Description
Despite conscious and ongoing efforts to legitimise and reclaim the value of EAP in the context of higher education (Hyland, 2021), practitioners’ work is often seen as a remedial activity operating in the periphery with little support and recognition (Ding & Bruce, 2017, Hyland & Jiang, 2021). Nevertheless, EAP, specifically in-sessional provision, engages with the fabric of the university and appears in different forms and degrees of specificity (Tibbets & Chapman, 2023). This provision transcends the problematic and contentious native vs non-native speaker division (Hyland, 2016; Flowerdew, 2019) and opens thespace for collaboration and exploration between In-sessional Provision and Academic Development Units to challenge the current state and reimagine a coherent and inclusive academic skills provision. The Centre for Education Enhancement and the International Education Institute, the AD and EAP units within the University of St Andrews, joined together to offer an integrated in-sessional service thus moving from a previously segregated approach to provision. In this talk, we reflect on the drivers for collaboration while
unpicking how and why we consciously aligned our previously divided provision to enhance students’ experience at our institution. We explain how our one-to-one tutorials and workshops are designed and made accessible to all our learners in a coherent manner. Drawing from student-generated data and our
reflections, we also explore affordances and challenges encountered in our collaborative approach. We conclude by outlining the future directions of our collaboration. This talk will be relevant for both academic developers and EAP practitioners involved in EGAP in-sessional support.
| Period | 16 Mar 2024 |
|---|---|
| Held at | British Association of Lecturers in English for Academic Purposes, United Kingdom |
| Degree of Recognition | International |