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International Journal for Academic Development

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Self development in Support of Innovative Pedagogies: Peer support using

email

Sue Clegga; Mike McManusa; Karen Smitha; Malcolm J. ToddaaSheffield Hallam University, UK

To cite this ArticleClegg, Sue , McManus, Mike , Smith, Karen and Todd, Malcolm J.(2006) 'Self-development in Supportof Innovative Pedagogies: Peer support using email', International Journal for Academic Development, 11: 2, 91 100

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International Journal for Academic Development

Vol. 11, No. 2, November 2006, pp. 91100

ISSN 1360144X (print)/ISSN 14701324 (online)/06/02009110

2006 Taylor & Francis

DOI 10.1080/13601440600924421

Self-development in Support of InnovativePedagogies: Peer support using email

Sue Clegg*, Mike McManus, Karen Smith and Malcolm J. Todd

Sheffield Hallam University, UK

TaylorandFrancisLtdRIJA_A_192359.sgm10.1080/13601440600924421InternationalJournalfor AcademicDevelopment1360-144X(print)/1470-1324(online)OriginalArticle2006Taylor&[email protected]

Staff involved in pedagogic innovations are often presented with challenges that take them outside theircustomary spheres of expertise and disciplinary identities. This paper presents an analysis of data collected

from staff involved in a bottom up pedagogic innovation introducing inquiry-based learning to a cohort of

first year social science students. Data were collected in the form of transcripts of emails shared by staff

weekly during the development, research interviews conducted after the module had finished, and a follow up

email questionnaire a year later asking them to reflect on the value of the original email exchanges. The email

exchanges were descriptive close-to-action summaries of events in the classroom and provided a way of creat-

ing teaching as community property. The follow-up interviews revealed states of uncertainty and liminality

(in-betweeness). The paper argues that the characteristics of email, as both informal and intimate and at the

same time a public mode of exchange, allowed sharing which supported tutor learning. The paper illustrates

the importance of different sorts of talk in community creation and in supporting academic innovation.

Le personnel prenant part des innovations pdagogiques font souvent face des dfis qui les amnent auxfrontires de leurs domaines habituels dexpertise ou de leurs identits disciplinaires. Cet article prsente

lanalyse de donnes colliges auprs du personnel prenant part une innovation pdagogique mergeant de

la base. Cette innovation visait introduire lapprentissage centr sur la dcouverte (inquiry-based learning)

une cohorte dtudiants de premire anne inscrits en sciences sociales. Les donnes colliges prennent la

forme de courriels changs sur une base hebdomadaire par le personnel prenant part lactivit de dvel-

oppement, dentretiens de recherche effectus un fois que le module a pris fin, de mme que dun question-

naire de suivi achemin par courriel un an aprs lvnement, amenant les participants rflchir sur leur

perception des courriels originaux. Ces courriels prenaient la forme de rsums descriptifs dtaills des vne-

ments ayant lieu en classe et fournissaient un moyen de rendre lenseignement davantage public. Les entre-

tiens de suivi tmoignent des doutes entretenus par les participants et de leur sentiment de se retrouver entre

deux chaises (in-betweeness). Larticle soutient que les caractristiques du courriel, mode dchange la fois

informel, intime et public, ont permis un partage favorisant lapprentissage de la part des enseignants. Cetarticle illustre limportance des discours multiples en matire de crations communautaires et de soutien des

innovations acadmiques.

*

Corresponding author. Learning and Teaching Institute, Sheffield Hallam University, City Campus,

Howard Street, Sheffield S1 1WB, UK. Email: [email protected]


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Introduction

Exchanging ideas and support are important, particularly when teams are attempting to inno-

vate. Moreover, this situation is different to the experience of much scholarly activity where:

We are members of active communities: communities of conversation, communities of evaluation,communities in which we gather with others in our invisible colleges to exchange our findings, our

methods and our excuses. (Shulman, 1993, p. 6)

Shulman argues that teaching is undervalued because the way we treat teaching moves it

away from the community of scholars. He argues we should make teaching community

property. Cranton and Carusetta (2002, p. 169) echo the argument describing teaching as a

secretive profession where colleagues do not often observe or share their teaching methods.

For staff involved in pedagogic innovations such a culture can be inhibiting. It is only through

the creation of a community where people are able to talk about teaching and where teaching

is valued, that the sharing of teaching methods and strategies is likely to have an impact on

educational experiences (Cranton & Carusetta, 2002, p. 172).

Talk, then, seems to be an important part of community creation, and academic innovation.

Haigh (2005) has recognised the importance of everyday conversation in academic develop-

ment. Everyday conversations can stimulate talk around learning, teaching, and assessment

practices and help create the types of communities Shulman, Cranton and Carusetta advocate.

Everyday conversation has characteristics which foster a sense of community: it is focussed on

the local, immediate and personal; it is seen as non-threatening; it is not hierarchical; storytell-

ing is common; and it can evoke reflection that results in learning (Haigh, 2005, pp. 4, 8).

Conversation within an inquiry group can help to reduce feelings of isolation; develop a

sense of professional authority; reaffirm ideals and commitments; and help develop solutions

to problems (Clark cited in Haigh, 2005, p. 10).

A common problem, however, is the apparent lack of time to reflect on, or to discuss,

teaching (Cranton & Carusetta, 2002, p. 168; see also Clegg, 2003). Given the ubiquity of

email, however, it is possible that newer forms of talk may be emerging. McKenna argues

that email is a writtenspoken hybrid discourse (2005, p. 94). It is characterised by its

illusion to intimacy (Moran & Hawisher, 1998, p. 88); solidarity (Bruner, 1999, p. 61); and

informality (Kress, 2003, p. 12). It has also been suggested that people are more willing to

self-disclose in online communication (Crystal, 2001, p. 126). Email offers certain affor-

dances: it puts people in each others temporal presence (Kress, 2003, p. 12); it can facilitate

dialogue (Clegg, Hudson, & Mitchell, 2005, p. 6); and it can be shared and stored. The tech-

nology, however, is only a tool with a shaping effect; the social conditions to enable change

and dialogue need to be established in the first place (Kress, 2005, p. 13).This paper began as an exercise in a bottom up inquiry with academic staff analysing the

study support needs of students from diverse backgrounds with a reduced unit of cost. The

team itself took the initiative, partly in the presence of what Land describes as a discipline

specific provocateur orientation (2004, p. 116), based on a knowledge of the literature, the

module leaders encouraged the course team to adopt a new pedagogic approach in the form

of inquiry-based learning (Todd, Steel, McManus, & Lynch, 2004). Recognising that imple-

menting the innovation was likely to present them with considerable personal challenges, they

experimented with using a low level technology (email) to keep in touch with each other

during the course of their teaching. They later decided to explore their experiences further


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Self-Development and Innovative Pedagogies

93

through interviews with staff. The data available thus cuts through what might be seen as an

action cycle at particular points, when the teaching was ongoing, and at the end as part of the

evaluation. The context was one of peer support: a community of innovators for whom

conversation mediated through the affordances of technology allowed for reflection and

development of practice.

The Context of Innovation

The context for the study was part of an educational innovation developed by a course team

in a social science department within a large post-1992 UK University. The team were

concerned that, despite rhetorical shifts in the language of higher education from a transmis-

sion model of pedagogy to supported learner autonomy, many students appeared to find this

problematical. Research by a group of academic staff within the case study department had

indicated that students had found working autonomously extremely challenging (Heron &

McManus 2003; Todd, Bannister & Clegg, 2004; Todd, Smith & Bannister 2006; Smith,

Clegg, Lawrence, & Todd, 2004), particularly for first years (Smith & Hopkins, 2005; Smith

& Todd, 2005).

Students in the case study university were enrolled on a wide range of social science degree

routes, which had a largely common first year programme of study. All students had been

provided with a non-credit bearing weekly two-hour timetabled study support and orientation

programme (SSOP) for Semesters 1 and 2 which was mainly focussed on giving information.

In 20022003, a review of the programme, including a review of the relevant literature,

suggested that the existing mode of engagement was not conducive to a student-centred

approach to learning. Consequently, it was decided a new strategy would be developed and

implemented, based on our previous research in the area of student transition into higher

education and a detailed examination of the inquiry-based learning literature. A new

programme was introduced which provided a space for students to form and frame their own

research questions, investigate issues and put forward possible explanations.

1

The project presented a number of challenges for everyone involved as there was no

practice of inquiry-based learning within the department. The fourteen staff involved in this

development represented a wide cross section in terms of subject discipline, age and experi-

ence of teaching in higher education.

The project leaders (Todd and McManus) consulted with an educational developer within

the university whose area of expertise was problem-based learning. However, they wanted the

pilot project to be a collegial activity that avoided a top-down approach and to create a safe

space in which academic staff could experiment; to some extent take risks with their existingapproaches to learning and teaching; and share experiences.

In an initial staff workshop, involving all the members of the team, it was stressed that all

participating staff owned the data and project, the aim being to create autonomy for staff as

well as students. Team members were provided with a range of reading material on inquiry-

based learning. A number of concerns were raised at this point, including about how staff

would engage with a new approach to learning, teaching and assessment. A particular concern

for the team members was that the project leaders were not providing a fixed template for the

inquiry-based learning sessions. Instead, the intention was to provide a set structure for the

issues to be covered in each of the classroom sessions but providing the tutors with a degree of


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S. Clegg et al.

flexibility in their implementation. The idea was to learn iteratively during the project, allow-

ing staff to conduct the classes according to their own judgement while keeping faithful to the

basic principles. As part of the planned evaluation of this project, each staff member was

provided with a diary which was to be completed after each inquiry-based learning session.

This would provide data from which we would later analyse and evaluate the project. Whilstthis was to be useful, it transpired that another form of reflection on practice was adopted by

the vast majority of the team members. Colleagues began to experiment by sharing experience

via weekly emails and this unexpected outcome proved to be an extremely useful vehicle to

provide ongoing peer support and an immediate medium for sharing teacher talk throughout

the innovation.

Methodology

The study involved a naturalistic inquiry which spanned the time frame of the innovation.

The first data source is the transcript of the electronic-mail exchanges that took place, week-by-week, as the innovation was implemented. Permission was granted for independent

researchers to look at the complete email transcript. Thirteen (out of 14) of the course team

took part in these exchanges. The second is data from interviews which were carried out by

a member of the course team after the module had been delivered. Nine interviews were

carried out. The interviews explored the expectations of staff and the kinds of demands it

had placed on them as well as asking them to describe the sessions and consider what they

would do differently. However, the interviewee followed the respondents cues, probing for

meaning in a relatively free way (Verma & Mallick, 1999, p. 22). All the interviews were

recorded and transcribed and were subsequently analysed by two independent researchers.

The final data source was from a follow up email questionnaire sent a year after the project

was completed asking the original email discussants about the value of the email exchanges,

whether they had changed their practice based on the reflections from others, and whether

they had used email exchanges to support other teaching since. Eight of the original 13

responded.

The analysis is based on all three sources. The original emails were analysed around the

question of how staff had used these exchanges in the implementation period, close attention

was paid to the form of these data and linguistic usage as well their content. The analysis of

the interview data was inductive, looking for patterns in the data which could yield insight

into the experience of staff taking part. The final data from the questionnaire were analysed in

a more focused way as an evaluation based on participants assessment of the usefulness of the

email exchanges. These data are reported alongside those parts of interview data which madespecific reference to the usefulness or otherwise of the email exchanges. We have reported the

analysis sequentially highlighting the key findings from each data source.

Findings

Visibility and the Significance of Description: The email exchanges

The dominant form of writing in the email exchanges is one of detailed description. The tone

and style is prosaic and captures the specifics of the moment:


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On arriving at the IT suite there were only ten out of the fifteen students belonging to my study

support group in attendance. With one exception, the group were logged on to the computers and

e-mailing their friends. I spent several minutes following up and clarifying timetables and other

housekeeping issues. (Email 1)

These comments were inter-dispersed with occasional comment about what might havebeen a better order or approach:

Because I did not meet my group last week I decided to do a brief review of IBL (I realised now it

would have been better to leave this out since I gave them a hand-out as well and they had already

started the group work idea with their initial introductions). (Email 3)

Additionally, there were reflections about group dynamics, specific examples of what

seemed to work and what did not. There were also some emotion work comments of

encouragement: Firstly and most importantly thank you to everyone for picking up the idea

of IBL and running with it so magnificently. I was worried that it might all go pear shaped

(Email 5). A comment immediately followed by some information about room changes.

What the email exchanges represent are a series of close-to-action reflections jotted down,in most cases, almost immediately after the class. Their tone is informal, matter of fact, but

above all there is an incredible amount of highly context specific detail. What is being made

visible through these exchanges are the material realities and minutia of the classroom, for

example hadnt thought of getting any acetates where the addressee is clearly someone who

is engaged in the same practical task and, therefore, will immediately be able to read the rele-

vance of the need for acetates and the significance of other bits of concrete detail. Read as

continuous prose, they give a clear sense of what was happening in particular classrooms,

along with tips about what did and did not work, and comments designed to encourage other

tutorshow the experience is a pleasant surprise, reassurance about not worrying about

feeling that one was not really doing anything, and so on.

Liminality (In-betweeness) and Uncertainty: The interview

The richest source of insight concerning the destabilising effects that staff experienced in what

for most of them was a new learning environment came from the interviews. Despite the fact

that the module had been collectively planned and agreed, and had been preceded by a work-

shop outlining the approach, the realities of the pedagogic shift proved challenging for some

staff and they used the interviews to reflect on this confusion, and the strategies they adopted:

So for me it was it was very difficult to sort of shift my head about. I completely understood why

we were doing, and the idea of inquiry-based learning was a very good one. The activity was a verygood one and I was just kind of like, OK, so how am I going to make this work? I didnt actually

have a clue how to do it, I have to admit. And for me, the saving grace was that my session was

later in the week, and it allowed me to read other peoples reflections. (Interview 1)

The leap involved from an intellectual conviction of the worth of the approach to a shift in

seeing, that comes about when a new concept is internalised as part of ones personal episte-

mology (Gamache, 2002), appears to be quite large. The value of the mimetic in picking up

from other peoples descriptions of what they actually did was an important source of support

that allowed this tutor to engage in what felt like a competent performance despite the evident

feeling of lack of know-how. This respondent was aware that their behaviour and uncertainty


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impacted on the students experience and this led to a series of reflections about how they

would approach it again.

Another tutor, who was experienced in other teaching contexts but new to the particular

type of course, described the experience as layer upon layer of anxiety (Interview 7). The

intensity of experiences varied across the data and anxiety was not universal, nonetheless, itwas clear that all the tutors found the new approach challenging, even if on reflection it turned

out to be a pleasurable one.

As well as using the interviews to express overall lack of grasp, or comfort with their own

capacity to put the approach into practice, some respondents also reflected directly on the

relationship of the pedagogy to their own sense of expertise and potential shifts in power. One

tutor, for example, was surprised at how adept their group was at finding information:

So again I could imagine that there is an issue there about you losing control in a sense students

becoming acute in one sense they are showing you what theyve got and what resources theyve got

and my role there was acting a kind of a filter and co-ordinator really and giving advice on the

appropriateness. (Interview 6)

Another tutor (Interview 3) clearly recognised that there was a tendency for them to stay

within their own comfort zone of knowledge and expertise.

However, having recognised that this was what had happened, the tutor began to think

about strategies to address what they felt to be the students needs rather than falling back on

their own repertoire. Other tutors had found that they had real gaps in their own knowledge

and a real sense of on-the-hoof coping:

I think all the stuff like plagiarism and stuff, I didnt know about, about what plagiarism means. I

think they probably knew that. When I talked through how to reference, which was a mistake

because explaining how to reference was a nightmare. (Interview 8)

The sense that students know when a tutor does not know and the nightmare of astream of unanswerable questions comes across strongly. However, later in the interview the

same tutor is able to reflect: I enjoyed it actually. It was quite a sort of pleasant couple of

hours. Although it was a bit odd at the beginning to kind of think, Im your teacher and I

shall be in control (Interview 8).

There is evidence in the data of the articulation of a different sort of expertise. There is also

a sense of a different sort of pedagogic pleasure which comes with relinquishing mastery

rather than exercising it.

Meaning Making and the Value of Sharing: Evaluation

There is evidence from both the interviews and from the follow up email responses that the

email sharing was immensely valuable in terms of meaning making and addressing the sense

of anxiety and liminality. For example: There was a very good email describing what he had

explained to them, the ground rules they had decided and stuff, so that helped a great deal

and obviously I re-read through literature that I was given (Interview 5).

In this interview the tutor described the different approaches that tutors had taken to letting

students choose topics, and comparing the social dynamics in their tutor group to those some

of the others described, so that decisions about what approaches to take and how they were

being made visible. Thus the email exchanges appeared to be functioning to help close the


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gap tutors expressed between generally buying into inquiry-based learning and the palpable

anxiety among some staff.

The email exchanges were also used creatively to negotiate an individual approach to

supporting the students. One tutor describes it as involving: I bet it was a combination of

what I read in the documents, what I read on emails and then just looking at the group(Interview 9). The emails were not a substitution for reading the classroom context and

particular dynamic but rather an adjunct.

This generally positive response was repeated in the email response a year on and, with the

exception of one member of staff who reported limited engagement, all the others found it a

valuable source of reflection. More than one respondent reported that they were interested in

the ways in which tutors had different approaches: I learnt from other reflectors that there

are so many different approaches (Email Questionnaire 11

2

). It was also quite empowering

when it was clear that people were doing a variety of things (Email Questionnaire 12).

Others stressed the supportive element of being able to directly learn from others:

The emails were a simple but effective way for me to make sure that what I was experiencing wasnot so radically different from that of others. So in that sense it was nice to see that what I was

doing was in tune with others. Some colleagues were trying out new ideas and I found this very

helpful and adopted some of these for my own sessions. (Email Questionnaire 13)

This same tutor was also impressed by the frankness with which colleagues were willing to

share their experiences: I didnt have problem with this at all and was impressed by how

candid my colleagues were about how the sessions were running (Email Questionnaire 13).

Another tutor used the phrase a community of practice in this context (Email Question-

naire 9). The only consistently reported downside to the exchanges related to time pressures.

Few tutors had used this form of sharing again although some reported they would like to.

One tutor had tried it less successfully on a much smaller scale, which suggests that thecontext of a new and for some quite challenging development taking place with a proactive

and engaged set of colleagues was of crucial importance.

Concluding Reflections

As we indicated at the beginning of the paper, email has certain affordances that facilitate

quick and easy sharing. It is important to stress that affordances are not a property of technol-

ogies per se but are relational based on the groups perceptions of what the technology will

enable them to do (Clegg et al., 2005). In this instance the time frame was significant since

the email exchanges enabled a weekly record of activity among a group who were rarely ableto be physically co-present. There is interesting theoretical work about the addressee using

email in other virtual environments which involve the ways it functions simultaneously

through both personal and public modes of address (McKenna, 2005). In this instance it

made direct, mundane, personal talk visible and collective. The use of email appears to have

facilitated the construction of the peer readers in a way that allowed people to write quickly,

informally and openly about events in the classroom. Face-to-face encounters involve the

management of the self in different ways and with a different power dynamic than appears to

have been present in the email exchanges. A combination of factors seem to have allowed the

construction of the email exchanges as informal and flat in terms of power distribution and,


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therefore, permissive of the sorts of descriptions of practice that were produced. Moreover, it

appears that these were highly valued as a form of support and learning. We would suggest,

therefore, that there is value in paying more attention to email usage as a mode of peer

supported development.

The context of the research interview is also instructive. Chivers has described the ways inwhich he has used face-to-face interviews in professional development: I have myself utilised

such in-depth interviews for many years as a powerful method of throwing light on the affec-

tive domain of learning and development for professionals (Chivers, 2003 p. 8).

He argues that research colleagues are very skilled in this respect. There appears to be

something special about the conditions of intimacy created by a good interviewers capacity to

establish rapport under conditions of guaranteed confidentiality and anonymity, and where

the rules of game involve listening in a non-judgemental, empathetic and attentive way. This

is what appears to have happened in this case. Staff were very willing to share their feelings of

insecurity and dilemmas they faced in implementing the innovation. We can speculate that

had they been asked to produce reflective writing that the conventions of such writing would

have produced different accounts. Interviews might be usefully conceptualised from another

perspective as a way of generating personal knowledge for the respondents as part of their

academic development. We would suggest that the research interview has greater potential as

part of ongoing continuing professional development and as a form of reflection that has

hitherto been generally recognised.

To return to the debates about making teaching community property as part of

academic development, we believe that there are good reasons for looking at forms of

speech and writing that staff themselves judge to be useful. Moreover, we found that staff

experienced the sorts of difficulties during the transition from one way of understanding

to another that Meyer and Land (2003, 2005) discuss in their work on thresholds and

liminality. They suggest that periods of transition, when acquiring new knowledge, can be

troublesome. During such transitions, between old ways of knowing and the new, learn-

ers enter a liminal state of being; a space between different ways of knowing as they

cross from one side of a threshold to the other. We would suggest this unsettling period

of being between ways of understanding has the potential to illuminate the learning

processes of teachers as well as students and that our study provides an example of this.

Rather than foreclosing the debate, we should recognise that such states are inevitable

and that moreover the confusion and incoherence they bring, what Siln (2003) describes

as chaos, are creative and hold potential for new meaning making. We should value

these states rather than repress them for, as our case study shows, staff were able to act

and innovate despite, or perhaps because of, their uncertainties based on different formsof shared talk. Our study, therefore, supports Haighs (2005) conclusions of recognising

the legitimacy and importance of practitioners everyday talk in their own academic

development.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Centre for Sociology, Anthropology and Politicspart of the Higher

Education Academyfor the grant to fund this research and evaluation. Thanks to the

anonymous referees for their useful comments.


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Notes

1. A research grant (C-SAP 33/S/03) was secured from the Centre for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics

to help evaluate the student and staff experience of the revised programme and the student element of

the evaluation has been reported elsewhere (Todd et al., 2004).

2. The numbers match the codes for the original email.

Notes on Contributors

Sue Clegg is Professor of Educational Research at Sheffield Hallam University. She works

collaboratively with staff to support practice and policy related research. She has published

widely; including on reflective practice, and models of professional development for

higher education practitioners, and on the uses of technology in higher education.

Mike McManus is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at Sheffield Hallam University where he is

also a Learning and Teaching Fellow. He is currently Project Manager for the Fund for

the Development of Teaching and Learning (FDTL5) project Active Learning: ActiveCitizenship (ALAC) and is also involved in the development of the Centre for Excellence

in Teaching and Learning (CETL) for the Promotion of Learner Autonomy.

Karen Smith works in an educational development unit at Sheffield Hallam University. Her

research interests are around transition, the first year experience and student support.

Her role, within the strategic development team, sees her working on university-wide

strategy, policy and frameworks and supporting staff with their higher education research

activity.

Malcolm J. Todd is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Sheffield Hallam University where he is

also a Learning and Teaching Fellow. He is involved with the development of the Centre

for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) for the Promotion of Learner Auton-

omy at Sheffield Hallam University. He is also a Senior Advisor for C-SAP, part of the

Higher Education Academy.

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