Presentation for ScotHELD's winter meeting, 2021

1. Writing Development Centre. University Library.
Decolonization and Learning
Development:
How must we respond?
ScotHELD winter meeting 2021
Dr HelenWebster

2. Writing Development Centre. University Library.
A recent conversation with a student….
"The [essay] question is
'Assess the value of researching histories of race / gender / sexuality /
age / disability in expanding our understanding of the past’.
2

3. Writing Development Centre. University Library.
“…universities remain white middle-class spaces.They require
students to adopt particular ways of being and doing – those which
conform to middle-class practices that define success in higher
education – ways of writing, speaking and the use of academic
language. Universities measure a particular type of success that is
possessed by those from white middle-class backgrounds.”
(Bhopal, 2018)
“The principal function of student writing is increasingly that of
gatekeeping.” (Lillis, 2001)
Decolonisation: Must we respond?

4. Writing Development Centre. University Library.
“Academic practices are usually presented as neutral, decontextualised
sets of technical skills and literacy that students from socially
disadvantaged backgrounds are seen to lack” (Lillis, 2001).
“Through taken- for-granted academic practices, constructions of
difference are formed, often in problematic ways.The tendency is to
project a pathologising gaze on racialised bodies that have historically
been constructed as a problem, and as suffering from a range of deficit
disorders (e.g. lack of aspiration, lack of motivation, lack of confidence
and so on’)” (Burke, 2015).
Decolonisation: Must we respond?

5. Writing Development Centre. University Library.
“Inclusion tends to be more about fitting into the dominant culture than
about interrogating that culture for the ways that it is complicit in the
social and cultural reproduction of exclusion, misrecognition and
inequality.’ (Burke, 2015)
“[Decolonisation is] an underlying transformation from a culture of
denial and exclusion to a consideration of different traditions of
knowledge.To diversify our curriculum is to challenge power relations
and call for deeper thinking about the content of our courses and how
we teach them.” (James Muldoon)
“Decolonization is not a metaphor” (Tuck andYang, 2012)
What is Decolonisation?

6. Writing Development Centre. University Library.
How does Decolonisation relate to LD?
Model The Problem The Aim
Study Skills Students lack the technical and
instrumental skills
Teach transferable, atomised
surface features
Academic
Socialization
Students are not familiar with the
discourse and practices of the
academic community
Students must be inducted,
acculturated, socialised
Academic Literacies • Discourses and epistemologies are
sociocultural practices situated in
context, and plural
• Writing is constitutive of identity,
meaning is contested and situated in
hierarchies of power and authority
• Provision must be tailored and
embedded
• ? Emancipatory practice,
negotiation, code-switching
6
The Academic Literacies Model, Lea and Street
(1998)

7. Writing Development Centre. University Library.
• Critically examine our stance towards these conventions and norms, and
how we frame them for students
• Learn about their history, alternatives, and how they impact on
disadvantaged groups
• Expose, interrogate and challenge the hidden curriculum
• Critique our own guidance and the assumptions it rests on
• Develop student-centred pedagogies that give students authority and
agency
• Cede authority, de-centre ourselves
• Become accomplices to students and academic colleagues in re-
imaginging the academy
7
What can we do?

8. Writing Development Centre. University Library.
A Typical ‘Study Skills’ model
Identify
Hm, let’s have a look at your essay…
•Examine
•Diagnose
•Prescribe

9. Writing Development Centre. University Library.
Formulation in Learning Development
“The clinician brings knowledge derived from theory, research and clinical
experience, while the service user brings expertise about their own life and
the meaning and impact of their relationships and circumstances”
(Johnstone, 2017)
The LDer
brings…
The student
brings…
?

10. Writing Development Centre. University Library.
The Five Ps of LD
Presentin
g
“Problem”
Pertinent
factors
Perceptio
n of task
Process
Product

11. Writing Development Centre. University Library.
A model for an Academic Literacies
dialogue
adapted from Lillis, 2001 and White, 2008
Authority
• Who can
you be?
• Who do
you want to
be?
• Who do you
need to be?
Authorial
Presence
• How can
you say it?
• How do
you want to
say it?
• How do you
need to say
it?
Authorship
• What can
you say?
• What do
you want to
say?
• What do you
need to say?
Do you want to
be…
Resident
Visitor
Renovator

12. Writing Development Centre. University Library.
A recent conversation with a student….
"The [essay] question is
'Assess the value of researching histories of race / gender / sexuality /
age / disability in expanding our understanding of the past’.
12

13. Writing Development Centre. University Library.
“What remains problematic, however, is the current uncritical
dissemination of the grounds upon which the [decolonisation] agenda is
based.These grounds, concerned as they are with access and
completion rates of BAME students are instrumental, and all too
insidiously tied to a neoliberal logic of capital, and the bottom line. Try
as we might, I cannot stress enough how we cannot begin to even
fathom what a genuinely decolonised HE curricula would look or feel
like, for we have never known one, let alone a truly decolonised
society. (Dhillon, 2020)
“the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (Audre
Lorde)
What can’t we do?

14. Writing Development Centre. University Library.
References
Bhopal, K. (2018) White Privilege:The Myth of a Postracial Society. Bristol: Policy Press.
Burke, P. (2015) ‘Widening Participation in Higher Education: Racialised Inequalities and Misrecognitions’. In C.
Alexander and J Arday (eds), Aiming Higher: Race, Inequality and Diversity in Higher Education. London:
Runnymeade, pp. 21-4.
Dhillon, S. (2020) ‘Why Neoliberal Universities can’t expect their libraries to facilitate decolonisation’ Copyright
Licensing Agency, 14th April 2020. Available at https://cla.co.uk/blog/higher-education/why-neoliberal-
neoliberal-universities-cant-expect-their-libraries-to-facilitate-decolonisation
Lea, M. and Street, B. (2006). ‘The Academic Literacies Model:Theory and Applications’ Theory into Practice,
45(4) 368-377.
Lillis,T. (2001) StudentWriting: Access, Regulation and Desire. London: Routledge.
Robinson-Pant, A. And Street, B. (2012) ‘Students’ andTutors’ Understanding of ‘New’ Academic Literacy
Practices’ in: M. Castello and C. Donahue (eds). University Writing: Selves andTexts in Academic Societies.
(London: Routledge. 71-92.