A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

Arts, humanities and social sciences
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made, different and challenging historical narratives follow which will then be tested in
debate. All these subjects operate in these ways for student and tutor alike: they require
active, participating students, since discussion and argument are fundamental to their
practice but this, in itself, can present difficulties, as illustrated in Case study 1. In such
dynamic fields, where new areas of work are continuously evolving, it is therefore vital
to consider carefully how students are to be adequately supported.
Case study 1: Teaching contemporary literature
When students encounter contemporary fiction they often feel that they are being
asked to let go of the handrails that have guided them through their programmes
thus far. If they are preparing to comment on or write about Dickens’ Bleak House
or Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice they can draw on their prior encounters with
the author’s work through novels, films and TV adaptations. Such classic texts
and authors have, oddly, a kind of cultural currency which students can make
use of in seminars and assignments. This familiarity often needs to be decentred
by the tutor, as anyone who has tried to encourage readings of Jane Austen that
reach beyond romance will know. Nevertheless, in many courses in English
departments there is cultural capital to draw on and experiment with when the
module begins.
Contemporary Irish prose is under-researched, compared with English fiction or
even Irish poetry. While students generally enjoy reading it, studying it often
produces a crisis of voice as students realise they will be required to comment on
a text without the opportunity to weave their comments into a prior conversation
about a novel conducted among critics, a conversation which is normally ratified
as acceptable through its publication and presence in the library. Students often
see their encounter with contemporary fiction as one which requires them to
develop an unmediated response to the text in question. When the fiction also
invites them to investigate a different culture this sense of vulnerability and the
perceived risk of saying ‘the wrong thing’ can be acute.
There is a balance to be struck in these circumstances between giving students the
sense of security they feel is lacking and encouraging the risk-taking that enables
original work. I try to achieve this balance first by being clear about expectations.
In a detailed handbook, I acknowledge anxiety and aim for clarity about what
students are and are not expected to know. I then provide a glossary for dialect
words and references to public figures or political acts that the text refers to, in
addition to a bibliography, and students can propose additions to both as the
course develops. I also provide brief seminar preparation exercises which give the
students some guidelines about issues to look out for and possible reading