Kate Chanock

What academic language and learning advisers bring to the scholarship of teaching and learning: problems and possibilities for dialogue with the disciplines

Higher education policy is seeking, in the interest of ‘quality assurance’, to reward teaching and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Academic language and learning (ALL) advisers, who work closely with students to improve their performance in their courses of study, have much to contribute to SoTL. ALL advisers who adopt an ‘academic literacies’ approach share with lecturers in the disciplines an engagement with issues of ‘‐ography’ (i.e. writing in and for a discourse community)—including the relationships between epistemology, form, and language—yet, misconceptions about ALL advisers’ work can prevent discipline lecturers from consulting them when thinking about questions of teaching and learning in their own field. This paper discusses ALL advisers’ access to insights into students’ experiences of learning and of being taught, with relevance both for particular disciplines and for academic culture across the disciplines; their contributions to SoTL; the difficulties they encounter in trying to communicate across the borders of the disciplines; and ways of improving this situation in the context of the new emphasis on encouraging improvement in the quality of teaching.

A Testing Issue: Key skills assessment in Australia

Maintenance of academic standards, assessment and monitoring are key tasks for tertiary education, as the system attempts to meet government targets for universal participation. Tertiary education therefore demands more attention to the measurement of outcomes. However, the use of a graduate skills assessment test, we contend--particularly in the form this currently takes in Australia--implies a limited sense of the value added by a university education. We question the validity of national testing both on grounds of its suitability to assess the skills cultivated by university study and on grounds of equity and cultural inclusiveness.

In search of a simple assessment instrument for identifying dyslexia in university students

University students with Learning Difficulties (LD) undergo lengthy, expensive assessment by an educational psychologist to provide a detailed cognitive profile on which to base accommodations to enable each individual to study without disadvantage. However, reports are often hard for students to understand and, without trained LD tutors, this information remains underutilized. We trialed an alternative instrument based on the York Adult Assessment developed in the UK, hoping to enable university staff in disabilities and academic skills units to identify students with dyslexia quickly, easily and at no cost to the student and to recommend a limited range of appropriate accommodations based on the result. The trial produced significant group effects, but unacceptable false negatives; we cannot recommend the instrument, therefore, and the need for a reliable alternative remains. This article considers the problems surrounding the present method of assessment and discusses the methodological problems of devising an alternative.