2010) Critical Discourse Analysis: the critical study of language Harlow: Longman  Foucault, Michel (1984). The order of discourse. In Shapiro (ed) The language of politics. Oxford: Blackwell  Reason and Bradbury, 2001 (eds) Handbook of action research: participative inquiry and practice. London: Sage (in Cousin, Glynis (2009) Researching Learning in Higher Education. Abingdon: Routledge)  Reisigl, Martin and Wodak, Ruth (2009) The Discourse–Historical Approach. In Wodak, Ruth and Meyer, Michael (eds) 2009: Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage