principles for effective practice in supporting

www.le.ac.uk/lli

Leicester Learning Institute

Moving beyond ‘study skills’:

Principles for effective practice in supporting

students’ learning

Moving beyond ‘study skills’: Principles for effective practice in supporting students’ learning

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Contents

Preface 3

Executive Summary 4

Introduction 5

Moving beyond 'study skills': Priniciples for effective practice in supporting students'

learning 8

Support with putting the principles into practice 14

References 16


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Preface

Thank you very much for taking the time to read what I hope will be a helpful and

thought-provoking document. Its chief purpose is to stimulate reflection and

discussion around the different ways in which we can all - staff and students -

work together to support learning at curricular levels. It sets out to provide

starting points for discussion and development of practice, and is certainly not

intended to be prescriptive. Academic departments, let alone universities, are

nothing if not diverse places in which a rich plurality of approaches to learning and

teaching co-exist and flourish.

As with all such documents, it’s bound to betray the particular values, beliefs and preoccupations of its

author. In my case, these centre around a vision of education as a critical practice and of universities as

spaces in which the ideas, ideologies, power-relations etc. that help shape the world we learn and teach in,

should be analysed, questioned, challenged and contested. In this spirit of criticality, then, colleagues are

invited (indeed, positively encouraged!) to challenge and critique what they read here and to contact me

with their comments.

It’s important to stress that the principles set out here relate specifically to the integration of support within

curricular settings. They are not intended to discount or diminish the value and importance of extra-, or

cross-curricular modes of support. The different approaches we take to supporting students’ learning each

have their own strengths and should be viewed as complementary and mutually informative rather than as

being in competition with each other. It’s also important to stress that the call to move ‘beyond study skills’

in no way implies that such skills are not relevant to student learning. Clearly, they are relevant. Rather, it is

intended to ensure that we don’t limit our understanding of student learning to the acquisition of ‘skills’, but

consider also broader and fundamental questions of how students learn through the development of a range

of discipline-specific practices.

Finally, I should also state that this document could not have been produced without the input, suggestions,

wisdom and all round brilliance of my LLI colleagues, Lucy Ellis, Dr Alexandra Patel and Marta Ulanicka.

Steve Rooney

[email protected]

Leicester Learning Institute

mailto:[email protected]


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Executive Summary

This document sets out four related principles designed to help departments integrate, within

mainstream curricula, support for students’ learning. They take as their starting point the

assumption that we all want to find approaches to supporting learning which: a) create

opportunities for students to engage, critically and creatively, with their respective courses of

study; and b) are informed by relevant research and scholarship around student learning. The

principles do not form a prescriptive ‘checklist’. Rather, they are intended to provide guidance, and

to stimulate discussion. How they are interpreted and adapted will, of course, vary across different

disciplinary contexts and levels of study.

The four inter-connected principles are as follows:

1. Support for developing students’ learning should be treated as an integral component of the

curriculum and firmly situated within the specific disciplinary contexts in which students’

learning takes place.

2. Practical support should consist of creating spaces for reflective and experiential learning

and provide opportunities for students to develop relevant academic practices.

3. Opportunities for dialogue and discussion around expectations, conventions, progress made

etc. should be provided at appropriate points in the curriculum.

4. Students should be engaged as partners and collaborators in developing practices to

support student learning.

In the sections that follow, each principle is explained, with reference to relevant literature, and

questions and prompts are also provided to guide individuals and course teams in reflecting on

current practices and potential areas for change and development.

What the principles mean in practice

The main implications of the principles are as follows:

We move away from a notion of abstract and isolated ‘skills’ and towards an appreciation

that academic literacy practices (inclusive of, but not reducible to, the development of

particular skills) are central to how students construct and develop disciplinary knowledge

and understanding

Where curricular-level support is concerned, it is related - in clear and recognisable ways - to

the various academic tasks students engage in

We engage, where appropriate and possible, students as partners in the design,

development and provision of support

Details of the support The Leicester Learning Institute (LLI) (www.le.ac.uk/lli) provides to

departments in helping to realise these implications, is provided at the end of this document.

http://www.le.ac.uk/lli


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Introduction

Supporting student learning: de-mystifying practices in HE

Writing of the confusion and disorientation students often feel, especially when new to higher

education, Lillis (2001) reminds us that: ‘it is important to view such confusion not as an individual

student phenomenon but as indicative of a dominant practice in HE, which I am calling here the

‘institutional practices of mystery.’’ The ‘practices of mystery’ to which Lillis refers are those norms

and conventions of HE study that those of us with more experience sometimes take for granted.

Whilst negotiating these practices certainly entails improving particular skills, it also involves a

much deeper process involving the development of more critical orientations towards knowledge,

requiring students to:

move from an ability to describe and reproduce the perspectives and theories of others

towards an ability to apply, challenge and critique these perspectives and theories - in the

process, developing their own

develop more critically evaluative approaches to locating and filtering information from an

ever wider range of sources

understand how various forms of academic discourse and genre conventions ‘work’ and

how ‘voice’ is articulated through these conventions

Creating spaces for students to make sense of, and practice, the above need not entail ‘dumbing

down’, ‘spoon-feeding’ or any other such narratives of declining or diluted ‘standards’. On the

contrary, our efforts to support students’ development should be viewed as forming part of our

broader commitment to empowering them to participate in an intellectually rigorous and

challenging process (Haggis, 2006) - a process that, in turn, reflects a vision of ‘the university as a

centre of critique and a vital democratic public sphere’ (Giroux, 2010).

Learning through the development of ‘literacy practices’

Although learning at university often involves developing particular skills (and developing these

skills can be enormously helpful and beneficial), the discourse around skills can sometimes be

unhelpful and reductive, tending to present them in somewhat abstract and de-contextualised

terms (Gibbs, 2009; Wingate, 2006). As Lea and Street pointed out some time ago:

‘Learning in higher education involves adapting to new ways of knowing: new ways of

understanding, interpreting and organising knowledge. Academic literacy practices -

reading and writing within disciplines - constitute central processes through which

students learn new subjects and develop their knowledge about new areas of study…

…The study skills approach has assumed that literacy is a set of atomised skills which

students have to learn and which are then transferable to other contexts. The focus is on

attempts to 'fix' problems with student learning, which are treated as a kind of pathology.’

(Lea and Street, 1998)


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The principles set out here are designed to help departments consider their approaches to

supporting the development of students’ ‘academic literacy practices’ - practices that can include

skills, but which also involve much more.

A focus on writing and on writing as a social practice

Writing is, of course, not the only activity students undertake. For many disciplines, however,

writing remains ‘the main form of assessment’ for students’ work (Lillis and Scott, 2007). The

different types of written tasks students undertake can provide a rich context for discussions

around a broad range of related literacy practices - from searching for and managing information

effectively, to reading selectively and critically, to making effective and useful notes for essays,

reports, literature reviews etc. For these reasons, the practices surrounding writing provide the

main focus for the sections that follow. However, the principles described here can also be

considered in relation to a broader range of academic practices.

As the academic literacies research referred to above argues, supporting the development of

students’ writing requires us to think beyond notions of individual student ‘deficits’ and towards an

understanding of writing as a social practice. As Burke points out:

‘Individuals do not simply learn the ‘right’ skills and then use them to produce writing that

clearly, logically and coherently reflects their thinking. Writing is deeply enmeshed in wider

power relations that construct the ‘author’… Writers are socially situated subjects and the


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meanings they produce through their writing are constituted through the contested and

multiple discourses at play in different social fields. This raises important epistemological and

ontological questions about the processes of writing. What counts as ‘knowledge’ in different

higher education contexts? Who can be recognised as a legitimate ‘knower’?’

Burke (2008)

The critical scholarship of Burke, Lea, Lillis, Street and others raises interesting and challenging

questions about the assumptions and values that underlie so many of our practices in HE. Given the

premium we place on criticality, however, these are questions that we can and should welcome and

engage with only too gladly!


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Supporting students’ learning: principles for developing

effective practice

The following principles provide departments with a basis for developing their own learning and

teaching practices in order to support their students’ learning.

1. Support for developing students’ learning should be treated as an integral

component of the curriculum and firmly situated within the specific disciplinary

contexts in which students’ learning takes place.

‘Interventions and approaches to improve retention and success should as far as possible

be embedded into mainstream provision to ensure all students participate and benefit

from them.’

(Thomas, 2012)

It can be tempting to treat support for the development of various academic practices as a separate

concern from the day-to-day process of teaching course content. After all, many of these practices

(studying independently, taking greater ‘ownership’ of learning, writing critically, formulating

arguments etc.) apply across a range of disciplines. However, whilst this is true up to a point, it is

important to remember that learning is situated within specific settings and contexts. There is

simply no such thing as an entirely generic, transferable, context-free ‘academic skill’. No student is

required to become an expert ‘writer’ or ‘critical thinker’, completely irrespective of subject, genre

of writing, level of study etc. Rather, they are required to develop expertise within particular (and

far from homogenous) contexts. As Wingate and London point out:

‘Generic essay-writing courses may develop certain techniques such as structuring the

essay, building paragraphs, or referencing conventions. But what students really need to

understand… is the academic discourse of the discipline… and the underlying

epistemology. They have to understand the discipline’s conventions of constructing

knowledge.’

(Wingate and London, 2007)

It is important, then, that the department-level activities, resources, materials etc. we

develop carry a strong discipline focus. Without this focus, students are likely to perceive any

efforts to provide support (however well-intentioned these efforts might be) as being of

limited relevance to their learning.

Questions to prompt discussion, planning and the development of practice:

What types of academic practices, specific skills and critical orientations towards

knowledge do students need to develop in order to engage with our discipline?


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In what ways do we seek to: a) introduce students to the subject-specific relevance of

these practices, skills and orientations; and b) support students in developing them

(e.g. during transition from one level of study to another)?

What do we know of the effectiveness, or otherwise, of our current approaches to

supporting students?

How far is the current curriculum designed to support the development of the kinds of

academic practices, skills and orientations we have identified as being particularly

relevant to our discipline?

Could the curriculum be developed or adapted in order to better support student

development?

2. Practical support should consist of creating spaces for reflective and experiential

learning and provide opportunities for students to develop relevant academic

practices.

Where support for student development is concerned, experiential approaches should be

considered, where possible.1 This is not to diminish the importance of more instructional

approaches elsewhere in the curriculum – far from it. In many cases, well-planned and

communicated instructional content is precisely what is called for to help provide students with

the means to extend and develop their knowledge. However, instructional approaches tend to

be less effective in enabling students to learn the practices necessary to engage in knowledge

construction in critical and creative ways. It is, after all, through practice, experimentation,

observation, reflection etc. that we develop our abilities to engage in a whole range of practices

- academic and non-academic alike. We will, of course, benefit from instruction in particular

elements of practice (provided such instruction is timely and relevant) but this is most helpful

when linked to concrete practices:

‘Through writing, and opportunities to practice writing, students learn not only to

recognise the conventions used in the disciplines they are studying, but also, more

fundamentally, they learn how these conventions reveal and contribute to creating the

epistemological orientation and knowledge-making practices at play in the disciplinary

fields they are beginning to inhabit themselves.’

(Harrington, 2011)

Although Harrington is referring to writing in particular, the focus on learning through

experience is no less important where other practices are concerned, such as delivering

effective presentations or designing engaging and interesting academic posters.

1 The term ‘experiential’ is used in the most general sense to denote learning rooted in, and related to, activities

students undertake. It in no way implies advocacy of specific models of experiential learning. Nor does it seek to lend legitimacy to contentious and widely discredited theories that state that teaching should be tailored to suit fixed ‘Learning Styles’ (for a comprehensive critique of such theories see Coffield et al., 2004)


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How would we characterise our current approaches to supporting students’

development? Would we describe it as mainly instructional or experiential?

What opportunities do students have for participating in experiential learning

activities related to the development of relevant academic practices?

Could our existing approaches be adapted to incorporate more opportunities for

experiential learning?

How do we demonstrate to students what effective practice ‘looks like’ (e.g. how

evidence can be used in an effective and critical manner in essays, reports, literature

reviews etc.)?

3. Opportunities for dialogue and discussion around expectations, conventions,

progress made etc. should be provided at appropriate points in the curriculum

If language were simply a clear and unambiguous transmitter of meaning, then helping students to

negotiate the various conventions and expectations they encounter at university would be a

straightforward question of providing detailed written guidelines, instructions, criteria etc.

However, as we know, language tends not to ‘transmit’ meaning in anything like so straightforward

a fashion. Indeed, as Lillis and Turner (2001) have argued, attempts to render more explicit the

often complex and tacit assumptions and expectations that surround various forms of academic

discourse can often result in even greater confusion:

‘…much advice in Study Skill texts/guidelines and tutor comments not only uses wordings

to denote conventions as if they were transparently meaningful but works with the

metaphor of language itself as ideally transparent. Consider, for example, the following

exhortations: state clearly, spell it out, be explicit, express your ideas clearly, say exactly

what you mean. If we explore further just one of these exhortations we can see that… such

wordings are anything but transparent and indeed mean different things across a range of

contexts.’

(Lillis & Turner, 2001)

To help address what we know to be language’s opacity, it is necessary to provide students (and

ourselves) with opportunities for dialogue and reflection in order to encourage better shared

understandings of expectations, and how these expectations might be met in practice:

‘Facilitating students’ internalisation of disciplinary standards... is about much more than

the provision of explicit assessment criteria and clear guidelines… Instead, there is a need

to create opportunities for students to engage with the criteria and guidelines, in dialogue


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with their tutors and each other - and themselves - in order to construct and internalise

their own understandings of the criteria, and of what counts as achieving them...’

(Harrington, 2011)

O’Donovan, Rust and Price (2015) (see References) describe such improved understandings (where

assessment tasks and processes are concerned) as ‘assessment literacy’ and provide some very

helpful practical advice on the kinds assessment and feedback practices that tend to help students

develop this kind of literacy.

Opening up conventions and criteria to greater levels of (potentially critical) scrutiny, dialogue and

discussion might also, of course, lead us to question them. We might decide, for example, that

certain conventions, expectations or modes of assessment need to be changed, adapted or

discarded altogether. Various academic norms and conventions are, after all, socially constructed

and are, as such, contestable and mutable. Given that we encourage students to adopt critical

approaches to disciplinary content, we should be no less open (as part of our broader commitment

to criticality) to subjecting our own practices and expectations to similar levels of scrutiny.


How do we seek to communicate the norms, expectations and conventions of the

discipline (e.g. how essays are structured, how evidence is used, how arguments are

presented and engaged with) to students?

How effective do we think these means of communication are in establishing shared

understandings?

Where and when do we engage with students in dialogue and discussion around

expectations, assessment criteria, feedback etc.? Could opportunities for dialogue and

discussion be extended or deepened in any way?

What role do assessment and feedback processes (e.g. opportunities for formative

assessment, reference to exemplars of ‘good practice’) play in developing students’

understandings of what constitutes effective practice within the discipline?

4. Students should be engaged as partners and collaborators in developing practices to

support student learning.

We can sometimes forget that an often rich source of expertise, where students’ learning

development is concerned, is students themselves. They, after all, possess direct experience of both

the demands of HE study, and the kinds of practices and strategies that can be developed in order

to negotiate these demands. Finding ways of harnessing and sharing this expertise can provide

powerful and effective means of introducing newer students to the cultures and expectations of

their respective discipline(s).


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There are numerous ways in which the ‘resident expertise’ of existing students can be utilised,

including:

Peer-assisted Learning (PAL) schemes in which students are trained to provide co-curricular academic support to fellow students (e.g. is designed to support student engagement with course content or key assessment activities) (Wadoodi and Crosby, 2002)

Co-design, between staff and students, of learning and teaching practices and resources to

support students’ academic development (Healey, Flint and Harrison, 2014)

Staff-student partnerships in curriculum design and development (Healey, Flint and

Harrington, 2014)

Activities can, and do, also consist of a combination of the above.

A further reason for engaging students as partners in teaching and curriculum design is that it can,

potentially at least, help us to create spaces in which the dynamic of students-as-

consumers/universities-as-service-providers can be challenged (Wenstone, 2012). Staff-student

partnership activities can look to provide alternatives to reductive visions of HE which

mischaracterise education as a commodity rather than as the highly complex, creative and critical

process we know it to be (McCulloch, 2009). Working with students to develop learning and

teaching can imply a vision of education as a shared endeavour in which students and staff work

together as ‘co-producers and collaborators.’ (Gibbs, 2012).

At the University of Leicester, several student learning-related staff-student partnerships and PAL

projects are currently in operation. Further details are available on the LLI website.


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How far, and in what ways, do we draw on the experience and expertise of existing

students (either directly or indirectly) to help support the learning of peers (e.g.

students newer to HE)?

Are there particular elements of the curriculum that might lend themselves to greater

levels of insight and input from current students?

How far, and in what ways, do we, or could we, work with students to develop

curricula, learning resources etc.?


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Support with putting the principles into practice

The LLI supports departments across the university in putting the principles outlined above into

practice. This support includes:

teaching and learning resources and activities for use with students in both face-to-face and

online contexts

co-design and co-teaching (where resources permit) of specific themed workshops or

modules

support for establishing Peer-Assisted Learning (PAL) and other staff-student partnership

activities (with a specific focus on supporting student learning)

co-design of courses and modules to enable the integration of support for student learning

into mainstream curricula

training and development activities and resources aligned with the UK Professional

Standards Framework (UKPSF) via the University of Leicester’s Continuing Professional

Development (CPD) Framework

Each of the above shares the aim of achieving the following:

providing students with context and task-specific support for developing learning

designing courses and curricula in which the development of discipline-specific academic

practices is supported via experiential means

developing assessment practices that provide spaces for dialogue, formativity and reflection


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developing cultures of cooperation and collaboration - between staff and students - in

supporting student learning

Visit the LLI website for further details of how we work with departments to achieve the above:

www.le.ac.uk/lli. In the meantime, please get in touch to find out more about how we can help - we

would love to hear from you!

http://www.le.ac.uk/lli


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References

Burke, P.J. (2008) Writing, Power and Voice: Access to and Participation in Higher Education, Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education, 15(2), 199-210. Coffield, F., Moseley, D., Hall, E., Ecclestone, K. (2004) Learning styles and pedagogy in post-16

learning: A systematic and critical review. London: The Learning and Skills Research Centre.

Gibbs, G. (2009) Developing students as learners - varied phenomena, varied contexts and a developmental trajectory for the whole endeavour, Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, Issue 1, 1-12. Gibbs, G (2012) Implications of ‘Dimensions of Quality’ in a market environment. HEA research series. York: The Higher Education Academy. Giroux, H. A (2010) Bare Pedagogy and the Scourge of Neoliberalism: Rethinking Higher Education as a Democratic Public Sphere, The Educational Forum, 74(3), 184-196. Haggis, T. (2006) Pedagogies for diversity: retaining critical challenge amidst fears of ‘dumbing down’ Studies in Higher Education 31(5), 521-535.

Harrington, K (2011) The Role of Assessment in “Writing in the Disciplines”. In Deane, M and

O’Neill, P, eds. Writing in the Disciplines. Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 48-62.

Healey, M., Flint, A. & Harrington, K. (2014). Engagement through partnership : students as partners

in learning and teaching in higher education. York: The Higher Education Academy.

Lea, MR & Street, BV (1998) Student writing in higher education: An academic literacies approach. Studies in Higher Education, 23(2), 157-172. Lillis, T (2001) Student Writing: Access, Regulation, Desire. London: Routledge.

Lillis, T & Turner, J (2001) Student Writing in Higher Education: Contemporary confusion, traditional

concerns, Teaching in Higher Education, 6(1), 57-68.

Lillis, T. and Scott, M. (2007) Defining academic literacies research: issues of epistemology, ideology

and strategy, Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4(1), 5-32.

McCulloch, A. (2009) The student as co-producer: learning from public administration about the student-university relationship, Studies in Higher Education, 34(2), 171-183. O’Donovan, B. Rust, C. and Price, M. (2015) A scholarly approach to solving the feedback dilemma in practice, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. Thomas, L (2012) Building student engagement and belonging in higher education at a time of change: final report from the What Works? Student Retention and Success programme. York: The Higher Education Academy.

http://www.aldinhe.ac.uk/ojs/index.php?journal=jldhe&page=issue&op=view&path%5b%5d=11

http://www.mendeley.com/library/

http://www.mendeley.com/library/

http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/what-works-retention


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Waddodi, A. and Crosby J. R. (2002) Twelve tips for peer-assisted learning: a classic concept revisited, Medical Teacher 24(3), 241-244. Wenstone, R. (2012) A Manifesto for Partnership. National Union of Students. Wingate, U. (2006) Doing away with “study skills.” Teaching in Higher Education, 11(4), 457- 469. Wingate, U & London, C (2007) A Framework for Transition : Supporting “Learning to Learn” in Higher Education, Higher Education Quarterly 61(3), 391-405.

http://www.nusconnect.org.uk/campaigns/highereducation/partnership/a-manifesto-for-partnerships/

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