AHKLC Annual Symposium Talk: The Long and Winding Road: Teaching and Scholarship

As a field of practice, language teaching is largely separated from research within its own discipline. The Centres that co-ordinate academic language courses are generally teaching only and can find themselves marginalised, with an unclear and uncertain position within their institution. Staff may or may not be on academic contracts. Few language teachers are also researchers. For most, professional identities are connected to student education work and teaching practices.

This focus and expertise should be celebrated and valued as an integral element of the academic endeavour. However, for the majority, this is not the reality we work in.  Research and researchers tend to hold greater cultural capital in most university contexts, with student education work frequently viewed as less desirable and those involved in it positioned as lower in status in comparison to researchers.

The marginalised position of Language Centres and of teaching in Higher Education more broadly combined with a lack of understanding around the scholarly work that this entails can make it difficult to navigate clear career pathways or to find ways of gaining recognition and reward for the work that we do. In this talk I aim to offer a short narrative account of my own winding journey into and through scholarship as an English for Academic Purposes practitioner. I will highlight the importance of scholarship to my own professional identity, my career and my practice. This is not a straightforward narrative, and can not be viewed as a map for others to follow. Rather it is a tracing of possibilities, suggestions and cautions. In sharing my own story, I hope to encourage discussion around how we can collectively and collaboratively incorporate scholarship into our practices. Ultimately and ideally, when describing ourselves as ‘a teacher’, the scholarship that is involved to take on this identity should be assumed within the description rather than seen as a separate endeavour.