While I have previously invited higher education professionals active in a number of different fields on to this blog and will do so again, I thought this time around readers might be interested in a firsthand account of English language teaching in India.

Over the last four weeks, I have had the great pleasure of being invited to conduct English language and theatre workshops at Union Chapel School in Calcutta. I was and am truly delighted to be able to do this, as it enables me to draw on not only my language teaching experience but also my background in theatre.

I teach two groups of students in the fifteen to sixteen year age group, all of whom have a first language background in either Hindi or Bengali (Hindi is the national language of India, and Bengali is the language of the state of West Bengal). When I asked my students how they related to English – and if they felt that they were dealing with a foreign language, I got some interesting answers. Most felt that in fact they were simply dealing with another “Indian” language, in the same way that they might try and deal with one of the many languages of the country, except that in the case of English they could see an immediate “use” for their knowledge.

As a teacher, I think getting this kind of reaction from a student is pure gold. Affinity is half the battle. The idea that when one starts thinking in another language one has come close to native-speaker/first language speaker status is compelling. But what about when one starts feeling in another language? It’s for this reason that using theatre exercises and the support of a Shakespearean play (“As You Like It”) in these workshops, I think is particularly useful. Functional English can never be discounted, but enabling students to tap into their imagination through the medium of a new language allows them to develop a full or active presence in it. Active language, I think, has to go beyond the somewhat limited idea we have of what constitutes a language “skill,” and become a language capacity. By capacity I mean the nuanced ability to maintain your speaking position in the face of changing circumstances (or, as some would call it outside the world of the assessment rubric – life).

The logistical pressures of moving countries and cities – from London to Calcutta – and a nasty bout of flu meant that it was sensible to stay offline for a while.

Over the next few blogs I will seek to provide an overview of the educational climate in India, and the extent to which international alliances are changing or are likely to change the university experience .

Why are British universities seeking to find a presence in India?

The Indian government has plans to increase the number of university goers from a current 12 per cent of the population to 30 per cent. In plain terms this works out to a present university student population of 12 million, and a projected increase to 30 million. This is clearly a very ambitious plan and opinions are mixed as to whether it can or should be achieved.

In this first piece though I want to present a side to the global impact of the ongoing changes in the Indian university system that is seldom seen in the media.

That is, what is the university experience in India from the point of view of the student and the lecturer?

I went to school in Calcutta and also did my first undergraduate degree in the city. When I went to the UK to do my second undergraduate degree it wasn’t the differences in the educational culture that I noticed but rather the continuities. This was probably because both the school and university I attended were established in the nineteenth century when Calcutta was the capital of British India, and at the heart of a close engagement between the cultures of India and of Britain.

What I experienced in India was a meticulousness of detail and depth of approach which I am truly grateful for. Somewhere along the way I also became firmly imbued with the idea that the big picture matters. So valuing the humanities was important because it helped one to link the puzzle pieces of the world together.

A common expectation and hope amongst the educational community in India is, I think, that alliances with British or other overseas universities will mean more flexibility for students and teaching staff. By which I mean exposure to the arts, sciences and perhaps even technical knowledges together. It seems rather harsh to expect an eighteen year old to choose a “stream” and stand by it life-long.

A simple scan-through of the weekly educational supplement to the Kolkata edition of The Times of India gives a thumbnail picture of the kinds of degrees and career pathways being offered to current undergraduates. Management and science degrees predominate but there’s a wide range of IT -related and engineering courses, along with intriguingly specialist courses in things like wine-making, chocolate making and magicianship (though not at Hogwarts).

What I wonder as a global citizen and a teacher is this – how are we going to help students join the dots? Will the view that learning has value in and of itself because it nurtures creative and critical thinking hold in the new university environment being fashioned?

This wider view of the meaning and value of education already has a space both in India and in the UK. But I have also experienced the piece meal view – in both countries – that being educated in order to find and keep a job is all that’s needed.

It’s an interesting time to be in education – and I hope in succeeding pieces to chronicle more of the changes taking place. The future – not just for the UK and India but for the world – looks an utterly different place than most would have imagined it a mere ten years ago.

Also – a very happy women’s day to everybody from both Ritu and I.

Priyali: I know you’ve been travelling internationally to complete work contracts. How do you go about finding openings? Do you use an agency or is it down to your own research, and how do you decide who is a good employer?

Ritu: I maintain an extensive professional network through writing, reading and research. I make prospective employers aware of my work and establish a continuing dialogue to contribute significantly towards health, social research and policy. This also helps me to find and select the kinds of projects I am keen to work on.

Priyali: You are someone who grew up in India but now lives in the UK, and has spent some of her most formative years within it. Do you feel you have access to more than one culture, and does this make you attractive to prospective employers?

Ritu: When people ask I often say I was brought up in England. I have certainly established “belongingness” here in Britain. I feel very much part of its society and environment. I think the experience of working in two different nations and understanding how things get done, certainly benefits in maintaining contacts and sustaining networks. I have access to wide networks here and in India. We live in a globalized world and also an extremely competitive one. With people now having access to specific geographical locations they didn’t have before, they are presented with new challenges and dynamics. These present difficulties but can be dealt with successfully.

Priyali: This is your free space – go ahead and send a message out to other researchers, practitioners and readers of this blog as to what most engages you at this point in your life and career.

Ritu: I feel that universities should prepare PhD students, who often live an isolated life, for the outside world. They should encourage them to publish and provide continued support even after they graduate. Most PhD students feel misplaced and choose different career paths, due to little or no guidance or support from their universities. It’s even more difficult for migrants who would like to establish their careers outside their home country.

Also, I would like to add that Britain needs to rethink its position on international development. I feel that Britain’s capacity to make a difference in the developing world is huge. This needs to be planned carefully by considering intersections of race, gender and social inclusion.

People belonging to diverse backgrounds should be given opportunities to contribute to the international development sector through an equitable manner and process. This will help deal with issues of social exclusion within the UK that give rise to inequalities in the work environment.

She is an academic, researcher and activist with substantial experience in gender and human rights issues. She has country knowledge and experience of working in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Serbia, Denmark, Mexico and the United Kingdom. Ritu is a founder and moderator of the South Asian Sexual Health (SASH) Forum and an Editor of the AIDS-ASIA eForum.

She is also the Director of Spatial and Social Development Perspectives – UK.

http://ritumahendru.wordpress.com/about/

http://mishtimli.blogspot.com/

Priyali: Hi Ritu, welcome to the “Let’s Talk” blog which is a platform for people within higher education and those simply interested in it, to talk about the things that concern us.

First off, many congratulations on completing your doctorate in Sociology. Would you like to comment on your early career experiences now that you’ve got it under your belt? What are your career plans, and what do you think of the present job market in the UK and outside it?

Ritu: Thanks Priyali. As you are aware, opportunities for PhD graduates are sporadic. I have not had much success in securing a full time academic position in the UK, something that I was looking forward to after finishing my PhD. However, I have specific engagements with various UK universities. Elsewhere, I am in negotiation with universities to establish international programmes – this is a lengthy and time consuming process.

Preferably, I would like to teach Gender and Public Health from sociological perspectives, and engage myself in social research simultaneously. I do have a company and would like to keep that as a tool to continue my engagement with countries like India, Afghanistan, South Africa etc. It may appear that I am adhering to the doctrine of utilitarianism. However, the job market in the UK is bleak so I have created a job for myself and carved my own path. I am hoping that one day the situation within UK universities will change, and I will have a full-time position at a University here.

Priyali: What or whom do you hope to influence with your work as a social science researcher?

Ritu: I wouldn’t necessarily like to influence anyone. Instead, I would like to facilitate and/or provide space for discussions on the issues of migration, gender and health. This would create knowledge of social marginalization through theoretical and methodological understanding. I am interested in the conceptualisation of diasporas and health and how the two are deeply interlinked. I made initiatives to enable this dialogue and founded SASH – an online forum that attempts to address the sexual health needs of migrants  and diasporic communities in the UK.

Next post: 7 March. Dr. Mahendru comments on being able to work across cultures, and on career planning for doctoral researchers.

So I was pleased to find Creative Writing in the Academy, a blog about creative writing research from Deanna Carlyle and Remittance Girl, who are both starting on the PhD journey.

There are two resources on here which are invaluable — the Creative Writing Conferences for Postgrad Writers list and the Resources for the Creative Writing Postgraduate Applicant page — where was this when I was agonising over my application!

It’s written in an easy-going accessible style and is specifically related to my discipline, which is rare, so I have no hesitation in recommending them to creative writers in academia. It’s also inspiring me to blog more about my personal journey through the PhD in the hope that my experiences with resonate with other students and help those who are puzzling over the mysteries of what exactly a practice-based PhD entails. More on that one soon!

Advice to writers always stresses that you will receive many, many rejections  and that you must learn to deal with them. Rejection is never nice, and it has knocked me about a bit, but I want to have a look at the positives, and how I’m going to deal with the negatives.

My letter was positive in many ways; the editor had taken the time to read and consider my initial chapters carefully and offer some suggestions. She made some lovely comments which in the main mirror what my supervisor has been saying, that my descriptive writing is good and language is evocative. Landscape, seascape and the natural world are all really important to the novel so I am cheered no end by this!

However, I need to look again at the plot and really decide what the central themes are. I am trying to fit a lot in and it’s not quite working. I think that, once I’ve finished my initial draft, I will go back and cut out one aspect of the novel which is detracting from the main coming-of-age and finding-her-place themes. This will resolve the feeling that the editor (and my supervisor) have that the reader is not sure what’s going to be important, what the tensions are and the direction of development.

She also said that the language could be a little more adventurous — with all the work I’ve done recently on trying to nail the voice, I hope this is now better.

What I sent in really, really wasn’t ready, but I was flattered to be given the chance to send something in, so I did. However, I won’t send any other work out until I’m happy with it. (Not to say it needs to be perfect, as editors are ace at spotting unpolished gems.) I’ve lost my chance with a publisher I really admire and who are perfect for my kind of lit fic, which is a shame.

I’ve always kept my writing close to my chest, to avoid being downcast when people don’t like or understand it, and so that I can just write without thinking about the audience reaction, the “What would your mother say?” issue. I find having a mentor amazing for my motivation, but I don’t want more than one right now.

So, onwards and upwards. I’m super keen to keep my momentum going; I’ve upped my work-rate dramatically in the last month so despite the problems with plot I want to keep going and complete a first draft without endlessly circling back on the start. I am not sure I can fix the problems with the beginning when I’m not even sure how the ending is going to play out! (I have a chapter plan but I don’t know what’ll change and where emphasis is going to fall as I write; things always develop as my character develops.)

I’m having my monthly meeting with my supervisor on Friday. When I said I wanted to discuss the points raised in the letter he laughed and said, we can moan about our letters together then (from the same editor)! So at least I am in good company!

I think he meant by this that there is a craft and a science to producing that finished piece of work, whatever the discipline.  When the moment comes that you submit, defend and are finally awarded a doctorate by your examiners, you are being recognized as a worthy peer by the academy.

What is it then in your hands to do with the piece of work you have invested several years of your life in?

Publication – yes, but in what form and with whom? I was approached shortly after being awarded my doctorate by a company that wanted to publish my thesis. However, they did not have a peer review process. A friend of mine was similarly approached, and accepted. But she is a communications professional. The value of having her work out in book form supercedes the necessity of peer review. For someone like me who is building a career in scholarship, peer review makes the difference between work that will stand me in good stead when being considered for a lectureship, and work that may not carry so much weight.

How do you find the right publisher and the right audience for your work? Who will hold the copyright and for how long? How long will it take to appear in print?

To all researchers – please consider this an open call to write in with publication questions and answers. The greater our knowledge, the better our decisions.

As an Indian citizen who spends significant time living and working in the UK, I have been able to witness at first hand the changes taking place in the education sectors of both countries.

The Indian economy like the Chinese economy is expanding. India, like China, is investing heavily in education. New schools and universities are being founded at a steady rate.

British universities are looking to these two countries for expansion. The universities of Liverpool and Nottingham have already set up joint programmes and campuses in Xi’an Jiatong and Ningbo respectively.

I recently attended a meeting at which a reputed British university presented plans for a joint doctoral programme, to a group of senior faculty representing a number of established Indian universities. If the plan goes ahead, students will be able to show joint accreditation for their doctorates. Since a large part of the programme would be based in India, where both living expenses and tuition fees are significantly lower than in Britain, the overall cost of the doctorate would be reduced. A senior figure at the meeting remarked on the possibility that this could work not only in favour of Indian students seeking a UK degree – but also in favour of UK students wanting to cut down on university expenses.

I should mention of course that faculty at wellknown universities in India as with their counterparts in Britain, are highly distinguished. Students from both countries who are able to enroll  on such a programme should it go ahead, would also have that advantage on their side.

Are we going to see British students no longer simply taking a gap year in India but living and studying there in significant numbers? What will this mean for teaching methods, curricula and  – that impossible-to-define, mythical beast – global consciousness?

Is your department or university considering a move East?  If so, I’d love to hear your thoughts and expectations with reference to that?

Karen Kelsky runs an ‘academic-career consulting business’ to help students, basically, get jobs (writing grants, letters, CVs, publish etc.). She lambasts ‘absent’ professors for not providing this career advice. Maybe it’s different in the US, but I’ve never expected to get career advice from teachers at any level. It’s something I need, of course, but I don’t think of my supervisor as the perfect person to provide it. When I meet with him, we’re far too busy knocking my creative work and my thesis into shape — and that’s how I like it.

If and when I want more, like some help with getting the travel bursary I have my eye on, I will ask and I know I’ll get what I need. But the hour or so that we spend working on my project every month is precious, and I want to use it to focus on my writing, which is what he’s really good at.

Also, I want him to carry on being enthusiastic about my work, but also about his own. Not just so he publishes more and is therefore good to be associated with, but so that he is creatively fulfilled and satisfied, and therefore in a good place to be advising me, inspiring me, and making me feel that publication is possible. (As a creative writing student I’m talking about general publication as well as academic publishing.)

At my institution there is a Postgraduate Skills Training Programme as well as Continuing Professional Development courses, training and careers advisors. There’s a whole army of them. The system isn’t perfect, as there are so many students needing different things at different times, but it’s developing and has an essential role to play.

I feel that it’s up to me to look at my strengths and weaknesses and decide what to do about them and where to get advice. It’s also up to me to get off my backside and publish, network, write a great CV, blog, apply for grants and so on, all while I’m getting on with the main body of work. Postgrad skills training and my supervisor are both pretty clear that these are good things to do. Surely it’s obvious to any ambitious PhD student that you have to work hard and develop in all areas in order to succeed, whether you are aiming for an academic post or a corporate one.

The article is interesting, but I don’t like its hectoring tone, and it’s obviously an advert for her services. The comments section is even more telling; I am sad for the students who really do feel poorly advised. There are also quite a lot of profs pointing out just how much they have to do already without being academic career advisors as well (something which they aren’t trained for and may not know much about, not having been on the job market for a while)…and that the quality of their own research is very important to the success of the institution and their students.

Of course I want my PhD to result in a better job, I just don’t think the job-seeking part is up to my supervisors. In the main, it’s up to me.

However, citation software is far from perfect, and I’ve ended up with information all over the place because there’s no one tool that can pull everything together for me.

Here’s what I want to be able to do:
— input data via my smartphone, the web and offline on my laptop
— use sources ranging from Amazon and Primo (my institution’s library catalogue) to scanning the barcode of a book/inputting the ISBN
— organise references in the usual folder structure (again on web, app and desktop)
— search, tag, flag and annotate
— export, email, share
— at the click of a button, output an comprehensive and perfectly formatted bibliography which adheres to my department’s specified style (which may need tweaking from the standard)
— be free, or really worth the money!

Actually…that is quite a lot to ask, isn’t it! This kind of software purports to make it easy, but I’ve found it far from.

The main academic tools with both web and desktop facilities are EndNote and Mendeley. There are loads of other options, including LaTex which is for scientific researchers. After some testing — and frustration — I’m using Mendeley as my main tool.

Below, I describe my workflow. I hope it helps someone else who is looking at the jumble of offerings and wondering where to start.

From the library catalogue I save things into my eShelf and export to EndNote Web. I don’t have EndNote desktop, because I object to having to pay for software that they give on-campus students for nothing (I can’t afford to live on campus!), there is no ‘App for that’ and I just don’t like the user experience.

The Amazon iPhone app will scan barcodes and bring up the item; I then put that into a WishList and use Primo to quickly find the bibliographic data that I need, export it to EndNote web, export from there and import to Mendeley. Yeah, a massive pain!

I can also scan barcodes on MyBib (a $2.99 app) then send via email for import to Mendeley — but I can’t get that to work at present.

From the web, there is a bookmarklet I use to send things straight to Mendeley, and the list of possibilities there is impressive, including just clipping web pages. EndNote has a Firefox toolbar, a whole toolbar stuck onto Firefox for just three buttons — online help, an EndNote Web bookmark and a Capture bookmarklet. Clumsy, ugly and disabled.

Within Mendeley I can do everything I want — reading, annotating, grouping etc. The EndNote experience just wasn’t as seamless, although I think it does do all or most of the above.

The only thing I can’t do easily is the barcode scanning, so I will have to use Primo ISBN searches instead, via Safari on the iPhone (ugh, maybe it’s time for Dolphin).

Another thing I like is the sharing and collaboration possibilities of Mendeley’s social media link-in, although currently there’s not much in my field. With things like academia.edu and LinkedIn’s great groups out there as well, I have to see how things go there, but Mendeley seems pretty innovative.

This is a very personal ramble about bibliographic and citation software. I am rather disappointed that there isn’t a tool that will combine what I see as all the essential and fairly basic requirements for academics.

For something less personal, have a look at this extremely comprehensive comparison of free bibliographic managers.

For now, I will continue with my rather convoluted scheme of record-keeping! How does everyone else cope with the endless referencing and record-keeping nightmare?