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.

Vitae have posted this (2min) video about social media usage. The statistics are nuts — 50% of UK web traffic is for Facebook, for example. 93% of people trust peer recommendations while only 14% trust adverts, and this is key — social media is about people and connections, and the quality of connections is undeniably important for any researcher.

I like social media and the web, but am I really using them as well as I can to further my research?

Vitae’s Digital Researcher conference deals with just this. It’s at the British Library (Monday 20th Feb), and they’re opening it up online as well:

‘Digital Researcher Online will explore how new technologies and tools (microblogging, RSS feeds, social networking and social citation sharing) can be used to enhance your research and raise your professional profile.’

You don’t have to be a geek and you don’t have to spend loads of time on Facebook, Twitter or any other service, but with a bit of tweaking you can have relevant and timely information at your fingertips, and you can connect with others who are passionate about your field, and boy, can you market yourself.

I think it’s kind of like exercise — if you’re a gym hater, there’s no point making it a resolution to go three times a week. If you prefer running, do that instead. So if you love LinkedIn but aren’t keen on Twitter (assuming you have actually tried them and aren’t doing a Daily Mail hate-hate-hate-based-on-not-much) then fine, just use the tools that suit you.

I’m posting this because I’ve heard a few people say, almost proudly, that they ‘don’t really get this social media stuff,’ ‘don’t use the internet that much’ or ‘hate Facebook’. I’m think that’s a shame (although yeah, Facebook can be awful), and a bit short-sighted, because they may be failing to present themselves as well-developed professionals in touch with what’s going on outside of their specialism. So, have you checked recently what people see when they Google you?

For me, the web is exciting because I’m a writer, and there are so many new markets and chances for me with everything going on online, from micro-blogging fun to serious revenue-earning opportunities. I really believe that applies to everyone, and that social media doesn’t have to be complicated or time-wasting, just well-managed and thoughtfully applied. If anyone can help with that, it’s Vitae. (If you’re not signed up for their Researcher Bulletin, do it, great resources.)

Here’s the programme for the day (I think it’ll all be available afterwards too):

10:00 – Introduction
A short interview with Dr Tristram Hooley on Digital Researcher 2012 and the current digital landscape.

10:30 – 11:15 – Morning plenary
Join us online and tune-in to the opening plenary of Digital Researcher. During this session we’ll be covering academic practice, the role of social media and intellectual property.

15:45 – 16:30 – Keynote speaker Martin Weller (Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University and author of the ‘Digital Scholar’ book talking about ‘Digital Scholarship’.

John Igoe, Vitae’s Web Development Manager will be an online facilitator throughout the day. Join discussions on Twitter using the #dr12vitae hashtag.

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.

In my last post I looked at the issue of teaching modules which may seem to be at some distance from the discipline in which you did your research.

From amongst a wide circle of friends and colleagues who are both research active and teaching-active – to coin a new phrase – I’d say it’s extremely important to acknowledge that flexibility is both a personal and professional good. A friend who was awarded her doctorate in 2006 found a permanent teaching post within twelve months of completing. Her lectureship was not in History which was her “home” discipline if you like but in Criminology – she was able to develop a subsidiary interest into one which she could use as a foundation for her career.

In my present teaching post where the focus is on English for Academic Purposes, language and study skills  although I am not teaching literature, I find myself drawing upon my doctoral research constantly. Accuracy, structure and space for the imagination – are the three things I would name as the basis of every class I teach.

To put it another way – the proof of the research commitment is in the teaching practice.

Here’s to all researchers and teachers, as they seek to bring two worlds together : ).

To coin a metaphor, it’s rather like preparing a one course meal from the grand banquet you prepared for a once-in-a-lifetime festival. What to put in? More importantly – what to leave out? Most ironically, it is becoming clear to me that this whole process is in a sense the opposite of what it took to produce the thesis itself.

Let me explain with reference to the actual context. As a scholarly writer my great struggle has always been – to find the right design and the right connecting axes for my argument. Structure, structure, structure. Words and ideas rushed in on me  – but the simple and absolute necessity of putting each one in the right place occupied my days and nights.

However that story doesn’t concern us for the purposes of this post – somehow, like other survivors of this marathon, I found a way through this terrain and at an unsuspecting moment reached my destination. Aspects of this journey have been discussed elsewhere on this site by Heather http://www.jobs.ac.uk/blogs/phd-student/2011/06/15/what-makes-a-phd/ and Kat http://www.jobs.ac.uk/blogs/language-and-literature/2011/05/30/world-building-with-mind-mapping/. My own work now is to scale down – to sift through the first chapter of the thesis and produce a unified miniature – something which will tell the reader what I feel it is important for them to know about the forty two year poetic career of my subject:  D.L. Richardson. A British-born poet and teacher who, like many of that generation of Anglo-Indians, lived between nineteenth-century Calcutta and London. The first time around it took me 20,000 words.

Hm.

Well…the FIRST thing I’m doing is to follow my supervisor’s advice to “write what you need to write.” I mean that I’m following the mysterious, rational and more than rational shaping instinct which allowed me to form a view of Richardson’s life in the first place – I’m combing through the chapter and cutting and pasting the sentences and passages which form an outline of his poetic life into a new document. It’s amazing how your focus changes with your word count –like packing a smaller suitcase.

The SECOND thing – is that I’m making space for change. Putting in the final full stop was definitely not the end of my thinking about Richardson, the nineteenth century or the Romantic movement. It was a stage in the development of that thinking, and I would like the finished chapter to reflect that ongoing growth.  Nothing complicated about this – I’m simply adding in new thoughts and ideas as I go along in brackets containing both short, haiku-like questions and long, rambling ones (nothing like the bracket for relieving the military precision of linear sentences, eh?).

The THIRD thing is– carving out and creating time to deal with the copyright permissions I’m going to need to get and the formatting of the chapter in accordance with a new (to me) set of style rules.  

And – finally – given the hours, energy and patience this takes, I make time to remember why I’m doing this. The joy of work can seem very far away after hours at a stretch on my laptop – so I need to remember that ,in fact, I’m recovering – or rather helping to recover – the life and hopes  of a real person. And presenting him to an audience that probably would never otherwise come across his work or feel any relationship to it.

I live and work in two countries: India and Britain and within two cultures which are usually perceived as extremely different to each other. From where I stand, it’s the similarities which strike home.

In both, the figure of the scholar standing apart from the crowd in a kind of meditative and ethereal calm holds popular currency.  As an undergraduate at Cambridge, one of the first jokes I read in the fresher’s pack was this one: “How many Cambridge students does it take to change a lightbulb?” Answer: One – s/he holds it to the socket and the world turns around her/him. (Okay, I admit the gender sensitive language is my addition but it’s in my bones : )).

There is probably no British university which doesn’t have a version of this joke, and I still think it’s quite good. For my purpose here I just want to point out that it’s funny because the idea of a self-enclosed and, materially speaking, rather at-sea scholar is, in my experience, widely accepted as a common truth.

In India, particularly in Bengal where I live for some of the year and where knowledge for it’s own sake is a core, cultural value, the attitude is a little different. A scholar is still seen often as detached from the material world-  but this is a positive thing. It shows that the person in question is following the life of the mind.

Teachers and researchers are far from being the only professionals who are thus subtly encouraged to live a unidimensional life. Any urban professional, anywhere – and the way our world works, an ambitious professional in any field does need to spend at least part of their career being urban – is similarly expected to focus on the visual and the mental.

But we are starving ourselves. At least, that’s how it feels to me. I didn’t realize how much until I took up a yoga and movement course, which has helped me to bring movement back into my daily work day. I am not just my head, I’m a complete human being. My research and teaching are better because I am, quite simply, happier. Yoga, of course, isn’t everyone’s movement-genre of choice but for anyone who’s curious to know how this might work, do take a look at this site, where I found the course I eventually signed up to : http://www.joyrebel.com/.

And now, to finally get that light bulb screwed in : ).

Being a bit of a writer, and therefore a lot of a reader, I naturally turned to books to help me, and I found that there weren’t a lot around. There are plenty of books on how to get your PhD, but not so many on how to get onto one in the first place!

So here’s a recommendation for anyone preparing to unleash their brilliant research proposal on unsuspecting profs: The PhD Application Handbook by UK researcher Peter J Bentley, which has nearly 200 pages of invaluable advice.

This book is useful for prospective researchers in all disciplines, with a wide range of examples given. It’s really easy to read, and absolutely fascinating. Suddenly I knew the answers to some of the questions I dared not ask — how not to annoy the departmental secretaries or any of my prospective supervisors, who to approach first, how long to wait before enquiring about my application and so on.

I would recommend starting at the beginning and working through. You may want to skip the ‘Why do you want to do a PhD?’ part, but these are the questions the uni will ask, so be sure you really do know! There is tons of funding information, which will be invaluable for most students.

Personally, I found the chapter on preparing my application the most helpful, but the book is full of insights which will ensure that you present yourself as well as you possibly can. It also goes further than the application, holding your hand all the way through securing the offer, finding accommodation and some solid advice on beginning your PhD.

If you are wondering what it’s all about, you’ll feel much more confident with this book (and the Jobs.ac.uk PhD blogs!) to help you.